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Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'. In the modern Western context, stratification typically comprises three layers: upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each class may be further subdivided into smaller classes (e.g. occupational).
The most basic class distinction is between the powerful and the powerless.[1][2] Social classes with a great deal of power are usually viewed as "the elites" within their own societies. Various social and political theories propose that social classes with greater power attempt to cement their own ranking above the lower classes in the hierarchy to the detriment of the society overall. By contrast, conservatives and structural functionalists have presented class difference as intrinsic to the structure of any society and to that extent ineradicable.
In Marxist theory, the capitalist stage of production consists of two main classes: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of production, and the much larger proletariat (or 'working class') who must sell their own labour power (See also: wage labour). This is the fundamental economic structure of work and property (See also: wage labour), a state of inequality that is normalised and reproduced through cultural ideology. Max Weber critiqued historical materialism, positing that stratification is not based purely on economic inequalities but on other status and power differentials. Social class pertaining broadly to material wealth may be distinguished from status class based on honour, prestige, religious affiliation, and so on. The conditions of capitalism and its class system came together due to a variety of "elective affinities".
Theorists such as Ralf Dahrendorf have noted the tendency toward an enlarged middle class in modern Western societies, particularly in relation to the necessity of an educated work force in technological economies.[3] Perspectives concerning globalization and neocolonialism, such as dependency theory, suggest this owes to the shift of low-level labourers to developing nations and the Third World.[4] Developed nations have thereby become less directly active in primary industry (e.g. basic manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, mining, etc.) and increasingly involved with "virtual" goods and services. The national concept of "social class" has therefore become increasingly complex and confused.
Contents |
-United States is less rigid than many societies with regard to class, the socioeconomic class we belong to affects everything from how much money we make to the schools we attend, the jobs open to us,and many other things. These aspects of identity interact with gender, sexual orientation, wealth and race. Also income, education, wealth and occupation.
In class societies a person's class status is a type of group membership. Theorists disagree about the elements determining membership, but common features appear in many accounts. Among these are:
Classes often have a distinct lifestyle that emphasizes their class. The most powerful class in a society often uses markers such as costume, grooming, manners and language codes that mark insiders and outsiders; unique political rights such as honorary titles; and, concepts of social honour or face that are claimed to only be applicable to the in group. But each class has distinctive features, often becoming defining elements of personal identity and uniting factors in group behaviour. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests a notion of high and low classes with a distinction between bourgeois tastes and sensitivities and the working class tastes and sensitivities.
Race and other large-scale groupings can also influence class standing. The association of particular ethnic groups with class statuses is common in many societies. As a result of conquest or internal ethnic differentiation, a ruling class is often ethnically homogenous and particular races or ethnic groups in some societies are legally or customarily restricted to occupying particular class positions. Which ethnicities are considered as belonging to high or low classes varies from society to society. In modern societies strict legal links between ethnicity and class have been drawn, such as in apartheid, the caste system in Africa, and in the position of the Burakumin in Japanese society.
A distinction often made is that of ascribed status versus achieved status. This deals with difference between obtained class identification, and whether social standing is determined at birth or earned over a lifetime. Achieved statuses are acquired based on merit, skills, abilities, and actions. Examples of achieved status include being a doctor or even being a criminal—the status then determines a set of behaviors and expectations for the individual.
Different consumption of social goods is the most visible consequence of class. In modern societies, it manifests as income inequality, though in subsistence societies it manifested as malnutrition and periodic starvation. Although class status is not a causal factor for income, there is consistent data that show those in higher classes have higher incomes than those in lower classes. This inequality still persists when controlling for occupation. The conditions at work vary greatly depending on class. Those in the upper-middle class and middle class enjoy greater freedoms in their occupations. They generally are more respected, enjoy more diversity, and are able to exhibit some authority. Those in lower classes tend to feel more alienated and have lower work satisfaction overall. The physical conditions of the workplace differ greatly between classes. While middle-class workers may "suffer alienating conditions" or "lack of job satisfaction", blue-collar workers suffer alienating, often routine, work with obvious physical health hazards, injury, and even death.[6]
In the more social sphere, class has direct consequences on lifestyle. Lifestyle includes tastes, preferences, and a general style of living. These lifestyles could quite possibly affect educational attainment, and therefore status attainment. Class lifestyle also affects how children are raised. For example, a working-class person is more likely to raise their child to be working class and middle-class children are more likely to be raised to be middle-class. This perpetuates the idea of class for future generations.
