What is the most common form of social stratification?

Equality of Opportunity and Stratification

Social stratification and mobility processes can be depicted as a race, with winners and losers obviously. Thus, social stratification and mobility processes are associated with inequality of results (of the race) and conditions. How one defines the concept equality of opportunity is important in assessing whether or not social inequality is fair and justifiable. A very wide array of definitions for the concept equality of opportunity exists in the literature, providing many – nearly all possible – justifications for the existence of inequality in society.

A thin definition of the concept equality of opportunity postulates that opportunities are equal as long as no overt discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, and the like prevents anyone from entering a race. This minimal definition is also known as formal equality of opportunity, and is concerned with equality of the access to available opportunity. Examples for the lack of equal access to opportunity used to be very common in the past. For example, for many years women did not have access to the political spheres and were denied access to higher education. This formal definition of the concept is apparent in the legislation.

Entering the race does not necessarily mean winning it, and thus the concept equality of opportunity can be extended to include also the rules governing the competition and how the winner is selected, that is, equality in the selection processes, once access is granted. At the formal level, an extension of the concept to include also selection processes would require, in the context of the labor market for example, the adaptation of race, age, gender, etc., blind procedures for job hiring and firing. Under such a policy, equality of opportunity does not necessarily mean that social background is not associated with the winners of the race. This is so simply because of the advantages and disadvantages that social background entails. Accordingly, a child of educated professional parents is better equipped to take advantage of the educational system than a child of uneducated working class parents. Defining equality of opportunity with reference to equal chances for access and advancement is akin to Sorokin's characterization of modern democratic societies, as societies in which “there are no judicial or religious obstacles to climbing or going down” (Sorokin, 1959: p. 153).

1.1 Forms of Social Stratification

Human social stratification takes many forms. For example, in foraging societies, social status usually depends on hunting and leadership ability, particularly for males (Gurven & von Rueden 2006). Individuals who consistently bring back favored animal protein for meals are held in higher esteem than those who rarely succeed at hunting.

In parts of the world where agriculture has gradually replaced hunting and gathering, one finds land holdings forming the basis for social stratification. These holdings tend to be transmitted intergenerationally and give rise to what are known as estates, which were highly prevalent in mediaeval Europe (Ertman 1997).

With the rise of agriculture one finds cities slowly emerging with new forms of stratification. These forms are centered on occupational pursuits. As the skills needed for acquiring specialized occupational skills grew, so too did the intergenerational transmission of status associated with occupational classes. Among the best known forms of stratification according to basic occupational classes are known as guilds (Gilbert 1986; Evetts 2003). Even more rigid occupational classes are called castes, with the most famous examples found in India (Blunt 1931; Sinha 1967), although they exist in other parts of the world as well (Dumont 1980).

Probably the most rigid types of stratification come in the forms of slavery and indentured servitude (McSheffrey 1983; Silverman 2001; Ashcroft et al. 2013). Both of these forms involve people being treated as actual property and are often based on race or ethnicity. Apartheid is another type of social stratification that designates people on the basis of race or some other inherited characteristics. The most well-known country that practiced apartheid for several decades was South Africa (Ellis 1993).

In each of the above forms of stratification, individuals are usually designated a social status based on parentage or ethnic ancestry. However, the forms of social stratification that are most common in contemporary societies tend to be less rigid and more nuanced. In other words, individuals are not assigned a social status based simply on that of their parents. Instead, they at least have the chance of moving up or down in status relative to their parents.

Collective Mentoring by Affirmative Action

In the social stratification of science, the situation of women and other ‘minorities’ has always been rather peculiar. Irrespective of their actual individual achievements, they are more frequently working in organizational contexts disadvantageously affecting the cumulative allocation of reward during their scientific career. This bears upon appointments to institutions with low prestige, lacking eminent mentors, and access to scientific networks, publishing later and less than others, more seldom being held eligible for research funds and fellowships (Keith et al., 2002). This is one reason why members of these groups are much scarcer as gatekeepers of science as well and structurally encounter fewer opportunities to shape research policy issues. Respecting the normative ethos of universalism (Merton, 1942), which regards the validity of scientific knowledge claims as independent of irrelevant personal characteristics of scientists, often leads to support institutional measures for equal opportunities in science. In this sense, affirmative action for disadvantaged groups can be understood as a critique on a still lacking universalism in access to science.

