SOCIAL CLASS INFLUENCE LIFE CHANCES

Social Class Influence Life Chances

Social Class Influence Life Chances

Introduction

The categorising of people according their status within society is as old as mankind itself. The study of class has been viewed as the means to comprehend the structure of social society. Analyzing class has become a characteristic of much sociological debate. Leading class theorists including Marx, Weber, and functionalist thought assembled many complex approaches to class analysis near the turn of the 20th century. In today's industrial society, such as Britain, the system of social structure is adaptable. People can more easily ascend the social ladder than in the past. Modern theorists have attempted to explain what constitutes a particular social class and whether it is the type of neighbourhood one lives, their career, ethnicity or income that defines to which class they belong.

Definitions

Inequality

The quality of being unequal; difference, or want of equality, in any respect; lack of uniformity; disproportion; unevenness; disparity; diversity; as, an inequality in size, stature, numbers, power, distances, motions, rank, property, etc.

Stratification

Stratification can be defined various ways, but most commonly refers to institutionalized inequalities in power, wealth, and status between categories of persons within a single social system (e.g., classes, castes, ethnic groups). On one hand, inequalities based on personal qualities (charisma, economic or social skills, etc.) do not constitute stratification, since they aren't defined by membership in a particular category.

Gender inequality

A social order in which women and men share the same opportunities and the same constraints on full participation in both the economic and the domestic realm.

Analysis

Is the tern underclass a suitable identifier and a persuasive symbolic label as Marxists contend, or is it a post-industrial experience? The term underclass is largely used to define the unemployed who have little prospects for long-term, pernanent employment. The general tern cannot be applied broadly to all who are out of work for an extended period. This classification of people may be inclined to be chronically unemployed or unskilled but they have little else in common. The post-industrial class does not generally work in the mills or farms. They are an educated and skilled group which developed after WWII and constitute the middle to upper-middle class of society. The unskilled worker class has decreased as the class of the more educated workers becomes increasingly prevalent (Burrus, 1987).

Class is a matter of social perspectives. Position in the hierarchy is determined by personal merit and personal wealth. Most Britons view our own situation as in a middle class life-style. A person living in a Council Estate tenant views owning a home as a move into the middle-class. This is the height of their social objective. The title-holder of a house would view moving into a terraced house as a step down into the working class. Working class people see society levels in ternis of the haves and have-nots (Swift, 2000). In a utopian world, a person's circumstances would be of no significance. Everyone would compete for jobs under the same equitable ...