Theoretical models of class seek to explain how class relationships come into being, and why particular class relationships exist across broadly similar societies.
The Marxist conception of class involves a collective group of individuals that share similar economic and social relations relative to each other in society. A class is a group with intrinsic tendencies and interests that are different from, and may be opposed to the interests of other groups in society. For example, it is in the laborer's best interest to maximize wages and benefits and in the capitalist's best interest to maximize profit at the expense of such, leading to a contradiction within the capitalist system, even if the laborers and capitalists themselves are unaware of these class dichotomies.
For Marx, class involves two factors:
The first criterion divides a society into the owners and non-owners of means of production. In capitalism, these are capitalist (bourgeoisie) and proletariat. Finer divisions can be made, however: the most important subgroup in capitalism being petite bourgeoisie (small bourgeoisie), people who possess their own means of production but utilize it primarily by working on it themselves rather than hiring others to work on it. They include self-employed artisans, small shopkeepers, and many professionals. Jon Elster has found mention in Marx of 15 classes from various historical periods.[7]
| Social mode of production | Ruling classes | other classes | example society |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primitive communism | No classes | Many pre-agricultural societies | |
| Asiatic mode of production | Bureaucrats or theocrats | [unnamed class] | Archaic Egyptian society |
| Slave societies | Slave owners, Patricians | Plebeians, freemen, slaves | 16th to 19th century America, Ancient Rome |
| Feudal societies | Landowners, clergy | guild masters, journeymen, serfs | 12th century Western Europe |
| Capitalist societies | Industrial and financial capitalists | the petit bourgeoisie, the peasantry, wage labourers | 19th century Europe until present |
A prerequisite for classes is existence of sufficient surplus product. Marxists explain the history of "civilized" societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society. In the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie) and wage-workers (the proletariat). For Marxists, class antagonism is rooted in the situation that control over social production necessarily entails control over the class which produces goods—in capitalism this is the exploitation of workers by the bourgeoisie.
Marx himself argued that it was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the capitalist system with socialism, changing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future communist society in which: "..the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." (Communist Manifesto) This would mark the beginning of a classless society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for money.
Vladimir Lenin has defined classes as "large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it." A Great Beginning
The most important transformation of society for Marxists has been the massive and rapid growth of the proletariat the last two hundred and fifty years. Starting with agricultural and domestic textile laborers in England and Flanders, more and more occupations only provide a living through wages or salaries. Private manufacturing, leading to self-employment, is no longer as viable as it was before the industrial revolution, because automation made manufacturing very cheap. Many people who once controlled their own labor-time were converted into proletarians through industrialization. Today groups which in the past subsisted on stipends or private wealth—like doctors, academics or lawyers—are now increasingly working as wage laborers. Marxists call this process proletarianization, and point to it as the major factor in the proletariat being the largest class in current societies in the rich countries of the "first world."[8]
The increasing dissolution of the peasant-lord relationship (see pre-capitalist societies), initially in the commercially active and industrializing countries, and then in the unindustrialized countries as well, has virtually eliminated the class of peasants. Poor rural laborers still exist, but their current relationship with production is predominantly as landless wage labourers or rural proletarians. The destruction of the peasantry, and its conversion into a rural proletariat, is largely a result of the general proletarianization of all work. This process is today largely complete, although it was arguably incomplete in the 1960s and 1970s.
Marx saw class categories as defined by continuing historical processes. Classes, in Marxism, are not static entities, but are regenerated daily through the productive process. Marxism views classes as human social relationships which change over time, with historical commonality created through shared productive processes. A 17th century farm labourer who worked for day wages shares a similar relationship to production as an average office worker of the 21st century. In this example, it is the shared structure of wage labour that makes both of these individuals "working class."
