The Architecture of Stratification: Social Class and Inequality

1. CHAPTER 10 The Architecture of Stratification: Social Class and Inequality

2. Hurricane Katrina the lack of economic resources can have direct, physical consequences for people’s lives. neighborhoods with significant flooding had a lower median income, a higher poverty rate, and a higher percentage of households without a vehicle than areas that experienced little or no flooding

3. Stratification • Stratification is the structured system of ranking entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society. • Different systems: • Slavery – definition? • Caste system – definition? • Estate (feudal) system – definition?

4. Definitions • Social class- group of people who share a similar economic position in society, based on wealth and income • Different categories are used, one common set is upper, middle, working and lower class • How can we distinguish between these classes? • One way is based on ties to economy

5. Social mobility Movement of people or groups from one class to another Barriers often limit mobility from one generation to the next Common to take 5-6 generations to erase the advantages or disadvantages of one’s family Can visualize “class distinctions” as fuzzy lines – more like a continuum

6. Mass media images of class • Working-class individuals frequently not starring roles; most time spent on wealthy characters • Often portrayed as • Immature or irresponsible • Macho exhibitionists • Having “odd lifestyles” or personal problems • Reinforces images of poor or working-class as aberrations or something to fear • Sometimes depicted as heroic and noble, with wealth depicted as “evil” – accurate?

7. Structural-Functionalist Perspective • Because stratification is found in some form in most societies, SF would propose it is somehow necessary • What functions does inequality serve? • SF perspective looks at continuum of skill and reward • Some positions require skills that few possess or require great deal of training • Positions that require more skilled individuals must have higher rewards • Jobs that require few skills do not need to be highly paid as there is no shortage of people to fill them

8. Critique of SF perspective How do we determine what positions are important? Circular argument – pay based on importance, importance based on pay Can we say that people don’t have the skills to be doctors or attorneys when opportunities and access to training are not equal? Entertainers, actors and sports stars – could we live without them?

9. Conflict View of Stratification • Conflict perspective argues that inequality is a reflection of unequal distribution of power and resources and is primary source of conflict and coercion • Marxian class model (Karl Marx – 1818-1883) • Division into classes based on 2 criteria • Ownership of means of production (land, commercial enterprises etc.) • Ability to purchase or control labor of others

11. Marx and class consciousness Those in power have access to means to promote a reality that justifies their exploitive actions Dominant ideology promotes a false consciousness were people in lower classes come to accept a belief system that prevents revolution If workers become aware of their identity as an exploited class – Marx called this gaining a class consciousness - hypothesized leading to revolution

12. Max Weber Weber added two other dimensions—status (or what he called prestige) and power—to his model of stratification, preferring the term socioeconomic status rather than class SES : the prestige, honor, respect, and power associated with different class positions in society

13. Neo-Marxian Model Dahrendorff’s model also takes authority into account. What is authority? Stratification not exclusively economic, but also comes from the social relations between people who possess different degrees of power.

14. Upper class • “They have become the most discussed social group in the United States. Yet few people acknowledge being a member” • Why? • These families are usually headed by high-level executives, highly compensated lawyers, doctors, scientists, celebrities etc. • Educational system plays important role in perpetuating or reproducing the U.S. class structure. • How?

15. Middle Class • Has always been important in defining U.S. culture • its moods, political direction, lifestyles, values, habits, and tastes. • Often other classes measured against the values and norms of the middle class. • Many who consider themselves middle class report worries about: • job security, taxes, unemployment, cost of living, etc. • After adjusting for inflation, the mean hourly wage has actually dropped from a little over $19/hr in the early 70s to $17/hr today • The rising cost of health care is making it increasingly difficult even for middle-class families to afford insurance coverage. Today, one-third of the uninsured have incomes over $40,000 a year

16. Working Class • Even more susceptible than middle-class to downturns in economy. • Most have only high school education and earn an hourly wage rather than a salary. • To save money, many large companies have reduced their low-wage workforce. • To survive psychologically in a world of such economic instability, many begin to define their jobs as irrelevant to their core identity. • e.g. view as sacrifice for family

17. The Poor • Poverty pervades all aspects of life – uncertainty in shelter, food & employment • Most publicly visible consequence of poverty is homelessness. • between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience some type of homelessness over the course of a year • Typical poor family spends about 60% of after-tax income on housing. • Average middle-class homeowner about 23% • Barriers to health care and education.

