30.09.2019
Two criteria of social stratification. Basic stratification theories and criteria for stratification
The stratification of society occurs with the application of several factors: income, wealth, power and prestige.
1. Income can be described as the amount of money that a family or a certain individual received in a certain period of time. Such money includes: wages, alimony, pensions, fees, etc.
2. Wealth is the ability to own property (movable and immovable), or the presence of accumulated income in the form of cash. This is the main feature of all the rich. They can either work or not work in order to get their wealth, because the share of wages in their general condition is not large. For the lower and middle classes, it is income that is the main source for further existence. The presence of wealth makes it possible not to work, and its absence forces people to go to work for the sake of a salary.
3. Power exercises the ability to impose their wishes, not taking into account the will of others. In modern society, all power is subject to regulation by laws and traditions. People who have access to it can freely use a wide range of various social benefits, have the right to make decisions that, in their opinion, are important for society, including laws (which are often beneficial to the upper class).
4. Prestige is the degree of respect in society for a particular profession. On the basis of these bases for the division of society, the aggregate socio-economic status is determined. In another way, it can be called the place of a certain person in society.
Main types of social stratification
Inequality or stratification arose gradually, accompanying the birth of human society. Her initial form was already present in the original mode. The tightening of stratification occurred during the creation of early states due to the creation of a new class - slaves.
1. Slavery.
2. Caste system
3. Estates
Slavery, castes and estates characterize a closed society, i.e. social movements from the lower strata to the higher strata are either completely prohibited or significantly restricted.
Classes characterize an open society in which movement from one stratum to another is officially unrestricted.
Slavery is the first historical system of stratification. It arose in ancient times in China, Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Greece and existed in many countries up to the present. Slavery is a social, economic and legal form of enslavement of people. Slavery often deprived a person of any rights at all and bordered on an extreme degree of inequality.
The softening of stratification occurred with the gradual liberalization of views. For example, during this period, in countries with the Hindu religion, a new division of society is created - into castes. Castes are social groups, a member of which a person became only because he was born from representatives of one or another stratum (caste). Such a person was deprived for the rest of his life of the right to move to another caste, from the one in which he was born. There are 4 main castes: shurds - peasants, vaishyas - merchants, kshatriyas - warriors and brahmins - priests. In addition to them, there are still about 5 thousand castes and a podcast.
All the best prestigious professions and privileged positions are held by the rich stratum of the population. Usually their work is connected with mental activity and management of the lower parts of society. Their examples are presidents, kings, leaders, kings, political leaders, scientists, politicians, artists. They are the highest rung in society.
In modern society, the middle class can be considered lawyers, qualified employees, teachers, doctors, as well as the middle and petty bourgeoisie. The lowest layer can be considered the poor, unemployed and unskilled workers. Between the middle and the lower one can still distinguish one class in the composition, which often includes representatives of the working class.
Rich people, as members of the upper class, tend to have the highest levels of education and have the most access to power. The poor miles of the population are often quite limited by the level of power, up to the complete lack of the right to govern. They also have a low level of education and low income.
31.10.2011
Exist Various types social structures:
1. Socio-demographic - the whole society can be divided into groups according to similar characteristics. By sex, age and education
2. Socio-ethnic. Difference by nationality
3. Social-territorial
4. Social class. Class membership
5. Religious, confessional
That. the social structure of society is a heterogeneous phenomenon, i.e. each individual at one moment of time is simultaneously included in a whole set of social communities.
Social stratification
Social differentiation is the division of society (individuals) according to various criteria. The signs that distinguish one person from another are innumerable. But some of these signs do not lead to inequality between people, but some do: power, education, prosperity, prestige. They talk about social differentiation when they consider signs that do not affect inequality, and when we talk about stratification, the opposite is true.
In developed Western societies, these 4 features complement each other. But in Russia it is not so. Therefore, stratification in Russia differs from stratification in other countries.
Social mobility is the transition of individuals and groups from one stratum to another (vertical mobility) or within one stratum (horizontal mobility).
Horizontal mobility: moving to another city, changing marital status, changing profession (with the same income level). Vertical mobility implies either an increase or decrease in social mobility.
There are vertical upward and downward mobility. As a rule, upward mobility is voluntary, while downward mobility is forced.
Mobility is individual and group.
Two main types of str. System:
1. Pyramidal - developing countries
2. Rhomboid - Europe
They reflect the distribution of strata in society
A - the highest stratum, the elite (no more than 3%). The elite is economic, political, spiritual, scientific, and sometimes it is a combination.
C - the lowest layer - people with a low level of education, income, culture. It is heterogeneous in composition.
Anderslass is an underclass class. It includes vagrants, criminals. It is located at the very bottom of the pyramid.
B - the middle layer, the middle class.
middle layer. Middle class.
For the first time, the middle strata were mentioned by Aristotle, who argued that the larger the middle strata, the more stable society will develop.
In a capitalist society, peasants, artisans and the intelligentsia (stratum) were referred to the middle stratum.
At the moment, the middle layer performs a number of important functions in society:
1. Social stabilizer function. People belonging to this layer tend to support the existing social order.
2. The function of an economic donor. This is the bulk that provides life and services. They are also the main consumers. These are taxpayers, investors.
3. The middle layer is a cultural integrator, because is the bearer of cultural values traditional for this society
4. The function of the administrative-executive regulator. It is from the middle layer that the authorities of all levels are formed, representatives of the middle layer (middle managers) - a source of resources for personnel in the municipal and other areas.
The middle layer is not homogeneous. It distinguishes groups in Western societies:
1. Old middle class. It includes small and medium-sized businesses.
2. New middle class. It includes highly qualified specialists, employees and highly qualified workers.
Criteria for identifying the middle class in Russia:
1. Income level. In the US, over $2,000 per month. In the countries of Western Europe + -5%. In Russia, higher than the average for the region (19-20 thousand)
2. Education and cultural values. In Russia, the carriers of cultural values 80%. Only 25% have higher education
3. Self-reference - 60%.
A full-fledged middle layer in Russia is small, but there are so-called proto-middle layers (which can transform into a middle one)
Social communities
Definition (see the topic of society).
Characteristics of social communities:
1. Social communities really exist. Their existence can be empirically fixed and verified.
2. Social community has system properties.
3. Social communities are independent subjects of social interactions.
Classification of social communities:
Commons can be classified in several ways:
1. According to the basic system-forming feature:
1) Social demographic (husbands and wives)
2) Social ethnic
3) Social professional (example - railway workers)
4) Social-territorial
5) Cultural, etc.
2. By size:
1) Large: nation, nationality
2) Intermediate: SSU students
3) Small: family, team
3. By duration of existence
1) Group or social groups. They are more or less stable. They have direct personal interactions. There are criteria for membership in them: you yourself are aware of yourself as a member of a particular one and the rest recognize it. Small groups: from 2 to 15-20. The main criterion for a small group is direct interaction. If they do not interact, then this is already an average group. Large groups6 demographic, ethnic
2) Bulk. They are characterized by a situational mode of existence, the absence of a clear structure, and a short existence. They are large, medium and small. Small is, for example, the queue in the store. The average communities are the crowd, the spectators of the cinema, the football match. Large communities: viewers of the 1st channel, fans of the singer or singer.
Groups are:
1. Primary - the immediate environment of the individual. These are usually informal groups. These include family, friends, neighbors
2. Secondary - formal groups. They are medium or large in size. This is, for example, a university, a production organization, etc.
Reference groups - a group to which the individual does not belong, but it is a standard, model, ideal for the individual, and the individual either really wants to get into this group (then this is a positive reference group), or the individual really does not want to go there (negative reference group) .
Groups are divided into formal and informal. Formal groups are registered with authorities. It can be organizations, parties, associations. Informal groups are not registered and relationships are built on the basis of personal likes and dislikes.
14.11.2011
Social institutions
Each person is subject to the influence of society, which is through social institutions. This impact is not realized by a person, it is universal and sometimes the category “sociality” is replaced by the term “institutional”. It is believed that social institutions arose along with the emergence of society. Social institutions for a person compensate for the lack of instincts. There are no institutions in the animal world, and they are not needed there, because regulation is provided by powerful innate instincts. Animals do not need training, maintaining norms. Therefore, a number of institutions are emerging.
A social institution is understood as a set of socially significant values, norms, rules of behavior, patterns and models of behavior, social statuses and roles that satisfy basic social needs.
Key or fundamental institutions 5:
1. Institute of the family. Satisfies a range of needs. The key is the reproduction of society.
2. Political institutions. There are many of them, one of the key ones is the state.
3. Economic and social institutions. Economic: market, capitalism, money, etc.
4. Educational: institute of higher, secondary, vocational education, institute of governorship, etc.
5. Religious institutions.
In the event of the disappearance of social need (dactualization), the institution may exist for some time, but it inevitably ceases to function.
Social institutions cannot be identified with social groups and organizations. They are constituent parts of the institution, but its key element is norms and values. Belonging to a particular institution can be judged by the presence of a certain social status.
