Chapter 6: Social Stratification
In the years just after India became independent, a young sociologist named M.N. Srinivas packed a notebook and went to live in a village in Karnataka, which he later called Rampura. He was not there as a guest or an official. He wanted to watch ordinary life — who greeted whom, who sat where, who worked for whom, whose children married into which family — and to write it all down.
Living there, he noticed something that did not fit the tidy picture in the old books. The family the whole village listened to, the family that settled disputes and controlled most of the land, was not from the caste that Hindu tradition ranked highest. Ritual rank and real power, it seemed, did not always rest in the same hands.
He noticed something else. A few families lower down in the caste order had quietly given up meat and liquor and taken up the customs of the castes above them — hoping, over a generation or two, to be treated as higher themselves.
From small observations like these, made by sitting still and watching, Srinivas built ideas that changed how India understood its own social order. This chapter is about that order: the way every society, our own included, sorts its members into layers (Fig. 6.0-1) — by wealth, by caste, and by gender.
Diagram
Fig. 6.0-1 – illustration of a society shown as stacked horizontal layers, like a cross-section of the earth, with small groups of ordinary figures placed in an upper, a middle and a lower band; label the three bands and show a single thin arrow of one figure trying to move from a lower band toward a higher one
By the end of this chapter you will be able to answer each of these questions — questions you cannot settle on this page, but will be able to once you have read on.
6.2 The Class System
The class system is one of the great forms that stratification takes in the modern world. Where caste ties a person to the layer of their birth, class holds out — at least in principle — the possibility of movement. This section asks what a class is, how the class order grew, and what the main classes look like today.
6.2.2 Features of the Class System
Several features mark the class system out from other forms of stratification.
It is an open system. Class boundaries can be crossed; a person may rise or fall from the class of their birth. This movement, which we call social mobility, is possible in a class system in a way it is not in a rigid caste order.
Membership is largely achieved. In principle, class position is earned through ability, effort and opportunity rather than assigned at birth. In practice birth still counts for a great deal — children of wealthy families begin far ahead — but the door to movement is not formally shut.
Its basis is chiefly economic. Wealth, income and occupation are the main threads from which class is woven, even though prestige and lifestyle matter too.
It carries a distinctive lifestyle. Classes tend to differ in dress, food, speech, leisure and manners — the visible “life styles” by which members recognise one another and mark themselves off.
It is not sanctioned by religion. No sacred rule fixes the classes or forbids marriage across them. There is no notion of ritual purity and pollution dividing one class from the next.
6.2.3 The Development of the Class System
The class order did not arrive all at once, and it did not follow a single path everywhere. Its growth can be sketched in broad stages, shown in Fig. 6.2-1.
In the simplest and smallest societies there was little class division at all. Life was too small in scale, and resources too evenly shared, for durable economic layers to form.
Sharper divisions appeared in the feudal period. Society split between lords, who held the land, and serfs, who worked it; alongside them stood soldiers, artisans and, in the towns, craftsmen organised into guilds. Marx held that the clearest two-class structure formed in this period, though other scholars point to the several ranks that lay between.
The decisive break came with the Industrial Revolution. Two distinct classes now faced each other — the capitalists who owned the new factories and the industrial workers who laboured in them. This is the division Marx placed at the centre of modern life.
But the story did not stop with two classes. As industry matured, a large middle class grew up between owners and workers — traders and businesspeople at first, and later a broad body of professionals. Modern society is layered into several classes, not two.
Diagram
Fig. 6.2-1 – a left-to-right timeline of the growth of class: simple societies (little class division) → feudal society (lords and serfs) → industrial society (capitalists and workers) → modern society (a large middle class emerges between the two)
6.2.4 Types of Classes: Upper, Middle and Lower
Modern class societies are commonly described in three broad layers, though each shades into the next (Fig. 6.2-2).
The upper class is small in number but holds a large share of a society’s wealth and property. Its position rests on ownership — of land, businesses, shares — often built up and passed down over generations. Through this wealth it can shape economic and political life well beyond its size.
