1. GLOBAL STRATIFICATION
SOCI 100: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
Fall 2012
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker

2. What is social stratification?
What are its major forms?
How do we explain social stratification?
Is there stratification between countries? How is it measured?

3. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
What kinds of housing were more likely to collapse in the 1999 Marmara Earthquake?

4. Social stratification: a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy in terms of property, power and prestige.
Social stratification exists both within societies and between societies.

5. Some observatIons about stratIFICatION
Social stratification persists over generations
Social stratification is universal, but its forms and characteristics differ from society to society
Social stratification is not only about inequality but also about beliefs about why there should be inequality

6. Does stratificatIOn persISt over generations?
Social mobility: change in one’s position in the social hierarchy
Upward social mobility
Downward social mobility
Upward social mobility is less common. For most people, social standing remains the same in their lifetime.

7. What are the DIFFERENT FORMS OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION?
There are several axes of stratification in society
Socio-economic
Gender and sexuality
Ethnic and racial
Global stratification
This chapter addresses socio-economic and global stratification

8. TYPES OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRATIFICATION
Closed systems of stratification
Open systems of stratification

9. “Closed” systems of stratification
Slavery
Caste systems
Estates
“Closed” systems allow little change in social position

10. Slavery
A slave system: a form of social stratification in which people are owned by others as property
Classical slavery: existed in the Roman Empire and Greek city states and ancient Egypt
Chattel slavery: a system in which people can be bought and sold as property

11. THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, approximately, 15 million Africans were captured and shipped to the Americas as slaves. 4-6 million died during crossing the Atlantic. They were used as laborers in sugar, coffee, cotton and tobacco plantations in the U.S, Caribbean islands and South America. Slavery was abolished between the 1860s and 1880s in various American countries.

12. The slave trade

13. Did slavery exist in the Ottoman Empire?
Who were enslaved?
Was Ottoman slavery a closed or open system?
How did slavery come to an end?
For more information, see:
Hakan Erdem: Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise (1996)
Ehud Toledano: As if silent and absent : bonds of enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (2007)
(available in SKL)

14. Who are these people?

16. Descendants of African slaves in the Aegean region have formed an association to revive their culture Read: the-Colour/19701c20987i0p9/index.html

17. Does slavery still exist?
The United Nations abolished slavery and the slave trade and practices similar to slavery with a convention in 1957.
But social scientists argue that conditions like slavery still exist in many parts of the world today.
Examples: bonded labor, forced labor, illegal sex trade and prostitution, organ trade, human trafficking, etc.
Bonded labor (indentured service): a contractual system in which someone sells his or her (or his or her child’s) body (services) for a specified period of time in an arrangement very close to slavery
Today, millions of people are estimated to be in conditions of “modern slavery”

18. Documentaries on contemporary slavery (not included in Midterm exam 2) “Slavery: a 21st Century Evil” enturyevil/2011/10/ html enturyevil/2011/10/ html enturyevil/2011/10/ html enturyevil/2011/10/ html

19. The Estate System Feudalism in medieval Europe was an estate system
Estate: a system based on a rigidly interlocking hierarchy of rights and obligations
Lords: they were given land by a monarch or prince in return for which they supplied soldiers for the army
Peasants: lords gave rights to a plot of land to each peasant family. Peasants had an obligation to give some of their produce to the lord.

20. The Estates
First estate: nobility, those who owned the land Second estate: clergy in the Catholic Church, which owned lots of land Third estate: commoners, the serfs who came with the land

21. The Caste System
A system of social stratification based on inherited status or ascription
A caste system is completely “closed”.  birth alone determines one’s social destiny and there is no social mobility
Classic example: castes in India
Brahmans (priests and teachers)
Kshatriya (rulers and soldiers)
Shudra (peasants and laborers)
Dalit (untouchables)

22. Other examples of caste systems: post-slavery southern United States (racial segregation) apartheid South Africa Apartheid: the separation of racial/ethnic groups

23. Defining elements of a caste system
It is usually linked to occupations
“Endogamous” (in-group) marriages, outlawing of marriages between groups
Caste system determines everyday life (ritual purity and pollution, segregation)
Caste systems are supported by powerful cultural beliefs

24. An “open system” of stratification: Class
Social class system: social stratification resulting from the unequal distribution of wealth, power and prestige
It is an “open” system of stratification.
Why?

25. In the capitalist class system, social mobility is possible at least in principle:
All people in a modern democratic societies (“citizens”) have equal “rights” and “equal opportunity.”
They are all “equal before the law.”
But, there is still a lot of inequality.

