Sociology of Politics & Society

1. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION &
INEQUALITY
SOCIOLOGY OF POLITICS
[DATE: 19-FEB-2020]
MUHAMMAD SAUD
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social and Political Science
Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia
Email: muhhammad.saud@gmail.com

2. MAJOR CONCEPTS
• Social Differentiation is the process of categorizing people
by age, height, occupation, or some other personal
attribute.
• Social Stratification is when people are ranked in a
hierarchy that differentiates them as superior or inferior.

3. MAJOR CONCEPTS
• The hierarchies of stratification—class, race and
gender—place groups, individuals, and families in
the larger society.
• Life Chances refers to the chances throughout
one’s life cycle to live and to experience the good
things in life.
• Traditionally, the family has been viewed as the
principal unit in the class system.

4. WHAT IS SOCIAL CLASS?
• Social Class
• Social classes are formed when a number of people
occupy the same relative economic rank in the
stratification system.
• Privilege refers to the distribution of goods and
services, situations and experiences that are highly
valued and beneficial.
• Class privileges are based on the systematic linkages
between families and society.

5. RACE AND ETHNICITY
• Race and Ethnicity
• Race is socially defined on the basis of a presumed
common genetic heritage resulting in distinguishing
physical characteristics.
• Ethnicity refers to the condition of being culturally
rather than physically distinctive.
• The most important feature of racial stratification is the
exclusion of people of color from equal access to
society’s valued resources.

6. WHAT IS GENDER?
• Gender
• The sex-gender system is the stratification system that
assigns women’s and men’s role unequally.
• Sex roles refers to behaviors determined by an
individual’s biological sex.
• Patriarchy is the term for forms of social organization in
which men are dominant over women.

7. THE INTERSECTION OF
CLASS, RACE AND GENDER
• The hierarchies of class, race and gender are
interrelated systems of stratification.
• These systems of inequality forms what Patricia
Hill Collins calls a matrix of domination in which
each of us exists.

8. THEORIES OF STRATIFICATION
• Order Theory
• Order theorists argue that social inequality is
universal and natural.
• They argue that inequality serves as a basic
function by motivating the most talented
people to perform the most important tasks.

9. THEORIES OF STRATIFICATION
• Conflict Theory
• Conflict theorists argues that social inequality
is basically unjust and the source of many
social problems.
• They argues that the oppressed often accept
their deprivation as the result of false
consciousness.

10. DEFICIENCY THEORIES
• Biological Inferiority
• The biological explanation of poverty is that
the poor are innately inferior.
• Some theorists have argued that certain
categories of people are disadvantaged
because they are less well endowed mentally
(a theoretical version of social Darwinism).

11. DEFICIENCY THEORIES
• Cultural Inferiority
• The culture of poverty thesis contends
that the poor are qualitatively different
in values and lifestyles from the
successful and that these differences
explain the persistence of poverty from
generation to generation.

12. DEFICIENCY THEORIES
• Critics of innate inferiority and culture-of-poverty
explanations charge that, in blaming the victim,
both theories ignore how social conditions trap
individuals and groups in poverty.
• The source of the problem lies not in the victims
but in the way society is organized to advantage
some and disadvantage others.

13. STRUCTURAL THEORIES
• Institutional Discrimination occurs when the
customary ways of doing things, prevailing
attitudes and expectations, and accepted
structural arrangements work to the
disadvantage of the poor.
• The poor are trapped by this type of
discrimination.

14. STRUCTURAL THEORIES
• The Political Economy of Society
• The basic tenet of capitalism--the primacy of maximizing
profit-- promotes poverty in several ways
• Employers are constrained to pay their workers the least
possible in wages and benefits.
• By maintaining a surplus of laborers wages are depressed
• Employers make investment decisions without regard for their
employees

15. Copyright © Allyn and Bacon 2007