Affirmative action designates institutional measures of support, for instance, by quotas, targets, and mentorship, in order to counteract individuals' exclusion from opportunities based on group membership such as by race, class, and gender. These institutionalized forms of support aim at integrating members of these groups in academic networks by mediating knowledge about scholarly practices and by generating opportunities for experiencing career support and collegiality. Moreover, by affirmative action it is expected to provide more equal access for ‘minority’ members to shaping research policy at all relevant levels. Within the last decades, there has been done much research on affirmative action in the educational and employment system (Harper and Reskin, 2005). However, experience shows that it very much depends on programs' actual implementation practices whether their outcomes really benefit ‘minority’ members or not (Aguirre, 2000). Both social disparities and institutional programs to combat discrimination in the academe significantly vary between countries; particularly Anglo-Saxon and European Scandinavian countries are perceived as more advanced in that regard. While in the United States, affirmative action in higher education has responded to the Civil Rights movement from the 1960s onward, European countries only recently have begun to learn from these experiences (Bacchi, 1996; Appelt and Jarosch, 2000). In 1997, the European Union has adopted a legal guideline for actively pursuing antidiscriminiation strategies as part of the ‘Treaty of Amsterdam,’ such as by implementing gender mainstreaming and strategies combating racism. Except for the United Kingdom (HESA, 2012), however, most European countries' higher education statistics do not provide information with respect to known ethnicity-status, which indicates that ‘minority’ issues still are not much on the science policy agenda there.

2 Virtuoso and Mass Religion

The sociology of social stratification is concerned with the distribution of scarce resources and with the formation of social hierarchies by the processes of social closure and exclusion. The most common illustration of social stratification would be the unequal distribution of economic resources, resulting in a simple formation of economic classes. However, stratification also involves cultural distinctions such as education, lifestyle, and cultural consumption. Weber made an original contribution to the sociology of religion by treating charisma (a ‘gift of grace’) as a religious value that is also characterized by scarcity. Because these religious values are unequally and unevenly distributed in human societies, there is religious stratification. In The Social Psychology of the World Religions, Weber (1991, p. 287) asserted ‘that men are differently qualified in a religious way stands at the beginning of the history of religion…the sacred values that have been most cherished, the ecstatic and visionary capacities of shamans, sorcerers, ascetics, and pneumatics of all sorts, could not be attained by everyone. The possession of such faculties as “charisma,” which, to be sure, might be awakened in some but not in all. It follows from this that all intensive religiosity has a tendency towards status stratification, in accordance with differences in the charismatic qualifications.’

Religious gifts (charisma) are in demand because they bring healing and salvation, but they are inevitably in short supply. The resulting hierarchy of spiritual gifts creates a stratification system that differentiates between the virtuoso and the mass, where the latter are, in Weber's terminology, religiously ‘unmusical.’ This hierarchy of intense religious values stands in contrast to and frequently in opposition to the formal hierarchy of the ecclesiastical organizations of Christianity that attempted to regulate and to control the flow of charisma.

This model of virtuoso–mass religion is connected with the specific forms of salvational drive in the world religions, namely with their soteriologies. Religious systems of soteriology may be directed either toward inner-worldly asceticism or toward other-worldly mysticism. Now all religions that place a special emphasis on rebirth and spiritual renewal will create a special category of religious aristocracy, because charisma cannot be institutionalized in terms of an egalitarian distribution. This virtuoso pattern emerged as a general characteristic of religious communities, for example, among the Protestant sects, the perushim in Judaism, the Sufi dervishes of Islam, and the Buddhist monks (see Weber 1965, pp. 151–65). The existence of distinctive forms of internal religious stratification has often evolved in sharp contrast to the official doctrines of egalitarianism and universalism in, for example, Christianity and Islam.