Marxism has a rather heavily defined dialectic between objective factors (i.e., material conditions, the social structure) and subjective factors (i.e. the conscious organization of class members). While most Marxism analyses people's class based on objective factors (class structure), major Marxist trends have made greater use of subjective factors in understanding the history of the working class. E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is a definitive example of this "subjective" Marxist trend. Thompson analyses the English working class as a group of people with shared material conditions coming to a positive self-consciousness of their social position. This feature of social class is commonly termed class consciousness in Marxism, a concept which became famous with Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1923). It is seen as the process of a "class in itself" moving in the direction of a "class for itself", a collective agent that changes history rather than simply being a victim of the historical process. In Lukács' words, the proletariat was the "subject–object of history", and the first class which could separate false consciousness (inherent to the bourgeois's consciousness), which reified economic laws as universal (whereas they are only a consequence of historic capitalism).
The seminal sociological interpretation of class was advanced by Max Weber. Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with class, status and party (or politics) as subordinate to the ownership of the means of production, but for Weber how they interact is a contingent question and one that will vary from society to society. Weber is also known for his six "American Dream" Values which are: 1) Hard work, 2) Universalism, 3) Individualism, 4) Wealth, 5) Activism, and 6) Rationality.
Schools of sociology differ in how they conceptualize class. A distinction can be drawn between analytical concepts of social class, such as the Marxian and Weberian traditions, and the more empirical traditions such as socio-economic status approach, which notes the correlation of income, education and wealth with social outcomes without necessarily implying a particular theory of social structure. The Warnerian approach can be considered empirical in the sense that it is more descriptive than analytical.
The traditional `pigeon-holing' mainstay of much of the advertising industry used to be that of social class. Recently, however, as affluence has become more widespread, the process has become much less clear. It is now argued that the new `opinion leaders' come from within the same social class. The class groupings that were traditionally used by advertising agencies (for example in the NRS social grade schema were: AB - Managerial and professional, C1 -Supervisory and clerical, C2- Skilled manual, DE-Unskilled manual and unemployed.) have been reported to be of decreasing value in recent decades, especially in the distinction between clerical workers and manual workers in education and disposable income.
Whereas some four decades ago, when these groupings were first widely used, the numbers in each of the main categories (C, D and E) were reasonably well balanced, today the C group in total (although now usually split to give C1 and C2) forms such a large sector that it dominates the whole classification system and offers less in terms of usable concentration of marketing effort. [1]
| Academic Class Models | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dennis Gilbert, 2002 | William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, 2005 | Leonard Beeghley, 2004 | |||
| Class | Typical characteristics | Class | Typical characteristics | Class | Typical characteristics |
| Capitalist class (1%) | Top-level executives, high-rung politicians, heirs. Ivy League education common. | Upper class (1%) | Top-level executives, celebrities, heirs; income of $500,000+ common. Ivy league education common. | The super-rich (0.9%) | Multi-millionaires whose incomes commonly exceed $350,000; includes celebrities and powerful executives/politicians. Ivy League education common. |
| Upper middle class[1] (15%) | Highly-educated (often with graduate degrees), most commonly salaried, professionals and middle management with large work autonomy. | Upper middle class[1] (15%) | Highly-educated (often with graduate degrees) professionals & managers with household incomes varying from the high 5-figure range to commonly above $100,000. | The Rich (5%) | Households with net worth of $1 million or more; largely in the form of home equity. Generally have college degrees. |
| Middle class (plurality/ majority?; ca. 46%) |
College-educated workers with considerably higher-than-average incomes and compensation; a man making $57,000 and a woman making $40,000 may be typical. | ||||
| Lower middle class (30%) | Semi-professionals and craftsmen with a roughly average standard of living. Most have some college education and are white-collar. | Lower middle class (32%) | Semi-professionals and craftsman with some work autonomy; household incomes commonly range from $35,000 to $75,000. Typically, some college education. | ||
| Working class (30%) | Clerical and most blue-collar workers whose work is highly routinized. Standard of living varies depending on number of income earners, but is commonly just adequate. High school education. | ||||
| Working class (32%) | Clerical, pink- and blue-collar workers with often low job security; common household incomes range from $16,000 to $30,000. High school education. | Working class (ca. 40% - 45%) |
Blue-collar workers and those whose jobs are highly routinized with low economic security; a man making $40,000 and a woman making $26,000 may be typical. High school education. | ||
| Working poor (13%) | Service, low-rung clerical and some blue-collar workers. High economic insecurity and risk of poverty. Some high school education. | ||||
| Lower class (ca. 14% - 20%) | Those who occupy poorly-paid positions or rely on government transfers. Some high school education. | ||||
| Underclass (12%) | Those with limited or no participation in the labor force. Reliant on government transfers. Some high school education. | The poor (ca. 12%) | Those living below the poverty line with limited to no participation in the labor force; a household income of $18,000 may be typical. Some high school education. | ||
An early example of a stratum class model was developed by the sociologist William Lloyd Warner in his 1949 book, Social Class in America. For many decades, the Warnerian theory was dominant in U.S. sociological theory.
