Social classes are the hierarchical arrangements of people in society as economic or cultural groups. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists,
political economistsPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
and
social historiansSocial history is an area of historical study, considered by some to be a social science, that attempts to view historical evidence from the point of view of developing social trends...
. In some academic fields class is synonymous with '
social stratificationIn sociology and anthropology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into social classes, castes, and divisions within a society...
'.
In sociology and political philosophy, the most basic class distinction is between the powerful and the powerless. In Marxist theory and
historical materialismHistorical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx...
, social class is caused by
the fundamental economic structure of work and propertyRelations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx in his theory of historical materialism and in Das Kapital. It is first explicitly used in Marx's book The poverty of philosophy. Beyond examining specific cases, Marx never defined the general concept very exactly...
. Certain social and political theories propose that social classes with greater
powerPower is a measure of an entity's ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as...
attempt to cement their own ranking above the lower social classes in the
social hierarchySocial hierarchy is a multi-tiered pyramid-like social or functional structure having an apex as the centralization of power. The term can also be applied to animal societies, but the term dominance hierarchy is preferred most times...
to the detriment of the society overall. By contrast, conservatives and
structural functionalistsStructural functionalism is a sociological paradigm which addresses the social structure with regard to the social function of its constituent elements; namely, norms, customs, traditions, and institutions...
have presented class difference as intrinsic to the structure of any society and to that extent ineradicable. Social classes with a great deal of power are usually viewed as "the
eliteElite is taken originally from the Latin, eligere, "to elect". In sociology as in general usage, the elite is a relatively small dominant group within a large society, having a privileged status perceived as being envied by others of a lower line of order.The elite at the top of the social strata...
s" within their own societies.
Causes and outcomes of social class
In class society class is a key feature of life, and the cause and consequence of an individual's class often deeply scores their life.
Determinants of class position
In so-called non-stratified societies or
acephalous societiesIn anthropology, an acephalous society is a society which lacks political leaders or hierarchies. Such groups are also known as egalitarian or non-stratified societies....
, there is no concept of social class, power, or hierarchy beyond temporary or limited
social statusIn sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society .A society's stratification system, which is the system of distributing rewards to the members of society, determines social status. Social status, the position or rank of a person or group...
es. In such societies, every individual has a roughly equal social standing in most situations.
In class societies a person's class status is determined by membership in a group. Theorists disagree about the determining elements, but common shared features appear in many accounts. Key shared group relationships include:
- relationships of production, ownership and consumption
- a common legal status, including ceremonial, occupational and reproductive rights
- family
Family denotes a group of people or animals affiliated by a consanguinity, affinity or co-residence...
, kinship or tribal group structures or membership
- acculturation, including education
Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual...
The most powerful class in a society often have a distinct lifestyle that emphasize their prestige. This culture often includes markers such as intensive
costumeThe term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. Costume may also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances...
and
grooming
Personal grooming is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. In animals, it is a species-typical behavior that is controlled by neural circuits in the brain.- In humans :...
;
mannersIn sociology, manners are the unenforced standards of conduct which show the actor that you are proper, polite, and refined. They are like laws in that they codify or set a standard for human behavior, but they are unlike laws in that there is no formal system for punishing transgressions, other...
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. These expectations can be inverted, and low-class shared group behaviour can also be observed, and often becoming defining elements of personal identity and uniting factors in group behaviour.
Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed French sociologist.Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life...
suggests a notion of high and low classes with a distinction between
bourgeoisHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
tastes and sensitivities and the
working classWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
tastes and sensitivities.
Fluid notions such as race can influence on class standing. The association of particular ethnic groups with class statuses are common in many societies. As a result of conquest or internal ethnic differentiation, a ruling class is seen to be ethnically homogenous. Similarly, particular races or ethnic groups may be legally or customarily restricted to occupying low 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 AfricaCountries in Africa who have societies with caste systems within their borders include Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, and Somalia....
, and in the position of the
Burakuminare a Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaidō, the Ryukyuans of Okinawa and the residents of Korean and Chinese descent....
in Japanese society.
Defining
Ascribed statusAscribed status is the social status a person is assigned at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life. It is a position that is neither earned nor chosen but assigned. These rigid social designators remain fixed throughout an individual's life and are inseparable from the positive or negative...
versus
Achieved statusAchieved status is a sociological term denoting a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen. It reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts. Examples of achieved status are being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, or being a...
deals with the actual individual person's role in class identification, and on whether or not one's social standing is determined at birth or earned over a lifetime.
Achieved statusAchieved status is a sociological term denoting a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen. It reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts. Examples of achieved status are being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, or being a...
es 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.
Consequences of class position
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.
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
Theoretical models of class seek to explain how class relationships come into being, and why particular class relationships exist across broadly similar societies.
Marxist
For Marx, class involves two factors:
Objective factors: A class shares a common
relationshipRelations of production is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx in his theory of historical materialism and in Das Kapital. It is first explicitly used in Marx's book The poverty of philosophy. Beyond examining specific cases, Marx never defined the general concept very exactly...
to the
means of productionMeans of production , are things used byhuman labourers to create products. They include two broad categories of objects: instruments of labour and subjects of labour...
. That is, all people in one class make their living in a common way in terms of ownership of the things that produce social goods. A class may own things, own land, own people, be owned, own nothing but their labour. A class will extract tax, produce agriculture, enslave and work others, be enslaved and work, or work for a wage.
Subjective factors: The members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity and common interest. Marx termed this
Class consciousnessClass consciousness is consciousness of one's social class or economic rank in society. From the perspective of Marxist theory, it refers to the self-awareness, or lack thereof, of a particular class; its capacity to act in its own rational interests; or its awareness of the historical tasks...
. Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of one's own class interest (for instance, the maximisation of shareholder value; or, the maximisation of the wage with the minimisation of the working day), class consciousness also embodies deeply shared views of how society should be organised legally, culturally, socially and politically.
The first criteria divides a society into the owners and non-owners of means of production. In capitalism, these are capitalist (bourgeoisie) and
proletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons...
. Finer divisions can be made, however: the most important subgroup in capitalism being petit bourgeoisie (small bourgeoisie), people who possess their own means of production but utilise it primarily by working on it themselves rather than hiring others to work on it. They include self-employed
artisanAn artisan is a skilled manual worker who crafts items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewelry, household items, and tools...
s, small shopkeepers, and many
professionalA professional is a member of a vocation founded upon specialised educational training.The word professional traditionally means a person who has obtained a degree in a professional field...
s. Jon Elster has found mention in Marx of 15 classes from various historical periods.