There is demand from popular religion to enjoy the benefits of virtuoso religion such as healing, and thus there develops a distinctive pattern of exchange between the virtuosi and the mass. In return for acts of charity and direct economic support from their followers, the virtuosi offer healing, guidance, and other charismatic gifts. The layman who is completely immersed in the everyday world needs the blessing of charisma, but in return the virtuosi depend on lay tributes merely to exist. This mutual dependency and reciprocity create the conditions whereby virtuoso religion can always be diluted or manipulated to some extent by the laity who demand tangible evidence of charismatic gifts in the form of magical displays. In fact, with the possible exceptions of Judaism and Protestantism, all religions and religious ethics have had to (re)introduce cults of saints, heroes, or functional gods in order to accommodate themselves to the needs of the masses (Weber 1965, p. 103). In Asia the religious teachers or gurus function as living saviors, while in Catholicism the veneration of the saints was the real basis of popular religion. In Hasidic Judaism, despite its popular appeal to the ordinary people through, for example, its use of dance as an expression of religious joy, there was also a clear division between the spiritual elite and their disciples. In these examples, Weber recognized a paradoxical tension between the spiritual quest for perfection in the virtuosi, the pragmatic needs of the laity for healing and material sustenance, and the mutual reciprocity between elite and mass. Weber's sociology of charismatic roles was an application of philosophical critique of Christian morals by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who had condemned Christianity as a system of slave morality and as a product of psychological weakness. Slave morals are created out of resentment by a subservient social class, and hence the Christian doctrine of love was analyzed critically as a subconscious doctrine of a resentful social group. Guilt and bad conscience played a pivotal role in Christian ethics. Against this moral system, Nietzsche argued in favor of a revaluation of values from a position of psychological strength. Nietzsche's genealogy of (Christian) morals in terms of a study of the stratification of values between slave and master moralities was translated directly into Weber's social psychology of the world religions (see Stauth and Turner 1988). In Weber's treatment of the psychology of religion, he argued that certain social carriers were crucial in the development of the cultural systems of the various religions. In particular, he claimed, for example, that Islam had been carried by warriors, Buddhism by mendicant monks, Confucianism by court officials and the literati, and Christianity by artisans and craftsmen. These occupational groups were particularly important historically in providing the world religions with a specific soteriology. Thus, the world view of Christianity was shaped by the practical rationalism of artisans and craftsmen, and in the long run this rationalism proved decisive in the connection between the Protestant capitalists and economic rationalism. This thesis has been challenged and various historians have attempted to find similar connections between Jewish culture and the rise of capitalism (see Sombart 1951) or between Islam and capitalism (see Turner 1998). The core of the Weber thesis has survived these criticisms insofar as it attempts to identify important cultural connections between religious discipline, class position, and economic rationalism.

10.11 Closing Comments on Using Likely Universal Correlates of Status in Theory Development and Testing

The first theories of social stratification are usually traced back to the writings of 19th century scholars such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim (Grusky 1994; Beeghley 2015). Since then, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and psychologists have put forth numerous additional theories (Parsons 1940; Buckley 1958; Hauser & Featherman 1977/2013; Angle 1986; Anderson et al. 2001; Sidanius & Pratto 2001; McIntosh & Munk 2009; Lenski 2013; Rowthorn et al. 2014; Doob 2015; Xin 2016). Broad consensus has yet to be reached regarding which if any of these theories can best answer the three main questions that challenge the field:

Why is social stratification found in all societies?

Why do people vary in social status attainment?

What human traits are associated with variations in social status?

Two factors may underlie the inability of social scientists so far to settle on a theory of social stratification. One factor is ideological. As with humans generally, social scientists seem disposed toward explaining social stratification in ways that coincide with their political philosophies. In this regard, social scientists have been shown to favor left-wing political thought more than do people in general (Sanderson & Ellis 1992; Klein & Stern 2005; Rothman et al. 2005). This basically means that social scientists value human equality over individual freedom and personal responsibility for one’s actions (Tetlock 1984; Heywood 2017). As a consequence, social scientists are prone to downplay the role of inherent individual characteristics to explain variations in social status, focusing instead on societal “system-level” factors (Ellis 1998; O’Connor 2009; Johnson 2017). Since Tables 10.10a and 10.10b indicate that several individual characteristics are important, social scientists may need to redouble their efforts to consider theoretical ideas that are outside their ideological leanings.

We believe that the other reason social scientists have yet to coalesce around any single theory of social stratification—particularly a theory that is powerful in its explanatory and predictive capabilities—involves the vastness of the relevant research and the fact that so much of what has been reported has yielded inconsistent findings. Readers can get a sense of both the vastness and the inconsistencies by revisiting the tables throughout this book.

Many of the inconsistent findings are doubtlessly the result of measurement error along with small sample sizes utilized in some of the studies. Furthermore, large numbers of the correlations are likely to be in actuality quite small, implying that their relevance to the study of social stratification is minimal. Additional inconsistencies could reflect nuanced cultural factors that are also of little consequential from a broad theoretical perspective. In light of these qualifying remarks, a wide-ranging approach to correlates of social status is likely to yield the clearest picture of the most important correlates from a theoretical perspective. Therefore, the present chapter should be helpful to social scientists who are seeking to obtain a firm theoretical grasp on social stratification.

