Stratification Chapter 14 Lecture PowerPoint © W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

Introduction You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2  Stratification is systematic inequalities between groups of people that arise as intended or unintended consequences of social processes and relationships.

Views of Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 3  In the eighteenth century Jean- Jacques Rousseau argued that private property creates social inequality and that this inequality ultimately leads to social conflict.

View of Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 4  The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Ferguson and John Millar agreed with Rousseau that private property creates inequality. However, they argued that this is good because it means that some people are getting ahead and creating assets (a form of wealth that can be stored for the future). The ability to create assets provides an incentive to work hard, leading to higher degrees of social organization and ultimately to an improved society. The irony, however, is that this ability to create and store surpluses is what creates inequality.

View of Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 5  Thomas Malthus Viewed inequality favorably, but only as a means for controlling population growth Thought that a more equal distribution of resources would increase the world’s population to unsustainable levels and ultimately bring about mass starvation and conflict

View of Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 6  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic Posited that most social relationships in the world were based on a master-slave model in which the master becomes as dependent on the slave as the slave is on the master Believed that over time society would have more and more free people and the master-slave model would die out as the primary social relationship

Standards of Equality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 7  Ontological equality is the notion that everyone is created equal in the eyes of God.

Standards of Equality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 8  Equality of Opportunity Idea that inequality of condition is acceptable so long as everyone has the same opportunities for advancement and is judged by the same standards This standard of equality is most closely associated with modern capitalist society and a cornerstone of arguments made by civil rights activists in the United States in the 1960s

Standards of Equality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 9  Equality of Condition Idea that everyone should have an equal starting point from which to pursue his or her goals Belief in this standard of equality has led to policies such as affirmative action, which try to compensate social actors for differences in their conditions or starting points

Standards of Equality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 10  Equality of Outcome Notion that everyone in a society should end up with the same “rewards” regardless of his starting point, opportunities, or contributions Standard of equality is most closely associated with Communist ideology, and critics argue that without greater incentives to work hard and be productive, people would slack off and social progress would be stymied

Forms of Stratification You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 11 Estate System is a politically based system of stratification characterized by limited social mobility that is best exemplified in the social organization of feudal Europe and the pre– Civil War American South. Caste System is a system of stratification based on hereditary notions of religious and theological purity and generally offers no prospects for social mobility. The varna system in India is the most common example today of a caste system. Class System is an economically based system of stratification characterized by somewhat loose social mobility and categories based on roles in the production process rather than individual characteristics.

Forms of Stratification You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 12  Karl Marx felt that society was divided strictly into two classes—the proletariat, or working class, and the bourgeoisie, or owners of the means of production.  Erik Olin Wright developed the concept of contradictory class locations, which is the idea that people can occupy locations in the class structure that fall between the two “pure” classes defined by Marx.

Forms of Stratification You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 13  It can be difficult to define class because class means different things to different people and because people don’t always fit neatly into just one category.  Max Weber’s concept of class is based on grouping people according to the value of their property or labor in the commercial marketplace.  x.html x.html

Forms of Stratification You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 14  The status hierarchy system is a system of stratification based on social prestige. This prestige can be linked to different things—occupation, lifestyle, membership in certain organizations—but sociologists have most often studied occupational status.  Elite-mass dichotomy system is a system of stratification that has a governing elite—a few leaders who broadly hold the power of society.

How Is America Stratified Today? You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 15  Socioeconomic status (SES) refers to an individual’s position in a stratified social order.  In the United States, the upper class is associated with income, wealth, power, and prestige, but definitions related to specific levels of income or net worth can vary.  There is little consensus about how to define the middle class, yet almost 90 percent of Americans self-define as being in the middle class. A further complication is how to separate middle class from working class.

How Is America Stratified Today? You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 16  The middle class has historically been composed of white-collar workers and the working class of manual laborers, but in the post–World War II economic boom, the working class essentially merged with the middle class as higher wages gave manual laborers access to markers of middle-class achievement such as home ownership, providing their children with a college education, ample retirements savings, etc.

How Is America Stratified Today? You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 17  Another major change in the workforce that has blurred the lines between the middle and working classes is the rise of the low-wage service sector composed of ostensibly white- collar jobs that earn working-class wages.  The income gap between high-income and low-income individuals has increased dramatically over the last thirty years, and there are a number of competing theories as to why this has happened.

Figure 14.4 | Distribution of Net Worth and Financial Wealth, 2001 (pt. 1)

Figure 14.4 | Distribution of Net Worth and Financial Wealth, 2001 (pt. 2)

Figure 14.3 | Average CEO Pay versus Production Worker Pay,

How Is America Stratified Today? You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 21  Poverty has an official, government definition, but there are less official categories such as the working poor and the nonworking poor (sometimes called the underclass). These unofficial categories don’t represent stable, homogenous groups because people at this end of the socioeconomic spectrum tend to shift in and out of poverty over the course of their lives.

Global Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 22  Taking a broad view of history, it is clear that global inequality has increased dramatically in the past 500 years, for example. However, by some measures there has been a noticeable decrease in income inequality in the past twenty to thirty years. One key to these conclusions is whether you look at inequality within different countries or between countries.

Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 1980

Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 1990

Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 2000

Global Inequality You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 26  Many scholars have examined the question of why Europe developed first and why many former colonies have struggled to improve social and economic conditions for their populations. Theories range from geographic differences to the importance of social institutions to the types of relationships different colonial powers had with their colonies.

Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 27  Social mobility, the movement between different positions within a system of social stratification in any given society, can be either horizontal or vertical and can take place on the individual or group level.

Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 28  Structural mobility is mobility that is inevitable from changes in the economy, such as the expansion of high-tech jobs in the past twenty years.  Exchange mobility occurs when people essentially trade positions—the number of overall jobs stays the same, with some people moving up into better jobs and others moving down into worse ones.

Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 29  A mobility table is a way to examine the process of individual mobility by comparing changes in occupational status between generations.  A status-attainment model also looks at changes in occupational status between generations, but it includes factors such as educational attainment, income, and the prestige of a person’s first job.

The “Death” Tax You May Ask Yourself Copyright © 2008 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 30  The estate tax in the United States is related to the issue of stratification because it goes to the heart of questions about how to promote business growth, how wealth should be distributed, how to encourage meritocracy, and how to build a more equitable society.