Jon Elster's explanation of Marx's schema of classes.
| 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 |
Patricians |
Plebians, freemen, slaves |
Ancient Greece |
| Feudal societies |
Lords |
guild masters, journeymen, serfs |
12th century Western Europe |
| Capitalist societies |
Industrial and financial capitalists, landlords |
the petty bourgeois, the peasantry, wage labourers |
19th century England |
A prerequisite for classes is existence of sufficient
surplus productSurplus product is a concept explicitly theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Notions of "surplus produce" have been used in economic thought and commerce for a long time , but in Das Kapital and the Grundrisse Marx gave the concept a central place in his interpretation of...
.
MarxistsMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
explain the history of "civilized" societies in terms of a
war of classesClass warfare may refer to:* Class conflict, the tensions between members or groups of different social classes* Class Warfare, a book of interviews with Noam Chomsky* Class War was a UK class struggle based group...
between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society. In the Marxist view of
capitalismCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
, this is a conflict between capitalists (
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
) and
wage-workersWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
(the
proletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons...
). 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
exploitationThe term "exploitation" may carry two distinct meanings:# The act of using something for any purpose. In this case, exploit is a synonym for use.# The act of using something in an unjust or cruel manner...
of workers by the
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
.
Marx himself argued that it was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the capitalist system with
socialismSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
, 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 LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. 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 organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it."
Great Beginning
Proletarianisation
The most important transformation of society for Marxists has been the massive and rapid growth of the proletariat in the world population during the last two hundred and fifty years. Starting with agricultural and domestic textile labourers in England and Flanders, more and more occupations only provide a living through wages or salaries. Private enterprise or self-employment in a variety of occupations is no longer as viable as it once was, and so many people who once controlled their own labour-time are converted into proletarians. Today groups which in the past subsisted on stipends or private wealth—like doctors, academics or lawyers—are now increasingly working as wage labourers. Marxists call this process
proletarianisationProletarianization is a concept in Marxism and Marxist sociology. It refers to the social process whereby people move from being either an employer, or self-employed, to being employed as wage labor by an employer...
, 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." However, only in the strongly social-democratic societies such as
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
is there much long-term evidence of the weakening of the consequences of social class.
The increasing dissolution of the peasant-lord relationship (see pre-capitalist societies), initially in the commercially active and industrialising countries, and then in the unindustrialised countries as well, has virtually eliminated the class of
peasantA peasant is an agricultural worker who subsists by working a small plot of ground. The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district A peasant is an agricultural worker who subsists...
s. Poor rural labourers 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 proletarianisation of all work. This process is today largely complete, although it was arguably incomplete in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dialectics, or historical materialism, in Marxist class
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."
Objective and subjective factors in class in Marxism
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 ClassThe Making of the English Working Class is an influential and pivotal work of English social history, written by E. P. Thompson, a notable 'New Left' historian; it was published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and later republished at Pelican, becoming an early Open University Set Book...
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 consciousnessClass consciousness is consciousness of one's social class or economic rank in society. From the perspective of Marxist theory, it refers to the self-awareness, or lack thereof, of a particular class; its capacity to act in its own rational interests; or its awareness of the historical tasks...
in Marxism, a concept which became famous with
Georg Lukacs----György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. Most scholars consider him to be the founder of the tradition of Western Marxism...
's
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 Lukacs' words, the proletariat was the "
subjectIn philosophy, a subject is a being which has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
-
objectIn philosophy, an object is a thing, an entity, or a being. This may be taken in several senses. In its weakest sense, the word "object" is the most all-purpose of nouns, and can replace a noun in any sentence at all...
of history", and the first class which could separate
false consciousness{| align="right" | |}False consciousness is the Marxist thesis that material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat, and to other classes...
(inherent to the bourgeois's consciousness), which
reified1846 "act of materializing" from L re, stem of res "thing"Reification may refer to:*Reification , making a data model for a previously abstract concept*Reification , fallacy of treating an abstraction as if it were a real thing...
economic laws as
universalIn philosophy, universalism is a doctrine or school claiming universal facts can be discovered and is therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism. In certain religions, Universality is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is consistent throughout the universe...
(whereas they are only a consequence of historic capitalism).
Max Weber
The seminal sociological interpretation of class was advanced by
Max WeberMaximilian Carl Emil Weber was a German lawyer, politician, historian, sociologist and political economist, who profoundly influenced social theory and the remit of sociology itself. His major works dealt with the rationalization, bureaucratization, and 'disenchantment' he associated with the...
. Weber formulated a
three-component theory of stratificationThe three-component theory of stratification, more widely known as Weberian Stratification or Three Class System, was developed by German sociologist Max Weber with class, status and party as distinct ideal types. Weber developed a multidimensional approach to Social stratification that reflects...
, 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.
Academic models
Schools of
sociologySociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...
differ in how they conceptualise 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 gradeThe NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey in order to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become...
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.
http://futureobservatory.dyndns.org/9432.htm
William Lloyd Warner
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 anthropologySocial anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular people: customs, economic and...
, 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:
- Upper-upper class. "Old money." People who have been born into and raised with wealth; mostly consists of old "noble" or prestigious families (e.g., Earl of Shrewsbury
Earl of Shrewsbury is a hereditary title of nobility created twice in the peerage of England.-First creation:...
, VanderbiltThe Vanderbilt family is a significant international family with Dutch origins, who were highly prominent during the 1800s due to the family patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt, the tenth wealthiest person in history, who created railroad and shipping empires...
, Rockefeller).
- Lower-upper class. "New money." Individuals who have become rich within their own lifetimes (e.g., entrepreneurs, movie stars, top athletes, as well as some prominent professionals).
- Upper-middle class. Professionals with a college education, and more often with postgraduate degrees like MBAs, Ph.D.s, MDs, JDs, MSs, etc. (e.g., doctors, dentists, lawyers, bankers, corporate executives, head teachers, university professors, scientists, pharmacists, airline pilots, ship captains, high level civil servants, politicians, and military officers, architects, artists, writers, poets, and musicians).
- Lower-middle class. Lower-paid white collar workers, but not manual laborers. Often hold Associates or Bachelor degrees. (e.g., police officers, fire fighters, primary and high school school-teachers, engineers, accountants, nurses, municipal office workers and low to mid-level civil servants, sales representatives, non-management office workers, clergy, technicians, small business owners).
- Upper-lower class. Blue-collar workers and manual labourers. Also known as the "working class."
- Lower-lower class. The homeless and permanently unemployed, as well as the "working poor."
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
RooseveltRoosevelt was the name of a powerful Dutch-American family that produced two Presidents:*Franklin D. Roosevelt - 32nd President of the United States*Theodore Roosevelt - 26th President of the United States- Other Names:...
s;
KennedysIn the United States, the phrase Kennedy family commonly refers to the family descending from the marriage of the Irish-Americans Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald that is prominent in American politics and government. Their political involvement has revolved around the...
;
BushesThe Bush family is a prominent American family. Along with many members who have been successful bankers and businessmen, across three generations the family includes two U.S. Senators, one Supreme Court Justice, two Governors, one Vice President and two Presidents...
).
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 mediaMass media denotes a section of the media specifically designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. However, some forms of mass media such...
.
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.
Coleman and Rainwater
In 1978 sociologists Coleman and Rainwater conceived the "Metropolitan Class Structure" consisting of three social classes, each with a number sub-classes.
- Upper Americans
- Upper-upper class; (ca. 1%) Old money stemming from inherited wealth. Persons in this class typically have an "Ivy league college degree." Their household income in 1978 was over $60,000 ($183,000 in 2005 dollars)
- Lower-upper class; (ca. 1%) This is the "Success elite" consisting of "Top professionals [and] senior corporate executives." People in this class have degrees from "Good colleges." Their household income was also commonly in excess of $60,000 ($183,000 in 2005 dollars).
- Upper-middle class; (ca. 19%) Also called the "Professional and Managerial" class, it consists of "Middle professionals and managers" with a college and often graduate degrees. Household incomes for this group lay between $20,000 ($60,000 in 2005 dollars) and $60,000 ($183,000 in 2005 dollars)
- Middle Americans
- Middle-class; (ca. 31%) This class consists of "Lower-level managers; small-business owners; lower-status professionals (accountants, teachers); sales and clerical" workers. Middle class persons had a high school and some college education. Their household incomes commonly ranged between $10,000 and $20,000 ($30,000 - $60,000 in 2005 dollars)
- Working class; (ca. 35%) This class consists of "Higher blue collar (craftsman, truck drivers); lowest-paid sales and clerical" workers. Younger individuals in 1978 who were members of this class had a high school education. Their household income lay in between $7,500 and $15,000 ($23,000 - $45,000 in 2005 dollars)
- Lower Americans (ca. 13%)
- Semipoor; This class had a partial high school education and consisted of "Unskilled labor and service" workers with household incomes ranging from $4,500 to $6,000 ($14,000 - $18,000 in 2005 dollars)
- The bottom; Those who are "Often unemployed" or rely on welfare payments. These individuals typically lack a high school education and had household incomes of less than $4,500 ($14,000 in 2005 dollars)
Thompson & Hickey
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:
- Upper class, (ca. 1%-5%) individuals with considerable power over the nation's economic and political institutions. This group owns a disproportionate share of the nation's resources. The top 1% had incomes
Income in the United States is measured by the United States Department of Commerce either by household or individual. The differences between household and personal income is considerable since 42% of households, the majority of those in the top two quintiles with incomes exceeding $57,658, now...
exceeding $250,000 with the top 5% having household incomesHousehold income is a measure commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. That measure counts all the income of all residents over the age of 18 in each household, including not only all wages and salaries, but such items as unemployment insurance, disability payments,...
exceeding $140,000. This group features strong group solidarity and is largely constituted by the heirs to multi-generational fortunes. Prominent government officials, CEOs and successful entrepreneurs are among the upper class even if not of elite background.
- Upper middle class, (ca. 15%) white collar professionals with advanced post-secondary education
The educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
such as physicians, professors, lawyers, corporate executives, and other management. While households commonly have six figure incomes in this group, the majority of income earners do not. Only 6% of persons had six figure incomes while 15% were upper middle class. While high educational attainmentThe educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
commonly serves as the staple mark of this group, entrepreneurs and business owners may also be upper middle class even if lacking advanced educational attainment.
- Lower middle class, (ca. 33%) individuals who worked their way through college and commonly have a Bachelor's degree or some college education
The educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
. School teachers, sales-employees and lower to mid level supervisors rank among those in this particular group. Household incomeHousehold income is a measure commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. That measure counts all the income of all residents over the age of 18 in each household, including not only all wages and salaries, but such items as unemployment insurance, disability payments,...
is generally in the range of $30,000 to $75,000. Workers in this group are mostly white collar but have less autonomy in their work than do upper middle class professionals. Members of this class often attempt to emulate those in the two higher classes and have recently become overly indebted by their desire to have a comfortable lifestyle.
- Working class, (ca. 30%) individuals who occupy both blue and white collar occupations. Pink collar workers in predominantly female clerical positions are common in this class. Job security tends to be low for this group and unemployment as well as losing health insurance remain potent economic threats. Household incomes
Household income is a measure commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. That measure counts all the income of all residents over the age of 18 in each household, including not only all wages and salaries, but such items as unemployment insurance, disability payments,...
typically range from $16,000 to $30,000.
- Lower class, repeated cycles of unemployment, working multiple low-level part-time jobs are common among this group. Many families fall below the poverty line
The most common measure of poverty in the United States is the "poverty threshold" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using...
from time to time when employment opportunities are scarce.
Gilbert & Kahl
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.
- Capitalist class; (ca. 1%) "Subdivided into nationals and locals, whose income is derived largely from return on assets." Yet it should be noted that the top 1.5% of households made $250,000 or more with only 146,000, 0.01% of households having incomes of $1,600,000 or more.
- Upper middle class; (ca. 14%) "...college trained professionals and managers (a few of whom ascend to such heights of bureaucratic dominance or accumulated wealth that they become part of the capitalist class)." Educational attainment is the main feature of this class. They enjoy great job autonomy and economic security. Household incomes vary greatly depending of the number of income earners." Considering US Census Bureau According to the 2005 Economic Survey, the top 15% of income earners made $62,500 or more with the top 15% of households having six figure incomes.
- Middle class; (ca. 30%) "...members have significant skills and perform varied tasks at work, under loose supervision. They earn enough to afford a comfortable, mainstream lifestyle. Most wear white collars, but some wear blue." In 2005 incomes for this group would have ranged from $50,000 to $90,000 for households and $27,500 to $52,500 for individuals.
- Working class; (ca. 30%) "People who are less skilled than members of the middle class and work at highly routinized, closely supervised manual and clerical jobs. Their work provides them with a relatively stable income sufficient to maintain a living standard just below the mainstream." Incomes in 2005 would have ranged from $10,000 to $27,500 for individuals and $20,000 to $50,000 for households.
- Working poor; (ca. 13%) "...people employed in low-skill jobs, often at marginal firms. The members of this class are typically laborers, service workers, or low-paid operators. Their incomes leave them well below mainstream living standards. Moreover, they cannot depend on steady employment." In 2004 the bottom 12.2% of households made less than $12,500.
- Underclass (ca. 12%) "...members have limited participation in the labor force and do not have wealth to fall back on. Many depend on government transfers." The average household income is $12,000 a year, and the class makes up 12% of the population.
Chinese model
In the Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification, sociologist Li Yi lays out a detailed model of
Chinese social stratificationThe social structure of China has a very long history, going from the feudal society of imperial times to the industrializing and urbanizing society of today.The teaching of Confucius taught of five basic relationships in life:...
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
cadreThe concept of professional revolutionaries, alternatively called cadre, is in origin a Leninist concept used to describe a body of devoted communists who spend the majority of their time organising their party toward a mass revolutionary party capable of leading a workers' revolution...
(about 40 million) and quasi-cadre (about 27 million).
Iranian model
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:
- Capitalists: Owners of physical and financial means of economic activities, who employ workers. Capitalists are divided into modern and traditional occupational categories.
- Petty bourgeoisie: Self-employed persons who do not hire any paid worker but may rely on unpaid family labor. They, too, consist of modern and traditional categories.
- The middle class: Employees of the state or the private sector, in administrative-managerial and professional-technical positions. They exercise some authority and enjoy relative autonomy. In this category are those who are employed in economic activities and social services of the state. Those employed in the administrative or managerial position in the political apparatus of the state are not included here.
- The working class: Workers who do not own the means of economic activity and do not benefit from the authority and autonomy of those in the middle class. They are employees of the state or the private sector, excluding those in the lower ranks of the political apparatus 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.
Middle class
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 RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the United Kingdom. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North...
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
aristocracyAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
,
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
, 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 classWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
. As the vast majority of Americans identify themselves as being middle class, there are multiple theories as to what constitutes the
American middle classThe American middle class is an ambiguously defined social class in the United States. While the concept remains largely ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use, contemporary sociologists have put forward several, more or less congruent, theories on the American middle class...
. The term has been used to describe people from all walks of life, from janitors to attorneys. 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 classThe middle class are any class in the middle of a social schema. In Weberian socio-economic terms they are the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socioeconomically between the working class and upper class. In Marxist terms, middle class commonly refers to either the...
is also relevant to the standard of living of the majority of people in the world.
From this perspective, the term
middle classThe middle class are any class in the middle of a social schema. In Weberian socio-economic terms they are the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socioeconomically between the working class and upper class. In Marxist terms, middle class commonly refers to either the...
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 strataThere is considerable controversy regarding social class in the United States, and it remains a concept with many competing definitions. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the "rich", the "middle class", and the "poor." More complex models that have been proposed...
, other theories maintain that professionals and managers who have a
college degreeThe educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
make up most of the middle class. In 2005 roughly 35% of Americans worked in the professional/professional support or managerial field and 27% had a college degree. Sociologists such as
Dennis GilbertDennis Gilbert is professor and chair of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and has taught at the Universidad Catlica in Lima, Peru, Cornell University and joined Hamilton college in 1976. He has published a variety of sociology books,...
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. 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 attainmentThe educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
, lower
personal incomePersonal income is a measure of individual income used by the United States government, particularly the Department of Commerce. It is most often only applied to those who are either above the age of 15, 18, or 25 and are considered to be members of the labor force...
and less prestige than those of the upper middle class.
Sociologists such as Gilbert, Hickey, James Henslin, and
William ThompsonWilliam Thompson was an Irish political and philosophical writer and social reformer, developing from utilitarianism into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the Cooperative, Trade Union and Chartist movements as well as Karl Marx...
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. Economist Michael Zweig defines class as power relationships among the members of a society, rather than as a lifestyle or by income. 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.
Class structure in various societies
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.
Ancient Rome
Social class in
ancient RomeAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
played a major role in the lives of Romans. Ancient Roman society was
hierarchicalSocial hierarchy is a multi-tiered pyramid-like social or functional structure having an apex as the centralization of power. The term can also be applied to animal societies, but the term dominance hierarchy is preferred most times...
. Free-born adult male
Roman citizensCitizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged social status afforded to certain individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance.It is hard to offer meaningful generalities across the entire Roman period, as the nature and availability of citizenship was affected by legislation, for...
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 married women, children, and
slavesSlavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war....
, who had no rights, and could be legally killed, ejected, or sold by the head of their household.
Aztec
AztecThe Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the Late post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Often the term...
society traditionally was divided into classes. The highest class were the
pīpiltin or
nobilityNobility is a state-privileged status which is generally hereditary, but which may also be personal only. Titles of nobility are usually associated with present or former monarchies. The term originally referred to those who were "known" or "notable" and was applied to the highest social class in...
. 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.
The second class were the
mācehualtin (people), originally
peasantA peasant is an agricultural worker who subsists by working a small plot of ground. The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district A peasant is an agricultural worker who subsists...
s. Eduardo Noguera
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.
SlavesSlavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation...
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
merchantA merchant is a businessman who trades in commodities that they do not produce themselves, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
s called
pochtecaA pochtecatl was a professional long-distance traveling merchant in the Aztec Empire. They were a small, but important class as they not only facilitated commerce, but also communicated vital information across the empire and beyond its borders. The pochteca also traveled outside the empire to...
h 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.
Chinese
In pre-Confucian China, the feudal system divided the population into 6 classes. 4 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 commoners (庶民, shùmín) and slaves (奴隶, núlì).
See main article of below description for Confucian classes:
Four occupationsThe four occupations or "four categories of the people" was a hierarchic social class structure developed in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty and is considered a central part of the Fengjian social structure...
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
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world...
's ideal of a
philosopher kingPhilosopher kings are the hypothetical rulers, or Guardians, of Plato's Utopian Kallipolis. If his ideal city-state is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" .-In Book VII of The Republic:Plato defined a...
). The scholars were mainly from the
gentryGentry denotes “well-born and well-bred people” occupying the social class of the minor aristocracy, and whose income derives from their large landholdings.- British :...
, 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 expedibility. 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 serviceThe term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
. The Chinese model was widely disseminated throughout east Asia.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so191/Projects2003/LauraB/part_2.html/
Pre-revolutionary French
France was an
monarchyThe person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch. It was a common form of government in the world during the ancient and medieval times. A Monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged with an individual, who is the head of state, often for life or...
with a king and other princes at the top of the class structure. The
French States-GeneralIn France under the Ancient Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...
, established in 1302 was an assembly whose members were ranked according to hereditary class. The First Estate consisted of the highborn sons of great families who had devoted themselves to religion (compare to the Indian Brahmins, Confucian scholars, and Qajar theology students). The Second Estate consisted of all other members of the nobility, who constituted approximately two percent of the total population. The Third Estate consisted, technically, of everyone else, but was represented only by the richest members of the
bourgeoisieHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
. 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 RevolutionThe causes of the French Revolution are a subjective yet significant historical debate.France in 1789, although facing some economic difficulties and simplicities, was one of the richest and most powerful nations in Europe; further, the masses of most other European powers had less freedom and a...
.
Indian
Traditionally, the Indian caste system was one of the oldest and most important systems of social class with peculiar rigidity (in the sense that it lacks upward or downward mobility between castes). It differs from
VarnaVarna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and in Northern Bulgaria, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 77th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 355,450 .Commonly referred to as the marine capital of Bulgaria, Varna is a...
shrama
DharmaThe term , is an Indian spiritual and religious term, that means one's righteous duty or any virtuous path in the common sense of the term. A Hindu's Dharma is affected by a person's age, class, occupation, and sex. In Indian languages it can be equivalent simply to "religion", depending on context...
found in
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
, 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
BrahminBrahmins have historically been the class of educators, scholars and preachers in Hinduism. They are considered as belonging to the "forward castes" of the four varnas of Hinduism....
varnaVarna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and in Northern Bulgaria, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 77th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 355,450 .Commonly referred to as the marine capital of Bulgaria, Varna is a...
was idealized as a leisurely priest class devoted to religious
ceremoniesthumb|right|250px|Part of the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard in Whitehall, London.A ceremony is an activity, infused with ritual significance, performed on a special occasion.-Celebration of life:...
, while the
KshatriyaKshatriya is one of the four varnas in Hinduism. It constitutes the military and ruling order of the traditional Vedic-Hindu social system as outlined by the Vedas and the Laws of Manu...
defended them as military princes. The modern concept of the middle class was represented by the
VaishyaVaishya, also known as Vaisya, Vanika or Vysyas, is one of the four varnas of Hinduism. According to Vedic tradition, this order primarily comprises merchants, cattle-herders and artisans...
varnaVarna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and in Northern Bulgaria, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 77th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 355,450 .Commonly referred to as the marine capital of Bulgaria, Varna is a...
artisans, farmers, and merchants, and the lower
varnaVarna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and in Northern Bulgaria, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 77th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 355,450 .Commonly referred to as the marine capital of Bulgaria, Varna is a...
were the
ShudraShudra is the lowest Varna in the traditional four-section division in the Hindu caste system. Their assigned and expected role in post-Vedic North India was that of farmers, craftsmen and labourers...
laborers. Within this basic framework were arranged a huge number of
jatiJāti is the term used to denote communities and sub-communities in India. It is a term used across religions. In Indian society each jāti typically has an association with a traditional job function or tribe, although religious beliefs or linguistic groupings define some jatis...
s, or subcastes. Despite being notorious for its rigidity, it should be recognised not as a religious system (as
VarnaVarna is the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast and in Northern Bulgaria, third-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, and 77th-largest in the European Union, with a population of 355,450 .Commonly referred to as the marine capital of Bulgaria, Varna is a...
shrama
DharmaThe term , is an Indian spiritual and religious term, that means one's righteous duty or any virtuous path in the common sense of the term. A Hindu's Dharma is affected by a person's age, class, occupation, and sex. In Indian languages it can be equivalent simply to "religion", depending on context...
prescribed in
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
), but a social system, which evolved from Varnashrama Dharma. After, the end of
British occupationThe British Raj was the British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; it can also refer to the period of dominion, and even the region under the rule...
in 1947, the
Constitution of IndiaThe Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishing the structure, procedures, powers and duties, of the government and spells out the fundamental rights, directive principles and duties of citizens...
introduced various
affirmative action plansReservation in Indian law is a quota system whereby a percentage of seats are reserved in the public sector units, union and state government departments and in all public and private educational institutions, except in the religious/ linguistic minority educational institutions, for the socially...
to abolish the caste system with limited success.
Iranian
Under the Qajar dynasty of Iran, the class structure was set up as follows:
- the permanent hereditary class of Qajar princes
- an upper class of "nobles and notables"
- religious leaders and students of theology
- merchants (note the difference from east Asian models)
- agricultural landowners
- master artisans and shopkeepers
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.
http://www.iranian.com/Dec96/Iranica/Qajar/Qajar.html/
Japanese
The Japanese class structure, while influenced by the Chinese, was based on a much more feudal environment. The
EmperorThe of Japan is the symbol of the state and of the unity of the Japanese people. He is the head of the Japanese Imperial Family. He is also the highest authority of the Shinto religion...
was not claimed to be a deity until pre world war II military government claimed as such, 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 is a military rank and historical title for Hereditary Commanders in Chief of the Armed Forces of Japan. The modern rank is equivalent to a Generalissimo...
, or military dictator. Beneath the shogun,
daimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in premodern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
s or regional lords, administered the provinces through their
samuraiis the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
lieutenants. Perhaps through Chinese influence, and perhaps springing from a lack of
arable landIn geography, arable land is an agricultural term, meaning land that can be used for growing crops. It is distinct from cultivated land and includes jungles that are not currently used for human purposes. Arable land covers an area of approximately 12 million square miles...
, the Japanese class structure also ranked farmers above
merchantA merchant is a businessman who trades in commodities that they do not produce themselves, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
s and other bourgeois.
Korean
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.
United Kingdom
The
Parliament of the United KingdomThe Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. It alone has parliamentary sovereignty, conferring upon it ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and its territories...
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 LordsThe House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is also commonly referred to as "the Lords". Parliament comprises the Sovereign, the House of Commons , and the Lords...
up until very recently still representing the hereditary upper class and the
House of CommonsThe House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 646 members, who are known as "Members...
technically representing everyone else. The House of Commons until the early 20th century represented the industrialist and landed classes. In the
Victorian eraThe Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. The reign was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements...
of the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, social class became a national obsession, with
nouveau richeNouveau riche , or new money, refers to a person who has acquired considerable wealth within his or her generation. This term is generally to emphasize that the individual was previously part of a lower socioeconomic rank, and that such wealth has provided the means for the acquisition of goods or...
industrialists in the House of Commons trying to attain the status of House of Lords landowners through culture, marriage, title, and the construction of
folliesIn architecture, a folly is a building constructed strictly as a decoration, having none of the usual purposes of housing or sheltering associated with a conventional structure. In the 18th century English gardens and French landscape gardening often featured Roman temples, which symbolized...
