Page 9 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes in all the human societies. Therefore, it is necessary to have a critical view of the above generally
assumed universality and functionally of social stratification.
While analysing social stratification in pre-industrial societies, M.G. Smith writes : “Stratification
never consists in the mere existence or occupancy of differential positions, but in the principles by
which the distribution of access and opportunities is regulated.” According to Smith, age-sets and
sex are the main considerations for having access and opportunities to resources in pre-industrial
societies. Age and sex are not simply biological criteria. These are social and cultural phenomena
in pre-industrial societies. Parsons and Svalastoga have stated these as simply biological or non-
social criteria. Political power can be legitimated on a biological basis, as elderly men would have
opportunity to lead their communities undermining younger people and female members.
Smith refers to analytic and concrete concepts of stratification like analytic and concrete structures
or membership units and generalized aspects of social process. Analytically, the functionalists like
Tumin and Parsons regard stratification as an abstract necessity of all social systems. Concretely,
it refers to empirical distributions of advantages and benefits in specific societies. Thus, Smith
considers stratification as a process as well as a state of affairs. Yogendra Singh, while analysing
trends in social stratification in India, looks at stratification from the points of its theory, structure
and process. He observes that the element of process is more fundamental than the other points,
namely, theory and structure. According to Smith, the state of affairs is both a product and
condition of social process.
The analysis made by Smith is quite significant because in his view institutionalization is the basis
of social relations between the grpups/units in a given society. In other words, randomness,
contingency and discord cannot be the bases of a ranking system at all, hence structural principles
determine nature and functioning of a system of social stratification. The prevailing distributions
of advantage (processes of distribution) are regulated by structural principles. The concept of
structure facilitates identification of these principles (distributions) and their combinations.
Structural change implies changes or modifications in structural units, that is, status. Thus, social
stratification implies not merely a ranked hierarchy, but also a homogenous quality in each of
various strata. However, homogeneity may not be found in “situs” systems and in caste systems.
Inequality and stratification differ from each other to the extent that stratification is generally
based on normatively constructed principles and values, whereas inequality may have its genesis
in pre-given unchanging systems such as lineages and age-sets. Based on the sources of social
inequality, a demarcation can be worked out between stratification and inequality or, in other
words, between modern industrial societies and pre-industrial societies.
Marxian Viewpoint
The classical Marxian view on social stratification is analytically quite distinct compared to the
structural functional conceptualization discussed above. It would not be correct to say that Karl
Marx propounded a simple theory of technological or economic determination. He professed a
grand structural explanation of society, incorporating concepts of class, class-conflict and change.
In his classic work Capital (Vol. Ill) Marx writes : “The owners merely of labour power, owners of
capital, and landowners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit, and ground-rent,
in other words, wage-labourers, capitalists, and land-owners constitute the three big classes of
modern society based on the capitalist mode of production.” Marx further observes that middle
and intermediate strata obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere. The tendency is found more
and more in the development of the capitalist mode of production, transforming labour into wage
labour and the means of production into capital. Landed property tends to transform into the
capitalist mode of production as well.
Marx poses two questions :
1. What constitutes a class ?

4 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY