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Social Stratification

Notes obscure. They probably lie in the twin bases of ethnicity and occupational specialization. The
system which the Brahmins perfected was founded on five main divisions, four caste groups
(Varna) and an out caste group (Pancham Varna), the untouchables. The four caste groups were the
Brahmis, the priestly class having religious authority, the Kshatriyas, the secular and military ruler
and landlord caste, the Vaishyas the mercantile middle class and the Shudra - the servants and
slaves class. The untouchables performed only the most degrading and ritually impure/polluting
tasks.
Caste has been described as the fundamental social institution of India. As Andre Beitelle (1996)
points out, “sometimes the term is used metaphorically to refer to rigid social distinctions or
extreme social exclusiveness wherever found. But it is among the Hindus in India that we find the
system in it’s most fully developed form, although analogous forms exist among Muslims,
Christians, Sikhs and other religious groups in South Asia”.
Class
Class, commonly known as social class, is one of the major forms of social stratification along with
estate and caste. In the course of the first three decades of the nineteenth century the term class
gradually replaced ‘estates’, ‘ranks’ and ‘orders’ as the major word used to denote divisions
within society. In The Social Science Encyclopaedia, Zygmunt Bauman (1984), in a brilliant analysis,
tells us that “the change of vocabulary reflected the diminishing significance of rank and ascribed
or inherited qualities in general and the growing importance of possessions and income among
the determinants of social position. Class now came to refer to large categories of population, (1)
distinct from other categories in respect of wealth and related social position, (2) deriving their
distinctive status mainly from their location in the production and distribution of social wealth,
(3) sharing accordingly in distinctive interests either opposing or complimenting other group
interests, and (4) consequently displaying a tendency to a group - distinctive political, cultural
and social attitudes and behaviour.

Class status is determined by property, achievement and capacity of an individual.

In simpler terms, a class is a category or group of persons having a definite status in society which
permanently determines the relation to other groups. The relative position of the class in the social
scale arises from the degree of prestige attached to it.
The major theoretical tradition within class analysis is derived from the works of Karl Marx and
Max Weber on the newly emerging class structure of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth
century. Marx analysed class in relation to the ownership of capital and the means of production.
A class is formed by an aggregate of persons who play the same role in the production mechanism.
Marx divided the entire human population into those who owned property or means of production
and those who did not - the capitalist class and the proletariat. Marx saw classes as tangible
collectivities and as real social forces with the capacity to change society. The never ending drive
of capitalists to create profit led to the exploitation of proletariat and so Marx believed that it
would result into it’s pauperization. In these circumstances the workers would develop class
consciousness and the proletariat would grow from being a class in itself, that is an economically
defined category with no self-awareness, to become a class ‘for itself’ made up of workers with a
class-conscious view of the world and ready to pursue class conflict against the capitalists. Thus,
Marx distinguished classes in objective terms : that is, in terms of their position in the productive
system.

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