Summary :
# Definition and main factors of stratification
Stratification is classifying people by social status and economic condition. Especially, it can be divided by three main factors : power, poverty, prestige.
1) Power : someone’s ability to get others to do his/her will.
2) Poverty : refers to the sum total of one’s possessions as well as their regular income in addition to one’s earning potential and accumulated debt.
3) Prestige : refers to the reputation or esteem associated with one’s position in society. An individual’s prestige is closely tied to their social class.
These three indicators(power, property, prestige) tend to go hand-in-hand.
# Origins of inequality and private property
In past, hunter and gatherer society, there is no diffrenciation on way of life. So individual's private property are much the same. However, time goes by, in horticultural/pastoralist, people stay one place, start division of labor, and make surplus goods. Trading this surplus goods make gaps of private property so this became one of the origins of inequality. After the realization of notion of inequality by Hobbes and Locke, people recognize inequality and the posibility that specific social institutions and groups invent inequality.
# Persistence of inequality
Sociologist Joel Charon offers a few reasons why inequality continues in society.
people who already had high social and economic status, want to remain existing systemㅡinequality, because there are many benefits to them and their offsprings.
So political leverage of establishments, developed technology, belief that their situation is result of their efforts, and socialization to accept their position in life by education make inequality more fixed. Much of society seems to encourage and protect the system of inequality.
# Dominant perspectives
On the one hand, structural-functionalism on stratification perspective say that stratification and inequalities are inevitable and beneficial to society. It is logical that society must offer greater rewards (e.g., income, vacations, promotion) to motivate the most qualified people to fill the most important positions. But, this insistence have problem that it is difficult to determine the functional importance of any job.
functionalist also said the system of stratification is fair and rational, and that the ‘best’ people end up on top because of their superiority. But, in real life, the system does not work so fair. only a few ‘chosen’ people should have all the power and all the material wealth, rather than distributing it equitably, or distributing it to those who need it most.
On the other hand, Conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society. They believe that this competitive system, together with the way the game is ‘fixed’, ends up creating and perpetuating stratification systems. Competition and inequality are not inevitable but are created and maintained by people. But, conflict theorists also had a problem that they underestimate people’s ability to move upward in society.
# Interrelationship with capitalism
Stratification generally relates to capitalism. Capitalism produces enormous amounts of wealth, in addition to increasing levels of inequality. people who have money get high social class, and they have more possibility of survival, good education, more income, and opportunity. Despite the myth that hard work leads to getting ahead and making it, for the most part people have little power to improve their class position. What is worse, it effects to the gap of race and gender.
# Global inequality
Social scientists offer a few theories which help to explain the causes and consequences of global inequality : development and modernization, dependency, world system theory, and the new international division of labor theory.
Development and modernization theory think that a country, which not developed enough, become poor compared with developed country.
Dependency theorists believe large economic growth is not necessarily the key to reducing poverty and developing. Instead, poor countries are trapped by large debts which prevent them from developing.
World systems theory insist that the world economy is a system divided into a hierarchy of three types of countries: core, semiperipheral, and peripheral.
Division of labor theory is a stream that reflect changing production process to devide into parts in world boundary.
Interesting point :
‘Structural-functionalism on stratification’ part is interesting. This part, the contradiction of this perspective can be thinking point. Functionalists justify stratification by a concept that ‘a person who have socially important role earn more benefits.’ But this perspective has a problem that ‘so, what is the socially important role in society?’ We can’t solve this problem exactly. this concept is very vague. For example, according to reading material, ‘who is more important in society between teacher and sports star?’ Well, generally sports star earn much more money than teacher. Than is sports star more important and more essential to society? Let’s think about social role of job. The gap of income is too big despite that ‘which job is more important’ was not solved.
I think, in capitalism society, ‘How popular some job is’ or ‘Which job is commercially value’ decide incomes that someone will receive.
Discussion :
I want to talk about ‘intergenerational transfer of wealth’ problems. Nowadays, in Korea, the youth use words such as gold spoon and dirt spoon. Gold spoon means a person who has socially or economically high-class parents. Dirt spoon is vise versa. This cruel words show us harsh reality of intergenerational transfer of wealth. As finding job process become difficult in Korea, the youth become helpless and angry because of gaps of what they feel (opportunity, method of approach to social resources and so on...).
Lately, the starting point of ‘Choi Sun Sil’ accident was controversy of her daughter, ‘Jung Yu-ra’ who was brought up problems about special illicit admission to university and fabricated grades. One of the reason why this accident brought controversy is that the youth had been suppress their reality and it exploded finally.
reference :
> Choi Sun-sil
>Jung Yu-ra
> News of accident Choi Sun-sil gate
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