18. Poverty • Poverty rate = percentage of US residents whose income falls below the poverty line • Poverty line = (gov’t calculation) amount of yearly income a family needs to meet its basic needs • In 2006, poverty line for family of four—two parents and two children—was an annual income of $20,444. • Calculation developed in 1960s, based on $ needed for food times 3 • What expenses are not considered??

19. Differential experiences of poverty • 2006 – poverty rates: • non-Hispanic Whites (8.3%) • Asian Americans (11.1%) • nonwhite Latino/as (21.8%) • African Americans (24.9%) • The poverty rate for families headed by • single mothers is 28.7% • Single fathers 13.0% • 5.1% for married couple families • Education is critical - 70% of young single mothers without a high school diploma are poor • Children under 18 constitute 25% of US pop., but are 34.9% of the poor

20. Near-poor and working poor Those who earn just above the poverty line may be eligible for some benefits, but this group can particularly struggle Unexpected emergencies take savings US Bureau of the Census is experimenting with a new calculation for poverty line

21. Why poverty persists: Growing income inequality • Income – occupational wages or salaries and earnings from investments • In 2004 the annual income of the top 5% of U.S. families averaged $173,640 • the annual income of the bottom 20% of families averaged $24,780 • US has greatest income inequality of any industrialized nations.

22. Wealth Wealth includes ownership of durable consumer goods (houses, cars, etc.) and financial assets (stocks, bonds, etc.) Wealthiest 20% of US pop holds about 80% of the wealth (wealthiest 1% had 40%) Poorest 40% control .2% of wealth Bill Gates’ net worth is equivalent to total worth of poorest 40% of US households

23. “Benefits of Poverty” for society • Ready pool of low-wage laborers • Ensures enough people to populate military • Military personnel in War in Iraq disproportionately ethnoracial minorities from poor or working class families • By 2006, 34% of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq came from the poorest quarter of families, while 17% came from the richest quarter • Visible reminder of “legitimacy” of conventional value of competitive individualism.

24. Global Stratification • Much of North and South America, Africa and Asia were at some point in history colonies of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and in some cases the US • Colonies serve as a source of raw materials and market for high priced finished products – economic benefits of manufacturing portion lost • Wealthy countries can also exert financial pressure on poorer nations by setting world prices on certain goods • Other areas of inequality among nations • % of pop in secondary or higher education • Access to health care

25. Multinational Corporations Actions reflect corporate goals, in essence loyal to no single country Conflict theorists argue that multi-nationals exploit local workers and communities Conditions and wages would not be tolerated on such a large scale in US Environmental regulations not as strict as US

26. Karl Marx

27. Manifesto of the Communist Party The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in common ruin of the contending classes. [….] Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possess, however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. P. 171

28. Manifesto of the Communist Party Modern industry has established the worldmarket, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extend, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed in the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange. P. 173

29. Manifesto of the Communist Party It (the bourgeoisie) has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. P. 173-4.

30. Manifesto of the Communist Party The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with the the whole relations of society. [….] Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, are swept away, all new-formed ones becomes antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations in kind. P. 174

31. Manifesto of the Communist Party The bourgeoisie, by rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois model of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image. P. 175

32. Manifesto of the Communist Party It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part of not only the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epoch, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed: why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. P. 177.

33. Manifesto of the Communist Party Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master in the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As a privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they the slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. [….] The less skill and exertion or strength implied in manual labor, in other words the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to age and sex. P. 178.

34. Manifesto of the Communist Party The lower strata of the middle class – the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants – all these sink gradually in to the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of population. P. 179.

35. Manifesto of the Communist Party But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number, it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels its strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the worker begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois . . . . P. 179-180

36. Manifesto of the Communist Party The lower-middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so, only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, bur their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves as that of the proletariat. The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. P. 181-2.

37. Manifesto of the Communist Party The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their involuntary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. P. 182-3.