Page 147 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes • Culture defines the rules of the game, the nature of relations between the haves and the
have-nots. Thus culture does not include only cultural practices, rituals, rites de passage, etc.
Structure is a product of dialectical contradictions, historical forces, and a certain ‘formation’.
Once it has emerged, it becomes a sort of force in determining the course of history, the
nature of contradictions and the evaluational standards. Thus, structure refers to relations
between social segments at a point of time as a historical product and as an existent reality.
• Several scholars have denied the ‘congruence’ version about caste, class and power in the
ancient India. They have conclusively established that social mobility existed in ancient and
medieval India. The jajmani system was never completely ‘organic’ in practice. The idea of
the contrapriest exposes the hollowness of the concepts of hierarchy and pollution-purity. In
the place of sanskritization, westernization and dominant caste etc., it is necessary to study
downward mobility and proletarianization, upward mobility and embourgeoisiement, urban
incomes for the rural people and the migration of the rural rich to towns, and rural non-
agricultural income and mobility etc.
• In vernacular language he uses the terms maalik, kissan and mazdur for these three classes
respectively. The landowners or proprietors traditionally belonged to the upper caste groups.
They were tax gatherers and non-cultivating owners of land. Thorner (ibid) understands
that the category of proprietors or maalik refers to families whose agricultural income is
derived primarily (although not necessarily solely) from property rights in the soil. That is to
say that whatever other sources of family income may exist, such as from a profession or
business, the main agricultural income is derived from a share of the produce of lands
belonging to the family.
• The second class referred to as kisan) or working peasants has also a recognised property
interest in the land. They may be small owners, or tenants with varying degrees of security.
By and large (but not in every state) their legal and customary rights will be somewhat
inferior to these of the malik (proprietors) in the same village. The chief distinguishing feature
however, is the amount of land held. In the case of the working peasant the size of the
holding is such that it supports only a single family and then only if one or more members
of the family actually perform the field labour.
• The third agrarian class referred to as labourer or mazdur comprise those villagers who gain
their livelihood primarily from working on other people’s land. Families in this class may
indeed have tenancy rights in the soil, or even property rights, but the holdings are so small
that the income from cultivating them or from renting them out comes to less than the
earnings from fieldwork.
• The existing land reforms have initiated a process by which the security of tenure and
economic prosperity of the rich peasantry has increased, but the condition of the small
peasants both in respect of economic level and tenurial stability has deteriorated.
• The rural India witnessed and still witnessing the process of social mobility and
transformation. Depeasantization of small and marginal peasant is also a by-product of the
transformation of village India.
• Social class is measured in terms of status; a person belonging to a particular class is said to
hold status similar to members of that class. So social class is defined in terms of the amount
of status the members of a particular class relatively have, in comparison with members of
other social classes. Broadly speaking, the stratification into varied social classes, is done on
the bases on three factors, viz., wealth (economic assets) power (ability to exert influence
over others) and prestige (recognition received). However, marketing academicians and
researchers, as well as consumer researchers, define status in terms of demographical variables
like income, occupation and education; in fact, the three are interrelated and thus, used in

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