My newest book, Key
Concepts and Contemporary Approaches to Structural Inequality, is based on a seminar I teach on the
topic of social stratification. In the course and in the book, I make an effort
to avoid what I see as the biggest problem in current academic treatments of
inequality, the tendency to base approaches on ideological bias and to present
opinions as facts. I don’t argue that our thinking about social issues can ever
be free from the influence of background or values. But this means that we
should try to consider how our ideas are affected by the limitations of our
experiences and interests, not that we can make the ad hominem argument that
views can be judged right or wrong because of the race, gender, class,
geographical origin, or upbringing of the person who holds the ideas. None of
us, of any background, see the world from the vantage point of heaven.
I’ve included the introduction to the book below. If this
looks interesting, both hard and electronic copies (the ebook is much less
expensive) are available from the publisher or from Amazon
or Barnes
and Noble. In order to make this as widely and freely available as
possible, I encourage potential readers to ask their libraries to stock copies.
When I
teach a course in social stratification, I usually begin the first class by
asking students to list some of the ways in which people are unequal.
Inevitably, their first answers are heavily freighted with moral judgements
current in the modern university. People are unequal, they answer, because some
grow up in privileged circumstances, while others do not. People are unequal
because they suffer from racial discrimination, or benefit from it. People are
unequal because some have less access than others to education or healthcare. Gender roles constrict
opportunities for some and expand opportunities for others. Differences in
treatment by police and the legal system have become increasingly common among
the first answers in recent years.
I
generally do not disagree with the moral orientations implicit in these
examples. In fact, in most ways I share the values dominant in contemporary
academia. But the first answers my students give constitute a free association
test. Our initial associations tell us as much about our own minds as they do
about the realities surrounding us. Are there other ways in which people are
unequal? With a little prodding, the students will move on to a host of
individual characteristics. Some are physically stronger. Some can run faster.
Some have musical talents or are good at writing or mathematics. Some are
especially diligent at whatever they do.
As we
talk about these ways in which people are unequal, the difference between
structural inequalities, the kinds they view with suspicion or disfavor, and
individual inequalities, the kinds they see as inevitable and even desirable,
emerges. Is there some connection, though, between the two types? If someone
shows exceptional musical skill and learns to play the piano at age three without
lessons, might the fact that there is a piano in the house have something to do
with the development of individual talent even in this extreme case?
If one argues that individual outcomes have
nothing to do with abilities or personal characteristics, and that the outcomes
are just reflections of positions in an unequal social structure, the obvious
implication is that people have no agency. But if one argues that all
variations in life circumstances could be attributed to individual abilities
and efforts, then there would be no such thing as opportunity. The person with
no piano in the house would have just as much of a chance to become an
accomplished player as someone with an instrument, living in an ideal situation
for developing musical talent.
The
complicated relationship between individual action and social position is one
of the fundamental topics of stratification, I suggest to the students.
Connected to this is the question of why, apart from personal qualities, life
chances can differ. What makes a piano more or less widely available or
influences which homes will have them and which will not?
The
issue of individual and structural inequalities leads to looking more carefully
at those moral orientations. The word “inequality” immediately called up
negative associations, but are most students (or most people) really opposed to
all forms of inequality? Do they believe
that everyone should have exactly the same income or live in homes of exactly the same
value? “Yes” is a perfectly legitimate
answer to questions like this, but only if one takes an ideological stance that
few students actually accept. Most will
say that inequality is acceptable, or even desirable, to the extent that it results
from individual skills and actions, rather than from structural positions. But
that returns to the recognition that what people can do is unavoidably linked
to where they are in a society.
Two of
the main kinds of equality, I suggest, are equality of opportunity and equality
of condition. The few who would answer “yes” to the questions above would
logically have to discard the former altogether. Opportunity is an inherently
competitive idea, one that necessitates inequality of outcomes. But equal
opportunity is also a problem. If we have unequal conditions, then we cannot
compete on an equal basis. If we compete, then we create unequal conditions.
Equality
of condition, moreover, often involves baselines. If we reject the goal of
making everyone’s situation the same, we can still hold that there are some
universal standards. Concerns about discriminatory treatment by police and the
justice system derive from the view that all individuals should be equal under
the law even if they are unequal in wealth or prestige. Assertions that healthcare,
education, or a minimal standard of living
constitute human rights are claims that even in a stratified society there
should be base levels. But who decides what these base levels should be and how
can they be guaranteed? If people differ in power or in wealth, how can the
differences be prevented from affecting actual treatment by the legal system or
the quality of available healthcare?
Behind
all of these considerations lies something much broader. What shapes the
setting in which we compete or in which we live in relatively similar
circumstances? What forces influence our opinions about the baselines should be
and what are the debates about those baselines? How much control can people
exercise over this setting and which people exercise that control?
The
present text is inspired by fundamental questions like these. It is an effort
to put the topic of social stratification into a concise volume that introduces
readers to the main theories and concepts of this topic, to ways of analyzing
existing inequalities, to developments in social stratification today, and to
political and policy debates about
social and economic inequality.