Based on social anthropology, Warner divided Americans into three classes (upper, middle, and lower), then further subdivided each of these into an "upper" and "lower" segment, with the following postulates:
To Warner, American social class was based more on attitudes than on the actual amount of money an individual made. For example, the richest people in America would belong to the "lower upper class" since many of them created their own fortunes; one can only be born into the highest class. Nonetheless, members of the wealthy upper-upper class tend to be more powerful, as a simple survey of U.S. presidents may demonstrate (i.e., the Roosevelts; Kennedys; Bushes).
Another observation: members of the upper lower class might make more money than members of the lower middle class (i.e., a well-salaried factory worker vs. a secretarial worker), but the class difference is based on the type of work they perform.
In his research findings, Warner observed that American social class was largely based on these shared attitudes. For example, he noted that the lower middle class tended to be the most conservative group of all, since very little separated them from the working class. The upper-middle class, while a relatively small section of the population, usually "set the standard" for proper American behavior, as reflected in the mass media.
Professionals with salaries and educational attainment higher than those found near the middle of the income strata (e.g. bottom rung professors, managerial office workers, architects) may also be considered as being true middle class.
In 1978 sociologists Coleman and Rainwater conceived the "Metropolitan Class Structure" consisting of three social classes, each with a number of sub-classes.
In their 2005 sociology textbook, Society in Focus, sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey present a five class model in which the middle class is divided into two sections and the term working class is applied to clerical and pink collar workers. Their class system goes as follows:[10]
In The American Class Structure, 6th edition (Wadsworth 2002) as well the preceding 5th edition, Dennis Gilbert lays out an even more precise breakdown of American social classes. Dennis Gilbert stresses that "there is really no way to establish that a particular model is 'true' and another 'false.'" He furthermore states that his "model emphasizes sources of income" and that household income, being very dependent on the number of income earners, varies greatly within each social class. The class descriptions in quotes below are lifted from the 5th edition, pages 284 and 285.[11]
Some sociologists lay out a detailed model of Chinese social stratification after 1949. In China today, there is a peasant class, a working class (urban state worker and urban collective worker, urban non-state worker, and peasant worker), a capitalist class (about 15 million), and a class of cadre (about 40 million) and quasi-cadre (about 27 million).
Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad in their book Class and Labor in Iran; Did the Revolution Matter? (Syracuse University Press, 2006) define and quantify social classes in Iran and examine the changes in the configuration of social classes in the post-revolutionary Iran. Nomani and Behdad base their analysis (à la Erik Olin Wright 1 ) on three dimensions of (1) property ownership, (2) possession of scarce skills/credentials, and (3) organizational assets/authority. They recognize four distinct class categories and the ambiguous category of political functionaries of the state:
Those employed in the political apparatus of the state, engaged in political administration, national defense and domestic surveillance, constitute the ambiguous class category of political functionaries. This category includes higher rank of state administrators, managers, and military and para-military officers, the rank file of the political apparatus, and the lower rank members of the coercive forces (including the military draftees).
The post 1979 revolutionary turmoil had notable impacts on the class reconfiguration of Iran (see table below). The disruption of the accumulation process in the first revolutionary decade (Khomeini period) retarded the capitalist relations of production (structural involution ). This condition gave rise to deproletarianization of labor and peasantization of agriculture, and a general expansion in petty-commodity activities and a rise of the petty bourgeoisie, alongside a huge expansion of state activities. In the post-Khomeini period, the effort toward reconstitution of capitalist relations of production via an economic liberalization policy (deinvolutionary process) reversed some of the previous trends. In the second post-revolutionary period an increase in proletarianization of labor and de-peasantization of agriculture is observed. The first (involutionary ²) period promoted traditional capitalists and the petty bourgeoisie, whereas in the second (deinvolutionary) period the number of modern capitalists, modern petty bourgeoisie, and the middle class (especially those employed by the private sector) increased significantly.
