Social Stratification Essay

Social stratification is defined as, “a concept involving the classification of people into groups based on shared economic conditions… a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political, and ideological dimensions”. All societies around the world people have different terms for social and biological characteristics like age, gender, and size, ethnic backgrounds etc. when the characteristics are valued differently we tend to start having social inequality and social stratification. We’re ranked and evaluated according to social values, and the results is a hierarchy based degree of prestige, honor, importance, material goods, and other rewards that come from these characteristics.

Even though social stratification systems exist in all societies except primitive societies, the standards used to rank people and nature of stratifications systems differ from each society around the world. In a complex society social stratifications structures are present. For example, people can be ranked by gender, race, and ethnicity. Different places use rankings based on economic factors such as social class.

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Even though a person has money doesn’t not give them prestige, and one may have power because of the money they may have, but still can lack honor.

One stratification in modern society is called class. Stratification is made aware of the German philosopher/theorist, Karl Marx. This is the stratification of society based on economic criteria, the important point about Marx is that his conclusion of the primary discussion of his theory that the economic differences of individuals may lead to its superiority in other areas of politics and culture.

The reason why I choose social stratification is because social stratification is very important onto how to understand society today and how we’re are rank. I find it very interesting that in different parts of the world like some parts of Africa if you’re a woman your ranked low in the society. Social stratification gives you an idea of how you’re looked upon, especially in Europe if they can easily look down upon you simply by the way you look or speak, it doesn’t even matter how much money you have all because of social stratification.

In social stratification in America by Zeinab Tari, Tari stated, “Americans believe in three class society: rich poor, and middle class and most Americans consider themselves as middle class” (Tari, Zeinab). I don’t find this information shocking because the way the economy is it’s hard to find a job especially since food and gas prices are steadily arising.