Social Stratification

Social stratification is one of the important subfields in Sociology, a discipline that is concerned with inequalities and structures of power relations. It examines the division of people into layers or strata based on socio-economic factors. The layering of rocks is an intrinsic feature of the geological world, and sociologists posited that the layering of people is an inevitable feature of the social world. In the middle of the twentieth century, sociologists in the United States took on the mantle of sociological research and consciously decided to move the intellectual centre from European society to American society. It was also the period of rebuilding the economy with capitalist enterprises and strengthening democracy. The Social Darwinian and Durkheimian model of the idea of the survival of the fittest led to seeing inequality not in Marxist terms of exploitation but in structural functionalist terms of seeing differences in people and hierarchies in society as inevitable. In this chapter, we will examine the emergence of the field of social stratification and talk about forms of stratification such as class, race and gender. We will be drawing on examples from different parts of the world but the major focus will be the United States as that is where stratification and social mobility studies thrived. This chapter will be a window to the subject of social stratification in society. The study of social stratification takes for granted that the principle of inequality is inevitable and a normal aspect of society. Girls, racial minorities and the poor are socialised to believe that they will have access to fewer resources than the dominant and the powerful gender, classes and races.