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Rosy Hastir, Lovely Professional University Unit 7: Class

Unit 7: Class Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
7.1 Concept of Class
7.2 Class as a System of Stratification
7.3 Class and Mobility : Occupation and Mobility
7.4 Summary
7.5 Key-Words
7.6 Review Questions
7.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit students will be able to:
• Understand the concept of Class.
• Explain the Class as a System of Stratification.
• Discuss the Class and Mobility : Occupation and Mobility.

Introduction

Class in India is generally seen as a consequence of change in the caste system and not as a
concomitant and co-existent system inseparable from caste. Several questions can be raised about
the studies of caste hierarchy and social mobility. For example, why did Srinivas and his associates
often study caste structure, positional changes, village community, and family life and kinship;
and why did they leave out the studies of class relations, vertical mobility, urban community,
industry and formal organizations from their sociological purview ? Culturology is given primacy
over the structural perspective in the understanding of the caste system in most studies carried
out by Srinivas and his followers.The concepts of dominant caste and sanskritization remain
central to this view. Corporate mobility and the study of the social and cultural aspects receive
greater attention instead of mobility at the level of family and individual and economic and
political aspects. Resentment, opposition and conflict in the study of intergroup relations remain
inactive notions.
European sociology has generally used class models as a means of exploring the social structure.
These models divide the economic sphere according to a ‘class schema’ in order to study the
distribution of wealth and power, the extent of mobility between classes, and the degree of openness
of the class structure. In general, such schemes have been defined in terms of a classification of
occupations and employment statuses, and the analyses generally assume that class membership
is long enduring and stable (so that, for instance, a specific individual can usefully be characterized
as ‘working class’ because he or she has held a working-class occupation for a significant length
of (time). However, a number of recent studies have noted that there is, in fact, a considerable
amount of occupational changing, some resulting in a change of class, although little attention has
been drawn to the significance of this for class theory. For instance, Goldthorpe (1980) noted a
great deal of short-range, short-term mobility in the data collected in the Oxford Mobility Survey.

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