The process of forming an institution is called institutionalization. It consists of the following steps:
1. The emergence of a need, the satisfaction of which requires joint organized action. If the need can be organized by one person, then the institution does not arise.
2. Formation of common goals.
3. The emergence of norms and rules in the course of spontaneous social interactions by trial and error.
4. The emergence of procedures, rituals, patterns of behavior associated with norms and rules.
5. Consolidation of norms and rules, their adoption and practical application.
6. The emergence and consolidation of a system of norms and sanctions that guarantee the implementation of norms. Sanctions are both positive and negative. Negatives are responsible for breaking the rules.
7. Creation of a system of statuses and roles covering all members and institutions without exception.
CHOOSE ANY SOCIAL INSTITUTION AND LIST ALL ITS MAIN COMPONENTS OR COMPONENTS: NEEDS WHICH IT SATISFIES, NORMS, SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT VALUES, SANCTIONS FOR VIOLATION OF THESE NORMS AND THE SYSTEM OF STATUSES AND ROLES WHICH THIS IS DESCRIBED.
Functions of social institutions.
They are divided into explicit and hidden or latent.
Latent functions are individual for each institution. Explicit common functions for all institutions include:
1. The function of fixing and reproduction public relations. It is implemented: each institution has a system of norms and rules that consolidate, standardize human behavior and make it predictable.
2. Regulatory. Institutions regulate people's behavior through the development of patterns of behavior.
3. Integrative function. It consists in uniting people on the basis of common social institutions for them.
4. Broadcasting function. Transfer of social experience to each subsequent generation.
5. Communicative. It consists in the dissemination of information within the social institution and in the exchange of information between social institutions.
Social organizations
The term organization has three meanings:
1. Activities to develop certain norms and rules for the interaction and coordination of the efforts of individuals or groups.
2. Object properties have a complex ordered structure.
3. Target group of an institutional nature, with clear boundaries and focused on the implementation of certain functions.
In a traditional society, this role is played by communities, while in an industrial and post-industrial society, organizations play this role.
Organizations can be classified in various ways.
1. By size: large, medium, small.
2. By field of activity: trade, manufacturing, educational, medical, etc.
3. Fregozhin identified 4 types of organizations: business (characterized by the fact that membership in such organizations brings income to a person), allied or associative (participation in them does not bring income to a person, but satisfies other needs: cultural, religious, political), family, territorial-settlement organizations.
4. According to the method of structure: linear (army), functional (some construction organizations), design (there is no stable structure and working groups are formed according to certain orders), matrix (synthesis of design and functional structure), divisional (organizations with branches), mixed or conglamerative (include many functions in the seed)
28.11.2011.
1. Sociology of personality
1. The concepts of "man", "individual" and "personality".
The term "man" is used to refer to the qualities and abilities inherent in all people. A person is understood as a biosocial being with biogenic and sociogenic features.
An individual is a separate specific representative of the human race, possessing a unique set of qualities and characteristics. All people are different and therefore each person has an individuality.
The term "personality" is studied by many sciences. The main one is psychology.
Personality is the integrity of the social properties of a person, a product community development and the inclusion of the individual in the system of social relations through active objective activity and communication. In order for an individual to become a person, two conditions must be present:
1. Biologically, genetically predetermined prerequisites
2. The presence of a social environment and interaction or contact with it.
There are several theories of personality in sociology that explain its structure and behavior:
1) Our idea of how others see me.
2) Our idea of how other people react to what they see.
3) Our response to the perceived reaction of others. J
If the image that we see in the mirror is favorable, our "I" - the concept is reinforced and the actions are repeated, if this image is not favorable, the "I" - the concept is revised, and the behavior is changed.
3. Status-role. Author: Merton. Each person simultaneously has a set of social positions, which are called statuses. This collection is called the status set. Statuses are divided into 2 main groups: social (belonging to a large social group: student, professor), personal (friend, family). In this whole set, the main or basic one can be distinguished. Most often it is associated with the main type of activity. Statuses are achieved and assigned.
Assigned status is given upon reaching a specific age, but this happens automatically without human intervention.
Achievable requires at least minimal action. Example: student.
For each status there is a certain image (a set of manners of behavior, speech). Each status corresponds to a certain model of behavior, called a social role. Social role is described in two aspects:
role expectations - behavior expected from a person holding a certain social position,
role behavior - real behavior.
If they do not match, then there is a role conflict. The success of the performance of a particular social role depends on:
1. Correct assimilation of role expectations. If they are formed incorrectly, then his role behavior will be mixed.
2. Compliance of individual characteristics with the requirements of the role. Sensitivity to the requirements of the role.
Personal socialization is the process of becoming a person by mastering the basic set of spiritual values by an individual, as well as the process of adaptation to the social environment, awareness of one's place and role in society.
There are two main stages of socialization:
1. Primary. Covers two stages of growing up: childhood and adolescence
2. Secondary. Covers two periods: maturity and old age.
Socialization never ends and proceeds throughout a person's life, but differs at different stages. In the process of primary socialization, the individual is able to build norms and values into the personality structure. In the secondary process, there is a change external behavior, while the structure remains unchanged.
Smelse identifies three main stages of primary socialization:
1. The stage of imitation and copying of adult behavior by children
2. Game. Children are aware of behavior as the performance of a role.
3. Group game stage. Children begin to understand what the group expects from them.
Allocate agents of primary and secondary socialization. Primary agents: family, friends, i.e. closest social circle. Secondary: school, labor collective, mass media.
Sociology of the family
The family in sociology is considered in two aspects:
1. As a small group. We are talking about specific families.
A family is an association of people based on great kinship or adoption, connected by a common life and mutual responsibility for raising children. The family includes three systems of relationships
1) Matrimony, marriage
2) Parenthood
3) Kinship.
2. Social Institute.
The family is a social institution for the reproduction and development of social status, spiritual and physical values, social health, well-being of individuals and society as a whole.
Family types: nuclear family, contracted family, and extended and extended family
Traditional family, neotraditional family, matriarchal family, egolitarian family.
Family functions (at least 5)
Social control (29.30) - independently.
Inequality- a characteristic feature of any society, when some individuals, groups or layers have more opportunities or resources (financial, power, etc.) than others.
To describe the system of inequality in sociology, the concept is used "social stratification" . The very word "stratification" borrowed from geology, where "stratum" means geological formation. This concept accurately conveys the content. social differentiation, when social groups line up in social space in a hierarchically organized, vertically sequential row according to some measuring criterion.
In Western sociology, there are several concepts of stratification. West German sociologist R. Dahrendorf suggested that social stratification should be based on political concept "authority" , which, in his opinion, most accurately characterizes the relations of power and the struggle between social groups for power. Based on this approach R. Dahrendorf represented the structure of society, consisting of managers and managed. He, in turn, divided the former into managing owners and managing non-owners, or bureaucratic managers. The second he also divided into two subgroups: the highest, or labor aristocracy, and the lowest - low-skilled workers. Between these two main groups he placed the so-called "new middle class" .
American sociologist L. Warner identified as defining signs of stratification four parameters :
The prestige of the profession;
Education;
Ethnicity.
Thus he determined six main classes :
top-top class included rich people. But the main criterion for their selection was "noble origin";
IN lower upper class also included people of high income, but they did not come from aristocratic families. Many of them had only recently become rich, boasted of it, and sought to flaunt their luxurious clothes, jewelry, and fancy cars;
upper middle class consisted of highly educated people engaged in intellectual work, and business people, lawyers, owners of capital;
lower middle class represented mainly by clerks and other "white-collar workers" (secretaries, bank tellers, clerks);
upper class lower class made up of "blue collar" - factory workers and other manual laborers;
Finally, underclass included the poorest and most outcast members of society.
Another American sociologist B. Barber stratified on six indicators :
Prestige, profession, power and might;
Income level;
The level of education;
The degree of religiosity;
The position of relatives;
Ethnicity.
French sociologist A. Touraine believed that all these criteria were already outdated, and proposed to define groups on access to information. The dominant position, in his opinion, is occupied by those people who have access to the greatest amount of information.
P. Sorokin singled out three criteria stratification:
Income level (rich and poor);
Political status (those with and without power);
Professional roles (teachers, engineers, doctors, etc.).
T. Parsons supplemented these signs with new ones criteria :
quality characteristics inherent in people from birth (nationality, gender, family ties);
role characteristics (position, level of knowledge; professional training, etc.);
"characteristics of possession" (possession of property, material and spiritual values, privileges, etc.).
In modern post-industrial society, it is customary to single out four main stratification variables :
Income level;
Attitude to power;
The prestige of the profession;
The level of education.
Income- the amount of cash receipts of an individual or family for a certain period of time (month, year). Income is the amount of money received in the form of wages, pensions, allowances, alimony, fees, deductions from profits. Income is measured in rubles or dollars that an individual receives (individual income) or family (family income). Incomes are most often spent on maintaining life, but if they are very high, they accumulate and turn into wealth.
