Page 143 - DSOC401_SOCIOLOGICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit-22: Concept of Status, Class and Power

class interest notes

Although members of a particular class can express one type of reaction still it will be wrong to
say that they are directed by some Class-Interest. Weber says the concept of Class Interest is highly
ambiguous. The meaning of class-interest is just that in one class condition there is a definite direction
of efforts done by the average members of that class for the fulfillment of their interest. To conclude
any other meaning of Class-Interest is to make it more unclear in the form of experimental concept.
The concept of Class-Interest is ambiguous because of two reasons—Firstly since every person for the
fulfillment of their interest bears a tendency to do it in a particular way according to his ability and
capacity. Secondly because the direction of interest keeps changing by that person according to the
hopes made by his group or organization of which class, organization or group he is the member. It
will also be possible that an industrial labour does not expect much from his labour-community and
therefore tries to fulfill his interest in his own way. In that condition the question of Class-Interest
rarely do arise. Therefore it is clear that Class-interest may be able to got in its original form and if
get then only in ambiguous form.

22.3 summary

y In the formation of social class along with financial basis social and political basis are also
important.
y Under financial basis the concept of life chance is important.
y Weber presented trivial description of class.
1. property based.
2. respect based, and
3. power based.

22.4 Keywords

1. social class- According to Weber, Class is the group of people having same class status.
This type of group gets equal chances in life, i.e. , their some capacity remains same in the
market.

22.5 review Questions

1. Present Weber’s trivial description of Class.
2. Whom Max Weber has called the ‘Conditioned Group’?

answers : self assessment

1. Services 2. clerk-class 3. Propertiless

22.6 further readings

Books 1. Sociological Thought – Rabindranath Mukherjee.
2. Encyclopedia of Sociology – Harikrishna Rawat.

LoVeLY professionaL uniVersitY 137