Social Stratification - Sammi Branch

Social stratification is a way of sorting people into groups in society. Stratification is not necessarily hierarchical, but it can be. For example, in India the caste system was used until the mid 1990s and was based completely on social standing that one was born into. That is called an ascribed status – something that you can not change. Other examples of ascribed statuses are race, sex, or birth defects. There are also achieved statuses. An achieved status is something that you have worked for or achieved based off of your actions. Some examples are money, degrees, or marital status.

In a caste systems such as India used to have, all you got was an ascribed status; you were born into a social class and you stayed within that class for your whole life. Indians believed that people at the top of the caste system had earned their way there through good behavior in past lives. That belief sort of blurs the line between achieved and ascribed, but for sociological purposes the caste system is based on ascribed statuses. In the United States we have social stratification, like blue collar and white collar, but there is the potential for vertical mobility. Vertical mobility is the ability to move up in social status where you can gain a more prestigious achieved status than you might have been born into. One of the videos we watched briefed the lives of three boys who were friends and went to the same school but were in three different social standings. It showed how it can be hard to move up in social standing in some circumstances but easier in others. It also shows the perks to being born into a “higher” class. As I mentioned before social stratification is not necessarily based on class; but it is very easy to find examples where that is the case.

 However, just because that is prominent does not mean that people lower in socio-economic class are lesser people. A good example of this comes from the caste system again. The people at the top of the caste system don’t necessarily have more money or wealth than people below them – they are being rewarded for good behavior in a past life. Although they are more respected and in a higher social standing, they might be less wealthy than someone less respected than themselves.

As you can see social stratification comes in different varieties and is not necessarily meant to be harmful, but can have some latent consequences that might favor “higher” class citizens and undermine people in a lower socio-economic group. Tupac Shakur makes a nice analogy in his Sociology 101 YouTube video. He uses an example of if he was hungry and every day someone opened a door and showed him a party with tons of food inside but wouldn’t let him in, he would at first try to get in nicely. He would “sing his way in”, he said. Then after a few days of that he would get hungrier, more needy, and start getting a little more forceful “bangin’ on the door” a little. Then after a year of being hungry but being shown this food every day “I’m pickin’ the lock”. This is a great example of how a lower socio-economic class doesn’t necessarily or immediately mean you are going to be a criminal or do something unlawful, but as it wears on you and as you get stuck in that class it might start to effect how you do things based on how badly you need something. If you are starving and your kids are starving, you are probably going to be a lot more willing to break your moral boundaries if it means you can feed yourself or your children. Someone with enough money that they don’t have to worry about meals every day wouldn’t feel that kind of pressure and therefore would probably not ever rob a convenient store or gas station. People of higher socio-economic standing still commit crime though, which shows that you can’t base likeliness of criminal action on class standing.  

These examples show that although vertical mobility is possible, there are a lot of barriers in the way. It is possible to overcome these, but it seems like the lower in socio-economic status you are, the harder it would be. So even though the United States does not have a caste system and our stratification is based on achieved rather than ascribed status and even though social stratification is not necessarily a bad thing or a way to keep people down, it can create barriers that tend to keep people in or very close to the same class you were born into. 

Works Cited:

Henslin, James. Essentials of Sociology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2007. Print.

Shakur, Tupac. Sociology 101 Professor: Dr. 2Pac Shakur. Youtube. N.p., n.d.
     Web. 8 Oct. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/
     watch?v=8s5o7ivNKhg&feature=player_embedded#!>.