Wealth- accumulated income, that is, the amount of cash or embodied money. In the second case, they are called movable (car, yacht, securities, etc.) and immovable (house, works of art, treasures) property. Usually wealth is inherited , which can be received by both working and non-working heirs, and only working ones can receive income. The main wealth of the upper class is not income, but accumulated property. The salary share is small. For the middle and lower classes, the main source of subsistence is income, since in the first case, if there is wealth, it is insignificant, and in the second it is not at all. Wealth allows you not to work, and its absence forces you to work for the sake of wages.
Wealth and income are unevenly distributed and signify economic inequality. Sociologists interpret it as an indicator that different groups of the population have unequal life chances. They buy different amount and different quality food, clothing, housing, etc. But in addition to the obvious economic advantages, the wealthy have hidden privileges. The poor have shorter lives (even if they enjoy all the benefits of medicine), less educated children (even if they go to the same public schools), and so on.
Education measured by the number of years of education in a public or private school or university.
Power measured by the number of people affected by the decision. The essence of power is the ability to impose one's will against the will of others. In a complex society, power is institutionalized , that is, protected by laws and tradition, surrounded by privileges and wide access to social benefits, allows you to make decisions that are vital for society, including laws that, as a rule, are beneficial to the upper class. In all societies, people who hold some form of power—political, economic, or religious—make up an institutionalized elite. . It defines the internal foreign policy states, directing it in a direction that is beneficial to itself, which other classes are deprived of.
Three scales of stratification - income, education and power - have completely objective units of measurement: dollars, years, people. Prestige stands outside this series, since it is a subjective indicator. Prestige - respect, which in public opinion is enjoyed by this or that profession, position, occupation.
The generalization of these criteria makes it possible to represent the process of social stratification as a multifaceted stratification of people and groups in society on the grounds of owning (or not owning) property, power, certain levels of education and training, ethnic characteristics, gender and age characteristics, sociocultural criteria, political positions, social statuses. and roles.
Can be distinguished nine types of historical stratification systems , which can be used to describe any social organism, namely:
Physico-genetic,
slaveholding,
caste,
estate,
Etacratic
Socio-professional,
class,
cultural and symbolic,
Cultural and normative.
All nine types of stratification systems are nothing more than "ideal types". Any real society is their complex mixture, combination. In reality, stratification types are intertwined and complement each other.
basis of the first type physical-genetic stratification system – lies the differentiation of social groups according to "natural", socio-demographic characteristics. Here, the attitude towards a person or group is determined by gender, age and the presence of certain physical qualities - strength, beauty, dexterity. Accordingly, the weaker, those with physical disabilities are considered defective and occupy a humbled social position. Inequality is affirmed in this case by the existence of the threat of physical violence or its actual use, and then fixed in customs and rituals. This "natural" stratification system dominated the primitive community, but continues to be reproduced to this day. It is especially strong in communities struggling for physical survival or expansion of their living space.
The second stratification system - slaveholding – also based on direct violence. But inequality here is determined not by physical, but by military-legal coercion. Social groups differ in the presence or absence of civil rights and property rights. Certain social groups have been completely deprived of these rights and, moreover, along with things, have been turned into an object of private property. Moreover, this position is most often inherited and thus fixed in generations. Examples of slaveholding systems are quite varied. This includes ancient slavery, where the number of slaves sometimes exceeded the number of free citizens, and servility in Rus' during the Russkaya Pravda, and plantation slavery in the south of the North American United States until civil war 1861-1865 is, finally, the work of prisoners of war and deportees on German private farms during the Second World War.
The third type of stratification system - caste . It is based on ethnic differences, which, in turn, are reinforced by the religious order and religious rituals. Each caste is a closed, as far as possible, endogamous group, which is assigned a strictly defined place in the social hierarchy. This place appears as a result of the isolation of the functions of each caste in the system of division of labor. There is a clear list of occupations that members of a particular caste can engage in: priestly, military, agricultural. Since the position in the caste system is inherited, the possibilities of social mobility are extremely limited here. And the stronger caste is expressed, the more closed this society turns out to be. India is rightfully considered a classic example of a society with a dominance of the caste system (this system was legally abolished here only in 1950). There were 4 main castes in India : Brahmins (priests) kshatriyas (warriors) vaishyas (merchants) sudras (workers and peasants) and about 5 thousand minor castes And podcast . The untouchables, who were not part of the castes and occupied the lowest social position, stood out in particular. Today, although in a smoother form, the caste system is reproduced not only in India, but, for example, in the clan system of the Central Asian states.
The fourth type is represented estate stratification system . In this system, groups differ in legal rights, which, in turn, are strictly related to their duties and are directly dependent on these duties. Moreover, the latter imply obligations to the state, enshrined in law. Some classes are obliged to carry out military or bureaucratic service, others - "tax" in the form of taxes or labor duties. Examples of developed estate systems are feudal Western European societies or feudal Russia. So, class division is, first of all, a legal, and not an ethnic-religious or economic division. It is also important that belonging to a class is inherited, contributing to the relative closeness of this system.
Some similarity with the estate system is observed in representing the fifth type of etacratic system (from French and Greek - "state power"). In it, differentiation between groups occurs, first of all, according to their position in the power-state hierarchies (political, military, economic), according to the possibilities of mobilizing and distributing resources, as well as according to the privileges that these groups are able to derive from their positions of power. The degree of material well-being, the style of life of social groups, as well as the prestige they feel, are connected here with the formal ranks that these groups occupy in the respective power hierarchies. All other differences - demographic and religious-ethnic, economic and cultural - play a secondary role. The scale and nature of differentiation (volumes of power) in the etacratic system are under the control of the state bureaucracy. At the same time, hierarchies can be fixed formally legally - through bureaucratic tables of ranks, military regulations, assignment of categories to state institutions - or they can remain outside the sphere of state legislation ( good example the system of the Soviet party nomenklatura can serve, the principles of which are not spelled out in any laws). The formal freedom of members of society (with the exception of dependence on the state), the absence of automatic inheritance of positions of power also distinguish etacratic system from the class system. Etacratic system manifests itself with the greater force, the more authoritarian character the state government assumes.
In line with socio-professional stratification system groups are divided according to the content and conditions of their work. A special role is played by the qualification requirements for a particular professional role - the possession of relevant experience, skills and abilities. Approval and maintenance of hierarchical orders in this system is carried out with the help of certificates (diplomas, grades, licenses, patents), fixing the level of qualification and ability to perform certain types activities. The validity of qualification certificates is supported by the power of the state or some other sufficiently powerful corporation (professional workshop). Moreover, these certificates are most often not inherited, although there are exceptions in history. The socio-professional division is one of the basic stratification systems, various examples of which can be found in any society with any developed division of labor. This is a system of craft workshops in a medieval city and a rank grid in modern state industry, a system of certificates and diplomas of education received, a system of scientific degrees and titles that open the way to more prestigious jobs.
The seventh type is represented by the most popular class system . The class approach is often opposed to the stratification approach. But class division is only a particular case of social stratification. In the socio-economic interpretation, classes represent social groups of politically and legally free citizens. The differences between these groups lie in the nature and extent of ownership of the means of production and the product produced, as well as in the level of income received and personal material well-being. Unlike many previous types, belonging to classes - bourgeois, proletarians, independent farmers, etc. - is not regulated by the highest authorities, is not established by law and is not inherited (property and capital are transferred, but not the status itself). In its purest form, the class system does not contain any internal formal partitions at all (economic prosperity automatically transfers you to a higher group).
Another stratification system can be conditionally called cultural and symbolic . Differentiation arises here from differences in access to socially significant information, unequal opportunities to filter and interpret this information, and the ability to be a bearer of sacred knowledge (mystical or scientific). In ancient times, this role was assigned to priests, magicians and shamans, in the Middle Ages - to church ministers, interpreters of sacred texts, who make up the bulk of the literate population, in modern times - to scientists, technocrats and party ideologists. Claims for communion with divine forces, for the possession of truth, for the expression of the state interest have existed always and everywhere. And a higher position in this regard is occupied by those who have the best opportunities to manipulate the consciousness and actions of other members of society, who can prove their rights to true understanding better than others, who own the best symbolic capital.
Finally, the last, ninth type of stratification system should be called cultural and normative . Here, differentiation is built on differences in respect and prestige that arise from a comparison of the way of life and the norms of behavior followed by a given person or group. Attitudes towards physical and mental work, consumer tastes and habits, manners of communication and etiquette, a special language (professional terminology, local dialect, criminal jargon) - all this forms the basis of social division. Moreover, there is not only a distinction between “us” and “them”, but also a ranking of groups (“noble - ignoble”, “decent - dishonorable”, “elite - ordinary people- bottom).
The concept of stratification (from Latin stratum - layer, layer) denotes the stratification of society, differences in the social status of its members. Social stratification is a system of social inequality, consisting of hierarchically arranged social strata (strata). All people belonging to a particular stratum occupy approximately the same position and have common status characteristics.
