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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
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