The middle class is the broad band in between, and it is far from uniform. It is often split again into an upper-middle, a middle and a lower-middle layer. Its members include professionals, managers, businesspeople, teachers, engineers, doctors and salaried employees. This class has grown enormously in modern times, and it has driven much of the development of arts, sciences and public institutions. Movement within it, and a pull towards rising, are constant.
The lower, or working, class earns its living chiefly through manual and wage labour. Historically it bore the harshest conditions — long hours, low pay, crowded housing. Over the last century those conditions have improved in many places, partly through the organised strength of trade unions and partly through wider access to education, health care and social protection. The working class has not vanished, but it has changed form.
A word of caution runs through all three layers. Class cannot be read off income alone. The priest, the scholar and the artist may be honoured out of proportion to their earnings, while a high income may bring little respect. Class is where economic position, prestige and way of life meet.
Diagram
Fig. 6.2-2 – a three-band pyramid: a narrow upper band, a broad middle band (marked into upper-middle, middle and lower-middle sub-bands) and a wide lower band; the width of each band suggests the relative size of the class
6.3 The Caste System
If class is the characteristic form of stratification in the modern industrial world, caste is the form most closely associated with India. It is stratification at its most closed: the layer a person is born into is, in the strict traditional system, the layer they die in. This section looks at what caste is, how tradition explained its origin, what marks it out, and how its worth has been argued over.
6.3.1 The Concept of Caste and the Varna Scheme
A caste is a ranked group into which a person is born, whose membership is fixed for life, and within which one is expected to marry. The word reached India through the Portuguese casta, meaning breed, race or lineage — itself from the Latin castus, “pure.” The Indian term for the birth-groups it named is jati.
The most influential early definition came from the sociologist S.V. Ketkar.
To understand caste in India, two ideas must be kept apart. The first is varna — the four broad divisions set out in the classical texts. The second is jati — the many thousands of actual birth-groups that people belong to in daily life. The varna scheme is the ideal framework; jati is the lived reality on the ground.
The four varnas, ranked from highest, are shown in Fig. 6.3-1. The Brahmins were assigned priestly, teaching and learned functions. The Kshatriyas were the rulers and warriors, holding military and political roles. The Vaishyas were merchants, traders and cultivators, carrying trade and agriculture. The Shudras were the labouring and serving group, meant to serve the other three.
Below and outside this fourfold order stood groups historically subjected to untouchability — treated as so ritually impure that their touch, and even their shadow, was said to defile. The label “untouchable” was one imposed on them by others; it is rejected today, and these communities are recognised in the Constitution as the Scheduled Castes, many of whose members identify as Dalit. Untouchability was formally abolished by the Constitution of India.
Diagram
Fig. 6.3-1 – a four-tier pyramid of the varna scheme, from the top: Brahmin (priests, teachers), Kshatriya (rulers, warriors), Vaishya (traders, cultivators), Shudra (labourers, servers); a separate band drawn outside and below the pyramid marks the groups historically subjected to untouchability, now the Scheduled Castes
6.3.2 The Origin of Caste: The Theory of Divine Origin
How did the caste order come to be? The oldest explanation, and the one the classical tradition itself gives, is the Theory of Divine Origin, also called the Traditional Theory.
Its source is the Purusha Sukta, a hymn of the Rig Veda. It describes a cosmic being, the Purusha, from whose body the four varnas issued: the Brahmin from the mouth, the Kshatriya from the arms, the Vaishya from the thighs, and the Shudra from the feet (Fig. 6.3-2). The body-part is symbolic of the function — the mouth for speech and teaching, the arms for strength and defence, the thighs for the body’s support, the feet for service and movement.
Traditional thought joined this account to the doctrines of karma and dharma. By the doctrine of karma, a person is born into a particular caste as a result of the deeds of a past life. By the doctrine of dharma, one who lives faithfully by the duties of one’s caste is said to earn a higher birth in the next life. Together, these gave the order a moral logic: your caste was deserved, and right conduct within it was the path upward.
It is worth being clear about what this theory is and is not. As sociology, it is important because it shows how the caste order was made to seem natural, sacred and just to those living inside it. As history, it is a belief, not a demonstrated account of origins. Modern scholarship does not treat caste as literally god-given; it sees caste as a social order that grew over a long history.
