Talk:Social stratification

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“While these hierarchies are not universal to all societies, they are the norm among state-level cultures (as distinguished from hunter-gatherers or other social arrangements).”

Why have I seen books that state that social stratification is universal? 69.221.229.125 15:50, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Many reasons...
  1. Because most surviving societies are stratified. Non-stratified societies are rare--mostly because they're usually conquered by more warlike neighbours. It's likely they were once far more numerous for much of human history, before mass warfare became common.
  2. Because not everyone who writes a book about human society knows what they are talking about. Everybody from Plato to Dr. Phil has had something to say about society, but most of the time they are speaking from opinion, not from objective study. Even objective social sciences like psychology and economics tend to overlook non-stratified, non-state cultures because...(see the next reason)
  3. Because members of stratified societies have stratified prejudices, and don't pay much attention to non-state societies. If they don't have writing, architecture, money, and warfare, they don't count as civilizations as far as most people are concerned.
  4. Hunter-gatherer societies can be stratified or non-stratified; but it's hard to tell them apart when they're all lumped together by many social commentators. It's easier to assume they're all stratified.
I'm sure there are other possible reasons. But does this address the question?--Pariah 06:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] NPOV External Link

The only external link provided on this page is essentially Marxist, and describes social stratification as inherently unjust. Someone should probably put up a link to a less ideological website to balance the external links section.

I don't think it's a problem. If you'd ever taken a sociology class on this kind of topic, you'd see that Marxist views ("conflict theory") pretty much dominate the topic. You could try adding another to balance it out if you'd like, but within sociology Marxism isn't at all controversial (and to be honest, it actually feels terribly dry after a while). Sarge Baldy 08:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Article Is Taken Word for Word from Another Site

I think this is definitely a worthy topic, but I have a problem with lifting something from another website that is associated with a travel group. There is only one authoritative source to quote from. The article needs to be given a more sceintific treatment. Unfortunately, I am not a sociologist and would ask anyone in that field or in anthropology or archaeology to come to our aid. Here is the link to the straw-man article which doubles as a travel community [[1]] Prospero74 00:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the original article--several search engines have taken to copying wiki articles and posting them as their own.--Pariah 18:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] M.L.Tubo

I am cuirous about the reference to M.L. Tubo. Who is s/he? and where did this quote come from?

Not sure. It definitely should be referenced, or else removed from the article.--Pariah 22:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [2] Slrubenstein | Talk 16:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV??

While there are no fewer than two NPOV tags, there are no comments about them here. My edits always tend to get reverted, so I will leave them for somebody else to remove.

I agree. Since no one has come forward to explain the source of the NPOV complaint, I am removing the NPOV tags from the article. If there is still a problem, the tags can be re-added later, with discussion on this talk page.--Pariah (talk) 10:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Undid Recent Edits

I undid the following edits to the article:

"social stratification is the division of people of a particular society on the basis if occupation, income, power, prestige, authority, status, dignity, education, class, castle, gender, race and ethnicity"

"types of stratificaion 1. slavery 2. Estates 3. Social castes 4. Social classes"

The edits seemed redundant and were poorly formatted. A section enumerating types of social stratification would be an interesting addition the article if cited sources can be found for such a list. Please comment if you thought the edits removed should have been left and/or incorporated into the article.--Pariah 01:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major overhaul & update

I reworked a couple of sections of the article; notably the first paragraph under "Non-stratified societies" and the "Marx's Inspiration" section. There are many more references and I think the writing is more solid. Also, while editing, I removed the following reference: "Also see Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (ISBN 0-87348-261-1)." It seemed a little orphaned and unclear (since an author and page number are missing), so I've moved it here.--Pariah (talk) 02:05, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Justification of the NPOV tags

The article was poorly written to begin with. The way it's written may have been improved with the revisions discussed on this TalkPage, but when I editted it and added the NPOV tag there was nothing much beyond a Marxist screed there. One cannot assert one's moral convictions as facts. I'm not saying by any means that the Marxist perspective shouldn't be included, but there are very few sources of anthropological 'evidence' referenced and from this there seems very little justification for making broader conclusions, let alone the bold assertions which one occassionally (perhaps inevitably) finds on pages such as this. The fact is, it's written from one sociological perspective, which is not befitting this site or its standards.

I understand that everyone's not as 'unpolitical' as myself, but I shouldn't think it's too hard to exercise a little restraint and intelligence in writing these articles. It's not hard to outline and describe a subject without 'having a say'.


TheScotsman1987 (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Scotsman, thank you for responding, but I think you're jumping the gun here. I don't believe the section was ever a "Marxist screed" or an endorsement of any kind. The section on Marx simply presents information about his philosophy, neither for nor against it. In fact, I think many Marxists would be surprised and maybe a little dismayed to hear his ideas were influenced by hunter-gatherer social arrangements--but then I'm not a Marxist so I can't say for sure. Perhaps if you could say specifically what bold assertions and broader conclusions you are having trouble with, we could work together to make a better article.--Pariah (talk) 01:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the NPOV tags from the article. While I agree that the article needs work, particularly the external links, I don't believe it is fair to add NPOV tags--especially to the well referenced section on Marx--without proper discussion of specific issues to be solved. As has been mentioned before on this talk page, all of the sociological and anthropological theories dealing with social stratification are built on Marx's theories. This does not make the article any sort of endorsement of Marx's political position, and I don't think it's fair to add NPOV tags to an article discussing such theories simply because someone does not agree with them. It's an abuse of the NPOV policy.--Pariah (talk) 20:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)