In a comparison of the class structure in 1996 with that in 1976 one can observe that in spite of some peculiar differences, there are striking similarities between the two periods. If the changes between 1986 and 1996 may be regarded as a trend, there is a pattern toward reconstruction of the 1976 class configuration of Iran in the years ahead.
1- Wright, Erik Olin (1997) Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2- Nomani and Behdad (2006). Class and Labor in Iran; Did the Revolution Matter? Syracuse University Press, Chapter 3.
In about the 1770s, when the term "social class" first entered the English lexicon, the concept of a "middle class" within that structure was also becoming important. The Industrial Revolution was allowing a much greater portion of the population to have time for the kind of education and cultural pursuits once restricted to the European feudal division of aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and peasantry which in that period would have included what later became the industrial proletarians of the towns and cities.
Today, concepts of social class assume three general categories: an upper class of proprietors and senior managers; a middle class of people who may not exert power over others, but may earn a significant proportion of their income through commerce, land ownership, or professional employment; and a lower class, who rely on wages for their livelihood.
It is important, however, to highlight the distinction of such a class model from that of the British concept of class in which the terms upper, middle and working-class have different definitions. The chief difference relates to the association of inherited wealth and landed property as a defining characteristic of the upper class. This distinguishes its members from those of the middle class whose membership is more fluid and more reliant upon employment status and its income. This is a broad generalization as there are classes within the middle class, such as the upper middle class whose interest in culture, and whose manners and mores distinguish them from other ranks in the middle strata, but is nonetheless a useful marker by which to distinguish the British concept of class from that of the new world.
In the United States, the term "middle class" is applied very broadly and includes people who would elsewhere be considered working class. As the vast majority of Americans identify themselves as being middle class, there are multiple theories as to what constitutes the American middle class. The term has been used to describe people from all walks of life, from janitors to attorneys.[14][15] The definition of middle class is also relevant to the perspective of the individual. Due to the high standard of living in wealthy countries such as the U.S., the term middle class is also relevant to the standard of living of the majority of people in the world.
From this perspective, the term middle class becomes more inclusive. As a result, the US middle class is often sub-divided into two or three groups. While one set of theories claim that the middle class is composed of those in the middle of the social strata, other theories maintain that professionals and managers who have a college degree make up most of the middle class.[16] In 2005 roughly 35% of Americans worked in the professional/professional support or managerial field and 27% had a college degree.[17] Sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert or Joseph J. Hickey argue that the middle class is divided into two sub-groups. The upper middle class consists of white collar professionals with advanced educations and constitutes roughly 15% of the population. In 2005 the top 15% of income earners (age 25+) had incomes exceeding $62,500.[18] The lower middle class (or middle-middle class for those who divide the middle class into three segments) consists of other mostly white collar employees with less autonomy in their work, lower educational attainment, lower personal income and less prestige than those of the upper middle class.
Sociologists such as Gilbert, Hickey, James Henslin, and William Thompson have brought forth class models in which the middle class is divided into two sections which combine to represent 47% to 49% of the population.[10][19][20] Economist Michael Zweig defines class as power relationships among the members of a society, rather than as a lifestyle or by income.[21] Zweig says that the middle class is only about 34% of the U.S. population, typically employed as managers, supervisors, small business owners and other professional people.
Although class can be discerned in any society, some cultures have published specific guidelines to rank. In some cases, the ideologies presented in these rankings may not concur with the mainstream power dialectic of social class as it is understood in modern English use.
Social class in ancient Rome played a major role in the lives of Romans. Ancient Roman society was hierarchical. Free-born adult male Roman citizens were divided into several classes, both by ancestry and by property. There were also several classes of non-citizens with different legal rights, along with slaves, who had no rights, and could be ejected or sold by their master.