Stratification,
or structured inequality, is a social construction in two senses. First, the
positions that exist in every human society are results of social processes and
differ across time and place. Second, the ways that we think about those
positions are shaped by our participation in particular societies.
To
illustrate the first sense, we can consider the difference between the
organization of human societies and that of other social creatures. Ants and
bees are also social creatures, and they live in communities characterized by hierarchical
division of labor (see, for example, the classic work on social
insects by Edward O. Wilson, 1971). Within varieties of social insects, though,
one can find few differences in social organization. Even among social animals
that are more similar to us, such as gorillas and our close cousins, the two
types of chimpanzees, social organization within species tends to vary
relatively little. By contrast, though, there is such an enormous range of
differentiation among present and past human societies that it is difficult to
identify the limits of possible change in the future. One of the chief tasks of
an overview of the subject of human social stratification, then, is to grapple
with the question of what causes variation in the unequal structuring of
societies. This is essential not just for understanding our current situation,
but also for adopting policy responses to it.
The
second sense in which stratification is socially constructed is a matter of the
sociology of knowledge. In social science, we face the challenge of embedded
subjectivity. Even as we try to describe our social world, our social world is
shaping our perceptions and descriptions. For much of human history, people interpreted
structured inequality as the given order of the world. This way of thinking
about societies as divided into orders has also carried normative judgement: in
a well-ordered society people are supposed to stay within their orders, often
circumscribed by sumptuary laws and norms defining how people in different
levels should dress or carry themselves.
The
vision of stratification that now dominates modern understandings and
expectations is, no less than the feudal vision, a product of the society
itself. Rapid social change, especially
stimulated by the industrial revolution and the emergence of market societies, led
us to emphasize the inherent changeability of social forms. The changeability
applied to individuals, as well as to the positions of those individuals. A status became a place in society that one
occupies, rather than an identity that one holds. This way of seeing social
structure and the relationship between individuals and social structure bore
its own normative judgements.
In the
free association of my students’ responses to the question of inequality, there
is a kind of implicit social contract perspective that entails a generally
unconscious assumption of a sort of non-social state of nature. Individuals are
inherently equal in identities undetermined by social forces. . Because they
can, in theory, move among statuses, they retain a true identity outside of any
particular status. Inequality is acceptable to the extent that it results from
the actions of individuals freely entering into social positions and
unacceptable to the extent that it results from social forms that constrain and
define individuals.
We can
see our assumptions about the relationship between individuals and social
structure reflected in the way we talk about social influences. “Society
teaches us that ….” Or “society tells us that …,” with the things that
“society” teaches us or tells us understood to be distorting the true nature of
things. It is as if we could return to the paradise inside ourselves if only we
would stop listening to the external voice of society.
Recognizing
that the concepts and values of modern liberal democracy are socially constructed and often carry unexamined
assumptions does not mean rejecting those concepts and values as mere
illusions. To do so would be to discard the very possibility of any kind of
knowledge or judgement. But it does necessitate introspection and reflexivity
in order to clarify the influences on our own thinking.
In
this book, I have tried to look at the difficult topic of structured inequality
in a way that invites the reader to debate and clarify theoretical approaches
to stratification and recognizes the reflexive nature of sociological thinking.
Beyond that, though, I have tried to bring in empirical evidence on
contemporary stratification. Based on theory and evidence, I have attempted to delineate
what that contemporary stratification means for political life and what policy
responses may be possible. Of course, I cannot stand in a place of perfect
objectivity and, like every other observer, I wear blinders of background and
experience. I encourage readers to take
this text critically in a spirit of debate and reasoned discourse.
This
book begins with major theories of stratification and then proceeds to lay out
the fundamental concepts of this area of social science. It then takes an
empirical look at contemporary stratification, beginning with the influential
race-class-gender orientation and with
the evidence regarding this way of organizing facts about social inequality. It
follows by describing the environmental setting of structured inequality today.
It then moves to possible causes of inequality of individuals within social
structures. In the final section, the text treats stratification as a political
issue and then examines some of the major policy responses to structured
inequality.
The
first chapter deals with theories. The first section describes two pre-sociological
views of sources of social inequality and a third view by a founder of
sociology that expressed a program of intentional social design. The second
chapter examines how the most important classic sociological theorists who were
concerned with stratification set frameworks for thinking about structured
inequality. The third chapter deals with the modern approaches of
structural-functionalism or order theory, of conflict theory, and it ends by discussing how
ecological-evolutionary theory can provide a synthesis.
Chapter
Two follows theories of structured stratification by giving readers clear
understandings of the main concepts and means of measurement. It lays out first
the concepts of status, caste, and class. It then moves on to the related
concept of mobility, placing particular emphasis on the distinction between
individual and structural mobility, on how these two are connected. The distinction
between individual and structural mobility sets the stage for a section on
status attainment and class as ways of studying inequality. A
section on the hotly debated concept of meritocracy follows from these two ways of studying and
thinking about inequality. The chapter ends with an explication of
measurements, looking at measurements of degrees of ownership
and control and at the components of the commonly used index of socioeconomic
status.
The
third chapter opens the discussion of contemporary stratification with a
discussion of the current social and economic setting of structured inequality.