.
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 removal of the majority of traditional working class
industrialAn industry is the manufacturing of a good or service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw...
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. People are often perceived as being upper class if they were educated by a public school, use Received Pronunciation and own a large number of inherited items such as antique furniture, even if they hold a job that has a lower rate of pay or is regarded as socially inferior. Similarly, many high earners can be perceived as belonging to a lower class by dint of having attended state schools or having occupations that society deems lower class, even though they pay relatively well.
Latin American
In colonial
Latin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,501 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
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
CriollosThe criollos were a social class in the caste system of the overseas colonies established by Spain in the 16th century, especially in Latin America, comprising the locally born people of pure Spanish ancestry....
(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 castes, listed in order of rank, there were around a hundred castes, one of these were:
- Mestizo
Mestizo is a Spanish and Portuguese term that was used in the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire to refer to Latin people of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry in the Americas....
(Mixed Amerindian and Spaniard);
- Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent or a person who has both black ancestry and white ancestry. The term may be perceived as pejorative in some cultures and situations. Its current usage varies greatly.-Etymology:...
(Mixed Spaniard and African)
- Amerindian
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples...
- Zambo
Zambo is a Spanish term used in the Spanish Empire and today to identify individuals in the Americas who are of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry . The word originated from the Romance and Latin language...
(Mixed Amerindian and African)
- Negro
Negro is a term referring to people of Black ancestry. Prior to the shift in the lexicon of American and worldwide classification of race and ethnicity in the late 1960s, the appellation was accepted as a normal, completely neutral, formal term both by those of Black African descent as well as...
It is to be noted that even today there is a strong correlation between class and ethnicity.
United States
The social structure of the United States is a vaguely defined concept which includes several commonly used terms that use
educational attainmentThe educational attainment of the U.S. population is similar to that of many other industrialized countries with the vast majority of the population having completed secondary education and a rising number of college graduates that outnumber high school dropouts. As a whole, the population of the...
,
incomeHousehold income is a measure commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. That measure counts all the income of all residents over the age of 18 in each household, including not only all wages and salaries, but such items as unemployment insurance, disability payments,...
and occupational prestige as the main determinants of
classThere is considerable controversy regarding social class in the United States, and it remains a concept with many competing definitions. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the "rich", the "middle class", and the "poor." More complex models that have been proposed...
. 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:
- Upper class
The American upper class describes the sociological concept pertaining to the "top layer" of society in the United States. This social class is most commonly described as consisting of those with great wealth and power and may also be referred to as the Capitalist Class or simply as The Rich...
; Those with great influence, wealth and prestige. Members of this group tend to act as the grand-conceptualizers and have tremendous influence of the nation's institutions. This class makes up about 1% of the population and owns about a third of private wealth.
- Upper middle class; The upper middle class consists of white collar professionals with advanced post-secondary educational degrees and comfortable
Affluence in the United States refers to an individual's or household's state of being in an economically favorable position in contrast to a given reference group...
personal incomesPersonal income is a measure of individual income used by the United States government, particularly the Department of Commerce. It is most often only applied to those who are either above the age of 15, 18, or 25 and are considered to be members of the labor force...
. Upper middle class professionals have large amounts of autonomy in the workplace and therefore enjoy high job satisfaction. In terms of income and considering the 15% figure used by Thompson, Hickey and Gilber, upper middle class professionals earn roughly $62,500 (€The euro is the official currency of 16 of the 27 Member States of the European Union . The states, known collectively as the Eurozone, are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain...
41,000 or £The pound sterling , often simply called the pound, is the currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and British Antarctic Territory...
31,500) or more and tend to reside in households with six figure incomes.
- (Lower) middle class; Semi-professionals, non-retail salespeople, and craftsmen who may have some college education. Out-sourcing tends to be a prominent problem among those in this class who often suffer from a lack of job security. Households in this class may need two income earners to make ends meet and therefore may have household incomes rivaling the personal incomes of upper middle class professionals such as attorneys.
- Working class; According to some experts such as Michael Zweig, this class may constitute the majority of Americans and include those otherwise referred to as lower middle. It includes blue as well as white collar workers who have relatively low personal incomes
Personal income is a measure of individual income used by the United States government, particularly the Department of Commerce. It is most often only applied to those who are either above the age of 15, 18, or 25 and are considered to be members of the labor force...
and lack college degrees with many being among the 45% of Americans who have never attended college.
- Lower class; This class includes the poor, alienated and marginalized members of society. While most individuals in this class work, it is common for them to drift in and out of poverty.
Current issues
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
postmodernismPostmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives...
. One argument for class being unimportant follows:
Arguments against relevance of class
- Mode of consumption is much more important than actually earning the means of income (Clarke and Saunders, 1991).
- French sociologist Mattei Dogan has argued in his "From Social Class and Religious Identity to Status Incongruence in Post-Industrial Societies" (Comparative Sociology, 2004) that the relevance of social class has declined, giving way to a different form of social identification that is largely cultural and religious, and which raises identity conflicts called status incongruence. This can be observed, in particular, in the developing countries, but even in many post-industrial societies
A post-industrial society is a society in which an economic transition has occurred from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, a diffusion of national and global capital, and mass privatization. The prerequisites to this economic shift are the processes of industrialization and...
.
Arguments for relevance of class
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:
- Jordan suggested that those in poverty had the same attitudes on work and family as those in other classes, this being backed up with surveys expressing that the poor/working class/lower class feel almost shame about their position in society.
- MacIntosh and Mooney noted that there was still an upper-class which seems to isolate itself from other classes. It is almost impossible to get into the upper-class. They (upper-class) kept their activities (marriage, education, peer groups) as a closed system.
- Marshall et al. noted that many manual class workers are still aware of many class issues. They believed in a possible conflict of interest, and saw themselves as working class. This counters the postmodern claims that it is consumption which defines an individual.
- Andrew Adonis and Stephen Pollard (1998) discovered a new super class, which consisted of elite professionals and managers, which held high salaries and share ownership.
- Chapman noted there was still an existence of a self-recruiting upper-class identity.
