Week12.2--weekly blog--LI LINLIN

 (1) Summary:

Social stratification is the process of categorizing people into different levels of privilege based on socioeconomic factors such as wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or power. This stratification forms a hierarchical structure that reflects the degree of inequality in society. Social stratification not only deals with the relative social status of individuals within social groups, categories, geographic areas, or social units, but also reveals the widespread existence of inequality.

In modern Western societies, social stratification is usually divided into upper class, middle class, and lower class, each of which can be subdivided into upper class, middle class, and lower class. In addition, social hierarchies can be formed based on blood ties, clans, tribes, or castes. These stratifications are used in the social sciences to describe an individual's relative social status within a particular social group, category, or geographic area, derived from the Latin word "strata tum", which stratifies people into different classes according to socioeconomic criteria.

Social stratification is based on four principles. First, social stratification is defined by society as a characteristic of society, rather than an individual characteristic. Second, social stratification is passed from one generation to the next. Third, social stratification is pervasive but variable in time and place. Fourth, social stratification involves not only quantitative inequality, but also qualitative beliefs and attitudes about social status. Although stratification is not limited to complex societies, all complex societies exhibit the characteristics of stratification, with the distribution of the total stock of valuable goods being unequal, and the most privileged individuals and families enjoying a disproportionate share of income, power, and other valuable social resources.

Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals, social groups, or categories between or within layers of a hierarchical system. Mobility can be intra - or intergenerational, and is sometimes used to classify different systems of social stratification. An open hierarchical system allows for flow between levels, often by valuing the characteristics of individual achievement. Closed hierarchical systems have little or no mobility, such as the caste system, where all social status characteristics are innate and an individual's social status remains the same from birth to life.

In Marxist theory, modern production mode consists of two parts: foundation and superstructure. The foundations include relations of production: employer-employee working conditions, technical division of labor and property relations. Social class is determined by the relation of the individual to the means of production. In any class-based society there are at least two classes: the owners of the means of production and the laborers who sell their labor power to the owners of the means of production. Marx predicted that the capitalist model would eventually, through its own internal conflicts, lead to revolutionary consciousness and develop into a more egalitarian and communist society.

Marx also described two other classes, the petty bourgeoisie and the rogue proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie is akin to a small commercial class that has never really accumulated enough profits to become part of the bourgeoisie, while the rogue proletariat is an underclass without social status.

Max Weber was influenced by Marx's ideas, but he rejected the possibility of communism, arguing that it would require more harmful social control and bureaucratization than a capitalist society. Weber developed a three-element theory of stratification and the concept of life chances. He believed that there were four main social classes: the upper class, the white collar workers, the petty bourgeoisie, and the manual labor class.

In general, social stratification is a universal and complex phenomenon, which not only reflects the relative status of individuals in society, but also reveals the unequal distribution of resources and power in society. This stratification is not limited to a specific social or cultural context, but is widely present and reflected at all levels of human society.

(2) Interesting points:

When discussing the complexity of social stratification, it is mentioned that social stratification is not limited to complex societies, but all complex societies exhibit the characteristics of stratification.

(3) Q:

Have you ever encountered a typical case of social stratification in your life?