Page 237 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes the absolute number of mobile individuals or the proportion of the given individuals to the total
population, respectively. Based on the data of intensiveness and relative generality of the vertical
mobility in a definite field, the aggregate index of the vertical economic mobility of a particular
society may be obtained. This can facilitate comparison in terms of space and time between societies
and in a specific society.

SOCIAL MOBILITY
The situation is summed up in the following scheme :

Territorial, religious, political party, family,
(a) of individuals Horizontal occupational, and other horizontal shiftings
without any noticeable change in vertical position
SOCIAL
MOBILITY Ascending Individual
infiltration Economic,
(b) of social Creation occupational,
objects Vertical and elevation of political, etc.
a whole group
Individual
sinking
Descending Economic,
occupational,
Sinking or political, etc.
disintegration of
a whole group

Based on the nature of horizontal or vertical mobility or intensiveness and generality, a particular
society may be observed. If there is no ascending or descending, no circulation of its members,
that a person is attached to a stratum based on his birth, “such a type of stratification may be as
absolutely closed, rigid, impenetrable, or immobile”. Opposite to this may be a type of society in
which the vertical mobility is very intensive and general. One can move from one stratum to
another both upwardly and downwardly. “Such a type of social stratification may be styled open,
plastic, penetrable, or mobile.” “Between these two extreme types there may be many middle or
intermediary types of stratification.”
Democratic societies have more intensive vertical mobility compared to autocratic, and dogmatic
societies. Birth-based ascriptive status does not find a place of significance in a democratic society.
There is openness and equality of opportunities. There are more holes and elevators to go up and
down. The following are general principles of vertical mobility as formulated by Sorokin :
1. There has scarcely been any society whose strata were absolutely closed or in which vertical
mobility in its three forms - economic, political and occupational - was not present.
2. There has never existed a society in which vertical social mobility has been absolutely free and
the transition from one social stratum to another has had no resistance.
3. The intensiveness, as well as the generality of the vertical social mobility, varies from society
to society (fluctuation of mobility in space).
4. The intensiveness and the generality of the vertical mobility - the economic, the political and
the occupational - fluctuate in the same society at different times.
5. As far as the corresponding historical and other materials permit seeing, in the field of vertical
mobility, in its three fundamental forms, there seems to be no definite perpetual trend toward
either an increase or a decrease of the intensiveness and generality of mobility. This is proposed
as valid for the history of a country, for that of a large social body, and, finally, for the history
of mankind.

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