Stratification criteria
Different sociologists explain the causes of social inequality and, consequently, social stratification in different ways. Thus, according to the Marxist school of sociology, inequality is based on property relations, the nature, degree and form of ownership of the means of production. According to the functionalists (K. Davis, W. Moore), the distribution of individuals by social strata depends on the importance of their professional activities and the contribution that they make with their work to achieve the goals of society. Proponents of the exchange theory (J. Homans) believe that inequality in society arises due to the unequal exchange of the results of human activity.
A number of classic sociologists considered the problem of stratification more broadly. For example, M. Weber, in addition to economic (attitude to property and income level), proposed in addition such criteria as social prestige (inherited and acquired status) and belonging to certain political circles, hence power, authority and influence.
One of the creators of the theory of stratification, P. Sorokin, identified three types of stratification structures:
§ economic (according to the criteria of income and wealth);
§ political (according to the criteria of influence and power);
§ professional (according to the criteria of mastery, professional skills, successful performance of social roles).
The founder of structural functionalism T. Parsons proposed three groups of differentiating features:
§ qualitative characteristics of people that they possess from birth (ethnicity, family ties, gender and age characteristics, personal qualities and abilities);
§ role characteristics determined by a set of roles performed by an individual in society (education, position, various types of professional and labor activity);
§ characteristics due to the possession of material and spiritual values (wealth, property, privileges, the ability to influence and manage other people, etc.).
In modern sociology, it is customary to distinguish the following main criteria for social stratification:
§ income - the amount of cash receipts for a certain period (month, year);
§ wealth - accumulated income, i.e. the amount of cash or embodied money (in the second case, they act in the form of movable or immovable property);
§ power - the ability and ability to exercise one's will, to exert a decisive influence on the activities of other people with the help of various means(authority, rights, violence, etc.). Power is measured by the number of people it extends to;
§ education - a set of knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in the learning process. The level of education is measured by the number of years of education;
§ prestige - a public assessment of the attractiveness, significance of a particular profession, position, a certain type of occupation.
Despite the diversity various models social stratification currently existing in sociology, most scholars distinguish three main classes: higher, middle and lower. At the same time, the share of the upper class in industrialized societies is approximately 5-7%; middle - 60-80% and lower - 13-35%.
In a number of cases, sociologists make a certain division within each class. Thus, the American sociologist W.L. Warner (1898-1970), in his famous study of Yankee City, identified six classes:
§ upper-upper class (representatives of influential and wealthy dynasties with significant resources of power, wealth and prestige);
§ lower-upper class (“new rich” - bankers, politicians who do not have a noble origin and did not have time to create powerful role-playing clans);
§ upper-middle class (successful businessmen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists, managers, doctors, engineers, journalists, cultural and art workers);
§ lower-middle class (employees - engineers, clerks, secretaries, employees and other categories, which are commonly called "white collars");
§ upper-lower class (workers engaged mainly in physical labor);
§ lower-lower class (beggars, unemployed, homeless, foreign workers, declassed elements).
There are other schemes of social stratification. But they all boil down to the following: non-basic classes arise by adding strata and layers that are inside one of the main classes - rich, wealthy and poor.
Thus, social stratification is based on natural and social inequality between people, which is manifested in their social life and is hierarchical. It is sustainably maintained and regulated by various social institutions, is constantly reproduced and modified, which is an important condition for the functioning and development of any society.
To get started, watch the video tutorial on social stratification:
The concept of social stratification
Social stratification is the process of arranging individuals and social groups in horizontal layers (strata). This process is associated primarily with both economic and human causes. The economic reasons for social stratification is that resources are limited. And because of this, they must be rationally disposed of. That is why the ruling class stands out - it owns the resources, and the exploited class - it obeys the ruling class.
Among the universal causes of social stratification are:
psychological reasons. People are not equal in their inclinations and abilities. Some people can concentrate on something for long hours: reading, watching movies, creating something new. Others do not need anything and are not interested. Some can go to the goal through all obstacles, and failures only spur them on. Others give up at the first opportunity - it's easier for them to moan and whine that everything is bad.
biological reasons. People are also not equal from birth: some are born with two arms and legs, others are disabled from birth. It is clear that it is extremely difficult to achieve something if you are disabled, especially in Russia.
Objective causes of social stratification. These include, for example, place of birth. If you were born in a more or less normal country, where you will be taught to read and write for free and there are at least some social guarantees, that's good. You have a good chance of being successful. So, if you were born in Russia even in the most remote village and you are a kid, at least you can join the army, and then stay to serve under the contract. Then you may be sent to a military school. It's better than drinking moonshine with your fellow villagers, and by the age of 30 to die in a drunken brawl.
Well, if you were born in some country in which statehood does not really exist, and local princes come to your village with machine guns at the ready and kill anyone at random, and whoever they hit are taken into slavery, then write your life is gone, and together with her and your future.
Criteria of social stratification
The criteria of social stratification include: power, education, income and prestige. Let's analyze each criterion separately.
Power. People are not equal in terms of power. The level of power is measured by (1) the number of people who are under your control, and also (2) the amount of your authority. But the presence of this criterion alone (even the greatest power) does not mean that you are in the highest stratum. For example, a teacher, a teacher of power is more than enough, but the income is lame.
Education. The higher the level of education, the more opportunities. If you have a higher education, this opens up certain horizons for your development. At first glance, it seems that in Russia this is not the case. But that's just how it seems. Because the majority of graduates are dependent - they should be hired. They do not understand that with their higher education they may well open their own business and increase their third criterion of social stratification - income.
Income is the third criterion of social stratification. It is thanks to this defining criterion that one can judge which social class a person belongs to. If the income is from 500 thousand rubles per capita and more per month - then to the highest; if from 50 thousand to 500 thousand rubles (per capita), then you belong to the middle class. If from 2000 rubles to 30 thousand then your class is basic. And also further.
Prestige is the subjective perception people have of your , is a criterion of social stratification. Previously, it was believed that prestige is expressed solely in income, because if you have enough money, you can dress more beautifully and better, and in society, as you know, they are met by clothes ... But even 100 years ago, sociologists realized that prestige can be expressed in the prestige of the profession (professional status).
Types of social stratification
Types of social stratification can be distinguished, for example, by spheres of society. A person in his life can make a career in (become a famous politician), in culture (become a recognizable cultural figure), in social sphere(to become, for example, an honorary citizen).
In addition, types of social stratification can be distinguished on the basis of one or another type of stratification systems. The criterion for singling out such systems is the presence or absence of social mobility.
There are several such systems: caste, clan, slave, estate, class, etc. Some of them are discussed above in the video on social stratification.
You must understand that this topic is extremely large, and it is impossible to cover it in one video tutorial and in one article. Therefore, we suggest that you purchase a video course that already contains all the nuances on the topic of social stratification, social mobility and other related topics:
Sincerely, Andrey Puchkov
1. INTRODUCTION
Social stratification is a central theme in sociology. She explains social stratification on the poor, the wealthy and the rich.
Considering the subject of sociology, we found a close connection between the three fundamental concepts of sociology - social structure, social composition and social stratification. We expressed the structure in terms of a set of statuses and likened it to empty cells of a honeycomb. It is located, as it were, in a horizontal plane, but is created by the social division of labor. In a primitive society there are few statuses and a low level of division of labor, in a modern society there are many statuses and a high level of organization of the division of labor.
But no matter how many statuses there are, in the social structure they are equal and functionally related to each other. But now we have filled the empty cells with people, each status has turned into a large social group. The totality of statuses gave us a new concept - the social composition of the population. And here the groups are equal to each other, they are also located horizontally. Indeed, in terms of social composition, all Russians, women, engineers, non-party people and housewives are equal.
However, we know that in real life the inequality of people plays a huge role. Inequality is the criterion by which we can place some groups above or below others. Social composition turns into social stratification - a set of vertically arranged social strata, in particular, the poor, the wealthy, the rich. If we resort to a physical analogy, then the social composition is a disorderly collection of iron filings. But then they put a magnet, and they all lined up in a clear order. Stratification is a certain way "oriented" composition of the population.
What "orients" large social groups? It turns out that there is an unequal assessment by society of the meaning and role of each status or group. A plumber or a janitor is valued below a lawyer and a minister. Consequently, high statuses and people occupying them are better rewarded, they have more power, the prestige of their occupation is higher, and the level of education should also be higher. Here we got four main dimensions of stratification - income, power, education, prestige. And that's it, there are no others. Why? But because they exhaust the range of social benefits that people strive for. More precisely, not the goods themselves (there may just be many of them), but access channels to them. A home abroad, a luxury car, a yacht, a vacation in the Canary Islands, etc. - social benefits that are always in short supply (i.e. highly respected and inaccessible to the majority) and are acquired through access to money and power, which in turn are achieved through high education and personal qualities.
Thus, social structure arises from the social division of labor, and social stratification arises from the social distribution of the results of labor, i.e. social benefits.