Diagram
Fig. 6.3-2 – the cosmic being (Purusha) shown upright, with arrows from four body parts to labelled boxes: mouth → Brahmin, arms → Kshatriya, thighs → Vaishya, feet → Shudra; a caption noting the body-part symbolises the varna’s traditional function
6.3.3 The Characteristics of Caste
Whatever its origin, the caste system in India carries a set of characteristic features that together make it a closed form of stratification.
Endogamy and Heredity
Membership of a caste is settled by birth and lasts for life; no change of wealth, education or occupation alters it. Marriage is governed by endogamy — the rule that one must marry within one’s own caste. Marriage across castes has long been discouraged, and endogamy is widely regarded as the very backbone of the system, since it keeps each caste a closed, self-reproducing group.
Hierarchy
Castes are arranged in a hierarchy, with the Brahmins traditionally at the top and the others ranked below. The ranking is not merely of prestige; it is expressed in elaborate rules of who may associate with whom, and it is treated as fixed rather than negotiable.
Purity and Pollution
Underlying the hierarchy is the principle of purity and pollution. Higher castes are held to be ritually pure and lower castes polluting, so that contact with a lower caste — its touch, its food, at the extreme even its shadow — was believed to defile. From this belief flowed strict food and water taboos: rules about with whom one might eat, and forbidding the sharing of a common well.
Hereditary Occupation
Each caste was traditionally tied to a fixed occupation, handed down from parent to child. Occupational names still echo this — Teli for oil-pressers, Mochi for cobblers, Chamar for leather-workers. In modern times this link has loosened sharply: banking, industry and countless new jobs belong to no caste, and the carpenter’s child may become an engineer. Yet the caste label often outlives the occupation it once named.
The Caste Council
Traditionally, caste affairs were regulated by a caste panchayat — a council of caste elders that settled disputes, enforced the rules and could punish those who broke them. With the spread of law and elected local government, the authority of these councils has weakened.
6.3.4 Merits and Demerits of the Caste System
Because caste has shaped Indian society for so long, it has been both defended and condemned. Sociology sets out both cases without taking sides.
Arguments Made in Its Favour
Defenders of the traditional system argued that it secured a settled division of labour: every task had a group responsible for it, and no work was left undone. They held that it preserved skills and crafts, since occupations and their techniques passed from parent to child across generations. They pointed to the social security and identity it gave — a person always knew their group, and the group supported its members. And they credited it with a kind of social stability, each caste keeping to its place.
The Case Against It
The criticisms are far weightier, and they are why the system is rejected today.
Caste denied mobility. Because position was fixed at birth, talent and effort could not lift a person out of the layer they were born into, and ability was wasted.
It rested on untouchability and discrimination. Whole communities were degraded, denied entry to temples, wells and schools, and stripped of dignity — a grave and lasting injustice.
It obstructed equality and national unity, dividing people into ranked and separated groups and standing directly against the democratic principle that all citizens are equal.
It slowed social and economic progress, since fixed occupations resisted change and closed groups resisted cooperation.
And it worked to subordinate women, whose marriages were tightly controlled through endogamy so that caste boundaries could be kept intact.
Weighed together, the traditional defences cannot balance these harms. The caste system is studied today not as an order to be preserved, but as a form of inequality whose workings must be understood in order to be undone.
6.4 Caste and Class: A Comparison
Caste and class are the two great forms of social stratification, and much of what each one is becomes clear only when it is set against the other. Both rank people into higher and lower groups. But they rank on different grounds, and they treat the individual very differently.
The sharpest difference lies in how a person comes to belong. Class rests on achieved status — a position reached through economic activity, education and effort, one that can change over a lifetime. Caste rests on ascribed status — a position fixed at birth, held for life whatever a person does. From this single contrast most of the others follow.
Class is an open system: its layers can be crossed, and movement up or down is possible, even if often difficult. Caste is a closed system: in its traditional form the layer of birth is sealed, and an individual cannot pass from one caste into another. The comparison below draws out the main lines of difference.
Two points deserve care. First, the contrast above is a model — a clean set of ideal types held up so the differences stand out. Real life is messier. Caste has never been wholly frozen: whole groups have raised their standing over generations, a process you will meet in the next section. And class is never wholly open: the advantages of birth — good schools, useful contacts, confidence — are quietly inherited, so the “open” ladder is easier for some to climb than others (Fig. 6.4-1).
