The authors of your textbook are fond of using vignettes to add interesting narrative to each chapter. To lead my thoughts on stratification and social psychology, I thought it might be interesting to briefly follow the path that led me to be your professor.
When I was a teenager, my family moved to Arkansas to start an intentional community. Life was very hard and most people left after a year or two. Our family had hardly any money—often food was bartered for our labor. Attending school was a daily reminder of how little we had compared to the other students. When we went on class trips, to make my money stretch (if I even had any) I would tell my friends I was not hungry or that I did not want what everyone else wanted. Before and after graduation (14 in my class) I had worked at a number of odd jobs to make ends meet such as clearing brush, cleaning out chicken houses, roofing, and working in a chicken plant. To change the path I was on, I decided to join the regular Army after doing three or four years in the National Guard. After serving in Europe, the Gulf War, and Fort Carson I got out and rejoined the reserves—where I would stay for the remainder of my 22 years of service. I also got married and had a child. Along the way I received a number of degrees culminating in a Ph.D. Now I am a professor of sociology at Jackson State University.
In my story, my family did not provide me with any economic resources to get through college. I had to join the Army. Life for many of my former classmates was also not easy. What is extraordinary, I think, is that so many of my classmates did become successful given their circumstances. It is important for me to acknowledge that family “background” factors, my race, and even my gender all contributed to the opportunities that were presented to me.
Stratification is an extremely important and complex sociological process. Basically the concept revolves around how society ranks its members and how opportunities and power are distributed. You may recall how I mentioned that the “Holy Trinity” in sociology is SES (education, occupation, income) and that you needed to consider SES in all sociological studies. This remains true for social psychological studies as well. Returning to my story, how I felt about my position relative to my classmates in high school probably had a lot do with my personality. Perhaps my sense of humor and overactive imagination were ways I learned to deal with our family’s lack of resources and opportunities.
Sociological Perspectives on Stratification
There are various ways sociologists explain stratification in society. I will mention structural functionalism and conflict briefly and then follow the book for the third (symbolic interactionism).
Structural Functionalism
One way is discuss the functions and dsyfunctions stratification poses. Davis and Moore (1945) argued that stratification was useful for society by rewarding members who take on the most important jobs. I fail to see how athletes and celebrities are pivotal in the survival of society. It is rather easy to see how poverty has a negative influence in society but what are the positive effects? Herbert Gans (1972) thought that poverty had some positive functions such as providing jobs for social workers and policement. Citing Kerchoff (1995:476), Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas (2007:91) note that “A more structural perspective takes hierarchy as a “given” and “seeks to understand the processes by which individuals become distributed in that hierarchy.” A little further down, Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas (2007:92) mention that “A structuralist perspective on mobility processes tries to explain how inequality is passed from generation to generation and how it is maintained within the same generation.”
Conflict Theory
Another way of analyzing stratification is by focusing on who has the resources and power in society. Following the conflict perspective, a researcher would look at modes of production (capitalism, feudalism, etc), how the worker is alienated from what they create, and the redistribution of resources and power from the workers to elites in society.
Symbolic Interactionism
Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas (2007:85) argued that. “Symbolic interactionists try to uncover the subtle and not so subtle ways that social hierarchies develop and are maintained in social settings.”
What do you think of Shirley Heath’s research language and storytelling to working-class black and white children in North and South Carolina? Summing up Heath’s research, Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas (2007:85) wrote that “…the types of interactions that children experienced early on with significant others were stratified by social class and helped to perpetuate a system that sustained societal inequalities.”
How do people talk about stratification? In more sociological terms, theorists use the concept of “accounts” and “accounting.” Stratification accounts are contingent on one’s social class. Taking on the role of the other or more empathetic versus more prestige and status people who are less empathetic. Think of the pointed rhetoric lobbed at marginalized people by Tea Partiers and others. Counter to common wisdom, Tea Partiers tend to be highly educated and are doing rather well economically. Recently some social commentators have noted a growing narcissism in the electorate. In other words, many of today’s voters tend to become outraged, like a spoiled child, when they do not get their way.
Class also shapes our lifestyles. If you filled out the “Living Room Scale” that I provided in class you may get a sense of how our material surroundings really showcase our social class. This should not be surprising—marketers have very precise knowledge about our preferences and have devised classes within zipcodes that suggest, by class, what a particular zipcode eats, watches on television, and drives. Also check out People Like Us.
