Social category

25 Azar 1392

Social category

• Social category is a collection of people who occupy the same social status, such as "woman" or "student."

• Members of the same social category do not necessarily identify the category as a meaningful entity to which they belong, nor do they engage in regular patterns of interaction.

Major Types of social category

• 1. Class: (we use these different categorizations) 1.1 employment status: employer/self employed/employee/unemployed 1.2 wealth: owners of capital (large)/owners of capital (small)) home ownership only/non wealth holder 2. occupation. unskilled/semi skilled/semi professional/professional :Occupation is also used to categorize non- class social groups for example: occupation by industry group: service workers/manufacturing workers/agricultural workers (this category gives social planners information about the form of society/community they are studying) 3. Age: can be used to generate different kinds of categories 3.1 the ordinal categories ; young /middle aged/ elderly 3.2 the interval categories: below 19 years/20-39 years/etc (the difference between these two forms of social categories are that we can use more detailed statistical analyses with interval based forms of categories) 3.3 life style age categories: babies/children/adults/ 4. Marital status: single/married/divorced ,separated or widowed 5.:Education status of adults: non-matriculated/ undergraduate/post graduates 6 .Citizenship status: citizen/permanent resident/temporary resident/illegal resident 7 .Religion (again there are various ways that people can be categorized within this definition: 7/1 Christian/Islam/Hindu/ Buddhist/indigenous religious/no religion 7.2 attend a form or religious service

Types of Social Classes of People

• The objective method measures and analyzes “hard” facts.

• The subjective method asks people what they think of themselves.

• The reputational method asks what people think of others.

The lower class

• The lower class is typified by poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

• People of this class, few of whom have finished high school, suffer from lack of medical care, adequate housing and food, decent clothing, safety, and vocational training.

• In some countries the media often stigmatize the lower class as “the underclass,” inaccurately characterizing poor people as welfare mothers who abuse the system by having more and more babies, welfare fathers who are able to work but do not, drug abusers, criminals, and societal “trash.”

The working class

• The working class are those minimally educated people who engage in “manual labor” with little or no prestige.

• Unskilled workers in the class—dishwashers, cashiers, maids, and waitresses—usually are underpaid and have no opportunity for career advancement. They are often called the working poor.

• Skilled workers in this class—carpenters, plumbers, and electricians—are often called blue collar workers. They may make more money than workers in the middle class

• secretaries, teachers, and computer technicians are among the working class

The middle class

• The middle class are the “sandwich” class. These white collar workers have more money than those below them on the “social ladder,” but less than those above them.

• They divide into two levels according to wealth, education, and prestige.

• The lower middle class is often made up of less educated people with lower incomes, such as managers, small business owners, teachers, and secretaries.

• The upper middle class is often made up of highly educated business and professional people with high incomes, such as doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and CEOs.

The upper class

• Comprising only 1 to 3 percent of the most countries population, the upper class holds more than 25 percent of the nation's wealth.

• This class divides into two groups: lower upper‐ and upper upper‐ . • The lower upper class‐ includes those with “new money,” or money made from

investments, business ventures, and so forth. • The upper upper class‐ includes those aristocratic and “high society” families ‐

with “old money” who have been rich for generations. These extremely wealthy people live off the income from their inherited riches.

• The upper upper class is more prestigious than the lower upper class. Wherever ‐ ‐their money comes from, both segments of the upper class are exceptionally rich.

• Both groups have more money than they could possibly spend, which leaves them with much leisure time for cultivating a variety of interests. They live in exclusive neighborhoods, gather at expensive social clubs, and send their children to the finest schools. As might be expected, they also exercise a great deal of influence and power both nationally and globally.

Social Mobility

• When studying social classes, the question naturally arises: Is it possible for people to move within a society's stratification system? In other words, is there some possibility of social mobility, or progression from one social level to another? Yes, but the degree to which this is possible varies considerably from society to society.

• In a closed society with a caste system, mobility can be difficult or impossible. Social position in a caste system is decided by assignment rather than attainment. This means people are either born into or marry within their family's caste; changing caste systems is very rare. An example of the rigid segregation of caste systems occurs today in India, where people born into the lowest caste (the “untouchables”) and can never become members of a higher caste. South Africa also had a caste system before cancellation of apartheid system.

• In an open society with a class system, mobility is possible. The positions in this stratification system depend more on achieved status, like education, than on ascribed status, like gender. For example, in western countries' movement between social strata is easier and occurs more frequently.

Patterns of social mobility

• Horizontal mobility involves moving within the same status category. An example of this is a nurse who leaves one hospital to take a position as a nurse at another hospital.

• Vertical mobility, in contrast, involves moving from one social level to another. A promotion in rank in the Army is an example of upward mobility, while a demotion in rank is downward mobility.

• Intragenerational mobility, also termed career mobility, refers to a change in an individual's social standing, especially in the workforce, such as occurs when an individual works his way up the corporate ladder.

• Intergenerational mobility refers to a change in social standing across generations, such as occurs when a person from a lower class family ‐graduates from medical school.

Social stratification• Social stratification refers to the unequal distribution around the

world of the three Ps: property, power, and prestige. • This stratification forms the basis of the divisions of society and

categorizations of people. For example, social classes of people develop, and moving from one stratum to another becomes difficult.

• Normally property (wealth), power (influence), and prestige (status) occur together. That is, people who are wealthy tend also to be powerful and appear prestigious to others. Yet this is not always the case. Plumbers may make more money than do college professors, but holding a professorship is more prestigious than being a “blue collar worker.”

• The three “postscript” form the basis of social stratification in so many countries around the world

Karl Marx’s social theory of class• To Marx, what distinguishes one type of society from another is its mode of

production (i.e., the nature of its technology and division of labour), and each mode of production engenders a distinctive class system in which one class controls and directs the process of production while another class is, or other classes are, the direct producers and providers of services to the dominant class.

• The relations between the classes are antagonistic because they are in conflict over the appropriation of what is produced, and in certain periods, when the mode of production itself is changing as a result of developments in technology and in the utilization of labour, such conflicts become extreme and a new class challenges the dominance of the existing rulers of society.

• The dominant class, according to Marx, controls not only material production but also the production of ideas; it thus establishes a particular cultural style and a dominant political doctrine, and its control over society is consolidated in a particular type of political system.

• The theory of class is at the centre of Marx’s social theory, for it is the social classes formed within a particular mode of production that tend to establish a particular form of state, animate political conflicts, and bring about major changes in the structure of society

• In Weber's view every society is divided into groupings and strata with distinctive life-styles and views of the world, just as it is divided into distinctive classes. While at times status as well as class groupings may conflict, at others their members may accept fairly stable patterns of subordination and super ordination.

• With this twofold classification of social stratification, Weber lays the groundwork for an understanding of pluralistic forms of social conflict in modern society and helps to explain why only in rare cases are such societies polarized into the opposing camps of the "haves" and the "have-nots.“

• He has done much to explain why Marx's exclusively class-centered scheme failed to predict correctly the shape of things to come in modern pluralistic societies.

Max Weber's social theory of class