This chapter is essentially application of a class analysis perspective to
contemporary stratification. It begins wih a section on increasing inequality
as a characteristic of contemporary highly developed societies, and in
particular of the United States and it then proceeds to present evidence
regarding a growing socioeconomic division. Following this discussion of the
division, the book looks at how globalization and the expansion of the importance
of the financial and technological sectors resulting from globalization have
affected social stratification. In the next section of the chapter, the book
considers the movement of people as part of the same process as the movement of
goods and services. It examines how immigration has contributed to change in
the American population and links this change to the issue of ethnic
stratification and to debates about the growing divide. It follows by putting economic and demographic
developments into the broader context of globalization and the increasing
dominance of technology and finance. A
final section explores the issue of a cultural and ideological divide accompanying
the socioeconomic divide, linking the cultural consequences of economic change
with attitudes toward demographic change.
The
fourth chapter follows this examination of the socioeconomic setting with a
consideration of the topic of categorical inequality, the race-class-gender orientation that
occupies a large part of current discourse in the social sciences. The chapter
deals with how a race-gender-class view can provide insights into existing
stratification, and also suggests that there are aspects of social inequality
that may not receive attention from focusing exclusively on social categories
of advantage and disadvantage. It begins with a section on racial and ethnic
inequality, looking briefly at the historical background of this form of
categorical stratification and providing a summary of the social movements that
have brought race and ethnicity to the forefront of public attention. It gives
evidence of the continuing influence of race and ethnicity in distribution of
resources and opportunities and in explicit and implicit discriminatory
treatment.
A
section on gender follows the one on race and ethnicity. It begins by briefly discussing
the apparent origins of gender roles and in touching on historical and
contemporary differences. It argues that contemporary demands for change in
gender roles derive from the rise of the corporate society, the entry of women
into the labor force, and the influence of the civil rights movement. It ends
by discussing the broadening of the concept of gender and gender equality by
looking at the extension of this concept to non-heterosexual categories.
Although
the topic of class runs throughout the text, because this is an important kind
of categorical equality, this topic receives special attention in a section in
this chapter. Although class may be defined in different ways, as a social
category it generally refers to those who occupy the same economic situation.
This section offers a brief summary of how relatively advantaged and
disadvantaged economic categories influence life outcomes.
The
chapter on categorical inequality ends with a section on intersectionality, on
how categories of disadvantage may intersect and overlap. This section
discusses how this kind of focus on interaction can be useful because it
recognizes that race/ethnicity, gender, and class, may work in
different ways for people in different groups. The section gives examples to
illustrate this point. However, an intersectional approach can also lead us to
overlook aspects of stratification that cannot be readily resolved into
questions of advantage vs. disadvantage or oppressors vs. oppressed.
Chapter
5 turns to the problem of causation, of what makes people unequal. While the
previous chapter described the structural setting of stratification, this chapter
connects that class analysis view to the question of status attainment. In separate sections, the chapter considers
discrimination, culture, family structure and family
relations, educational resources, and social networks as causes of unequal outcomes. The chapter ends by proposing a way of
integrating these causes into a diagram that suggests a causal chain
The
final chapter turns to matters of politics and policy. Again, the study of
stratification is not limited to describing the structure of society and
identifying causes. It also entails evaluation and decisions about action. I
suggest that stratification is a political issue for two main reasons. First,
the type and degree of inequality in a society shape the distribution of power
and influence among individuals and groups. Second, responding to inequality is
unavoidably a matter of governmental policy, whether the response is one of
promoting inequality, passive acceptance, or some form of active egalitarian
intervention. The sections in this chapter describe political dilemmas posed by
stratification and possible policy responses.
The
first subsection treats the power elite problem, the tendency to concentrate
control in a small number of actors. Related to this, but from a different
perspective, a second subsection examines concerns about the managerial state.
This is the Weberian influenced view that bureaucracy concentrates control, and
that even social reformist bureaucracies can become organizational oligarchies. The
third subsection deals with what is sometimes a reaction to perceptions of
bureaucratic concentration. This is the phenomenon of illiberal populism, an alliance between a leader and
a mass power base.
A
section on policy looks at some of the major policy responses to structured
inequality. This include government programs to promote upward mobility, affirmative
action and categorical
reparations, tax policies, and efforts to establish an economic
floor through minimum wage and universal basic income. The subsections in this part of
the book try to weigh arguments for and against each of these policy
approaches.
The
“for and against” strategy for considering specific policies leads to the final
short chapter of the book. This is an effort to lay out general considerations
in thinking about redistribution. It lays out the competing
philosophical, political, and economic arguments for and against
redistribution. This section emphasizes that most of us are neither radical
egalitarians in all respects nor proponents of undisturbed laissez-faire
inequality. In understanding how to think about structured inequality, readers
must examine their own assumptions and the implications of their views.
At the
end of each of these chapters readers will find a discussion and debate
section. These sections are intended to engage readers in the topics involved in
structured inequality, to actively and critically summarize the main points in
each chapter, and to encourage readers to think their positions regarding these
topics.