26. HOW TO EXPLAIN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION?
Conflict theory: Marx and Engels and their followers
Max Weber
Functionalist theory

27. Classes AccordIng to Marx and ENgels
Capitalist society is polarized between two major classes
Capitalists: owners of the “means of production” productive property (they are a minority)
Workers: people who do not own any means of production and therefore have to work for capitalists (they are the majority)
Marx and Engels argued that there is a great gap of wealth between the capitalists and the workers
Why? The right of private property and right of inheritance ensures that wealth stays in the hands of the capitalists
Capitalist society reproduces the class structure in each new generation

28. Marx AND ENGELS
Marx and Engels predicted that there would be class conflict between the capitalists and the workers
Workers would become poorer and become aware of the inequalities in the society
They would organize a social revolution and abolish capitalism and take over the state

29. But their prediction did not materialize in much of the world
Why?
the role of ideology
the growth of middle classes
improvements in the living conditions of workers in Europe in the twentieth century (emergence of the Welfare State)

30. Ideology: cultural beliefs that serve to legitimate certain interests, and therefore justify social stratification
Examples:
“Some people are poor because they deserve to be so”
“Some people are poor because they are lazy”
“Rich people deserve to be rich because they are talented”
“Some people are rich because they are hardworking”

31. Class consciousness: shared identity of a class based on their position in the means of production False class consciousness: workers identifying with the interests of the capitalists

32. A DEMONSTRATION OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS SYSTEM THROUGH CARTOONS
Li'l Abner, a resident of the hill-billy community of Dogpatch, discovers a strange and wonderful creature, the ``shmoo,'' and brings a herd of them back to Dogpatch. The shmoos‘ sole desire in life is to please humans by transforming themselves into the material things human beings need. The do not provide humans with luxuries, but only with the basic necessities of life. If you are hungry, they can become ham and eggs, but not caviar. What is more, they multiply rapidly so you never run out of them. They are thus of little value to the wealthy, but of great value to the poor. In the following episode from Li'l Abner, a manager working for a rich capitalist, P.U., does a study to identify the poorest place in America in order to hire the cheapest labor for a new factory. The place turns out to be Dogpatch. P.U. and the manager come to Dogpatch to recruit employees for the new factory. The story unfolds in the following sequence of comic strips from Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts, 1989

37. What does this cartoon strip tell us about classes
What does this cartoon strip tell us about classes? In the real world, schmoos don’t exist. Therefore, most people have to work in order to “earn their bread” The cartoon shows how the existence of capitalists and workers is interrelated.

38. Max Weber on social stratification
Weber considered stratification to be multi- dimensional  class, status and power.
(your textbook refers to these as property, prestige and power)
He accepted the existence of social classes as Marx described.
But for Weber, there were more than two “class situations”

39. ClassES ACCORDING TO WEBER
Class situation: a group of people who share the same “life chances” because they have similar opportunities for earning an income or owning property
For Weber (like Marx), workers and capitalists are the main classes in modern society.
But, within each group, there are further divisions

40. Capitalists are differentiated according to what type of property they own
(financiers, industrialists, rentiers, merchants)
Workers are differentiated according to what kind of services they offer in the labor market (industrial workers, service workers, professionals, managers)

41. Status groups
For Weber, there’s another axis of stratification  status
Status relates to social prestige
Status group: a group of people who share the same social estimation of honor (negative or positive) and who share a similar “style of life”
Examples: castes, ethnic groups, racial minorities, occupational groups, etc.

42. Power For Weber, as modernity advances, bureaucratization takes place
Bureaucratic organizations gain a lot of power, and hence become part of the stratification system
Examples: the bureaucratic state, government agencies, political parties, etc.

43. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION ACCORDING TO FUNCTIONALIST THEORY
Davis and Moore’s argument:
Stratification is inevitable because
For society to function, its positions must be filled
Some positions are more important than others
Important positions must be filled by the more qualified people
To motivate the more qualified people to fill these positions, they must be offered higher rewards

44. crITIQUE of functIonalIST approach
Does this approach justify existing inequalitieis?
How do we know that the higher paid positions are more important?
If Davis and Moore were right, then society would be meritocratic
Meritocracy: a form of social stratification in which all positions are awarded on the basis of merit

45. GLOBAL STRATIFICATION: THREE WORLDS

46. “THREE WORLDS” First World, Second World, Third World
High income, middle income, low income countries (levels of industrialization, significance of agriculture, wealth)
South-North
Core, periphery, semiperiphery
Developed, developing, less developed, underdeveloped countries
The most industrialized, industrializing and the least industrialized countries

47. INDICATORS OF Global sTRATIFICATION
Per capita GNP (see maps)
Level of industrial production
Ranking in the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI)

51. The Human development Index
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of
life expectancy
education
and per capita income.

52. HDI HDI is used to rank countries into four tiers:
Very high human development countries
High human development countries
Medium human development countries
Low human development countries
Where does Turkey belong according to the Human Development Report of 2011?
See: by_Human_Development_Index

53. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HD (DARKER MEANS HIgher HD)

54. Map showing world poverty: http://www. worldmapper
Map showing world poverty: me_animation.html

55. What are the causes of global STRATIFICATION?
Colonialism
Levels of industrialization (modernization theory)
Unequal exchange between core, peripheral and semiperipheral countries (World Systems Theory)