And it's always uneven. So there is an arrangement of social strata according to the criterion of unequal access to power, wealth, education and prestige.
2. MEASURING STRATIFICATION
Imagine a social space in which vertical and horizontal distances are not equal. P. Sorokin, the man who was the first in the world to give a complete theoretical explanation of the phenomenon, and who confirmed his theory with the help of a huge empirical material stretching throughout human history, thought this way or something like this.
Points in space are social statuses. The distance between the turner and the miller is one, it is horizontal, and the distance between the worker and the master is different, it is vertical. The master is the boss, the worker is the subordinate. They have different social ranks. Although the case can be presented in such a way that the master and worker will be located at an equal distance from each other. This will happen if we consider both of them not as a boss and a subordinate, but only as workers performing different labor functions. But then we will move from the vertical to the horizontal plane.
Curious fact
Among the Alans, the deformation of the skull served as a sure indicator of the social differentiation of society: among the leaders of the tribes, the elders of the clans and the priesthood, it was elongated.
The inequality of distances between statuses is the main property of stratification. She has four measuring rulers, or axes coordinates. All of them arranged vertically and next to each other:
income,
power,
education,
prestige.
Income is measured in rubles or dollars that an individual receives (individual income) or family (family income) over a specified period of time, say one month or one year.
On the coordinate axis, we plot equal intervals, for example, up to $5,000, from $5,001 to $10,000, from $10,001 to $15,000, and so on. up to $75,000 and above.
Education is measured by the number of years of study at a public or private school or university.
Let's say elementary school means 4 years, junior high means 9 years, high school means 11, college means 4 years, university means 5 years, graduate school means 3 years, doctoral studies means 3 years. Thus, a professor has more than 20 years of formal education behind him, while a plumber may not have eight.
power is measured by the number of people affected by the decision you make (power- opportunity
Rice. Four dimensions of social stratification. People occupying the same positions in all dimensions constitute one stratum (the figure shows an example of one of the strata).
impose their will or decisions on other people, regardless of their desire).
The decisions of the President of Russia apply to 150 million people (whether they are implemented is another question, although it also concerns the issue of power), and the decisions of the brigadier - to 7-10 people. Three scales of stratification - income, education and power - have completely objective units of measurement: dollars, years, people. Prestige is outside this range, as it is a subjective indicator.
Prestige - respect for status, prevailing in public opinion.
Since 1947 National Research Center public opinion The United States periodically conducts a survey of ordinary Americans, selected in a national sample, in order to determine the social prestige of various professions. Respondents are asked to rate each of 90 professions (occupations) on a 5-point scale: excellent (best),
Note: the scale has from 100 (the highest score) to 1 (the lowest score) points. The second column "points" shows the average score received by this type of occupation in the sample.
good, average, slightly worse than average, the worst occupation. List II included almost all occupations from the supreme judge, minister and doctor to plumber and janitor. Having calculated the average for each occupation, the sociologists obtained a public assessment of the prestige of each type of work in points. Arranging them in a hierarchical order from the most respected to the most unprestigious, they received a rating, or a scale of professional prestige. Unfortunately, periodic representative surveys of the population about professional prestige have never been conducted in our country. Therefore, we will have to use American data (see table).
Comparison of data for different years (1949, 1964, 1972, 1982) shows the stability of the prestige scale. The same types of occupations enjoyed the greatest, average and least prestige in these years. Lawyer, doctor, teacher, scientist, banker, pilot, engineer received invariably high marks. Their position on the scale changed slightly: the doctor in 1964 was in second place, and in 1982 - in first place, the minister, respectively, occupied 10th and 11th places.
If the upper part of the scale is occupied by representatives of creative, intellectual labor, then the lower part is occupied by representatives of predominantly physical low-skilled: a driver, a welder, a carpenter, a plumber, a janitor. They have the least status respect. People occupying the same positions on the four dimensions of stratification constitute one stratum.
For each status or individual, you can find a place on any scale.
A classic example is the comparison between a police officer and a college professor. On the scales of education and prestige, the professor ranks higher than the policeman, and on the scales of income and power, the policeman ranks higher than the professor. Indeed, the professor has less power, the income is somewhat lower than that of a policeman, but the professor has more prestige and years of study. Noting both with points on each scale and connecting their lines, we get a stratification profile.
Each scale can be considered separately and denoted by an independent concept.
In sociology, there are three basic types of stratification:
economic (income),
political (power)
professional (prestige)
and many non-basic, for example, cultural and speech and age.
Rice. Stratified profile of a college professor and police officer.
3. BELONGING TO A STRATE
Affiliation measured by subjective and objective indicators:
subjective indicator - feeling of belonging to this group, identification with it;
objective indicators - income, power, education, prestige.
So, a large fortune, high education, great power and high professional prestige - the necessary conditions so that you can be attributed to the highest stratum of society.
A stratum is a social stratum of people who have similar objective indicators on four scales of stratification.
concept stratification (stratum- layer, facio- do) came to sociology from geology, where it denotes the vertical arrangement of layers of various rocks. If we make a cut of the earth's crust at a certain distance, it will be found that under the layer of chernozem there is a layer of clay, then sand, etc. Each layer consists of homogeneous elements. So is the stratum - it includes people with the same income, education, power and prestige. There is no stratum that includes highly educated people in power and powerless poor people in low-prestige jobs. The rich are in the same stratum with the rich, and the average with the average.
In a civilized country, a big mafioso cannot belong to the highest stratum. Although he has a very high income, perhaps a high education and strong power, his occupation does not enjoy high prestige among citizens. It is condemned. Subjectively, he may consider himself a member of the upper class and even fit the objective criteria. However, he lacks the main thing - the recognition of "significant others."
Under "significant others" are two large social groups: members of the upper class and the general population. The highest stratum will never recognize him as "their" because he compromises the entire group as a whole. The population will never recognize mafia activity as a socially approved occupation, as it contradicts the mores, traditions and ideals of this society.
Let's conclude: belonging to a stratum has two components - subjective (psychological identification with a certain layer) and objective (social entry into a certain layer).
Social entry has undergone a certain historical evolution. In primitive society, inequality was insignificant, so stratification was almost absent there. With the emergence of slavery, it suddenly intensified. slavery- a form of the most rigid fixing of people in unprivileged strata. castes- lifelong assignment of an individual to his (but not necessarily unprivileged) stratum. In medieval Europe, lifelong ownership is weakening. Estates imply legal attachment to the stratum. Rich merchants bought noble titles and thus moved to a higher class. Estates were replaced by classes - open to all strata, not implying any legitimate (legal) way of securing one stratum.
4. HISTORICAL TYPES OF STRATIFICATION
Known in sociology four main types of stratification - slavery, castes, estates and classes. The first three characterize closed societies and the last type is open.
Closed is a society where social movements from lower to higher strata are either completely prohibited, either significantly limited.
open called a society where movement from one stratum to another is not officially restricted in any way.
Slavery- an economic, social and legal form of enslavement of people, bordering on complete lack of rights and an extreme degree of inequality.
Slavery has historically evolved. There are two forms of it.
At patriarchal slavery (primitive form) a slave had all the rights of a younger member of the family: he lived in the same house with the owners, participated in public life, entered into marriage with the free, inherited the property of the owner. It was forbidden to kill him.
At classic bondage (mature form) the slave was finally enslaved: he lived in a separate room, did not participate in anything, did not inherit anything, did not marry and had no family. He was allowed to be killed. He did not own property, but he himself was considered the property of the owner ("talking tool").
Antique slavery in ancient Greece and plantation slavery in the United States before 1865 is closer to the second form, and servitude to the Geese of the 10th-12th centuries is closer to the first. The sources of slavery differ: the ancient was replenished mainly through conquests, and servitude was debt, or bonded slavery. The third source is criminals. In medieval China and in the Soviet GULAG (non-legal slavery), criminals were in the position of slaves.
At a mature stage slavery turns into slavery. When people talk about slavery as a historical type of stratification, they mean its highest stage. Slavery - the only form of social relations in history when one person acts as the property of another, and when the lower stratum is deprived of all rights and freedoms. There is no such thing in castes and estates, not to mention classes.
caste system not as ancient as the slave system, and less common. If almost all countries went through slavery, of course, to varying degrees, then castes were found only in India and partly in Africa. India is a classic example of a caste society. It arose on the ruins of the slaveholding in the first centuries of the new era.
Castoycalled a social group (stratum), membership in which a person owes solely to his birth.
He cannot move from his caste to another during his lifetime. To do this, he needs to be born again. The caste position is fixed by the Hindu religion (now it is clear why castes are not widespread). According to its canons, people live more than one life. Each person falls into the appropriate caste, depending on what his behavior was in a previous life. If bad, then after the next birth he should fall into a lower caste, and vice versa.
In India 4 main castes: Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), Shudras (workers and peasants) and about 5 thousand minor castes and podcasts. The untouchables are especially worthy - they are not included in any caste and occupy the lowest position. In the course of industrialization, castes are replaced by classes. The Indian city is becoming more and more class-based, while the village, in which 7/10 of the population lives, remains caste-based.
