Social Stratification

• Davis & Moore


  Functionalist sociologists who explored how society ensures that the right people perform the right roles
• Davis & Moore argue that there need to be strata - or classes - of people with different power and pay, in order to ensure the best candidates get the most important jobs
• Davis & Moore argue that this ensures meritocracy
• How society ensures the right people perform the right roles


  1. All jobs and roles in society need to be done by somebody

  2. It is important that they are done by people most capable of doing the job or most suited to it

  3. Where appropriate it is important that people underwent the necessary training to be able to do the job

  4. It is important that people took the job seriously and did it properly
• Unequal rewards


  • Society pays more for the jobs that are more functionally important, require more training or require more hard work/effort
  • The rewards provide the incentive for talented and/or hardworking individuals to make the effort to do the difficult and responsible jobs
• It is not clear that the most functionally-important jobs really do get the highest pay
• Other criteria might influence people in their choice of careers, not just pay (e.g. job satisfaction, leisure time, work/life balance, etc.)
• Marxists would strongly disagree with Davis & Moore over the idea that stratification is meritocratic and fair
• Marxists argue that social mechanisms, such as education, ensure that class inequality is reproduced from generation to generation
• Patriarchy


  • Central to our understanding of society
  • Restricts women and helps to maintain male domination of society
• Patriarchal structures


  • Paid work
  • Patriarchal relations of production
  • Patriarchal culture
  • Sexuality
  • Male violence towards women
  • The state
• Walby argued that the nature of patriarchy in Western society has changed, from private patriarchy to public patriarchy
• Goldthorpe & Lockwood presented the idea of a new working class that was sociologically very different from the traditional working class
• Devine disagreed with the conclusions from the 1960s, dismissing the idea of a new working class
• Privatised instrumentalism


  The idea that the new working class was much more individualistic, supportive of capitalism and aspirational for themselves and their families
• Solidarity


  The traditional working class was communal, interested in solidarity as a class and was critical of capitalism
• Marx argues that social stratification is created by the economic system and is based on the relationship between people and that system
• Bourgeoisie


  The ruling class who own the means of production and employ the proletariat
• Proletariat


  The working class who are paid a wage for their work, which is much less than the value that their work adds
• Means of production


  Things like factories and mills
• Class struggle


  The conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
• Exploitation


  The bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat by paying them less than the value their work adds
• Ideology


  The bourgeoisie creates the illusion that inequality is inevitable or fair
• False class consciousness


  The working class are convinced that capitalism is fair or inevitable and that they should be happy with their lot
• Alienation


  The separation of workers from the products of their labour, the act of production, and their own human essence
• Capitalism


  An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit
• Underclass


  The growing class of people relying on benefits
• Underclass (according to Murray)


  • Rising crime rate
  • Unwillingness amongst some of Britain's youth to seek employment
  • Undermining of traditional values like honesty, family life and hard work
  • Replacement of these values by an alternative value system that tolerates crime and anti-social behaviour
• Murray's work has been criticised for its poor evidence base
• Much of the research evidence suggests that the benefit system does not have the effect that Murray claims, and that many of the so-called underclass actually have conventional attitudes and want stable relationships and paid employment
• Viewed more sympathetically, members of the underclass can be seen as the victims of social inequality rather than the cause of social problems
• Murray's analysis of the underclass is closely associated with New Right theories which also blame the benefits system for producing groups who are unable or unwilling to earn their own living
• Relative deprivation


  Townsend's preferred measure of poverty - individuals, families and groups fall into relative poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in activities and have the living conditions that are widely available in the society in which they live
• Townsend's research method


  1. Questionnaires issued to over 2,000 households and more than 6,000 individuals located in various geographical areas in the UK

  2. Devised a deprivation index covering a large number of variables including diet, fuel, clothing, housing conditions, working conditions, health, education and social activities

  3. Calculated a threshold for levels of income below which the amount of deprivation rapidly increased
• Townsend believed more than 22% of the population to be living in poverty in 1968–69, this compared to just over 6% using the state standard and a little over 9% using relative income
• Townsend's methods and conclusions have been criticised by those who argue that his index was inadequate and produced potentially misleading results, for example the absence of fresh meat and cooked meals might not be an indicator of poverty but of individual choice
• Weber's view on social stratification

  • More complex than Marx
  • Classes develop in market economies where individuals compete for economic gain
  • Major class division between those who own the forces of production and those who do not
  • Differences between groups who lack control of the forces of production, e.g. professionals receiving higher salaries
  • No evidence to support the polarisation of classes - middle class expands rather than contracts
  • Rejection of the view that a proletarian revolution is inevitable and that political power derives only from economic power
  • Three different sources of power: charismatic, traditional, and rational legal
• Weber argued that collective action could result from a shared status situation (level of prestige or esteem) resulting from individuals' shared occupations, ethnicity, religion or lifestyles
• Weber described the process of social closure whereby some individuals can be excluded from membership of a status group
• There is a longstanding debate between sociologists who adopt a Marxist perspective on class and those who follow Weber