Second, caste and class are not rival systems one must choose between. In India they operate together. A single person has both a caste position and a class position, and the two may or may not match — a caste ranked low in ritual terms may include families who are wealthy in class terms, and the reverse is also true. Indian society is stratified by both lines at once.
Diagram
Fig. 6.4-1 – two ladders side by side; the left ladder, labelled “Class (open)”, has a figure climbing its rungs; the right ladder, labelled “Caste (closed)”, has its rungs barred so the figure stays on the rung of birth
6.6 Gender and the Status of Women
Class and caste are the forms of stratification most people expect to meet in a chapter like this. But there is a third line along which almost every society ranks its members, one that cuts across both class and caste: gender. Being born a girl or a boy shapes a person’s opportunities as surely as being born into a class or a caste — which is why sociologists speak of gender stratification, the unequal sharing of wealth, power and prestige between women and men.
6.6.1 Sex and Gender: The Difference
In everyday speech “sex” and “gender” are used as if they meant the same thing. In sociology they do not, and keeping them apart is the starting point of this whole topic.
Sex is the biological distinction between male and female. It is given before birth and marked by physical and chromosomal differences — a person’s twenty-third chromosome pair being XX (female) or XY (male). Sex is a matter of the body.
Gender is different. It is the bundle of personal traits, roles and social positions that a society attaches to being female or male — how one is expected to dress, behave, feel and work. Gender is not inborn; it is learned, taught from childhood through the way boys and girls are treated, spoken to and rewarded.
The clearest evidence that gender is made rather than given comes from comparing cultures. The anthropologist Margaret Mead found that the temperament expected of men and of women differed from one society to another — traits treated as naturally “manly” in one place were expected of women in another. If these traits sprang from biology, they would be the same everywhere; that they vary shows they are the work of culture.
One more point belongs here. Sex is usually spoken of as male or female, but gender does not always fall neatly into two. Some people’s sense of their own gender does not match the sex assigned to them at birth, and some societies have long recognised more than two gender categories. When the topic speaks of the consequences of gender “for men, women and others”, the others are these gender-non-conforming and transgender persons, whose experience the rest of this section keeps in view.
Diagram
Fig. 6.6-1 – two facing columns; the left column, “Sex”, lists biological/given features and the right column, “Gender”, lists socially learned roles, with an arrow showing that gender is added by society on top of sex
6.6.2 Patriarchy and Patriarchal Ideology
Gender stratification does not fall evenly. In most societies it favours men, and the name for that arrangement is patriarchy.
Patriarchy — literally “rule of the father” — is a form of social organisation in which men hold most of the power and authority and women are largely kept out of it. It appears in who heads households, who owns property, who leads institutions and who decides.
Patriarchy is held up by a set of beliefs — a patriarchal ideology — that makes male dominance seem natural and right: that men are more capable, that a woman’s proper place is the home, that authority belongs with fathers and husbands. At the root of this ideology is sexism, the belief that one sex is innately superior to the other.
Sexism is not only a matter of individual opinion. It is built into the institutions of society — into laws, workplaces, schools and families — so that it shapes lives even when no individual intends harm.
It is worth stressing that patriarchy has costs for men too. The demand to be tough, dominant and unemotional pushes men toward risky behaviour and stress, discourages them from seeking help, and cuts them off from closeness. Gender bias in men’s favour is real, but the rigid role it forces on them carries its own price — a point the topic asks you to weigh honestly.
Against this background, consider the position of women in independent India. The Constitution promises equality — Articles 14 and 15 guarantee the right to equality and forbid discrimination on grounds of sex. Yet the social reality has lagged behind the legal promise, as a landmark inquiry made plain.
6.6.3 Gender Bias and Its Consequences: Workplace, Property and Family
Gender bias — the unequal treatment of people because of their gender — works through three arenas in particular. The topic asks you to look at each.