The Mantegna Tarocchi, sets of cards made as an educational aid in Ferrara in the late 15th century, used the following hierarchy for the "Conditions of Man", largely ignoring the rural population:
Aztec society traditionally was divided into classes. The highest class were the pīpiltin or nobility.[22] Originally this status was not hereditary, although the sons of pillis had access to better resources and education, so it was easier for them to become pillis. Later the class system took on hereditary aspects.[23]
The second class were the mācehualtin (people), originally peasants. Eduardo Noguera[24] estimates that in later stages only 20% of the population was dedicated to agriculture and food production. The other 80% of society were warriors, artisans and traders.[25]
Slaves or tlacotin also constituted an important class. Aztecs could become slaves because of debts, as a criminal punishment or as war captives. A slave could have possessions and even own other slaves.
Traveling merchants called pochtecah were a small, but important class as they not only facilitated commerce, but also communicated vital information across the empire and beyond its borders. They were often employed as spies.
In pre-Confucian China, the feudal system divided the population into six classes. Four noble classes with the King (王, wáng) at the top, followed by the Dukes (诸侯, zhūhóu), then the Great Men (大夫, dàifu) and finally the Scholars (士, shì). Below the noble classes were the Commoners (庶民, shùmín) and Slaves (奴隶, núlì).
See main article of below description for Confucian classes: Four occupations
Confucian doctrine later minimized the importance of the nobles (except the emperor), abolished great men and scholars as noble classes, and further divided commoner workers based on the perceived usefulness of their work. Scholars (now not exclusively nobles) ranked the highest because the opportunity to conceive clear ideas in a state of leisure would lead them to wise laws (an idea that has much in common with Plato's ideal of a philosopher king). The scholars were mainly from the gentry, who owned land, and may be educated and wealthy but had no aristocratic titles. Under them were the farmers, who produced necessary food, and the artisans who produced useful objects. Merchants ranked at the bottom because they did not actually produce anything, while soldiers were sometimes ranked even lower because of their perceived expendability. The Confucian model is notably different from the modern European view of social class, since merchants could attain great wealth without reaching the social status accorded to a poor farmer. In practice, a rich merchant might purchase land to reach farmer status, or even buy a good education for his heirs in the hopes that they would attain scholar status and go into the imperial civil service. The Chinese model was widely disseminated throughout east Asia. [2]
France was a monarchy with a king and other princes at the top of the class structure. The French States-General, established in 1302 was an assembly whose members were ranked according to hereditary class. The First Estate was the clergy, all Roman Catholic, and by this time with the bishops and higher roles dominated by sons of the nobility. The Second Estate consisted of lay members of the nobility, who constituted approximately two percent of the total population. The Third Estate consisted, technically, of everyone else, but was represented by representatives elected by a complicated system, in practice dominated by the bourgeois lawyers who held offices in the various regional Parlements. The peasantry had no official status in this system. This may be contrasted with the ideologically high status of farmers in Confucian China. The rigidity of the French hereditary system has been suggested as a major cause of the French Revolution.
Traditionally, the Indian caste system was one of the oldest and most important systems of social class. It differs from varnashrama dharma[26] found in Hinduism, which allowed people born into a certain varna to move upward or downwards depending on their qualification. It divided society based on skill and qualifications. Briefly, the Brahmin varna was idealized as a leisurely priest class devoted to religious ceremonies, while the Kshatriya defended them as military princes. The modern concept of the middle class was represented by the Vaishya varna: artisans, farmers, and merchants, and the lower varna were the Shudra: laborers. Within this basic framework were arranged a huge number of jatis, or subcastes. It should be recognised not as a religious system (as varnashrama dharma prescribed in Hinduism), but a social system, which evolved from varnashrama dharma. After, the end of British occupation in 1947, the Constitution of India introduced various affirmative action plans to abolish the caste system. The people outside of the main varnas were called Untouchables, because they were to not be touched by the "Twice Borns", or the higher three varnas.
