What are the main ways in which groups of people draw distinctions between themselves and other groups of people?

Essay by josephchristCollege, Undergraduate December 2004

download word file, 6 pages 4.7

Downloaded 107 times

There are many different ways in which groups of people draw distinctions between themselves and other groups of people. Throughout my essay I am going to look at the factors that allow these distinctions to be made and how they are made. The general term used to describe the way in which groups of people draw distinctions between themselves and other groups of people is called 'social stratification'. "Sociologists use the concept social stratification to refer to a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy." According to Macionis and Plummer, social stratification has four basic principles. The first of these principles is "Social stratification is a characteristic of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences", the second is "social stratification persists over generations", the third principle is "social stratification is universal but variable" and the final principal is "social stratification is not just inequality but beliefs.

I will delve further into these principals throughout my essay. There are two opposing standards when describing social stratification. They are 'closed systems' which allow for little change, and 'open systems', which allow for social mobility. "Each society has social layer, or strata which are demarcated more or less sharply from one another." This can be a way in which people draw distinctions between each other. Groups of people draw distinctions between themselves and other groups of people through things such as social and economic positions, power, prestige, gender, ethnicity, age, disabilities etc. Plummer states that these differences, or inequalities, are hierarchies which are known as 'social and economic stratification', 'gender stratification', 'ethnic stratification' and 'age stratification' I will discuss all of these further in my essay

In this paragraph I will be explaining the different systems of social and economic stratification. Slavery, caste, estate and class...