Social stratification involves society as a system of hierarchical categories. Max Weber defined stratification as the division of a society into distinct communities, which have varying assignments of “status honor” or prestige. Social stratification has been viewed by Weber in three dimensions: 1) economic class, 2) social status, and 3) political power (party). Each of these dimensions has its own stratification: the economic, represented by income and the goods and services which an individual possesses; the social, represented by the prestige and honor he enjoys; and the political, represented by the power he exercises. Power is the main element in his theory. Power has been viewed as the chance of a man or of a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action. Power gives social honour.
Weber further viewed status from two distinct concepts: (1) class status, and (2) social status, which primarily based on (1) mode of living, (2) a formal process of education which may consist of empirical or rational training and the acquisition of the corresponding modes of life, or (3) on the prestige of birth or of an occupation. But Weber’s pluralistic approach to social stratification which involves several competing and conflicting groups makes it very difficult to specify stratified social groups in society. The boundaries between various groups are almost impossible to specify (where does one group begin and another group end, not stated specifically) and we tend to end-up, empirically, with a stratification system that is highly fragmented, that is, split-up into numerous small groups and almost impossible to classify coherently. Finally, with reference once again to the idea that Weber’s analysis of stratification tends to produce a picture of a highly fragmented class structure, there is no way of knowing where this fragmentation could stop – in effect, the level of fragmentation appears to depend more upon the way in which a stratification system is defined than to anything more useful.
Post Contributed By:
Soumya Pratik Dutta
Indian Institute of Legal Studies
