For use by CAPE students pursuing the Sociology Program. This would give them a synopsis of social stratification and give them the launching pad to delve deeper into the topic.

1. Caribbean Social
Stratification
Race, Class and Gender in
Social Stratification

2. The study of social inequality, according
to Giddens is one of the most exciting
areas of sociology since it enables us to
observe that material resources to which
people have access determine a great
deal about their lives.

3. Stratification in the Caribbean take place
along the following:
1. Colour and class.
2. Ethnic grouping – cultural variations or
complexities.
Note: “In every Caribbean society the
emergence during and after slavery of
strata of people of ‘fixed colour’ is of
critical significance. But since colour,
race and status remain pivotal to the

4. stability of post-slave ‘colony society,’ the
mediation of the ‘free coloured’ group,
while opening up intercourse between
white and black groups, also
institutionalizes …. the symbolism of race,
colour and status as the idiom of social
stratification and mobility,” (Stuart Hall in
Unesco 1977, 166).

5. The combination of race, colour and
status is a triple articulation of the system
of status symbolization which makes
Caribbean society of the most complex
social system on earth.
The race - colour element combines with
the usual elements of non-ethnic
stratification systems such as education,
wealth, occupation, income, life values to
compose the stratification matrix.

6. If in the Caribbean, there is no class
solidarity, then there is no ‘ethnic’ or
‘cultural’ solidarities either
In any event, in the Caribbean, we cannot
speak properly of a single – subject ruling
class, but of class fractions and coalitions
or ruling class.

7. Class consciousness is used as a generic
term to describe subjective perceptions of
the division of society into relatively
distinct classes and self – placement in
that structure.