People in power are accorded the power to “frame” the issues. You may recall that I recently mentioned that there were more deaths due to malnutrition in the U.S. in 2002 than deaths caused by terrorist activities. Now contrast that fact with how much money and effort we have spent on terrorism rather than providing adequate nutrition to all Americans. The point is that those in power are able to define which issues are more important than others.
“In 2001, 2978 people in the U.S. were killed by terrorist attacks, that same year, 3,454 died from malnutrition.”—wired (reported in The Week (March 12, 2004). Original source was Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2003).
| year | malnutrition deaths | population | rate (100,000) |
| 1999 | 3,985 | 279,040,168 | 1.4 |
| 2000 | 3,926 | 281,421,906 | 1.4 |
| 2001 | 3,454 | 284,796,887 | 1.2 |
| 2002 | 3,510 | 288,368,706 | 1.2 |
| 2003 | 3,153 | 290,810,789 | 1.1 |
| 2004 | 2,847 | 293,655,404 | 1 |
| 2005 | 3,003 | 296,410,404 | 1 |
| 2006 | 2,377 | 299,398,484 | 0.8 |
| 2007 | 2,644 | 301,621,157 | 0.9 |
| Total | 28,899 | 2,615,523,905 | 1.1 |
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
It is important to note how elites throughout U.S. history have pitted minority groups against marginalized whites. Howard Zinn noted that the Revolutionary period American elites were very worried that minorities and poor whites would band together. Their efforts to keep these groups apart have contributed to our system of stratification and how we view race in American society.
Your textbook authors provide an important qualifier regarding the stratification process. We are not passive in the process but are able to modify and even change the course of direction, the paths of our lives. The interplay between agency and structure concerning status, power, and life-chances is extremely complex but interesting.
Doing Gender
Most people do not spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a man or a woman. As you may know, sex is biological and gender is social. Our activities are continuously referenced to whether we are men or women. Moreover, we socialize our children in gender-specific ways. However, it is important for us to realize that these rules and norms do change from place-to-place and over time. What one culture defines as masculine may not be the case in another. In some parts of the world, it is considered normal for men to hold hands and kiss each other. Within U.S. society, gender role expectations have changed. Many of our founding fathers wore wigs and wore hosiery. Even into the early part of the 20th century it was normal for little boys to wear dresses. Consider the picture provided below that I took from one of my books (Graham’s Illustrated 1858).
In American society, the opportunities presented to women are fewer than for men. For example women tend to earn less and tend to work in less prestigious occupations. Oftentimes, they are prevented from moving up (the glass ceiling). Moreover, laws and practices make it hard for one or two-parent families to balance family and work.
Our attitudes about gender roles are shaped through our socialization experiences. What is seen appropriate lines of work for men and women is an interesting example. In my master’s thesis I explored men and women’s attitudes about women in combat. Nowadays this issue may seem moot but back in the early 1990s there was a lot of discussion about whether women should remain in the military. Although my data were from a convenience sample, therefore not generalizable, I was interested to find that a number of women were not very enthusiastic about opening up the combat jobs in the military to women. I also got a sense that there was greater support if the respondent had higher levels of education—one aspect of class position. In otherwords, blue-collar and lower classed respondents were more traditional in their views about women (Kersen 1996).
Consider the table below based on General Social Survey (GSS) data (Davis and Smith 2009). Respondents were asked “At the present time, about 9 percent of the armed forces are women. All things considered, do you think there are too many women in the armed forces, about the right number, or should there be more women in the armed forces?” The results suggest that as education increases, respondents tend to support greater participation of women in the military.
| TOO MANY | ABOUT RIGHT NUMBER | SHOULD BE MORE | |
| < H.S. | 16.9 | 62.8 | 20.3 |
| H.S. | 6.7 | 59.8 | 33.5 |
| A.A. | 7.9 | 50.1 | 42.0 |
| B.A. | 3.1 | 47.7 | 49.2 |
| > B.A. | 2.8 | 49.9 | 47.3 |
| TOTAL% | 9.0 | 58.6 | 32.5 |
| TOTAL# | 407 | 2,648 | 1,468 |
The General Social Survey has a number of questions dealing with gender roles. If you have not had the chance to look at GSS please do so–it is a valuable source for many of your classes.