While the roughly 4000 studies included in this book are far from being comprehensive, their numbers are sufficient to be indicative of what is currently known about traits associated with social status. Also, because no effort was made to “cherry pick” the evidence to support any particular point of view, one can be assured that the picture provided by the evidence was not agenda-driven.

In conclusion, the overarching goal of this final chapter was to identify what can be deemed universal correlations of social status. The result should provide a new empirical platform from which to view and assess the relative power of social stratification theories. Specifically, the best theories should be those that are able to explain the greatest number of LUCSs revealed in Tables 10.10a and 10.10b. Ultimately, we hope that this book improves scientific understanding of social stratification. Through this understanding, humanity may gradually acquire the wisdom needed to reduce social inequality, or at least ameliorate many of its adverse consequences.

Insurance as a Tool for Increasing or Decreasing Social Stratification

Insurance in action often serves a social stratification function. Insurance law scholar Tom Baker argues that the “social stratification function of insurance is a more generalized way of thinking about the dynamic that makes insurance companies gatekeepers” (Baker, 2008: 10). As the prior sections highlight, the relationship between insurance and law in society is often mediated by insurance institutions, namely, insurance companies. Those individuals who cannot obtain insurance from insurance companies occupy a different social position than those who are able to obtain insurance. Moreover, people who have to pay more for insurance have fewer resources to spend on other things. To be clear, insurance companies are not the sole cause of such inequality. However, insurance companies do play an important role and in doing so, simultaneously construct and reflect the broader social conditions that lead to social stratification. In the context of first-party insurance, many life, health, and disability insurance companies have traditionally refused to provide coverage to people who have been treated for mental illness (Baker, 2002). Some insurance companies that are guided by an overzealous desire to insure ‘good’ risks sometimes ‘cream-skim’ and insure only ‘good’ risks and therefore decrease the likelihood of paying out on claims. This has the undesirable effect (from the standpoint of society) of leaving those most in need of insurance without being able to obtain coverage and increases the gap between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’

Conversely, insurance laws and regulatory schemes sometimes allow insurance to ameliorate social stratification and consequently serve the public interest (Talesh, 2012). In addition to liability insurance financing the civil litigation system, state laws require people to purchase automobile insurance and allow employers to opt into state-created workers' compensation insurance schemes. In doing so, insurance laws provide injured persons with insurance mechanisms through which to seek relief. Health insurance laws such as Medicaid and Medicare in the United States assist the poor and the elderly (and other groups) by increasing access to care to those who may not otherwise be able to purchase health insurance. Universal or socialized health care programs in Canada and some European countries (and more recently, the Affordable Care Act in the United States) also attempt to reduce social stratification. Though not perfect, insurance regulation, in addition to court decisions, attempts to ensure that insurance companies follow through on their promises, remain solvent, and avoid unfair business practices. Without insurance laws and regulations, policyholders could not possibly trust insurers to pay claims or remain solvent. As a system of risk spreading, transfer, and distribution, insurance can sometimes promote the public good and often allows individuals to seek compensation without needing to use a lawyer. In this way, insurance law acts in the public interest because it provides a collection mechanism for injured persons seeking compensation and relief for injuries (Talesh, 2012).

Ethnocultural Differences

The most prominent differentiations among nonhierarchical concepts of social stratification are certainly ethnicity and race. These factors may on first glance be individual-level factors, however, an overwhelming body of research concludes that it is often the sociocultural context which defines health advantages and disadvantages of native- and foreign-born people. Native- or foreign-born status has multifaceted health implications such as differential access to health care, differences in common health behaviors of the country of residence, and most prominently strong associations with different socioeconomic position. Ethnic and racial differences in health, thus, cannot be investigated without considering sociocultural context factors contributing to these health differences. As an exhaustive presentation of relevant research is beyond the scope of this article, the interested reader is referred to a comprehensive review on the topic in Anderson et al. (2004). Whereas the main strand of research was driven by the ethnically diverse population of the U.S., recent research also considers ethnic differences in health in European countries with a large migrant population. Applying the life course framework to explain ethnic differences in older-age outcomes, important theoretical and empirical contributions have been made investigating outcomes such as stroke (Glymour et al., 2008).

