Riassunto esame Sociology, prof A. La Spina, libro consigliato "Sociology", Giddens and Sutton

STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL CLASS

Systems of stratification

Sociologists use the concept of social stratification to describe inequalities that exist between

individuals and groups within human societies. Often we think of stratification in terms of assets or

property, but it can also occur because of other attributes, such as gender, age, religious affiliation

or military rank. Individuals and groups enjoy differential (unequal) access to rewards based on

their position within the stratification scheme. Thus, stratification can most simply be defined as

structured inequalities between different groupings of people. It is useful to think of stratification

as rather like the geological layering of rock in the earth's surface. Societies can be seen as

consisting of 'strata' in a hierarchy, with the more favoured at the top and the less privileged nearer

the bottom. All socially stratified systems share three

basic characteristics:

1. The rankings apply to social categories of people who share a common characteristic without

necessarily interacting or identifying with one another. For example, women may be ranked

differently from men or wealthy people differently from the poor. This does not mean that

individuals from a particular category cannot change their rank; however, it does mean that the

category continues to exist even if individuals move out of it and into another category.

2. People's life experiences and opportunities depend heavily on how their social category is

ranked. Being male or female, black or white, upper class or working class makes a big

difference in terms of your life chances - often as big a difference as personal effort or good

fortune (such as winning a lottery).

3. The ranks of different social categories tend to change very slowly over time. In the

industrialized societies, for example, only recently have women as a whole begun to achieve

equality with men.

In the earliest human societies, which were based on hunting and gathering, there was very little

social stratification - mainly because there was very little by way of wealth or other resources to be

divided up. The development of agriculture produced considerably more wealth and, as a result, a

great increase in stratification. Social stratification in agricultural societies increasingly came to

resemble a pyramid, with a large number of people at the bottom and a successively smaller

number of people as you move towards the top. Today, industrial and post-industrial societies are

extremely complex; their stratification is more likely to resemble a teardrop, with a large number of

people in the middle and lower-middle ranks (the so-called middle class), a slightly smaller

number of people at the bottom, and very few people as one moves towards the top. Historically,

four basic systems of stratification can be distinguished: slavery, caste, estates and class. These are

sometimes found in conjunction with one another: slavery, for instance, existed alongside classes

in ancient Greece and Rome, and in the Southern United States before the Civil War of the 1860s.

Slavery is an extreme form of inequality, in which certain people are owned as property by others.

The legal conditions of slave-ownership have varied considerably among different societies.

Sometimes slaves were deprived of almost all rights by law - as was the case on Southern

plantations in the United States - while in other societies, their position was more akin to that of

servants. For example, in the ancient Greek city-state of Athens, some slaves occupied positions of

great responsibility. They were excluded from political positions and from the military, but were

accepted in most other types of occupation. Some were literate and worked as government

administrators; many were trained in craft skills. Even so, not all slaves could count on such good

luck. For the less fortunate, their days began and ended in hard labour in the mines. Throughout

history, slaves have often fought back against their subjection; the slave rebellions in the American

South before the Civil War are one example. Because of such resistance, systems of slave labour

have tended to be unstable. High productivity could only be achieved through constant supervision

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and brutal punishment. Slave-labour systems eventually broke down, partly because of the

struggles they provoked and partly because economic or other incentives motivate people to

produce more effectively than does direct compulsion. Slavery is simply not economically efficient.

Moreover, from about the eighteenth century on, many people in Europe and America came to see

slavery as morally wrong. Today, slavery is illegal in every country of the world, but it still exists in

some places. Recent research has documented that people are taken by force and held against their

wiU. From enslaved brick-makers in Pakistan to sex slaves in Thailand and domestic slaves in

relatively wealthy countries like the UK and France, slavery remains a significant human rights

violation in the world today and against many people's assumption, seems to be increasing rather

than diminishing.

A caste system is a social system in which one's social position is given for a lifetime. In caste

societies, therefore, all individuals must remain at the social level of their birth throughout life.

