Types of stratification profile
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a) b) c)
Picture 1. a) rhombus; b) pyramid with broad footing; c) pyramid with narrow footing.
The stratification profile may speak a lot of stability in the society. Its extreme stretching or increase of social distance between the poles of differentiation of the society (as in case c) leads to strengthening social tension in the society. On the other hand, extreme compression (as in case b) can also have negative consequences as egalitarian principles in income, property, power, status positions deprive people of both important stimuli to activities and source of social development, which is social inequality. In other words, it leads to stagnation of the society.
Sociologists are unanimous in their opinion that middle class plays an important role in ensuring stability in the society. Sociological surveys prove that in modern Western countries middle class accounts for about 60% of the population. Occupying an intermediate position in a social hierarchy it serves as a kind of shock-absorber that partially puts out contradictions arising between the poles of social differentiation of the society and reduces the poles’ opposition. The larger is the share of the middle class in the population the larger is the impact it has on the socio-economic policy of the state, on formation of the public opinion etc.
Social stratification of modern Belarusian society
Under transferring from one socio-economic system to another in post-soviet societies in general and in Belarusian society in particular some deconstruction of criteria for social stratification has taken place. The following three parameters are of primary importance nowadays:
· owning the capital brining in profit;
· participation in redistribution of public wealth resulted from privatization of state property;
· level of personal income and consumption.
These parameters in a generalized form may represent material well-being measured per capita monthly in US dollars. Such methods are used by Russian sociologists, for instance, by N.M. Rimashevskaya and others who consider as rich those people whose monthly current income exceeds $ 3,000 per capita and as poor – those people whose monthly income is less than $ 50.
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Having applied these methods of calculations a Belarusian sociologist E.M. Babosov suggested a seven-step socio-structural matrix which shows social stratification of the Belarusian society by 2002:
1) rich people (1,5-2% of the population);
2) prosperous people who can afford expensive goods, trips, holidays etc. (3-4%);
3) well-doing people with the income of $1,000-500 who feel a bit restrained while buying expensive cars, visiting restaurants, going abroad etc. (8-9%);
4) moderately-doing people with the income of $300-100 who have to make a choice how to spend spare money with focusing on the family primary needs: to buy either good clothes or good food or high-tech equipment but never all these things at a time (38%);
5) little-doing people who feel seriously restrained as they can’t buy household or other expensive equipment, good clothes etc. (14-15%);
6) poor people who only sometimes afford to buy meat, fruit, clothes, who can’t pay for their children’s education (31%);
7) rags who can’t buy meat, fruit, clothes for themselves and their children; being beggars they often live on handout (7%).
Actually, this structural matrix of social stratification shows the distribution of wealth and income in Belarus but the population of the country can also be stratified according to people’s social statuses. E.M. Babosov suggested his own hierarchy with seven strata which is superposed with his socio-structural matrix. Obviously, his matrix differs from that of W. Warner with three basic strata further subdivided into upper and lower ones, because in modern Belarus, due to its historic development, there is no “old money” class, middle class is subdivided in three layers etc. So, due to statuses, in 2002 the Belarusian society was viewed by E.M. Babosov as follows:
· upper class – new elite is at the top of the pyramid: rich entrepreneurs, top officials like ministers and higher who are in fact a new bourgeoisie and higher state bureaucracy;
· upper middle class – middle and petty entrepreneurs, directors of enterprises, popular artists, actors, famous scientists, owners of medical centers etc.;
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· middle class – professors, lawyers and doctors possessing a private practice, middle management of efficient enterprises, senior offices etc.;
· lower middle class – teachers, line managers and engineers, employees of cultural establishments, qualified workers etc.;
· lower class – low qualified workers, peasants, etc.;
· parasite layers – mafia groups, racketeers, gangsters, witches, magicians etc. They may belong to various classes due to their level of wealth, even to the upper class but their status in the society is not high that’s why they have to put on a mask of other statuses;
· marginal layers – the homeless adults and teenagers, beggars who descended from other social classes, refugees etc.
Sociological surveys carried out in 1990-2002 show that a stratification profile of Belarusian transitive society had the form of a pyramid with broad footing (poor or lower classes of the society) and small peak (economic and political elite). The footing was a zone of poverty which extended from 3% of the population in 1990 to 76,8% in 2001. The other area of the pyramid was for the elite and middle class, they being not numerous in number. Of four basic parameters of social stratification (income, power, education and prestige) only power and income worked here as clearly defined. As for the political elite, these parameters were power and, to some extent, income which enabled to define the political elite as the middle class, as for the economic elite – mainly income.
As for prestige, the rich couldn’t be defined by this parameter as most of them got money by robbing the society and sometimes by crimes. As for education, the political elite are university graduates, but only few of the economic elite (the so called “new Belarusians”) can have boasted having university diplomas. It means that in the Republic of Belarus characteristics of the middle class were less defined as compared to highly developed countries.
But over the last three years a tendency of increasing monthly wages and salaries has been observed in the country. The income of the population is gradually increasing that together with the results of various socio-economic reforms undertaken in the Republic of Belarus may soon lead to changing the structural matrix of social stratification of its society.
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BASIC CONCEPTS
Aggregated socio-economic status – a person’s position and place in the society; a generalized parameter of stratification.
Economic stratification – a form of stratification when the focus is on the wealthy and the poor.
Horizontal social mobility – movements from one social position to another situated on the same level.
Income – amount of money a person or family makes for a definite period of time (month or year).
Lumpens – people who are completely discarded by the society.
Occupational stratification – a form of stratification if members of the society are differentiated into various occupational groups and some of these occupations are deemed more honorable than others, or if occupations are internally divided between those who give orders and those who receive orders.
Political stratification – a form of stratification when social ranks in a society are hierarchically structured with respect to authority and power.
Prestige – respect that public opinion gives to a certain job, profession or occupation.
Social inequality – unequal distribution of material wealth in a society.
Social mobility – people’s moving or transition from one social position to another in the social space.
Social stratification – differentiation of the population into hierarchically overlapped classes or strata (by P.A. Sorokin).
Status incompatibility – a contradiction between statuses or between status characteristics in the person’s status set.
Stratification profile – structural distribution of wealth and income that shows a ratio of the upper, middle and lower classes in the country’s population, or the level of social inequality in the given society.
Vertical social mobility – transitions of people from one social stratum to one higher or lower in the social scale.
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Wealth – accumulated income in the form of cash or materialized money; it can be movable property and real estate.
Additional literature
· Blau P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). – New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. – 354 p.
· Bourdeiu P. Logic of Practice. – Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. – 382 p.
· Coser L. The Functions of Social Conflict. – Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. – 188 p.
· Durkheim E. The Division of Labour in Society. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. – 272 p.
· Durkheim E. Suicide. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1951. – 345 p.
· Sztompka P. Sociology in Action: The Theory of Social Decoding. – Oxford: Polity Press, 2001. – 415 p
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