Estates precede classes and characterize the feudal societies that existed in Europe from the 4th to the 14th centuries.
estate- a social group that has fixed custom or legal law and inherited rights and obligations.
The estate system, which includes several strata, is characterized by a hierarchy, expressed in the inequality of position and privileges. Europe was a classic example of a class organization, where at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries society was divided into upper classes(nobility and clergy) and unprivileged third estate(artisans, merchants, peasants). In the X-XIII centuries there were three main estates: the clergy, the nobility and the peasantry. In Russia, from the second half of the 18th century, a class division into nobility, clergy, merchants, peasantry and philistinism (middle urban strata) was established. Estates were based on landed property.
The rights and obligations of each estate were determined by legal law and consecrated by religious doctrine. Membership in the estate was determined inheritance. Social barriers between classes were quite rigid, therefore social mobility existed not so much between as within the estates. Each estate included many layers, ranks, levels, professions, ranks. So, public service could only be done by the nobility. The aristocracy was considered a military class (chivalry).
The higher in the social hierarchy an estate stood, the higher was its status. In contrast to castes, inter-class marriages were quite allowed. Sometimes individual mobility was allowed. A simple person could become a knight by purchasing a special permit from the ruler. As a relic, this practice has survived in modern England.
5. Social stratification and prospects for civil society in Russia
Russia in its history has experienced more than one wave of restructuring of the social space, when the old social structure collapsed, the world of values changed, guidelines, patterns and norms of behavior were formed, entire layers perished, new communities were born. On the threshold of the XXI century. Russia is once again going through a complex and controversial process of renewal.
In order to understand the ongoing changes, it is first necessary to consider the foundations on which the social structure of Soviet society was built before the reforms of the second half of the 1980s.
Reveal the nature of social structure Soviet Russia is possible by analyzing Russian society as a combination of various stratification systems.
In the stratification of Soviet society, permeated with administrative and political control, the etacratic system played a key role. The place of social groups in the party-state hierarchy predetermined the volume of distributive rights, the level of decision-making and the scope of opportunities in all areas. The stability of the political system was ensured by the stability of the position of the ruling elite (“the nomenklatura”), in which the key positions were occupied by the political and military elites, and the economic and cultural elite occupied a subordinate place.
A etacratic society is characterized by a fusion of power and property; the predominance of state property; state-monopoly mode of production; dominance of centralized distribution; militarization of the economy; class-layer stratification of a hierarchical type, in which the positions of individuals and social groups are determined by their place in the structure state power, extending to the vast majority of material, labor, information resources; social mobility in the form of organized from above selection of the most obedient and loyal people to the system.
A distinctive characteristic of the social structure of a Soviet-type society was that it was not class-based, although in terms of the parameters of professional structure and economic differentiation it remained outwardly similar to the stratification of Western societies. As a result of the elimination of the basis of class division - private ownership of the means of production - the classes gradually destructured.
The monopoly of state property, in principle, cannot give a class society, since all citizens are employees of the state, differing only in the amount of powers delegated to them. hallmarks social groups in the USSR were special functions, formalized as a legal inequality of these groups. Such inequality led to the isolation of these groups, the destruction of "social lifts" that serve for upward social mobility. Accordingly, the life and consumption of elite groups acquired an increasingly significant character, reminiscent of a phenomenon called “prestigious consumption”. All these signs form a picture of a class society.
Class stratification is inherent in a society in which economic relations are rudimentary and do not play a differentiating role, and the main mechanism of social regulation is the state, which divides people into legally unequal estates.
From the first years of Soviet power, for example, the peasantry was formed into a special estate: its political rights were limited until 1936. The inequality of the rights of workers and peasants manifested itself for many years (attachment to collective farms through the system of a passportless regime, privileges for workers in obtaining education and promotion, propiska system, etc.). In fact, employees of the party and state apparatus have become a special class with a whole range of special rights and privileges. The social status of the mass and heterogeneous class of prisoners was fixed in the legal and administrative order.
In the 60-70s. in conditions of chronic shortages and limited purchasing power of money, the process of leveling wages is intensifying, while the consumer market is simultaneously split into closed “special sectors” and the role of privileges is growing. The material and social situation of groups involved in distribution processes in the sphere of trade, supply, and transport has improved. The social influence of these groups increased as the shortage of goods and services worsened. During this period, shadow socio-economic ties and associations arise and develop. A more open type of social relations is being formed: in the economy, the bureaucracy acquires the ability to achieve the most favorable results for itself; the spirit of entrepreneurship also covers the lower social strata - numerous groups of private traders, manufacturers of "left" products, builders - "shabashniks" are being formed. Thus, there is a doubling of the social structure, when fundamentally different social groups coexist in a bizarre way within its framework.
Important social changes that took place in the Soviet Union in 1965 - 1985 are associated with the development of the scientific and technological revolution, urbanization and, accordingly, an increase in the general level of education.
From the early 60s to the mid 80s. More than 35 million people migrated to the city. However, urbanization in our country had a clearly deformed character: mass movements of rural migrants to the city were not accompanied by a corresponding deployment of social infrastructure. A huge mass of superfluous people, social outsiders, has appeared. Having lost contact with the rural subculture and unable to join the urban one, the migrants created a typically marginal subculture.
The figure of a migrant from the countryside to the city is a classic model of the marginal: no longer a peasant, not yet a worker; the norms of the rural subculture have been undermined, the urban subculture has not yet been assimilated. The main sign of marginalization is the rupture of social, economic, and spiritual ties.
The economic reasons for marginalization were the extensive development of the Soviet economy, the dominance of outdated technologies and primitive forms of labor, the discrepancy between the education system and the real needs of production, etc. This is closely related to the social causes of marginalization - the hypertrophy of the accumulation fund to the detriment of the consumption fund, which gave rise to an extremely low standard of living and a shortage of goods. Among the political and legal reasons for the marginalization of society, the main one is that during the Soviet period in the country there was a destruction of any kind of social ties “horizontally”. The state strove for global dominance over all spheres of public life, deforming civil society, minimizing the autonomy and independence of individuals and social groups.
In the 60-80s. an increase in the general level of education, the development of an urban subculture gave rise to a more complex and differentiated social structure. In the early 80s. specialists who received higher or secondary specialized education already accounted for 40% of the urban population.
By the beginning of the 90s. in terms of their educational level and professional positions, the Soviet middle stratum was not inferior to the Western “new middle class”. In this regard, the English political scientist R. Sakwa noted: “The communist regime gave rise to a kind of paradox: millions of people were bourgeois in their culture and aspirations, but were included in the socio-economic system that denied these aspirations.”
Under the influence of socio-economic and political reforms in the second half of the 80s. big changes have taken place in Russia. Compared to Soviet times, the structure of Russian society has undergone significant changes, although it retains many of its former features. The transformation of the institutions of Russian society has seriously affected its social structure: property and power relations have changed and continue to change, new social groups are emerging, the level and quality of life of each social group is changing, and the mechanism of social stratification is being rebuilt.
As an initial model of the multidimensional stratification of modern Russia, we will take four main parameters: power, prestige of professions, income level and level of education.
Power is the most important dimension of social stratification. Power is necessary for the sustainable existence of any socio-political system; the most important public interests intersect in it. The system of power bodies of post-Soviet Russia has been substantially restructured - some of them have been liquidated, others have only been organized, some have changed their functions, their personal composition has been updated. The previously closed upper stratum of society opened up to people from other groups.
The place of the monolith of the nomenklatura pyramid was occupied by numerous elite groupings that are in competition with each other. The elite has lost a significant part of the levers of power inherent in the old ruling class. This led to a gradual transition from political and ideological methods of management to economic ones. Instead of a stable ruling class with strong vertical ties between its floors, many elite groups have been created, between which horizontal ties have intensified.
The area of management activity, where the role of political power, is the redistribution of accumulated wealth. Direct or indirect involvement in the redistribution of state property is in modern Russia the most important factor determining the social status of management groups.
In the social structure of modern Russia, the features of the former etacratic society, built on power hierarchies, are preserved. However, at the same time, the revival of economic classes on the basis of privatized state property begins. There is a transition from stratification based on the basis of power (appropriation through privileges, distribution in accordance with the place of the individual in the party-state hierarchy) to stratification of the proprietary type (appropriation by profit and market-valued labor). Next to the power hierarchies, an "entrepreneurial structure" appears, which includes the following main groups: 1) large and medium-sized entrepreneurs; 2) small entrepreneurs (owners and managers of firms with minimal use of hired labor); 3) independent workers; 4) employees.
There is a tendency for the formation of new social groups claiming high places in the hierarchy of social prestige.
The prestige of professions is the second important dimension of social stratification. We can talk about a number of fundamentally new trends in the professional structure associated with the emergence of new prestigious social roles. The set of professions is becoming more complex, their comparative attractiveness is changing in favor of those that provide more substantial and faster material rewards. In this regard, assessments of the social prestige of various types of activity change, when physically or ethically “dirty” work is still considered attractive in terms of monetary reward.
