The allocation of specialized duties to specific social position is called the process of social differentiation
The process of hierarchically arranging social positions on the basis of cultural values is social ranking.
A social stratification structure is composed of a hierarchy of social position and the accompanying network of social relationships.
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore contend that social inequality exists because societies require it. Ie. Functional Theory of Stratification Rewards are attached to achievement of social position.
Proponents of Conflict Theory believe that stratification structures are the product of power based conflict.
Social positions having a sufficiently similar rank are termed a social class.
Those at the top of a stratification structure, the elites and sometimes those at the bottom have their own ideology, their own set of ideas that serves to justify their values.
Social Mobility is the movement of individuals or families within a stratification structure.
Intergenerational Mobility is measured by comparing a father’s occupational level that of the son.
Comparing the same person’s occupational level at different intervals in his career is a measure of intergenerational mobility
Age, Sex, Ethnicity and Race are viewed as master social positions.
- Ascribed positions that significantly affect the likelihood of achieving other social positions within a stratification structure.
The determinative characteristic of age, sex and ethnicity as master position is declining.
The r R’s of Social Stratification Structure
1. Ranking is the process of virtually arranging social positions on the basis of a criteria rooted in cultural values.
2. Retention characterizes the tendency of endurance of hierarchy of positions and associated social relationships.
3. Rewards are the differential benefits derived from social class placement (Respect, Wealth and Influence)
4. Resources are the means by which persons and groups attain social class placement on a stratification structure – Assets that are negotiable in the process of achieving, maintaining or passing on to others a social class level.
5. Repercussions Behavioral and cultural patterns with certain social classes.
7. The Five R’s of STRATIFICATION STRUCUTE
Those who own capital would be the rulers, bourgeoisie those without ownership of the means of production would be the ruled, the proletariat
Karl Marx
Only one criteria was taken into by Marx – Economics
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Weber conceived straight structure as multidimensional and introduced three orders of stratification – Economic, Prestige and Power.
Weber underscored
Life Chances – the likelihood of securing the “good things of life” such as housing, education, health, food and various other desirable goods and services.
Prestige is the favourable evaluation of some persons by other persons. Most stable source of prestige is associated with social position particularly with occupation.
Prestige is a cultural and social matter, depending on the norms and values professed and practiced in a social structure.
Honour deference and the like must be given to one by another.
“Robinson never got any respect” until his man Friday came along.
Rodney Dangerfield
Social classes tend to share everything from food tasks to levels of education.
Power is the capability of one person to exert his ill on other person, whether or not they wish to cooperate.
The phenomenon of being high in some dimensions and low in others is called status inconsistency.
Wealth, prestige and power can be used as resources as well.
Ranking Various Approaches
When members of a stratification structure are asked to rank others in the social class hierarchy – reputational approach
When they are asked to rank themselves a self-locationed approach
When researchers establish standards that reflect the beliefs of stratification structure –
Objective approach.
If a move from one social position to another carries with it a change in social class level, vertical social mobility has occurred.
There can also be horizontal mobility, intra generational or intergenerational.
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In closed class structures inheritance of social class is the rule. By means of religious, biological, magical or legal justification superiors keep inferiors at a social distance. Eg. Caste System.
In open class systems
Social class movement is a desirable event.
Personality is composed of the patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that are characteristic of a person.
COMMUNITY STRUCTURE –URBANISM
Community structure is an inter-related set of social relationships that fulfill on a daily basis the major social and economic needs of the population living within a delimited geographic area.
In today’s world sheer size plus frequent and extensive geographical mobility tend to create a community of strangers. Urbanism has made obsolete the psychological definition of community.
Each of the organizations to which urbanites belong engages only a limited segment of their personalities.
Extremely high degree of occupational specialization found in cities promotes impersonal, segmental, superficial and transitory social relationships.
Wirth identified these characteristics to distinguish urban social structure; population size, population density and heterogeneity.
8. FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Weber responsible for the formulation of the bureaucratic model as an ideal type, expressed fear that bureaucracy would breed excessive conservatism among persons within such organizations.
Radicals rail against the bureaucracy or the Establishment, claiming it to be the house of decision making that dictates the fate of an essentially powerless and apathetic public.
Conservatives deplore the encroachment of the govt bureaucracy on the free enterprise system.
Both converge on the point that organizations in modern society are too numerous and too large.
They service the social and economic needs.
“There is something about a bureaucratic that does not like a poem”- Gore Vidal
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Nature of bureaucratic organization
Bureaucracy may be defined as a formal organization based on the following principles.
1. Hierarchy of authority
Application of bur tie principles increases effectiveness and efficiency through the coordination of people and their activities that is accomplished via a hierarchy of authority.
Power is the capability of a person or group to exert its will on other persons or groups, whether or not they wish to cooperate.
Manipulation, coercion expertise are correlates to power
Authority is power attached to a social position.
Legal authority is attached to the position regardless of the person occupying it at any given time.
In the case of Traditional authority compliance is based on acquiescence to the person occupying the traditionally approved position of authority.
In the case of charismatic authority no legal or traditional position exists but obedience is given to another person as a result of his magnetic personal characteristics or the trust he elicits.
2) Division of Labour
The breaking up of total production or service operation into their component parts. Specialization is the key principle.
Line Organization
Functional Organization
Staff Organization
3) System of rules and procedures. – prescribes and proscribes the manner in which organizational members perform the various facets of their jobs.
4) Universalism – refers to an impersonal attitude toward and treatment of another person.
The narrowness of vision and inability to change with the times that is based on training and experience is known as trained incapacity – an example of bureaucratic principles gone awry.
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Also goal displacement when organizational means are elevated to ends in themselves.
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