Social Stratification

An Introduction

James Littlejohn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000464030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1972, this book aimed to provide the student with a basic understanding of the main theories of social stratification and to acquaint them with current methods of research, with the results from modern research (with emphasis on British research), and with current issues in this field. The first two chapters are concerned with theory and are followed by chapters on slavery and the caste system. These are intended to illustrate concepts and theory and to offer the student a comparative perspective in which to view stratification in modern society – which is dealt with in a final lengthy chapter.

The book has been written primarily for first-year university students, but also with sixth-formers and students in colleges of further education in mind.

1

Theory

SOCIAL stratification is the name under which sociologists study inequality in society, i.e. the unequal distribution of goods and services, rights and obligations, power and prestige. These are all attributes of positions in society, not attributes of individuals. Individuals are unequally endowed as regards, for instance, health, strength and I.Q., but such differences do not provide the data from which studies in stratification start, although as we shall see later sociologists are interested in knowing to what extent and in what way individual differences in health and I.Q. are associated with the social inequalities which are our object of study. No sociological training is required to observe many of these latter differences—everyone knows that wages in some occupations are low and salaries in others high, that Cabinet Ministers have more power than ordinary citizens, that doctors enjoy higher prestige than dustmen and so on. Most of us are indeed naturally curious about these differences and adopt some attitude towards them. In this respect sociologists are distinguished from fellow citizens only in wanting more, and more exact, information.

However, sociologists also want to know how these differences arise, what differences in behaviour are associated with them and what consequences for society follow from them. Simply collecting information on distributions of socially valued rewards or on deprivations is not what most sociologists mean by the study of stratification. When they say of a society that it is stratified they are referring to a feature of the structure of that society, and they mean that the society exhibits significant breaks or discontinuities in the distribution of one or several of the attributes mentioned above, as a result of which are formed collectivities or groups which we call strata. For example, of our own society we sometimes say that it has an upper class, a middle class and a working class. It is the relations between or among such strata, and the relation of the system of relations formed by the strata to institutional complexes, such as politics or education, in which the sociologist is primarily interested.

Sociologists have distinguished several general types of stratification. A major distinction has been formulated by T. H. Marshall as follows. On the one hand are systems in which the difference between one stratum and another is

‘expressed in terms of legal rights or of established customs which have the essential binding character of law. In its extreme form such a system divides a society into a number of distinct, hereditary human species—patricians, plebians, serfs, slaves and so forth. Stratification is, as it were, an institution in its own right, and the whole structure has the quality of a plan, in the sense that it is endowed with meaning and purpose…’.¹

On the other hand is the kind of system which is not so much an institution in its own right as a by-product of other institutions; strata

‘emerge from the interplay of a variety of factors related to the institutions of property and education and the structure of the national economy.’²

Within the first of these general types sociologists have distinguished a few subtypes, particularly systems of estates and of castes, and some sociologists include as a distinct type those in which the most important discontinuity in the distribution of rights is that between slaves and freemen.³ Estates are strata distinguished from each other through differential immunities defined in law, e.g. immunities regarding taxation, or the kind of court in which the individual can be tried. A stratum of slaves is from some points of view an estate, since the important distinction between a slave and a freeman is that the former does not, or only to a limited extent, enjoy the protection of civil courts. However, as a particularly dramatic example of stratification we may consider slavery separately from estate systems. Caste denotes a kind of stratification most conspicuously, and according to some authorities exclusively, associated with Hindu society, in which the différences between strata are defined in the first instance in religious terms by degrees of purity and impurity.

Under the second heading come those systems of stratification characteristically found in industrial democracies such as our own. Societies exhibiting the previously described types of stratification are characterized by their acceptance of a general norm of inequality. People do not subscribe to the proposition that all men are equal, or at least not to the extent of ensuring that all are equally placed with regard to the law, or of allowing that all have equal access to grace or purity. Societies exhibiting the types under the second heading accept a general norm of equality and some, such as America, write it into their constitution. The norm is a major element in the modern conception of natural law, or natural right, which Weber defined as the sum total of all those norms valid independently of, and superior to, any positive law, and which provide the very legitimation for the binding force of positive law, for example, those laws which confer on all citizens the right to dispose of their private property or their labour without interference,¹ or the right to vote.