The newly emerged and therefore "deficient" in terms of personnel, the financial sector, business, and commerce are filled with a large number of semi- and non-professionals. Entire professional strata are lowered to the "bottom" of social rating scales - their special training turned out to be unclaimed and the income from it is negligible.
The role of the intelligentsia in society has changed. As a result of the reduction state support science, education, culture and art, there was a drop in the prestige and social status of knowledge workers.
In modern conditions in Russia there has been a tendency to form a number of social strata belonging to the middle class - these are entrepreneurs, managers, certain categories of the intelligentsia, highly skilled workers. But this trend is contradictory because common interests different social strata, potentially forming the middle class, are not supported by the processes of their convergence on such important criteria as the prestige of the profession and the level of income.
The level of income of various groups is the third essential parameter of social stratification. Economic status is the most important indicator of social stratification, because the level of income affects such aspects of social status as the type of consumption and lifestyle, the opportunity to do business, advance in the service, give children a good education etc.
In 1997, the income received by the top 10% of Russians was almost 27 times higher than the income of the bottom 10%. The 20% of the wealthiest strata accounted for 47.5% of total cash income, while the 20% of the poorest received only 5.4%. 4% of Russians are super-wealthy - their income is approximately 300 times higher than the income of the bulk of the population.
The most acute problem in the social sphere today is the problem of mass poverty - the beggarly existence of almost 1/3 of the country's population is being conserved. Of particular concern is the change in the composition of the poor: today they include not only the traditionally low-income (disabled, pensioners, large families), the ranks of the poor have been joined by the unemployed and employed, whose wages (and this is a quarter of all those employed in enterprises) are below the subsistence level. Almost 64% of the population has incomes below the average level (average income is considered to be 8-10 minimum dimensions salary per person) (see: Zaslavskaya T.I. The social structure of modern and certain society // Social Sciences and modernity. 1997 No. 2. S. 17).
One of the manifestations of the declining standard of living of a significant part of the population was the growing need for secondary employment. However, it is not possible to determine the real scale of secondary employment and additional earnings (bringing even higher income than the main job). The criteria used today in Russia give only a conditional characterization of the income structure of the population, the data obtained are often limited and incomplete. Nevertheless, social stratification on an economic basis testifies to the ongoing process of restructuring of Russian society with great intensity. It was artificially limited in Soviet times and is being developed openly
The deepening of the processes of social differentiation of income groups is beginning to have a noticeable impact on the education system.
The level of education is another important criterion for stratification; education is one of the main channels of vertical mobility. During the Soviet period, receiving higher education was accessible to many segments of the population, and secondary education was compulsory. However, such an education system was ineffective; higher education trained specialists without taking into account the real needs of society.
In modern Russia, the breadth of educational offerings is becoming a new differentiating factor.
In the new high-status groups, receiving a scarce and high-quality education is considered not only prestigious, but also functionally important.
Newly emerging professions require more skills and better preparation are better paid. As a consequence, education becomes an increasingly important entry factor into the professional hierarchy. The result is increased social mobility. She's all in lesser degree depends on the social characteristics of the family and is largely determined by personal qualities and education of the individual.
An analysis of the changes taking place in the system of social stratification according to four main parameters speaks of the depth and inconsistency of the transformation process experienced by Russia and allows us to conclude that today it continues to retain the old pyramidal form (characteristic of pre-industrial society), although the content characteristics of its constituent layers have changed significantly.
In the social structure of modern Russia, six layers can be distinguished: 1) the upper one - the economic, political and power elite; 2) upper middle - medium and large entrepreneurs; 3) medium - small entrepreneurs, managers of the production sector, the highest intelligentsia, the working elite, military personnel; 4) basic - the mass intelligentsia, the main part of the working class, peasants, trade and service workers; 5) lower - unskilled workers, long-term unemployed, single pensioners; 6) "social bottom" - the homeless, released from places of detention, etc.
At the same time, a number of significant clarifications should be made related to the processes of changing the stratification system in the process of reforms:
Most social formations are mutually transitional in nature, have fuzzy, vague boundaries;
There is no internal unity of the newly emerging social groups;
There is a total marginalization of almost all social groups;
The new Russian state does not ensure the security of citizens and does not alleviate their economic situation. In turn, these dysfunctions of the state deform the social structure of society, give it a criminal character;
The criminal nature of class formation gives rise to a growing property polarization of society;
The current level of income cannot stimulate the labor and business activity of the bulk of the economically active population;
Russia retains a stratum of the population that can be called a potential resource for the middle class. Today, about 15% of those employed in the national economy can be attributed to this layer, but its maturation to a "critical mass" will require a lot of time. So far, in Russia, the socio-economic priorities characteristic of the "classical" middle class can only be observed in the upper strata of the social hierarchy.
A significant transformation of the structure of Russian society, which requires the transformation of the institutions of property and power, is a long process. Meanwhile, the stratification of society will continue to lose rigidity and unambiguity, taking the form of a blurred system in which layer and class structures are intertwined.
Undoubtedly, the formation of a civil society should become the guarantor of the renewal of Russia.
The problem of civil society in our country is of particular theoretical and practical interest. In terms of the nature of the dominant role of the state, Russia was initially closer to the eastern type of societies, but in our country this role was even more pronounced. According to A. Gramsci, "in Russia, the state represents everything, and civil society is primitive and vague."
In contrast to the West, a different type of social system has developed in Russia, based on the efficiency of power, and not the efficiency of property. One should also take into account the fact that for a long time in Russia there were practically no public organizations and such values as the inviolability of the person and private property, legal thinking, which constitute the context of civil society in the West, remained undeveloped, the social initiative belonged not to associations of individuals, but to bureaucratic apparatus.
From the second half of the XIX century. the problem of civil society began to be developed in Russian social and scientific thought (B.N. Chicherin, E.N. Trubetskoy, S.L., Frank, etc.). The formation of civil society in Russia begins during the reign of Alexander I. It was at this time that separate spheres appeared civil life those not associated with military and court officials - salons, clubs, etc. As a result of the reforms of Alexander II, zemstvos, various unions of entrepreneurs, charity institutions, and cultural societies arose. However, the process of formation of civil society was interrupted by the revolution of 1917. Totalitarianism blocked the very possibility of the emergence and development of civil society.
The era of totalitarianism led to a grandiose leveling of all members of society before the all-powerful state, washing out any groups pursuing private interests. The totalitarian state significantly narrowed the autonomy of sociality and civil society, securing control over all spheres of public life.
The peculiarity of the current situation in Russia is that the elements of civil society will have to be created largely anew. Let us single out the most fundamental directions of the formation of civil society in modern Russia:
Formation and development of new economic relations, including pluralism of forms of ownership and the market, as well as the open social structure of society caused by them;
The emergence of a system of real interests adequate to this structure, uniting individuals, social groups and strata into a single community;
The emergence of various forms of labor associations, social and cultural associations, socio-political movements that make up the main institutions of civil society;
Renewal of relationships between social groups and communities (national, professional, regional, gender and age, etc.);
Creation of economic, social and spiritual prerequisites for the creative self-realization of the individual;
Formation and deployment of mechanisms of social self-regulation and self-government at all levels of the social organism.
The ideas of civil society found themselves in post-communist Russia in that peculiar context that distinguishes our country both from Western states (with their strongest mechanisms of rational legal relations) and from Eastern countries (with their specifics of traditional primary groups). Unlike Western countries, the modern Russian state does not deal with a structured society, but, on the one hand, with rapidly emerging elite groups, and on the other, with an amorphous, atomized society dominated by individual consumer interests. Today, civil society in Russia is not developed, many of its elements have been forced out or "blocked", although during the years of reform there have been significant changes in the direction of its formation.
Modern Russian society is quasi-civil, its structures and institutions have many formal features of civil society formations. There are up to 50 thousand voluntary associations in the country - consumer associations, trade unions, environmental groups, political clubs, etc. However, many of them, having survived at the turn of the 80-90s. a short period of rapid growth, in recent years they have become bureaucratic, weakened, and lost their activity. An ordinary Russian underestimates group self-organization, and the most common social type has become an individual, closed in his aspirations for himself and his family. In overcoming such a state, due to the process of transformation, is the specificity of the current stage of development.
1. Social stratification - a system of social inequality, consisting of a set of interconnected and hierarchically organized social strata (strata). The stratification system is formed on the basis of such characteristics as the prestige of professions, the amount of power, income level and education level.
2. The theory of stratification makes it possible to model the political pyramid of society, identify and take into account the interests of individual social groups, determine the level of their political activity, the degree of influence on political decision-making.
3. The main purpose of civil society is to reach consensus among various social groups and interests. Civil society is a set of social formations united specifically by economic, ethnic, cultural, etc. interests realized outside the sphere of state activity.
