Changes

As has most likely been stated in many previous posts on the subject; social stratification is when large numbers of people are divided into different levels within society based on their relative property, power, and prestige. Slavery, Caste, and Class are the main areas of social stratification. Slavery is defined as persons in ownership of another human being, Caste is the status that people receive at birth—based upon the family they were born into—and finally Class is determined by the money and material possessions one has acquired through no particular means. If the class system is singled out, there is a myriad of topics, which can be chosen to speak about at a narrowed level.

What happens when an individual begins to go through social mobility in the class system? A lot! Whether someone is going up the class ladder or has fallen to the bottom there are a myriad of changes occurring in that individuals life. These changes are going to require a great deal of resocialization, so that this individual can learn to survive within their new class.

Living most of your life within a certain class, one learns the appropriate values, expected attitudes and acceptable behaviors needed to function in that specific area of the social structure. These are the things you know and what has been engraved in your mind throughout many years of experiencing these functions. Then one day having to completely change the way you act within the world, is not an easy task. So, an individual in this position must go through resocialization.

Someone at the bottom of the class system living in a small population town somewhere in Kansas, who one day wins the lottery, inherits money from an unknown relative or simply works hard enough that they climb their way to middle—or better for this post—perhaps even upper-class may find that the world they now live in is very different. Some individuals may decide to continue living their lives around the same people and in the same town, but if the change takes them to—for this example—Manhattan, New York there will be great changes. Your neighbors will not act the same, the places you eat will require that you follow rules you have never been exposed to in a restaurant and the way you look and act will be scrutinized if they stay the way they had been, before the jump in class—even those who were born into the upper-class are scrutinized harshly. If the new expectations are not learned it may be impossible to survive within the new social class.

This is the same, for upper-class individuals who drop into a lower class system, either middle or lower-class. Let’s say a socialite in Manhattan, New York begins to have money problems and continues to fall down the class ladder until they hit bottom, they may have an even harder time than that of a lower-class individual climbing to upper-class. This is because, the upper-class individual has lived in a more luxurious life and they now do not have that luxury, so most of what they learned is no longer going to apply within their new lower standing. They now have to learn how to get what they need without any help from being well known and having high standings, their connections are gone and they no longer can they spend the money to be waited on—whether they had a maid or just went to fancy places. If they cannot learn to work and live in this lower class, where they have to fight harder for smaller gratifications they will not survive and will never be able to climb back up to a place where they feel comfortable.

Resocialization is needed, for anyone who has a substantial change in their life. So, within social stratification, when social mobility happens to anyone within the slavery, caste, or class systems there is a great deal of work ahead of them.