At the workplace, gender stratification is easy to see. Women are concentrated in lower-paid, lower-status work, and jobs labelled “women’s work” — nursing, clerical work, teaching — are paid and valued less, whatever the skill they demand. In India much of women’s labour lies in agriculture and the unorganised sector, unpaid and unrecorded, which is why so much of it stays statistically invisible. Protective laws exist — for instance the Equal Remuneration Act, which requires equal pay for equal work — but the standing complaint is that such laws are poorly enforced.
At the level of property rights, women were long excluded from inheriting family property. The law has changed to correct this, even if custom has been slower.
In family status, girls are often socialised from childhood into a secondary place. In many households a daughter is treated as a temporary member — someone who will leave at marriage — and is expected to help others, sacrifice her own claims, and put the family’s demands before her own. The consequences reach into old age: widows, and especially older widows, are among the most vulnerable members of the patriarchal family, their standing falling sharply with the loss of a husband.
The bias also falls on others — those whose gender does not fit the male–female binary. Transgender and gender-non-conforming persons have faced exclusion from ordinary work, rejection within families, and long invisibility before the law, though recognition of their rights has grown in recent years. Their experience is a reminder that gender stratification harms everyone forced to the edges of its rigid categories.
6.6.4 Gender Issues in Indian Society
The topic names a set of specific gender issues. Each is a social fact to be understood, not merely deplored; each is treated here plainly and without dwelling on distressing detail.
Violence before and around birth
Female infanticide — the killing of girl infants — is an old expression of a preference for sons. Female foeticide is its modern form: the selective abortion of female foetuses after the sex is discovered before birth. As ultrasound spread, so did sex-selective abortion, and its mark shows up directly in the population.
The child sex ratio counts girls per thousand boys among children aged 0–6:
\[\text{Child sex ratio} = \frac{\text{Number of girls aged }0\text{–}6}{\text{Number of boys aged }0\text{–}6} \times 1000\]
Read the table carefully. A figure of 919 means that for every 1000 boys there were only 919 girls; and because 919 is lower than the 927 recorded ten years earlier, the shortfall of girls grew, rather than shrank, between the two censuses (Fig. 6.6-2). The law has tried to stem this.
Diagram
Fig. 6.6-2 – a simple two-bar chart comparing the child sex ratio in 2001 (927) and 2011 (919), with the vertical axis marked “girls per 1000 boys” and a note that the bar has fallen, not risen
Harmful practices in marriage
Child marriage — the marriage of a girl below the legal age — cuts short her schooling, endangers her health, and fixes her in a subordinate role before she can choose otherwise; the law now prohibits it. Dowry, the money or goods demanded from a bride’s family at marriage, remains widespread despite being outlawed by the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961; it burdens a girl’s family, devalues daughters, and in its worst forms leads to cruelty. Sati, the practice by which a widow was burned on her husband’s funeral pyre, was made illegal in the nineteenth century and again by later law; it stands as an extreme historical instance of a widow’s life being counted as worth less than her husband’s. Widowhood itself has long carried a fall in status and a host of restrictions, weighing most heavily on older women left without support.
Violence against women
Domestic violence — abuse by an intimate partner or family member — is among the most common and least reported forms of harm to women, long shielded as a “private” family matter. Rape and sexual harassment are the gravest expressions of gender-based violence; fear of blame, an unresponsive system and hard procedures have kept them badly under-reported. The law has been strengthened in response: reforms in 2013 widened and toughened the provisions on sexual offences, and separate law now requires workplaces to act against the sexual harassment of women.
Women as perpetrators of violence
Gender oppression is not simply a matter of men against women. Because women are raised inside the same patriarchal norms, they too can uphold and enforce them. Older women may press for dowry, share in the decision to abort a female foetus, or treat a younger woman of the household harshly. Recognising this does not shift the blame onto women; it shows that patriarchy is a structure that shapes everyone’s conduct, so that changing it means changing norms, not merely blaming individuals. This is exactly why the topic asks you to notice women as perpetrators as well as victims — a reminder that gender inequality is built into society, not into one sex.
6.7 Summary
Social stratification is the arrangement of a society into a hierarchy of ranked layers (strata), in which whole categories of people have unequal and lasting access to valued resources such as wealth, power and prestige, an inequality passed on across generations.
A social difference is mere variation, set side by side without ranking (horizontal); social inequality is variation that is ranked and decides who gets more (vertical). Stratification is inequality that has hardened into durable, inherited layers.
