Notes: social class, a category of people with similar status, culture, and wealth
Why wasn’t Whitworth invited to the birthday parties at the country club when he was a child? The answer has to do with class consciousness, an awareness of one’s social category within a social hierarchy. Whitworth’s friends’ parents were keenly aware of social status, an individual’s position, or rank within a social system. When people first meet, one of the most common questions they ask each other is, “Where do you work?” or “What do your parents do?” This question positions people within a social hierarchy commonly referred to as social stratification, a system in which categories of people are ranked in a hierarchy.
socioeconomic status (SES), an individual’s social position based on education, occupation, income, and place of residence.
income, money earned on a regular basis through work
Another quick assessment is to determine if the person is a blue-collar worker, an individual who engages in manual labor, a pink-collar worker, an individual who works in female-dominated jobs with low pay, or a white-collar worker, an individual employed in a salaried professional, managerial, or administrative position such as lawyers, accountants, consultants, and analysts.
Wealth, the total of all personal assets, including property, investments, and income, was one criterion to determine social class.
Power, the ability to exert control over others and achieve goals with or without the support of society, can garner social status as well. Politicians and clergy members may not be wealthy, but they can wield a tremendous amount of power in the community, which, in turn, confers social status. The third interrelated component is prestige, the level of esteem and respect afforded to an individual often associated with one’s occupation or membership in a group or organization.
provides the top 10 occupations with the highest occupational prestige, a consensus of the value of a job or profession
Why does social inequality, a system that unequally rewards individuals based on characteristics such as sex, income, age, race, and ethnicity
Even though social structures are stable arrangements of patterns, they can and do change over time. For example, there are open systems, social systems that encourage and allow for social mobility, and closed systems, social systems that do not allow for social mobility, concerning social stratification.
The first social system of stratification is a slavery system, a closed stratified system in which slaves and owners exist. Slavery, a practice in which people are bought, sold, and traded as property, has existed throughout history in many societies worldwide. It is still present today.
The second social system of inequality is the caste system, a closed stratification system in which people are designated to a particular social position based on their parents’ social status.
The third social system of inequality existed in the Middle Ages and is known as the estate system, a closed stratified system in which wealthy landowners and peasants exist (500-1500 C.E.). The landowners were able to exploit the peasants who were depe
The class system, an open stratified system that allows social mobility, evolved from the social conditions that existed as the estate system ended. A class system is based on economic positions. It is an open system allowing for movement between classes.
One way the class system is similar to the three closed systems is that even today, ascribed status, a position in a social system that is assigned based on characteristics such as race, sex, or class,
Triple oppression, combined characteristics of being a woman, minority, and poor, is a term that describes the social limitations of women of color who are impoverished.
achieved status, a position in a social system that is gained through merit.
American dream, a commonly held belief in the U.S. suggesting that anyone can overcome obstacles and get ahead in life through hard work and determination (
The poverty rate, the percentage of people who are considered poor
social reproduction, the process of children remaining in the same social class through intergenerational transmission of various types of capital.
absolute poverty, a threshold in which an individual does not have enough resources to meet their basic survival needs
Another measure of poverty is relative poverty, a subjective level at which an individual or family experiences a deprived lifestyle.
Vertical mobility, movement up or down the system of stratification
Horizontal mobility, movement within a layer of the system of stratification,
An example of intragenerational mobility, an individual’s change in status during a lifetime, is when an individual starts as a history teacher, decides to move into administration, and eventually becomes the school district superintendent. Using our history teacher analogy, intergenerational mobility, an individual’s change in social status that results from mobility on a generational level, is when that individual was the first person in his family to graduate from college, his status as a history teacher was significantly different from family members in a previous generation. Being the first in a family to graduate from college increases the possibility of intergenerational mobility.
This is referred to as structural mobility, changes in the social position of a group that result from shifts in the larger society