The Rise of the Cultural Omnivore

As the rigidity of both the cultural and social stratification system erodes, cosmopolitan values such as being tolerant of diversity and openness are gaining ground (Inglehart, 1990). It is in this context that the cultural omnivore is introduced as a new type of cultural consumer who – in contrast to the snob typical of Bourdieu's Paris in the 1960s – crosses the boundaries between different cultural schemes (Peterson and Kern, 1996). The idea of omnivorousness suggests that cultural capital – and the prestige associated with it – relates to practices from both sides of the symbolic boundary between highbrow and lowbrow practices. The historic shift from snobbishness to omnivorousness, or the rise of the omnivore, is considered to have taken place in the 1970s and 1980s (Peterson, 1992; Peterson and Kern, 1996).

The concept of omnivorousness – and the lack of clarity surrounding the concept, especially – has generated many questions about what it actually means and how it should be measured (Peterson, 2005). This has motivated researchers to make distinctions between different forms of omnivorousness. The best known is the distinction between omnivorousness in composition – which centers on whether or not boundaries between different cultural schemes are crossed – and omnivorousness in volume – which refers simply to the breadth of taste and not the crossing of boundaries per se (Warde et al., 2008). Another question is whether omnivorousness should be studied in a single cultural sector – for example, by focusing on the variety of preferred musical genres – or whether omnivorousness should be considered across different cultural sectors, including preferences in music, films, books, clothing style, food preferences, and so forth (Van Rees et al., 1999).

These theoretical questions pertaining to the conceptual core of omnivorousness obviously have implications for its measurement in empirical research. There is also considerable debate at the methodological level about the ways omnivorousness should be measured. For example, omnivorousness has often been operationalized as a count variable by simply summing the different preferences of respondents (Peterson, 2005). This is especially problematic considering the bias toward highbrow cultural genres in most standardized surveys. If, compared with less legitimate forms, more legitimate forms of cultural participation are characterized by a greater differentiation, it is hardly surprising that individuals from higher social strata are more omnivorous than individuals from a lower social strata. Indeed, the idea that omnivorousness is exclusively situated in the upper middle classes is being contested. Most cultural sociological studies situate omnivorousness among the highly educated, upper middle classes. However, some authors – most notably Bernard Lahire (2004) – argue that omnivorousness is present in every social stratum. His argument draws on the ideas of Berger and colleagues who argue that individuals in contemporary society are subjected to heterogeneity of socializing experiences (Berger et al., 1974; Lahire, 2011 [2001]). Because of the highly differentiated character of contemporary societies, different life-worlds of individuals are now less unified than in the past. This allows individuals to be influenced by different socializing forces. This pluralization of social life-worlds is further reinforced by the eroding rigidity of the social stratification system. Thus, the individual experience of social mobility, parental/partner heterogamy, and so forth also presents the individual with new forms of cultural activities and preferences.

Moreover, even the depiction of the rise of the omnivore as a recent historic shift has not remained unchallenged. Trends in cultural participation reveal that the presence of the cultural omnivore is actually not that recent. Cultural omnivores were already present in the Netherlands in the mid-1950s. They increased in number until 1983, but have not increased since then (Van Eijck et al., 2002: p. 156). Also, data from Denmark reveal the existence of omnivores in the 1970s (Jæger and Katz-Gerro, 2010; Katz-Gerro and Jæger, 2011). The idea of omnivorousness as a recent phenomenon is further challenged by Lahire (2004), who argues that cultural omnivorousness – or cultural dissonance, as he calls it – is already present in Bourdieu's sample of Parisians in the 1960s. Lahire thus argues that the depiction of the rise of the omnivore as a recent historic shift “confuses a change in the model of reality (the scientific point of view on the world) with a historic change of reality itself” (Lahire, 2008: p. 182).

1.1 Socioeconomic Status and Health

Much effort is given to specify and test pathways through which social stratification indicators affect health, focusing on a wide range of health-related behaviors, environmental risks, and personal traits and dispositions. Link and Phelan (1995), in contrast, building on Durkheim's (1951) classic analysis of suicide, have presented data in support of the argument that socioeconomic differences are fundamental causes of poor health outcomes because those who are more advantaged in any situation or historical period will have greater knowledge of, or be better able to manipulate, the causal influences in their favor. Thus, while the pathways operative in any situation or historical period are specific to the circumstances, the knowledge, power, and resources characteristic of higher SES that provide advantage are more general and fundamental determinants of health across time and social circumstances.