7.1 Explain how the way in which people are ranked within the stratification system depends on events in the society’s history, its geographic location, its level of development in the world, and its political philosophy.

7.2 Compare key ideas in the symbolic interactionist, rational choice, structural-functional, and conflict perspectives on stratification.

7.3 Describe how achieved and ascribed characteristics affect individuals’ life chances in the United States.

7.4 Explain how family background, socialization, marriage, and education can affect social mobility.

7.5 Compare the pluralist and power elite perspectives on stratification in the United States today.

7.6 Illustrate how sociology can help us both understand and address inequality in society.

Key Points:

• Stratification—the layering or ranking of people within society—is one of the most important factors shaping the life chances of individuals. This ranking is influenced by micro, meso, and macro forces and resources.
• Depending on the theoretical perspective, stratification can be viewed as either functional or destructive for soci­ety and its members.
• The United States has less social mobility and higher levels of inequality and poverty than most other Global North nations.
• For individuals, where they stand in the system of strati­fication is highly personal, but it is influenced by the way the social system works at the meso and macro level— due to access to education; the problems created by gender, racial, and ethnic discrimination; and the vitality of the global economy.
• People without much social capital have fewer connec­tions to the meso and macro levels and are less likely to attain power, wealth, and prestige.
• Some macro systems stress ascribed status (assigned to one, often at birth, without consideration of one’s individual choices, talents, or intelligence). Other systems purport to be open and based on achieved status (depending on one’s contributions to the soci­ety and one’s personal abilities and decisions).
• Poverty is a difficult social problem, one that can be costly to a society as a whole. Various solutions at the micro, meso, and macro levels have had mixed results, partially because it is in the interests of those with privi­lege to have an underclass to do the unpleasant jobs.
• Technology is both a contributor to and a possible remedy for inequality, as the digital divide creates prob­lems for the poor, but electronic innovations may create new opportunities in the social structure for networking and connections to the meso and macro levels—even for those in the Global South, the poorer regions of the world.

Summary:

The issue of social stratification calls into question the widely held belief in the fairness of our economic system. By studying this issue, we better understand why some individuals are able to experience prestige (respect) and to control power and wealth at the micro, meso, and macro levels of the social system, while others have little access to those resources. Few social forces affect your personal life at the micro level as much as stratification. That includes the decisions you make about what you wish to do with your life or whom you might marry. Indeed, stratification played a role in why you are reading this book.