Social stratification and social inequality

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.

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.

· DurkheimE.The Division of Labour in Society. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. – 272 p.

· DurkheimE.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