- Dennis Gilbert argues that class is bound to exist in any complex society as not all occupations are equal and that households do form pattern of interaction that give rise to social classes.
See also
- 1984
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, by George Orwell, published in 1949 about the totalitarian régime of the Party, an oligarchical collectivist society where life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, public mind control,...
- Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits, with few permanent ties...
- Caste
A caste is a combined social system of occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power. Caste should not be confused with class, in that members of a caste are deemed to be alike in function or culture, whereas not all members of a defined class may be so alike.Although Indian...
- Chattering classes
The chattering classes is a generally derogatory term often used by pundits and political commentators to refer to a politically active, socially concerned and highly educated section of the "metropolitan middle class," especially those with political, media, and academic connections...
- Class conflict
Class conflict refers to the underlying tensions or antagonisms which exist in society due to conflicting interests that arise from different social positions...
- Class consciousness
Class consciousness is consciousness of one's social class or economic rank in society. From the perspective of Marxist theory, it refers to the self-awareness, or lack thereof, of a particular class; its capacity to act in its own rational interests; or its awareness of the historical tasks...
- Class in the contemporary United States
- Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. The term ultimately comes from the Greek κλῆρος - klēros, "a lot", "that which is assigned by lot" or metaphorically, "inheritence"....
- Elite theory
Elite theory is a theory of the state which seeks to describe and explain the power relationships in modern society. It argues that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power independent of a state's democratic elections process...
- Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite—a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to...
- Folk culture
Folk culture refers to the localized lifestyle of a culture. Historically, handed down through oral tradition, it demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty and relates to a sense of community. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place...
- Gilbert Model
The Gilbert Model was developed by Hamilton College Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert as a means of a more effective way of classifying people in a given society.-Influences on the Gilbert Model:...
- Health and Social Class
- Household income in the United States
Household income is a measure commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. That measure counts all the income of all residents over the age of 18 in each household, including not only all wages and salaries, but such items as unemployment insurance, disability payments,...
- Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
- Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. Descriptions of society as a "mass" took form in the 19th century, referring to the leveling tendencies in the period of the Industrial Revolution that undermined traditional and aristocratic values...
- Market segment
A Business market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs...
- Marriage gap
The marriage gap describes observed economic and political disparities between those who are married and those who are single. The marriage gap can be compared to, and should not be confused with, the gender gap.-Politics and marriage:...
- Ottoman Millet system
Millet is an Ottoman Turkish term for a confessional community in the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, with the Tanzimat reforms, the term started to refer to legally protected religious minority groups, other than the ruling Sunni. Millet comes from the Arabic word millah and literally means...
- National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification is the primary social classification in the United Kingdom. Its first major use was on the 2001 UK census...
(NS-SEC)
- Passing
- Poverty in the United States
The most common measure of poverty in the United States is the "poverty threshold" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using...
- Race and Inequality
- Raznochinets
- Reverse snobbery
- Second-class citizen
Second-class citizen is an informal term used to describe a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there...
- Snob
A snob is someone who adopts the worldview of snobbery — that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, etc. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob's personal attributes...
- Social class in American history
Social class has been an important theme for historians of the United States for over 100 years.-Colonial period:Historians in recent decades have explored in microscopic detail the process of settling the new country and creating the social structure....
- Social exclusion
One sociological definition of social exclusion is as follows:Social exclusion is a multidimensional process of progressive social rupture, detaching groups and individuals from social relations and institutions and preventing them from full participation in the normal, normatively prescribed...
- Social mobility
Social mobility is the degree to which an individual's family or group's social status can change throughout the course of their life through a system of social hierarchy or stratification. Subsequently, it is also the degree to which an individual's or group's descendants move up and down the...
- Social structure of the United States
There is considerable controversy regarding social class in the United States, and it remains a concept with many competing definitions. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the "rich", the "middle class", and the "poor." More complex models that have been proposed...
- Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong...
- Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society .A society's stratification system, which is the system of distributing rewards to the members of society, determines social status. Social status, the position or rank of a person or group...
- Social hierarchy
Social hierarchy is a multi-tiered pyramid-like social or functional structure having an apex as the centralization of power. The term can also be applied to animal societies, but the term dominance hierarchy is preferred most times...
- Social stratification
In sociology and anthropology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into social classes, castes, and divisions within a society...
- Social position
Social position is the position of an individual in a given society and culture. A given position may belong to many individuals. Social position influences social status...
- The Power Elite
The Power Elite is a book written by the sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in 1956. In it Mills called attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggested that the ordinary citizen was a relatively powerless subject of...
- The X class
- Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life is a 2003 non-fiction book by American author Annette Lareau based upon a study of 88 families to understand the impact of how social class makes a difference in family life, more specifically in children's lives...
(book)
Further reading
- Archer, Louise et al. Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion (RoutledgeFalmer, 2003) (ISBN 0-4152-7644-6)
- Aronowitz, Stanley
Stanley Aronowitz is professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist and cultural critic and an advocate for organized labor.-Social Text:...
, How Class Works: Power and Social Movement, Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0300105045
- Bertaux, Daniel & Thomson, Paul; Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility (Clarendon Press, 1997)
- Bisson, Thomas N.; Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)
- Blau, Peter & Duncan Otis D.; The American Occupational Structure (1967) classic study of structure and mobility
- Brady, David "Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty" Social Forces
Social Forces is a social science academic journal published by University of North Carolina Press. It concentrates on sociology but also addresses related problems within the fields of social psychology, anthropology, political science, history, and economics...
Vol. 81 No.3, (March 2003), pp. 715–751 (abstract online in Project Muse).
- Broom, Leonard & Jones, F. Lancaster; Opportunity and Attainment in Australia (1977)
- Cohen, Lizabeth; Consumer's Republic, (Knopf, 2003) (ISBN 0-375-40750-2). (Historical analysis of the working out of class in the United States).
- Croix, Geoffrey de Ste.; "Class in Marx's Conception of History, Ancient and Modern", New Left Review
The New Left Review is a political journal, founded in 1960 in the UK after the editors of the New Reasoner and the Universities and Left Review merged their boards. The Universities and Left Review had expressed opposition to the Suez War in 1956; it rejected the dominant 'revisionism' within the...
, No. 146, (1984), pp. 94–111 (good study of Marx's concept).
- Dargin, Justin The Birth of Russia's Energy Class, Asia Times
Asia Times was a newspaper launched in Thailand by Thai tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul in 1995. The newspaper hired talent from around the world to produce a regional English-language newspaper....
