Page 72 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH
P. 72

Unit 4: Theories of  Social Stratification-II


                Price wars and competitive struggles exhibit both. The kind of property and the kind of  Notes
                services further differentiate class situations, for example, in terms of class of rentiers and
                class of entrepreneurs, etc.
            •   Communal action refers to that action which is oriented to the feeling of the actors that they
                belong together.  Social action, on the other hand, is oriented to a rationally motivated
                adjustment of interests. The rise of societal or even of communal action from a common class
                situation is by no means a universal phenomenon.
            •   A class in itself does not entail a community. Nevertheless, class situations emerge only on
                the basis of communalization (mobilization for common economic interests). The labour
                market and the capitalist enterprise determine the class situation of the worker and the
                entrepreneurs. Thus, the communal action is not basically action between members of the
                identical class. The existence of a capitalist enterprise is pre-conditioned by a specific kind of
                “legal order”.
            •   “Classes” are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented
                by special “styles of life”. An “occupational group” is also a status group. For example,
                Brahmins are a status group as they perform priestly functions. However, technological
                change and economic transformation threaten stratification by status pushing the class
                situation into the foreground.
            •   “Classes” are found in economic order, “status groups” are seen in the sphere of the
                distribution of honour, and these two influence each other, and also the legal order, and are
                influenced by it. But “parties” live in a house of power. Thus, Weber asserts autonomy and
                interdependence of class, status and power.
            •   “Class situation”/”status situation” may determine “parties”. But parties may not be either
                “classes” or “status groups”. They are partly  class parties and partly  status parties. But
                sometimes they are neither. They have staff, rules of the game. “Parties” may represent
                ephemeral or enduring structures. Means of attaining power vary from naked violence to
                canvassing for votes with money, social influence, the force of speech, suggestion, clumsy
                hoax, etc.
            •   Marx is less careful in distinguishing between economic power and political power. Weber,
                as a liberal, makes there spheres clearly distinct : “economic”, “economically determined”
                and “economically relevant”.
            •   Bourdieu relates social space and the genesis of classes. He points out that in the Marxist
                theory the “theoretical class” cannot be treated as a “real class”. A real class is an effectively
                mobilized group. Bourdieu talks of the social field, he does not grant a multidimensional
                space to the economic field alone, to the reductions of economic production.
            •   Class and power along with caste (status) were considered as economic and political
                dimensions of social inequality and hierarchy. Some scholars looked at caste from a class
                point of view.
            •   Weber’s theory of social stratification cannot be taken away from Weber’s overall approach
                to society, economy, state, religion, etc. Weber tried to synthesize rationalism, subjectivity
                and objectification in his method of understanding (verstehen). Individual, organization and
                group occupied their respective space in Weber’s study of human society. Weber meticulously
                linked theory, method and data, which the Indian followers of Weber have not been able to
                do as scientifically as he did.
            •   That quintessence of the structural-functional theory of stratification is that social hierarchy
                is the result of the inevitability of differentiation of roles and duties. Different duties and
                roles carry differential power and prestige. The differentiation of roles and duties is inevitable




                                               LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY                                     67
   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77