Weber built off of Marx's idea that social stratification was a result of ownership of the "means of production" or economic ability but added a social and political dimension to the economic dimension. He moved away from viewing society as a object and viewed it as a series of social interactions. Weber's social stratification in society involved three dimensions which include class, status, and party. Each of these components play a role and are interrelated with each other and helps determine the opportunities an individual will have in society.
Class is the economic dimension in Weber’s formula. Class is made up of people who share three things, “(1) a number of people in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) life chances given by their economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets.” In other words, Weber believes that a person’s class is determined by the opportunities available or as he calls "life chances" of the individual or group in order to survive comfortably. This just means that a person working the cash register at Kroger is not going to hang out at the country club that and executive from Ford golf’s at.
Money and capital play a role in determining class, but also the idea of people who own property and those who lack property played a bigger role in determining class. Since people who own property possess large amounts of power because the supply is limited and is the most profitable. Weber then describes the "market situation" which is the class relationship between those who own the goods, rent the property, and those who do not own property. To put it in today's terms the people who own property are upper-class, people who rent are middle class, and those who do not own property and cannot rent are lower class. Weber believed that the class a person belongs to then influences their person's status and power.
Status is the social component in Weber's theory. Status can be related to how respected a group or individual is in society but it is not always linked to property or economic wealth. He believed that the class a person belongs to will shape their status in society. It is common that a person in the upper class will have the highest status in society but this is not always true. In some communities or societies the people with the highest status might not have the most wealth but are respected by others for different reasons such as age, position in the church, or length of residency in an area.
Party or power is the political dimension in Weber's formula. The party dimension is designed to bring people together who share similar ideas or to change or deal with problems from the opposing class as in the dominant and subordinate group model. Power can also be defined as how a person can obtain resources despite being challenged by others. An example of someone who may have a large amount power could be an executive of a large business who has committed a white collar crime but avoids jail time because of his ability to hire a team of lawyers to influence the court system that he is not guilty and eventually gets off. A person with little power would be an a poor individual who lives in the inner city and is charged with a petty crime that ends up getting the maximum sentence.
The point that Weber is trying to get across from this essay is that social stratification involves more than just a person's economic status or wealth like Marx believes. It involves a formula which brings together economic, social, and political dimensions which he calls class, status, and party.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
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Weber's interpretation on class, status, and party pretty much sums up how this world works. We all need to know which class we belong to, our status level, and which party as well, to be able to fit into society successfully. If this is unknown then there is a glitch in people's worlds and they may think that they belong in a higher class, where in reality they do not. This could be quite confusing if it were to happen. Just think, one would dress, act, and speak a certain way, thinking that they belong in a certain place, when maybe their family doesn't have the correct amount of money to be considered "rich and fancy". This is quite hard on some people, and there have been instances where certain individuals have been litereally "kicked out" of that rich life that they have been used to for years. I believe this to be a cruel and unusual punishment in society, but it has been done and surely will happen again, according to Weber's work.
ReplyDeleteWeber has intentionally linked class, status, and party to one another for a reason: to show society how people really work. Without belonging to a specific class, one would be completely lost. They would not know what people to talk to, what clothes to wear, or how to speak to others in a different class. Once people know their status in society they can go on with their lives, knowing what connections to make, who to literally be friends with, and where to live (on an economical basis). Weber studied people and societies for many years to come up with his findings, and they are the basis for a lot of sociologists and research workers out there.
Weber did take Marx's idea of social stratification, but he turned it into a much more complex idea. Without Marx's research Weber would have never come to his conclusions about social stratification in such ways as he did. It would not have had the proper research to have supported all the findings. Marx indeed opened up a whole new world out there for future researchers, and I think desperately hoped that someone like Weber would come along and turn it into so much more....which he did.