(2007) (good study of contemporary class formation in Russia, post communism)
- Day, Gary; Class, (Routledge, 2001) (ISBN 0-415-18222-0)
- Domhoff, G. William
George William Domhoff is a Research Professor in psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz...
, Who Rules America? Power, Politics, and Social Change, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1967. (Prof. Domhoff's companion site to the book at the University of California, Santa CruzThe University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
)
- Eichar, Douglas M.; Occupation and Class Consciousness in America (Greenwood Press, 1989)
- Fantasia, Rick; Levine, Rhonda F.; McNall, Scott G., eds.; Bringing Class Back in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives (Westview Press, 1991)
- Featherman, David L. & Hauser Robert M.; Opportunity and Change (1978).
- Fotopoulos, Takis
Takis Fotopoulos , born , is a political philosopher and economist who founded the inclusive democracy movement. He is noted for his synthesis of the classical democracy with the libertarian socialism and the radical currents in the new social movements. He was an academic, and has written many...
, Class Divisions Today: The Inclusive Democracy approach, Democracy & NatureDemocracy & Nature was a theoretical journal founded in 1992 by Takis Fotopoulos. Initially launched as Society and Nature, it was renamed Democracy & Nature in 1995. Four volumes of three issues each were released by Aigis Publications in the period from 1992 to 1999. From 1999 to 2003, five...
, Vol. 6, No. 2, (July 2000)
- Fussell, Paul; Class (a painfully accurate guide through the American status system), (1983) (ISBN 0-345-31816-1)
- Giddens, Anthony
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is renowned for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least...
; The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies, (London: Hutchinson, 1981).
- Giddens, Anthony
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is renowned for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least...
& Mackenzie, Gavin (Eds.), Social Class and the Division of Labour. Essays in Honour of Ilya Neustadt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
- Goldthorpe, John H. & Erikson Robert; The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Society (1992)
- Grusky, David B. ed.; Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective (2001) scholarly articles
- Hazelrigg, Lawrence E. & Lopreato, Joseph; Class, Conflict, and Mobility: Theories and Studies of Class Structure (1972).
- Hymowitz, Kay; Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age (2006) ISBN 1566637090
- Kaeble, Helmut; Social Mobility in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Europe and America in Comparative Perspective (1985)
- Mahalingam, Ramaswami; "Essentialism, Culture, and Power: Representations of Social Class" Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 59, (2003), pp. 733+ on India
- Mahony, Pat & Zmroczek, Christine; Class Matters: 'Working-Class' Women's Perspectives on Social Class (Taylor & Francis, 1997)
- Manza, Jeff & Brooks, Clem; Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (Oxford University Press, 1999).
- Manza, Jeff; "Political Sociological Models of the U.S. New Deal" Annual Review of Sociology, (2000) pp. 297+
- Manza, Jeff; Hout, Michael & Brooks Clem; "Class Voting in Capitalist Democracies since World War II: Dealignment, Realignment, or Trendless Fluctuation?" Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 21, (1995)
- Marmot, Michael; The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity (2004)
- Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick; The Communist Manifesto, (1848). (The key statement of class conflict as the driver of historical change).
- Merriman, John M.; Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979)
- Ostrander, Susan A.; Women of the Upper Class (Temple University Press, 1984).
- Owensby, Brian P.; Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil (Stanford University, 1999).
- Pakulski, Jan & Waters, Malcolm; The Death of Class (Sage, 1996). (rejection of the relevance of class for modern societies)
- Payne, Geoff; The Social Mobility of Women: Beyond Male Mobility Models (1990)
- Raico, Ralph
Ralph Raico is an American historian, libertarian, and specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He is currently a professor of history at Buffalo State College and a senior faculty member at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Raico was a student of Ludwig von Mises and...
; "Classical Liberal Exploitation Theory: A Comment on Professor Liggio's Paper", Journal of Libertarian StudiesThe Journal of Libertarian Studies was a scholarly journal published annually by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.. It was founded in the spring of 1977 by Murray Rothbard who also served as its editor until his death in 1995...
, Vol.1, No.3, pp. 179–183, (1977).
- Savage, Mike; Class Analysis and Social Transformation (London: Open University Press, 2000).
- Sennett, Richard & Cobb, Jonathan; The Hidden Injuries of Class, (Vintage, 1972) (classic study of the subjective experience of class).
- Siegelbaum, Lewis H. & Suny, Ronald; eds.; Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, and Identity. (Cornell University Press, 1994). Russia 1870-1940
- Sorokin, Pitrim; Social Mobility (New York, 1927)
- Warner, W. Lloyd et al. Social Class in America: A Manual of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status (1949).
- Wlkowitz, Daniel J.; Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity (University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
- "Class, Status and Party", Max Weber, in e.g. Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, (Oxford University Press, 1958). (Weber's key statement of the multiple nature of stratification).
- Weinburg, Mark; "The Social Analysis of Three Early 19th century French liberals: Say, Comte, and Dunoyer", Journal of Libertarian Studies
The Journal of Libertarian Studies was a scholarly journal published annually by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.. It was founded in the spring of 1977 by Murray Rothbard who also served as its editor until his death in 1995...
, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 45–63, (1978).
- Wood, Ellen Meiksins
-Biography:Wood was born Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees from fascism. She was raised in the United States and Europe.Wood received a B.A...
; The Retreat from Class: A New 'True' Socialism, (Schocken Books, 1986) (ISBN 0-8052-7280-1) and (Verso Classics, January 1999) reprint with new introduction (ISBN 1-8598-4270-4).
- Wood, Ellen Meiksins
-Biography:Wood was born Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees from fascism. She was raised in the United States and Europe.Wood received a B.A...
; "Labor, the State, and Class Struggle", Monthly ReviewMonthly Review is an independent socialist journal published in New York City. It appears 11 times per year.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
, Vol. 49, No. 3, (1997).
- Wouters, Cas.; "The Integration of Social Classes." Journal of Social History. Volume 29, Issue 1, (1995). pp 107+. (on social manners)
- Wright, Erik Olin; The Debate on Classes (Verso, 1990). (neo-Marxist)
- Wright, Erik Olin; Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
- Wright, Erik Olin ed. Approaches to Class Analysis (2005). (scholarly articles)
- Zmroczek, Christine & Mahony, Pat (Eds.), Women and Social Class: International Feminist Perspectives. (London: UCL Press 1999)
External links
Sources
Jon Elster,
An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge, England, 1986.
Michael Evans,
Karl Marx. London, 1975.