Class stratification
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Class stratification is a form of social stratification. Class stratification is the tendency of classes to divide into separate classes. An economic and cultural rift usually exists between different classes. People are usually born into their class, though through social mobility allows for some individuals to be promoted to a higher class level or demoted to a lower class level.
[edit] Process of class stratification
Usually, class stratification begins with people who are on the same economic and cultural level, with only a few people much more wealthy or less wealthy than others. As time goes on, wealth and status begins to concentrate around a small number of the population. As wealth concentrates more, pockets of people with less wealth may develop, or wealth may just move more and more into concentration until it is sharply imbalanced between rich and poor. As people spread out more from one another economically, classes are created. When a physical gap is added, a cultural rift between the classes comes into existence, an example being the perception of the well-mannered, "cultured" behavior of rich people versus the curt, "uncivilized" behavior of poor people. With the cultural divide, chances for classes to intermingle become less and less likely, and mythos becomes more and more common between them (i.e. "the wrong side of the railroad tracks"). The lower class loses more of its influence and wealth as the upper class gains more influence and wealth, further dividing the classes from one another.
[edit] Class and race
It can be argued that segregation between black and white ethnic groups is so strong in some countries that they are different classes, and thus that segregation is a form of class stratification. However, it should be noted that, though there is a definite divide in some countries between races, those countries will also have poor people of the "upper class" ethnicity.
[edit] References
- Kozol, Johnathon. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1991.
