Social Class as a Hierarchical Distinction - Essay Example

Social is the hierarhical distinctions or co-called stratification between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Individuals are usually assorted into classes according to their economic positions and similar political and economic interests within the particular stratification system. However social class is not a universal phenomenon. The factors that identify a class widely vary from one society to another. Different people or even groups within a society may have completely different ideas about what makes one person lower or higher in the social hierarchy. For example great sociologist Dennis Wrong determines class in two ways - realist and nominalist. The realist definition relies on clear class boundaries to which people adhere in order to create social groupings. They identify themselves with a particular class and interact mainly with people in this class. The nominalist definition of class focuses on the characteristics that people share in a given class - education, occupation, etc. Class is therefore determined not by the group in which you place yourself or the people you interact with, but rather by these common characteristics (Kerbo, 1996, p. 56). The most important class distinction between the two groups is power. The powerful attempt to cement their own positions in society and maintain their ranking above the powerless. In societies where classes exist, one's class is defined largely by occupation, education and qualifications, income, wealth, including the ownership of land, property, means of production, et cetera; family background and aspirations. Such fluid notion as race can have widely varying degrees of influence on class standing. Having characteristics of a particular ethnic group may improve one's class status in many societies. However, what is considered "racially superior" in one society can often be exactly the opposite in another. In situations where such factors are an issue, a minority ethnicity has often been hidden, or discreetly ignored if the person in question has otherwise attained the requirements to be of a higher class. Ethnicity is still often the single most overarching issue of class status in some societies. Also we should make a distinction between causation and correlation when it comes to race and class. Many societies have a high correlation between particular classes and race, but this is not necessarily an indication that race is a factor in the determination of class. So the term race can be refered to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of characteristics. Such visible traits as skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture are the basis for the most widely used human racial categories (Kerbo, 1996, p. 69). Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. Some scientists argue that although "race" is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans. Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity. Today most scientists study human genotypic and phenotypic variation using concepts such as "population" and "clinal gradation". Many contend that while racial categorizations may be marked by phenotypic or genotypic traits, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into races, are social constructs. Speaking about the social structure of the United States we can take as an example the model of contemporary American society: Upper class: Those with great influence, wealth and prestige. This class makes up about 1% of the population and owns about a third of private wealth. Upper middle class: The upper middle class consists of white collar professionals with advanced post-secondary educational degrees and comfortable personal incomes. Upper middle class professionals have large amounts of autonomy in the workplace and therefore enjoy high job satisfaction. Lower middle class: Semi-professionals, non-retail salespeople and craftsmen who have some college education. Households in this class may need two income earners to make ends meet and therefore may have household incomes rivaling the personal incomes of upper middle class professionals such as attorneys. Working class: According to some experts such as Michael Zweig, this class may constitute the majority of Americans and include those otherwise referred to as lower middle. It includes blue as well as white collar workers who have relatively low personal incomes and lack college degrees with many being among the 45% of Americans who have never attended college. Lower class: This class includes the poor, alienated and marginalized members of society. While most individuals in this class work, it is common for them to drift in and out of poverty (Kerbo, 1996, p. 78). The questions about social classes and race are closely connected with the question of ethnicity. Ethnicity theory insists that race is a social category and is one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Religion, language, customs, nationality and political identification are those other criteria. Ethnicity theory is based on the notion of culture. This theory was put forth by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. The theory was preceded by over a century where biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism is the belief that white European races are biologically superior and other non-white races are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify slavery and genocide of the Native Americans in a society which was supposedly founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to be a preoccupation of scientists, theologians, and the public. Ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined his four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of explaining the marginalized status of people of color in the United States with an inherent[[ biological inferiority, he instead said that it was a failure to assimilate into American culture that held people back. They could be equal as long as they dropped their culture which was deficient compared to white culture. The problems of social classes, race and ethnicity arise in the places where a lot of people live. It enevetably appeares in American big cities. It is urban society which is devided into classes and deals with the questions of race and ethnicity. Jane Jacobs in her one of the most instructive and civilized books "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" writes that People gathered in concentrations of big-city size and density can be felt to be an automatic-if necessary-evil. This is a common assumption: that human beings are charming in small numbers and noxious in large numbers. Given this point of view, it follows that concentrations of people should be physically minimized in every way: by thinning down the numbers themselves insofar as this is possible, and beyond that by aiming at illusions of suburban lawns and small-town placidity. It follows that the exuberant variety inherent in great numbers of people, tightly concentrated, should be played down, hidden, hammered into a semblance of the thinner, more tractable variety or the outright homogeneity often represented in thinner populations (Jacobs, 1961, p. 195). On the other hand, people gathered in concentrations of city size and density can be considered a positive good, in the faith that they are desirable because they are the source of immense vitality, and because they do represent, in small geographic compass, a great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities, many of these differences unique and unpredictable and all the more valuable because they are. Given this point of view, it follows that the presence of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact. It follows that they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated . References Jane Jacobs. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House. Kerbo, Harold R. (1996). Social stratification and inequality: class conflict in historical and comparative perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill, 142. Read More