Social Stratification: Nurturing Communities, Perpetuating Disparities

This article goes through the inherent structures of society, focusing on institutions like family, caste, tribe, labour, and the market. These institutions play dual roles, nurturing communities and perpetuating societal disparities. In India, glaring social inequalities like child labour, beggars, and caste-based discrimination are prevalent, often becoming so commonplace that they’re deemed inevitable. 

The illusion of upward mobility is mostly restricted to films, while in reality, the divide between the rich and poor remains stark and challenging to bridge. This narrative encourages first-hand exploration, suggesting interactions with both ends of the societal spectrum to gain deeper insights.

Society’s Shape: Understanding Dynamic Social Structures

• Understanding Social Structure: The term social structure points to the fact that society is structured—i.e., organised or arranged—in particular ways. 
• Fabric of Society: Society is characterised by a specific arrangement or structure that consists of patterns in human behaviour and relationships. 
• Dynamic Foundations: This structure, much like a building, provides a certain shape to society but is constantly being reconstructed by the actions of its members. 
• Example: Institutions like schools and families have set behaviours and traditions that continue over time, even as members come and go. This consistent pattern across time and space is referred to as social reproduction.

Thinkers on Social Structure: Perspectives on Social Stratification

Emile Durkheim: Durkheim’s Walls on Individual Actions

• He emphasised that societies exercise a constraining influence over individual actions. 
• He compared societal constraints to the walls of a room that limit a person’s movements. 

Karl Marx : Balancing Structure and Creativity

• He emphasised social structure puts constraints on individuals’ actions and at the same time stresses human creativity or agency to both reproduce and change the social structure.
• He also argued that human beings make history, but not as they wish to or in conditions of their choice, but within the constraints and possibilities of the historical and structural situation that they are in.

Social Stratification: Inherited Inequalities Across Generations

• Definition: It refers to the division of society into unequal groups based on their access to resources, wealth, power, and status.
• Perpetuating Inequality Across Generations: This Social Stratification is not random but is systematically linked to membership in different social groups. 
  • Privileged groups tend to pass on their advantages to successive generations, ensuring the persistence of these structured inequalities. 

Principles of Social Stratification: Society’s Impact, Generational Boundaries

The term “social stratification” also describes how people are hierarchically ranked in society, influencing their identity, experiences, and access to opportunities. 

Three central principles underpin social stratification:

• Society-Driven Hierarchies: Social stratification is a societal phenomenon, not merely based on individual differences but also societal differences. 
  • Advanced societies with surplus production tend to have pronounced disparities in resource distribution.
• Generational Persistence: Social Stratification transcends generations, with social positions often inherited. 
• Example: In the caste system, birth determines job opportunities, and practices like endogamy (marrying within one’s caste) reinforce these boundaries.
• Ideological Support: For Social Stratification systems to endure, they typically need ideological backing. 
  • The caste system, for instance, is justified by purity-pollution dynamics. 
  • Those benefiting most from such systems are likely to defend them, while the oppressed often challenge them.

Advantages of Social Stratification: Quality of Life, Status, Influence

• Life Chances: Material advantages improve life quality, encompassing wealth, health, and job security.
• Social Status: Recognition and high standing in societal view.
• Political Influence: Ability to dominate or influence decisions.

Social Processes: Examining Social Processes Beyond Common Sense

• Sociology transcends common sense by questioning and critically examining societal norms and behaviours. 
• It seeks to understand processes like cooperation, competition, and conflict based on societal structures rather than attributing them to mere human nature. 

Understanding the Social Process: Conflict and Harmony in Social Processes

Conflict Perspective: Marx’s Perspective on Societal Roles

• Evolving Cooperation: This perspective, often associated with Karl Marx, emphasises the changing forms of cooperation across different societies. 
• Surplus Societies: In societies that produce a surplus, like feudal or capitalist societies, cooperation involves potential conflict and competition. 
• Divergent Roles and Stakes: This is because different groups and individuals have varying roles and stakes within the system of production relations. 
  • Example: While factory owners and workers cooperate daily, their relationship inherently has conflicting interests due to their different positions in the hierarchy.

Functionalist Perspective: Durkheimian View on Universal Dynamics

• Durkheimian View: This perspective associated with Emile Durkheim, focuses on the system requirements of society. 
• Functional Prerequisites: It identifies certain functional prerequisites that are necessary for a society’s existence, such as socialisation, communication systems, role assignment etc, which maintain order and stability in society.
• Universal Societal Dynamics: From this perspective, interactions like cooperation, competition, and conflict are universal societal features. 
• Harmonizing Forces: They are outcomes of inevitable human interactions, often resolved without major disruptions, and can even contribute positively to society.
• Example: 
  • A study on women’s property rights in their natal family showed many women would choose not to claim their rightful property to avoid conflict with family members. 
  • This apparent cooperation is a result of underlying societal conflicts, which, when unexpressed, give the illusion of harmonious coexistence.

Cooperation And Division Of Labour: Intent and Societal Structures

Cooperation is essential for human survival, and even in the animal kingdom, it’s evident. However, human cooperation is distinct from that of animals due to its conscious intent and societal structures.

Durkheim on Division of Labour: Society’s Evolution through Solidarity

• Durkheim’s Morality of Solidarity: Emile Durkheim emphasised the moral force of society, or solidarity, as the basis for cooperation. 
  • He believed that altruism and solidarity were key elements distinguishing human society. 
  • The division of labour, which involves cooperation, is both a natural law and a moral rule. 
• Durkheim’s Societal Evolution: He introduced the concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity characterised pre-industrial and complex industrial societies respectively.
  • The former is based on sameness, with members bonded by shared beliefs, while the latter arises from the division of labour and the interdependence it creates.

Marx on Division of Labour: Consciousness, Alienation, and Society

• The Distinctive Nature of Human Consciousness and Cooperation: Karl Marx, while emphasising consciousness as a distinctive human trait, highlighted the difference between human and animal cooperation. 
• Involuntary Cooperation in Class Societies: Humans actively transform society and nature through cooperation. 
  • For Marx, human cooperation, especially in class societies, isn’t always voluntary. 
• Alienation and Enforced Cooperation: He introduced the concept of alienation, where workers lose control over their work and its products. 
  • In such scenarios, cooperation is enforced rather than natural. 
  • Example: The difference in the work satisfaction of traditional craftsmen compared to factory workers performing monotonous tasks.