Page 2 - Lesson Notes

 Social inequality is not the outcome of innate or „natural‟

difference between people, but is produced by society in which
they live.

Social Stratification:

 It refers to a system by which categories of people in a society
are ranked in a hierarchy.

 Social stratification refers to society's categorization of its
people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth,
income, race, education, gender, occupation, and social status,

or derived power (social and political)

 The hierarchical arrangement of different segments of society

into „strata‟ or sub-groups whose members share the same

general position in the hierarchy.

 Stratification implies inequality

 Egalitarian societies are in theory lacking in strata, though they

may have other forms of sub-grouping which are not arranged in
hierarchical terms.

Principles of Stratification:

1. Social stratification is a characteristic of society not simply a

function of individual difference

 It is a society wide system that unequally distributes social
resources among categories of people

 In Primitive societies, rudimentary social stratification could
exist.

 In more technologically advanced society where people produce
a surplus over and above their basic needs, social resources are

unequally distributed to various social categories regardless of
people‟s innate individual abilities.