Models of Social Stratification - Coursework Example

Social Class All societies have developed specific ways of carrying out basic functions--economic production, government, family life, religion, and so on. Because of biological life cycle, full-fledged members of any society must teach the young how to carry on the social patterns of that society if cultural continuity and social order are to be maintained. Sociologists refer to society as having a "social structure," by which they mean that there are many different interrelated positions (Brtaux & Thompson 54). The "structure" consists of the pattern of relationships among these positions. Each position (such as father, doctor, or legislator) is related to one or more other positions (such as daughter and son, patient and nurse, constituent and lobbyist) (Brtaux & Thompson 55). Each of these relationships is culturally defined, thus anyone occupying a position is expected to behave in culturally defined ways toward anyone occupying any of the related positions. When a society becomes highly differentiated so that different adult males and adult females are found carrying out a large number of rather different roles, the task becomes much more complex. Modern theories of class divisions view occupations as the basis of classification within the stratification system. Americans actually view different occupations as superior and inferior to one another. Thompson & Hickey (2005) identify five social classes: upper class, upper-middle class, lower middle class, working class, lower class. This has been demonstrated in countless ways in sociological research. It is thus seen as a means of attainment of social level rather than as a direct measure of social level. It is one of the important links between one's origin and one's destination, not only an influence in determining one's destination, but also influenced by one's origin. A major concern will be to investigate the degree to which one's educational level is a function of one's origin. Thompson & Hickey (2005) identify that adult roles are quite varied, and the socialization experiences required to prepare individuals to carry them out are also quite varied. Such complexities cannot be considered here. There is considerable agreement, however, that a person's occupation is the most valid single measure of the position he occupies in the stratification system of our society. More effectively than any other single measure, occupation reflects all three of the major dimensions of stratification. In fact, this statement probably applies not only to the United States but to all modern industrial societies. Another classification of class division is proposed by Gilbert & Kahl (2002). This model is based on sources of income which varies within each social class. the authors underline that "there is really no way to establish that a particular model is 'true' and another 'false.'. The main classes are: capitalist class ($250,000 or more), upper middle class ($62,500 per individual), middle class ($50,000 to $90,000 for households), working class ($20,000 to $50,000 for households), working poor ($12,500 per household) and underclass (less than $12,000 a year). There are three important ways in which middle-class occupations differ from working-class occupations that are relevant. First, middle-class (white-collar) occupations typically require the individual to handle ideas and symbols and to be skilled in personal relations, whereas working-class (blue-collar) occupations typically involve physical objects rather than symbols and call for much less interpersonal skill. Second, middle-class jobs require much more self-direction in the ordering of activities and the selection of methods, than working-class jobs, which are more often routinized and subject to more strict supervision. Closely associated with these differences is the tendency for middle-class occupations to call for individual action whereas working-class occupations more often call for coordinated group or team action. Such occupational differences are in part the basis for requiring higher levels of education for entry into middle-class occupations. The higher the level of education, the greater the emphasis on complexity of relations in the subject matter, the greater the concern with understanding interpersonal relations, and the greater independence expected of the student. Whereas middle-class people tend to value freedom and opportunity, working-class people give more emphasis to orderliness and security. Discussions of Western industrial societies have suggested several different bases of stratification. In general, these have reflected three dimensions. Max Weber referred to these dimensions as "class, status, and party" (Levine 22), whereas Brtaux and Thompson (1997) prefer the more descriptive terms "privilege, prestige, and power." Levine’s terms refer to the differentiation among social positions according to their economic, honorific, and political characteristics, respectively (Brtaux and Thompson 43). There is a general tendency for positions that are high or low on one dimension to be high or low on the others. That is, individuals with great wealth tend to be honored and to wield great political power, whereas poor people tend not to have high prestige and to be relatively weak politically. There are, however, many exceptions to this. The gangster may be wealthy and powerful but generally has low prestige; the religious leader may have high prestige but little wealth; and so on. Another model of class division was proposed by Levine (2006) these sociologists divide social classes into three main categories: Upper Americans, Middle Americans and Lower Americans. "Lower Americans" refers to that segment of the population whose only possible jobs are unskilled ones. Such jobs pay very little, are undependable sources of income, and thus provide a poor economic base for family stability. Families that are dependent on such jobs are thus likely to have very different lives from blue-collar families in which the wage earners have jobs that call for a degree of skill (Brtaux & Thompson 14). Such skilled jobs not only are more prestigious and better paid, they are also likely to be more dependable sources of income, both because they are more essential in industry and because they tend to be unionized. The three classes to which reference will most consistently be made, then, will be the middle class, the working