Everyone's social status is based on personal characteristics - such as perceived race or ethnicity

(often based on such physical characteristics as skin colour), parental religion or parental caste -

that are accidents of birth and are therefore believed to be unchangeable. A person is born into a

caste and remains there for life. In a sense, caste societies can be seen as a special type of class

society, in which class position is ascribed at birth (Sharma 1999). They have typically been found

in agricultural societies that have not yet developed industrial capitalist economies, such as rural

India or South Africa prior to the end of white rule in 1992.

Prior to modern times, caste systems were found throughout the world. In Europe, for example,

Jews were frequently treated as a separate caste, forced to live in restricted neighbourhoods and

barred from intermarrying (and in some instances even interacting) with non-Jews. The term

'ghetto' is said to derive from the Venetian word for 'foundry', the site of one of Europe's first

official Jewish ghettos, established by the government of Venice in 1516. The term eventually came

to refer to those sections of European towns where Jews were legally compelled to live, long before

it was used to describe minority neighbourhoods in US cities, with their caste-like qualities of racial

and ethnic segregation. In caste systems, intimate contact with members of other castes is strongly

discouraged. Such 'purity' of a caste is often maintained by rules of endogamy, marriage within

one's social group as required by custom or law.

The Indian caste system, for example, reflects Hindu religious beliefs and is more than 2,000 years

old, According to Hindu beliefs, there are four major castes, each roughly associated with broad

occupational groupings. The four castes consist of the Brahmins (scholars and spiritual leaders) on

top, followed by the Ksyarriyas (soldiers and rulers ), the Vaisyas (farmers and merchants) and the

Shudras (labourers and artisans). Beneath the four castes are those known as the 'untouchables' or

Dalits ('oppressed people'), who - as their name suggests - are to be avoided at all costs.

Untouchables are limited to the worst jobs in society, such as removing human waste, and they

often resort to begging and searching in garbage for their food. In traditional areas of India, some

members of higher castes still regard physical contact with untouchables to be so contaminating

that a mere touch requires cleansing rituals. India made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of

caste in 1949, but aspects of the system remain in full force today, particularly in rural areas . As

India's modern capitalist economy brings people of different castes together, whether it is in the

same workplace, airplane or restaurant, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the rigid barriers

required to sustain the caste system. As more and more of India is influenced by globalization, it

seems reasonable to assume that its caste system will weaken still further. Before its abolition in

1992, the South African caste system, termed apartheid, rigidly separated black Africans, Indians,

'coloureds' (people of mixed races) and Asians from whites. In this case, caste was based entirely on

race. Whites, who made up only 15 per cent of the total population, controlled virtually all the

country's wealth, owned most of the usable land, ran the principal businesses and industries and

had a monopoly on political power, since blacks lacked the right to vote. Blacks - who made up

three-quarters of the population - were segregated into impoverished bantustans (‘homelands') and

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were allowed out only to work for the white minority. Apartheid, widespread discrimination and

oppression created intense conflict between the white minority and the black, mixed-race and

Asian majority. Decades of often violent struggle against apartheid finally proved successful in the

1990s. The most powerful black organization, the African National Congress (ANC), mobilized an

economically devastating global boycott of South African businesses, forcing South Africa's white

leaders to dismantle apartheid, which was abolished by popular vote among South African whites

in 1992. In 1994, in the country's first ever multiracial elections, the black majority won control of

the government, and Nelson Mandela - the black leader of the ANC, who had spent 27 years

imprisoned by the white government - was elected president.

Estates were part of European feudalism, but also existed in many other traditional civilizations.

The feudal estates consisted of strata with differing obligations and rights towards each other, some

of these differences being established in law. In Europe, the highest estate was composed of the

aristocracy and gentry. The clergy formed another estate, having lower status but possessing

various distinctive privileges. Those in what came to be called the 'third estate' were the

commoners - serfs, free peasants, merchants and artisans. In contrast to castes, a certain degree of

intermarriage and mobility was tolerated between the estates. Commoners might be knighted, for

example, in payment for special services given to the monarch; merchants could sometimes

purchase titles. A remnant of the system persists in Britain, where hereditary titles are still

recognized (though since 1999 peers are no longer automatically entitled to vote in the House of

Lords), and business leaders, civil servants and others may be honoured with a knight- hood for

their services. Estates have tended to develop in the past wherever there was a traditional

aristocracy based on noble birth. In feudal systems, such as in medieval Europe, estates were

closely bound up with the manoria