Marshall’s distinction in effect distinguishes stratification in industrial democracies as a separate type from all others, and there are good reasons for doing so. First because there stratification is a result of the interplay of a variety of institutions in a social milieu where it is asserted that all men are equal; not a goal, a plan or a blueprint to which social relations are made to conform by legal sanctions. Second because industrial democracies are more complex in structure than estate or caste societies; in the former the division of labour has proceeded further, there are many more roles making up the social structure, institutions to co-ordinate roles and groups proliferate, and there are extensive population movements. Hence stratification in industrial democracies is a more complex field of study; strata are less easily identified, or rather they cannot be identified independently of the methods sociologists use for the purposé. I shall outline these methods below, and the theories associated with them.

When a society exhibits stratification it means that there are significant discontinuities in the distribution-of goods and services, or of property, rights and obligations. Analogously, different types of stratification mean that there are significant discontinuities between the systems of stratification exhibited by various societies. Any general theory of social stratification must deal in some way with the second sort of discontinuity. There are, broadly speaking, two main directions in which explanation may proceed. In one the various types are shown to be stages in a process of development; in the other the types are treated as only variations of the same thing, i.e. of the same elements and processes present to a varying degree in all cases, or modified by factors extrinsic to stratification itself. Of the two general theories of stratification, the Marxist and the functionalist, the former proffers a solution of the first sort, the latter of the second. The two are not absolutely different in the respect indicated, but differ markedly in emphasis. In addition to these two theories we shall consider notable contributions to our understanding of the subject from Max Weber, and some ideas of Thorstein Veblen.

As indicated, Marx’s theory of stratification is not something distinct from his theory of society and its development, and his leading hypothesis, his ‘guiding thread’ as he called it, he formulated in an oft-quoted statement:

‘In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which legal and political superstructure arise and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production or, what is but a legal expression for the same thing, with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then occurs a period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations, the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophical (in short, ideological) forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.’¹

By forces or powers of production Marx means knowledge about the natural world, technology, energy (including human labour power), and the effective deployment of these in specific organizations such as plantations or factories. By relations of production he does not mean the day to day relations between persons at work as studied at present by industrial sociologists, nor does he mean the division of labour in society. He means the relation between classes of persons marked off from each other by differential rights and obligations with regard to productive property, in the simplest case between owners and non-owners of productive property. In bourgeois (industrial democratic) society the relation, between capitalists and labourers, includes, for instance, the right of property owners to exclude non-owners from use of their property, and their obligation to pay wages to those they employ; the numbers of individuals in each class; and their conflicting interests, the owner’s in keeping wages as low as possible, the non-owner’s in raising the level of wages.

Forces and relations of production have altered in the course of social development through, Marx thought, more or less clearly defined stages. The stages he proposed are the primitive, the ancient, the Asiatic, the feudal and the bourgeois.¹ These stages accord to some extent with the classification offered above of types of systems of stratification, ancient society being characterized by the division between masters and slaves, feudal by the division between landlords and serfs, and bourgeois by the division between capitalists and labourers. The primitive stage is characterized by the absence of classes. These four stages comprise the history of the West to date. The next stage will be the socialist one which, like the primitive but on a higher level of complexity, will be marked by the absence of ‘the antagonistic mode of production’. Here the state will wither away to be replaced by the ‘abstract administration of things’.

The Asiatic stage is peculiar to the Orient and has two main features:

1. an organization of production in the village by castes, each specializing in an hereditary occupation;
2. domination of large territories by a state consisting of a despot and a bureaucracy, often controlling large-scale irrigation projects.

The relation between the two is one of simple extortion of tribute or taxes from villagers by the state bureaucrats. Because the village is a self contained unit of production and exchange it can survive through the endless wars of rival despots and the fall of dynasties; because it is self contained, yet loses its surplus production to the bureaucracy, furthe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Theory
• 2. Structure and Stratification
• 3. Slavery, Ancient and Modern
• 4. Caste Society
• 5. Modern Society
• Subject Index
• Author Index