Oct.

22 Social Class______________

What is Social Class?

Functionalist Approach to Social Class
and Critique
Upper Class in America

More than just how much $$ you make.

Wealth: Physical Property, valuable objects, and investments.
Socio-economic Status (SES): Income, educational attainment,
and occupational status.
Weber argues that groups are stratified by a combination of
power, wealth, and prestige.
(Most people are middle-class)

Social Stratification: A Functionalist

Approach______
Functionalists all about structure, seeing ideas as predictable, and all
the parts are needed to make the system to function.
Social Stratification is necessary to make sure certain individuals
fill certain important positions in society.
Societys Rewards: Sustenance and comfort, humor and
diversion, self-respect and ego.
Determinants of Positional Rank:
Functional Importance
Scarcity of Personnel

Critiques of the Functionalist Approach________

Stratification limits full range of talents, creative potential
available in a society.
Stratification provides elite with power to rationalize the status
quo.
Stratification promotes inequality in social rewards that lead to:
~Hostility and Suspicionlimited social integration.

~Unequally distribute sense of membership, loyalty,

motivation to participate and apathy.

Class as Culture
Remember high culture?
Upper class shares a distinctive lifestyle through participation in
various social institutions.
Subjective Indicators of Social Class:
Attitudes and values
Class Identification
Consumption Patterns
People Like Us: Chintz or Shag?
The Upper Class
-Upper class in America exists as a set of interrelated social
institutions.
-Schools
-Social Clubs
*Mechanisms for socializing new members.
*Create connections on a national scale.
*Reproduce class: There has been more continuity than change
among the business elites and upper classes in America.