Under the Qajar dynasty of Iran, the class structure was set up as follows:
As in many official class structures, the laborers who made up the majority of the population but owned no land and relied on wages were not even considered part of the structure at all. [3]
The Japanese class structure, while influenced by the Chinese, was based on a much more feudal environment. The Emperor was not claimed to be a deity until the pre–World War II military government did so but still was unquestionably at the pinnacle of the Japanese class structure (and still is, although no longer officially considered a god). However, for much of Japanese history the emperor was not allowed outside the palace grounds and his will was "interpreted" by a shogun, or military dictator. Beneath the shogun, daimyos or regional lords, administered the provinces through their samurai lieutenants. Perhaps through Chinese influence, and perhaps springing from a lack of arable land, the Japanese class structure also ranked farmers above merchants and other bourgeois. Classes changed after the Golden Age.
The Korean ruling class, or Korean power elite, is the relatively small number of Korean people who through similar schools, education, family clans, upbringing, or corporate chaebol wealth and urban power control decision making and policy within either of the partitioned Koreas.
This group is placed within the historical tradition of Confucianism and yangban scholars whose creation can be dated towards the end of the Goryeo dynasty; and that continues through the republican post-1945 and contemporary period; and which is represented by a controlling benevolent stewardship of the politics and economy of Korea by seniors or the older urban-dwelling elements of the population which crosses class, religious, party, and political lines.
Pre-colonial Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippine social classes includes the Nobility (Maharlika), Freemen (Timawa) and Serf (Alipin).
From the nobility comes the highest "Rajah" (Indianized), "Sultan" (Islamic) or "Hari" (Malay) as the King and highest of the ruling class, "Datu" as chieftains either independent or under the authority of the King and the "Maginoo" or nobles.
Freemen are called "Timawa", which includes "Mandirigma" (Soldiers), "Mangangalakal" (Merchants), and Priests/Priestesses (Babaylan, Umalohokan, Apo or Mumbaki).
Serf or Slaves are called "Alipin", are the bottom rung of the Malay society. They are subjects under either the Nobles or Freemen. Serfs can't pick their own wives or have children under their master's consent.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom still contains a vestige of the pre-capitalist European class structure. The Queen maintains her status at the top of the social class structure, with the House of Lords up until very recently still representing the hereditary upper class; however, due to the Life Peerage the vast majority of Lords in the House of Lords are of common birth and are not classified as Upper Class as they were not born into it, and the House of Commons technically representing everyone else. The House of Commons until the early 20th century represented the industrialist and landed classes. In the Victorian era of the United Kingdom, social class became a national obsession, with nouveau riche industrialists in the House of Commons trying to attain the status of House of Lords landowners through culture, marriage, title, and the construction of follies.
From a sociological point of view the class system in Britain changed substantially during the 'Thatcher Era'. Home ownership (on mortgage) was extended throughout the middle classes and below. With the loss of the majority of traditional working class industrial jobs from the market, a new 'underclass', below working class emerged. The 'underclass', defined as unemployed relying on state benefits, is the new bottom of the British class system.
In Britain people considered of lower social standing can earn high incomes, but an individual's social class is still largely assessed by their parent's mannerisms, education and the status.
In colonial Latin America access to positions of power and wealth were delineated by race. Accordingly, Peninsulars (Spaniards born in Spain and Portuguese born in Portugal) held the top ranks- including titles such as Viceroy, Captain General, etc. They were followed by Criollos (Those directly descended from Spaniards but born in America), who held considerable power and class but were barred from the highest decision-making posts. After these there was a system of around a hundred castes. Listed in order of rank, some of these were:
It is to be noted that even today there is a strong correlation between class and ethnicity.
The social structure of the United States is a vaguely defined concept which includes several commonly used terms that use educational attainment, income, wealth, and occupational prestige as the main determinants of class. While it is possible to create dozens of social classes within the confines of American society, most Americans employ a six or five class system. The most commonly applied class concepts used in regards to contemporary American society are:[10]
There have been fierce debates in the area of sociology about whether or not social class has become relevant in terms of shaping identity. The arguments suggesting that it is no longer relevant are brought forward by supporters of postmodernism. One argument for class being unimportant follows:
Major areas of social science still rely on class based explanations of personal identity, for instance, the history from below school of Marxist history. Outside of Marxist influenced thought, there is still much evidence suggesting that class affects everyone. Some ideas from different sociologists follow:
Jon Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge, England, 1986.
Michael Evans, Karl Marx. London, 1975.
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