class, and the lower class (whitecollar, skilled blue-collar, and unskilled blue-collar occupations, respectively). Upper class consists of “old money families’, "Success elite" and managerial class. Political practices and state actions have affected class division and mobility within society. The basic ideology defines all people as having the potential for movement into other strata--higher or lower. Such movement is called "social mobility" (Glbert 76). Career mobility refers to the change of level of an individual's position during his own lifetime; intergenerational mobility refers to the difference in level of the positions occupied by a father and his son. Using occupational ratings as an index, career mobility occurs when an individual's occupation later in life has a higher or lower rating than his earlier occupation, and intergenerational mobility occurs when the son has an occupation with a different ranking from that of his father. The presence of intergenerational social mobility in our society is, for our purposes, one of this society's crucial structural features (Glbert 78). The fact of mobility, and the fact that everyone is not equally mobile, poses a problem. The simple presence of stratification leads to the question of how persons are prepared to occupy different positions--how they develop the different requirements of those positions. But if there is mobility in the system, the problem is even more complex. Intergenerational discontinuity, especially if that discontinuity is selective, poses a problem (Saunders 1989). Political practices determine increasing demand for persons at the higher occupational levels and decreased demand for those at the lower levels. Central to this set of attitudes and values is the definition of the stratification structure itself and the acceptance of the prestige hierarchy it reflects. Following Levine (2006) “unless we are to view all mobility as due to random placement of individuals, we must look for factors that influence movement, and one of these factors is evidently the attraction of positions that are defined as "higher" or "better." (102). The stratification system of the United States is viewed as reflected in the occupational system. The role of the state is that it stipulates strict social division through education and health care opportunities, job selection and income system which prevent many people to reach upward mobility. Not only are income, education, and other variables often used in addition to or instead of occupational prestige as an index of social level, but there are competing methods of indexing occupational position (Thompson & Hickey 66). This view is limited to a consideration of differences between major segments of the class hierarchy. In most cases, the focus is on differences between the middle class (roughly, persons with white-collar occupations) and the working class (roughly, those with blue-collar occupations). One of the major characteristics of the social system is the fact that mobility not only is highly valued and facilitated but frequently occurs. The mobility opportunities vary by one's social class of origin and that socialization affects one's social class of destination and still acknowledge the existence of significant amounts of social mobility (Saunders 62). Since the residential pattern in our society separates classes to a high degree, and since in any event a child's early years are generally spent within the close confines of a nuclear family, the kinds of people young children encounter will vary to the extent that adults at different social levels have different characteristics (Levine 84). If social class serves both as a determiner of context and as a basis for expectations, one ought to be able to predict something about the outcome of the socialization process from a knowledge of the social class of origin of the individual (Brtaux & Thompson 76). Given the many ways in which social class of origin influences the mobility process, it may seem remarkable that the amount of intergenerational continuity is not greater than it is. The considerable amount of mobility that occurs is often viewed as an indication that the society is indeed an "open" one and that the channels and mechanisms of achievement are freely accessible. The noncumulative nature of the effect of social class suggests that there is a constant counter force at work. On the other hand, researchers (Glbert 54) recognize that mobility simply refers to the absolute difference in the level of the occupation of a father and his son, the fact of mobility takes on somewhat different meaning. If it should happen, that all sons had occupational positions a certain social distance higher than their fathers, then everyone would be upwardly mobile but no one would change his relative position in the stratification system (Levine 36). To some extent, that is what has been happening during the past few decades. The overall pattern of the occupational structure has shifted upward, so that there are many more high-prestige jobs today than formerly. In sum, model theories of class division shows that social class is a global index that summarizes a number of highly relevant factors but does not fully represent any of them. Social class is an important focus of attention in the study of the mobility process because a number of significant characteristics of the process tend to vary according to the level of origin of the individual. It is these characteristics, rather than social class as such, that affect the outcome. It has been suggested that mobility outcomes depend on how one's significant others behave and on what these others expect of the socializee. Social class is also important because it is one of the sets of categories people in society use in classifying each other and in determining what kinds of behavior are appropriate in relation to each other. Thus, both the social context and the expectation of others experienced by children tend to vary by their level of origin. Works Cited 1. Brtaux, D., Thompson, P. Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility. Oxford University Press, USA, 1997. 2. Levine, R. Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006. 3. Glbert, The American Class Structure, Wadsworth Publishing; 6 edition, 2002. 4. Saunders, P. Social Class and Stratification. Routledge; 1 edition, 1989. 5. Thompson, W., Hickey, J. V. Society in Focus. 5th Edition. Not Avail; 2006. Read More