4. The formation of civil society in Russia is associated with significant changes in the social structure. The new social hierarchy differs in many ways from the one that existed in the Soviet era and is characterized by extreme instability. The mechanisms of stratification are being rebuilt, social mobility is increasing, and many marginal groups with an indefinite status are emerging. Objective possibilities for the formation of a middle class are beginning to take shape. For a significant transformation of the structure of Russian society, it is necessary to transform the institutions of property and power, accompanied by a blurring of the boundaries between groups, a change in group interests and social interactions.
Literature
1. Sorokin P. A. Man, civilization, society. - M., 1992.
2. Zharova L. N., Mishina I. A. The history of homeland. - M., 1992.
3. HessIN., Markgon E., Stein P. sociology. V.4., 1991.
4. Vselensky M.S. Nomenclature. - M., 1991.
5. Ilyin V.I. The main contours of the system of social stratification of society / / Frontier. 1991. No. 1. P. 96-108.
6. Smelzer N. Sociology. - M., 1994.
7. Komarov M.S. Social stratification and social structure // Sotsiol. research 1992. No. 7.
8. Giddens E. Stratification and class structure // Sotsiol. research 1992. No. 11.
9. Political science, ed. Prof. M.A. Vasilika M., 1999
9. A.I. Kravchenko Sociology - Yekaterinburg, 2000.
Marxist tradition in class analysis
concept Class used in various scientific disciplines to denote any set consisting of elements, each of which has at least one property common to all. The term social classification (from lat. classis- rank, class, and facio- I do) means a single system of large groups of people located in a hierarchical row, which together form society as a whole.
The concept of ʼʼsocial classʼʼ was introduced into the scientific vocabulary at the beginning of the 19th century by the French historians Thierry and Guizot, putting into it mainly a political meaning, showing the opposition of the interests of various social groups and the inevitability of their clash. Somewhat later, a number of English economists, including Riccardo and Smith, made the first attempts to reveal the ʼʼanatomyʼʼ of classes, ᴛ.ᴇ. their internal structure.
Despite the fact that social class is one of the central concepts in sociology, scientists still do not have a single point of view regarding the content of this concept. For the first time we find a detailed picture of class society in the works of K. Marx. Most of Marx's works are connected with the theme of stratification and, above all, with the concept of social class, although, oddly enough, he did not give a systematic analysis of this concept.
We can say that Marx's social classes are economically determined and genetically conflicting groups. The basis of division into groups is the presence or absence of property. The feudal lord and the serf in a feudal society, the bourgeois and the proletarian in a capitalist society are antagonistic classes that inevitably appear in any society that has a complex hierarchical structure based on inequality. Marx also allowed the existence of small social groups in society that could influence class conflicts. In studying the nature of social classes, Marx made the following assumptions:
1. Every society produces a surplus of food, shelter, clothing and other resources. Class differences arise when one group of the population appropriates resources that are not immediately consumed and are not currently needed. These resources are considered private property.
2. Classes are determined on the basis of the fact of ownership or non-ownership of the produced property.
3. Class relations presuppose the exploitation of one class by another, ᴛ.ᴇ. one class appropriates the results of the labor of another class, exploits and suppresses it. This kind of relationship is constantly reproduced class conflict, which is the basis of social changes taking place in society.
4. There are objective (for example, possession of resources) and subjective attributes of class (a sense of class belonging).
Despite the revision, from the point of view of modern society, of many provisions of the class theory of K. Marx, some of his ideas remain relevant in relation to the currently existing social structures.
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This primarily applies to situations of interclass conflicts, clashes, and class struggle to change the conditions for the distribution of resources. In this regard, Marx's doctrine of class struggle currently has a large number of followers among sociologists and political scientists in many countries of the world.
The most influential alternative Marxist theory of social class is the work of Max Weber. Weber, in principle, recognized the correctness of the division of the population into classes on the basis of the presence or absence of ownership of capital and the means of production. At the same time, he considered such a division to be too rough and simplistic. Weber believed that social stratification has three different measures of inequality.
First - economic inequality,ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ Weber called the position of the class. The second indicator is status, or social prestige, and the third - power.
Class is interpreted by Weber as a group of people with the same life opportunities. Weber considers the attitude to power (political parties) and prestige as one of the most important signs of a social class. Each of these dimensions is a separate aspect of social gradation. However, for the most part, these three dimensions are interconnected; they feed and support each other, but still may not be the same.
Thus, individual prostitutes and criminals have great economic opportunities, but do not have prestige and power. The teaching staff of universities and the clergy enjoy high prestige, but in terms of wealth and power they are usually evaluated relatively low. Some officials may wield considerable power and at the same time receive little wages and no prestige.
Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, Weber for the first time lays down the system of stratification that exists in a given society as the basis for class division.
In modern Western sociology, Marxism is opposed by the theory of social stratification.
Classification or stratification? Representatives of the theory of stratification argue that the concept of class is not applicable to the modern post-industrial society. This is due to the uncertainty of the concept of ʼʼprivate propertyʼʼ: due to wide corporatization, as well as the exclusion of basic shareholders from the sphere of production management and their replacement by hired managers, property relations turned out to be blurred, lost their certainty. For this reason, the concept of ʼʼclassʼʼ should be replaced by the concept of ʼʼstrataʼʼ or the concept of a social group, and the theory of social class structure of society should be replaced by theories of social stratification. However, classification and stratification are not mutually exclusive approaches. The concept of ʼʼclassʼʼ, convenient and appropriate for a macro approach, will be clearly insufficient when we try to consider the structure of interest to us in more detail. In a deep and comprehensive study of the structure of society, the economic dimension alone is clearly not enough, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ offers a Marxist class approach. Stratification dimension- ϶ᴛᴏ a rather fine grading of the layers within the class, allowing for a deeper detailed analysis of the social structure.
Most researchers believe that social stratification- a hierarchically organized structure of social (status) inequality that exists in a certain society, in a certain historical period of time. The hierarchically organized structure of social inequality can be imagined as a division of the whole society into strata. Layered, multi-level society in this case can be compared with the geological layers of the soil. In modern sociology, there are four basic criteria of social inequality:
ü Income It is measured in rubles or dollars that an individual or family receives during a certain period of time, say, one month or a year.
ü Education measured by the number of years of education in a public or private school or university.
ü Power is measured by the number of people who are affected by the decision you make (power is the ability to impose your will or decisions on other people, regardless of their desire).
ü Prestige- respect for the status that has developed in public opinion.
The criteria of social stratification listed above are the most universal for all modern societies. At the same time, the social position of a person in society is also influenced by some other criteria that determine, first of all, his ʼʼ starting possibilitiesʼʼ. These include:
ü social background. The family carries out the introduction of the individual into the social system, determining in many respects his education, profession and income. Poor parents reproduce potentially poor children, which is determined by their health, education, qualifications. Children from poor families are 3 times more likely to die due to negligence, from diseases, accidents and violence in the first years of life than children from rich families.
ü gender. Today in Russia there is an intensive process of feminization of poverty. Despite the fact that men and women live in families belonging to different social levels, the income, status of women and the prestige of their professions are usually lower than those of men.
ü Race and ethnicity. Thus, in the US, white people receive a better education and have a higher professional status than African Americans. Ethnicity also affects social position.
ü Religion. In American society, members of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, as well as Jews, occupy the highest social positions. Lutherans and Baptists occupy a lower position.
Pitirim Sorokin made a significant contribution to the study of status inequality. To determine the totality of all social statuses of society, he introduced the concept social space.
In his work ʼʼSocial Mobilityʼʼ 1927 ᴦ. P. Sorokin, first of all, emphasized the impossibility of combining or even comparing such concepts as ʼʼgeometric spaceʼʼ and ʼʼsocial spaceʼʼ. According to him, a person of the lower class can physically come into contact with a noble person, but this circumstance will not in the least reduce the economic, prestige or power differences existing between them, ᴛ.ᴇ. will not reduce the existing social distance. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, two people between whom there are significant property, family, official or other social differences cannot be in the same social space, even if they are embracing.
According to Sorokin, social space is three-dimensional. It is described by three coordinate axes - economic status, political status, professional status.Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, the social position (general or integral status) of each individual, which is an integral part of a given social space, is described using three coordinates ( x, y, z). Note that this system coordinates describes exclusively social, not personal statuses individual.
The situation when an individual, having a high status on one of the coordinate axes, at the same time has a low status level on the other axis, is called status incompatibility.
For example, individuals with a high level of acquired education, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ provide high social status along the occupational dimension of stratification, may occupy a poorly paid position and therefore will have a low economic status. Most sociologists rightly believe that the presence of status incompatibility contributes to the growth of resentment among such people, and they will support radical social changes aimed at changing stratification. And vice versa in the case of the ʼʼʼʼʼ new Russians who aspire to get into politics: they are clearly aware that the high economic level they have achieved is unreliable without being compatible with an equally high political status. Similarly, a poor person who has received a fairly high political status as a deputy of the State Duma inevitably begins to use the newly acquired position for the corresponding “pulling up” of his economic status.