Race and Stratification
The section in Chapter 4 titled “Race and Poverty” is rather skimpy. The authors talked about a few studies dealing with how people who live in inner cities get on with their daily lives (see Liebow (1967) and Anderson (1999). The authors talked about stereotypes. I believe insights from W.E.B Dubois’s such as his double-consciousness concept should have been discussed.
Read this selection from The Souls of Black Folk (1995:45):
…the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
I think Dubois’s insight is useful for all sorts of marginalized people. In psychology the concept of cognitive dissonance is a rough parallel—the mental turmoil that arises from something that inhibits an individual from meeting their goal.
In referring to social mobility, Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas (2007:93) mentioned the Wisconsin Model which “…shows the role of parent and self attributes on self’s attainment.” You should remember the model—it is the one I had you use to describe how you got to where you are socio-economically. Social mobility means moving up or down with the class structure. There is also inter-mobility-moving up/down in class over generations and intra-mobility, moving up/down within your own generation.
Networks and Social Capital
Social capital is the groups/association/interactions a person possesses. In contrast, human capital is the education, skills, and other intrinsic qualities a person has. Human capital is what you know; social capital is who you know. There are two types of social capital: bridging social capital that is inclusive or allows all to enter. Bonding social capital, on the other hand, refers to groups or associations which restrict membership along some criteria. Kersen argues that bridging social capital not only benefits the individual but makes the community a better place to live.
Following the book, power centers on centrality and exclusion. Ask yourself who do people go to in an organization (centrality) and does that person have the ability to exclude people or resources? The authors suggest that exclusion, rather than centrality, is where true power lies. I want to mention Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchies. You may have observed that most actions tend to be done by a small band of people, no matter the size and type of organization. This taps, again, into the centrality concept. This small group of people not only possesses centrality but has the power to admit or exclude people. They are the “gate-keepers.”
In past classes, I mentioned the role of professors and others in helping students secure a job. The link between professor and student is “weak” in that professors and students do not share the same level of interaction that a parent and child does. Granovetter’s concept of weak links is based on the idea that weak links are very powerful in people’s lives because it is these types of links (e.g. professor-student) that lands a person a job. A letter of recommendation doesn’t come from your family or friends but from employers and professors.
Education, Occupations, and Aspirations
Your text book cites the work of Kohn and Schooler (1983). I would add that George Ritzer has written extensively about the phenomena of McDonaldized jobs. Ritzer observed that McDonaldized jobs possess a greater degree of: 1) efficiency or routinization, 2) calculability (something to count), 3) predictability, and 4) control (closeness of supervision). You probably aspire to occupations that possess lower levels of these characteristics. The types of jobs we are offered is determined by our SES background and that the jobs we find ourselves in shape our values, and even mold our identities.
Final Thoughts
As you may be aware, stratification is extremely important in influencing what we think of ourselves and others. I will not replicate the material within the section about Stratification Processes in Groups. You need to carefully read and understand this section—it is testable.
Sources
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. 2011.
Compressed Mortality File 1999-2007. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File 1999-2007 Series 20 No. 2M, 2010. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd10.html on Feb 8, 2011 5:47:00 PM
Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert E. Moore. 1945. “Some Principles of Stratification.” American Sociological Review 10:242-249.
Davis, James Allan and Smith, Tom W. 2009. General social surveys, 1972-2008[machine-readable data file] /Principal Investigator, James A. Davis; Director and Co-Principal Investigator, Tom W. Smith; Co-Principal Investigator, Peter V. Marsden; Sponsored by National Science Foundation. –NORC ed.– Chicago: National Opinion Research Center [producer]; Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut [distributor].
Dubois, W.E.B. 1995. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Signet Classic.
Gans, Herbert J. 1972. “The Positive Functions of Poverty.” The American Journal of Sociology 78:275-289.
Granovetter, Mark. 1983. “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited.” Sociological Theory 1:201-233.
Kersen, Thomas. 1996. “Women in Army Combat Roles: A Survey of College Undergraduates.” M.S. Thesis, Conway, Arkansas: University of Central Arkansas.
Rohall, David E. 2007. Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Zinn, Howard. 2003. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New ed. New York: HarperCollins.
