I was in an interdisciplinary major - which was a new thing then - which was psychology, sociology, anthropology, and biology, which is really sort of the study of the human being.
Stratification and Global Inequality (Part C)
by
Charles Lamson
Stratification and Culture
Why do people accept their place in a stratification system, especially when they are at or near the bottom? One answer is that they have no choice; they lack not only wealth and opportunities but also the power to change their situation. But lack of power does not prevent people from rebelling against inequality. Many people also believe that their inferior place in the system is justified by their own failures or by the accident of their birth. If people who have good cause to rebel do not do so and instead support the existing stratification system, those who do wish to rebel may feel that their efforts will be fruitless.
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FIGURE 1 A Stratification System
Another reason people accept their place in a stratification system (see Figure 1) is that the system itself is part of their culture. Through socialization we learn the cultural norms that justify our society's system of stratification. The rich learn how to act like rich people; the poor learn how to survive, and in so doing they tacitly accept being poor. Women and men learn to accept the places assigned to them, and so do the young and the old. Yet despite the powerful influence of socialization, at times large numbers of people rebel against their cultural conditioning. To understand their reasons for doing so, we need to examine the cultural foundations of stratification systems.
FIGURE 2 The American Dream
The Role of Ideology
An ideology is a system of ideas and norms that all the members of a society are expected to believe in and act on without question. Every society appears to have ideologies that justify stratification and are used to socialize new generations to believe that existing patterns of inequality are legitimate. In the United States, for example, most people embrace the ideology of the American dream (see Figure 2), the idea that in America anyone who works hard can achieve success and wealth. At the same time, we know that the odds of achieving great wealth are very low. This is one reason people love to hear stories about poor or or hard-working people of modest means whose lives are transformed by sudden lottery winnings. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the "rags-to-riches" stories of Horatio Alger were extremely popular. In Alger's first novel, Ragged Dick, the central character is a poor but honest boy who comes to the city looking for work. As he walks the streets he sees a runaway carriage; he leaps onto the horses and and stops them. In the carriage is a beautiful young woman who turns out to have a rich father. The father takes Dick into his business, where he proves his great motivation and becomes highly successful.
The people of pre-revolutionary China were also guided by ideology; they believed in the teachings of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), which emphasized the need to accept one's place in a well-ordered, highly stratified society (McNeill, 1963, The Rise of the West). Similarly, the castes of Hindu India are supported by religious ideologies. The rig-veda taught that Hindu Society was, by Divine will, divided into forecasts, of which the brahmins were the highest because they were responsible for religious ceremonies and sacrifices (Majundar, 1951, The History and Culture of the Indian People McNeil, 1963). Over time, other castes with other tasks were added to the system as the division of labor progressed and new occupations developed. Still another powerful ideology had its origins in Europe before the spread of Christianity. Tribal people in what is now France and Germany Associated their kings with Gods, and that association became stronger in the feudal era (Dodgson, 1987, The European Past).
FIGURE 3 Jesus Teaching
Religious teachings often serve as the ideologies of civilizations, explaining and justifying the stratification systems associated with them. But this relationship has not held in very every historical period or for every religious movement. Originally, for example, the teachings of Jesus (see Figure 3) opposed the stratification systems of both the Roman Empire and the Jewish people. Jesus preached a gospel of love and claimed that "The last shall be first" and "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." He showed sympathy for prostitutes and outcasts such as money lenders. No wonder his teachings appealed to the poor and downtrodden and enraged the wealthy and powerful. But over many centuries Christ's teachings were incorporated into church doctrine and organization, and by the Middle Ages Christianity was the ideology underlying the stratification system of kings, lord's, merchants, and peasants. The vicar is of the church upheld that system by affirming its legitimacy in coronations and royal weddings. They also presided over the execution of heretics who challenged the system, which was viewed as divinely ordained.
In our own era the civil rights movement in the United States, the movement to end apartheid in South Africa, the struggle of the Northern Irish Catholics for independence from Britain, and other social movements often invoke the ideology of radical Christianity. "We Shall Overcome," the theme song of the civil rights movement, was borrowed from an African-American Baptist spiritual, "I Shall Overcome," and transformed into a moving song of hope and protest with religious overtones.
Stratification at the Micro Level
These relationships between religious ideologies and the stratification systems of civilizations are macro-level examples of how cultures maintain stratification systems from one generation to the next. But we can also see the connection between culture and stratification in the micro level interactions of daily life. The way we dress---whether we wear expensive designer clothes, off-the-rack apparel, or second hand clothing from the Salvation Army-- -says a great deal about our place in the stratification system. So does the way we speak, as anyone knows who has been told to get rid of a Southern or Brooklyn accent in order to "get ahead." Our efforts to possess and display status symbols---material objects or behaviors that convey prestige---are encouraged by the billion-dollar advertising industry. Many other examples could be given, but here we will concentrate on two sets of norms that reinforce stratification at the micro-level; the norms of deference and demeanor (Goldhamer & Shils, 1939, Types of Power and Status. American Journal of Sociology, 45, 171-182).
FIGURE 4 Bowing: A Common Display of Deference
Deference By deference we mean the "appreciation an individual shows of another to that other" (Goffman, 1958, Deference and Demeanor. American Anthropologist, pp. 488-489). In popular speech the word deference is often used to indicate how one person should behave in the presence of another who is of higher status. These displays of deference illustrate how our society's stratification system is experienced in everyday life. In the United States, for example, we learn to address judges as "Your Honor." In most European countries, with their histories of more rigid stratification, people who want to show deference go further and address the judge as "Your Excellence."
But deference is not a one-way process. Erving Goffman has pointed out that the act of paying deference to someone in a higher status often obligates that other person to pay some form of deference in return: "High priests all over the world seem obliged to respond to offerings of deference with an equivalent of "Bless you, my son.'" (Goffman, 1958, pp. 489). The point here is that deference is often symmetrical in that both participants defer according to their place in the stratification system. Through deferent behavior and the appropriate response, both parties affirm their acceptance of the stratification system. Intuitively we all know this. When we are stopped by a police officer we may become deferential, using the most polite forms of address ("Yes, Sir," "No, Sir," and the like) in order to avoid embarrassment. The officer, in turn, my attempt to find out our place in the stratification system and use the appropriate forms of address in speaking to us.
Demeanor Our demeanor is the way we present ourselves---our body language, dress, speech, and manners. It conveys to others how much deference or respect we believe is due us. Here again the interaction can be symmetrical. The professor must make the first move toward informality in relations with students, for instance, but among professors of equal rank there is far more symmetry. The move toward informal demeanor, such as the use of first names, can be initiated by whomever feels most comfortable in his or her status. On the other hand, asymmetry in the use of names can be used to reinforce stratification, as in an office where the secretaries are addressed by their first names but address their supervisor by his or her last name plus a title such as Mr., Dr., or Professor.
Stratification and Social Interactions These largely taken-for-granted aspects of how we carry out or construct social stratification in our social interactions can have far-reaching effects. Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, and other African American Writers describe vividly of their parents in the era of segregation. Even to lift one's eyes to admire a white woman could cause trouble for a black man in the Jim Crow regions of the United States. Failure to carry out the rules of demeanor---to twitch, to have a runny nose, to encroach on another person's space---can cause a person to be labeled deviant (see Figure 5) and to be cast out of the "acceptable" strata of society.
*MAIN SOURCE: SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., 2003, WILLIAM KORNBLUM, PP. 316-317*
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