Following Melvin Tumin, stratification is social (not biological), ancient, universal yet variable, diverse in form, and consequential — it shapes a person’s life chances.
People are ranked on three bases — wealth, power and prestige — which do not always coincide; a group may rank high on one and low on another, as Weber noted. This is why the most powerful family in a village need not be the ritually highest.
Societies range in the extent of their stratification, from egalitarian (little fixed ranking) through rank (unequal prestige only) to stratified societies (unequal in wealth, power and prestige at once), which run from open class to closed caste.
A social class is a group marked off by economic position and its accompanying status and way of life. Class is an open system resting on achieved status, so movement between classes is possible.
Marx defined class by the relationship to the means of production, dividing society into owners (bourgeoisie) and non-owners (proletariat); their opposed interests drive class conflict. His forecast of a two-class split was overtaken by the growth of a large middle class.
The class order developed from feudal lords and serfs, through the capitalists and proletariat of industrial society, into today’s many-layered structure of upper, middle and lower classes — with the middle class the widest and most mobile layer.
A caste is a ranked group fixed by birth, based on ascribed status, into which a person is born and out of which they cannot ordinarily move. The classical varna scheme has four orders — Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra — while jati names the thousands of actual birth-groups; groups placed outside the four were subjected to untouchability, now unlawful.
The Theory of Divine Origin (the Traditional Theory), drawn from the Purusha Sukta and later texts, holds that the four varnas arose from parts of the cosmic being’s body, with the doctrines of karma and dharma giving the ranking religious force. Scholars read it as an ideology that justified the hierarchy rather than a historical account of its origin.
Caste is marked by heredity, endogamy, hierarchy, the logic of ritual purity and pollution, hereditary occupation, and regulation by caste councils. Its claimed merits (security, transmitted skills, order) were bought at the cost of equality, freedom and the dignity of those placed lowest — its serious demerits.
Caste and class differ as closed versus open and ascribed versus achieved: caste fixes birth-rank through endogamy, hereditary occupation and religious sanction, while class allows economic mobility. The clean contrast is an ideal type; in reality caste is not wholly frozen and class not wholly open, and in India both operate together.
Social mobility is movement between positions in the stratification system. Srinivas named three Indian forms: Brahminisation (imitating Brahmin customs to rise), Sanskritisation (a low group adopting the customs of any higher, twice-born caste and claiming higher rank), and Westernisation (changes flowing from British rule across technology, institutions, ideology and values).
Sex is the biological male–female distinction; gender is the socially learned bundle of traits and roles a society attaches to being male or female. Because what counts as masculine or feminine varies across cultures (Mead), gender is made by society, not fixed by biology.
Patriarchy is a social order in which men hold most power; it is upheld by patriarchal ideology and by sexism, the belief that one sex is innately superior. It disadvantages women most, but also imposes costly demands on men. In independent India, constitutional equality (Articles 14 and 15) has run ahead of social reality, as the 1974 “Towards Equality” report showed.
Gender bias falls through three arenas: the workplace (women concentrated in low-paid, often invisible work), property rights (long exclusion from inheritance, only partly corrected by law such as the Hindu Succession Amendment of 2005), and family status (girls socialised into a secondary place, widows left vulnerable) — with those outside the gender binary pushed to the margins.
Gender issues in India include female infanticide and female foeticide (reflected in a falling child sex ratio, from 927 in 2001 to 919 in 2011), child marriage, dowry, sati, widowhood, domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment — met by laws such as the PC-PNDT Act and the Domestic Violence Act. Women can also be perpetrators, which shows gender oppression is a structure that shapes everyone, not a simple contest of one sex against the other.
6.8 Key Terms
- achieved status — a social position earned through a person’s own effort, choice or ability, such as an occupation.
- ascribed status — a social position assigned at birth or involuntarily, regardless of effort, such as caste or sex.
- bourgeoisie — in Marx’s theory, the class that owns the means of production.
- Brahminisation — the process by which lower castes imitate the customs and rituals of Brahmins to raise their position.
- caste — a ranked social group fixed by birth, within which marriage is restricted and out of which a person cannot ordinarily move.
- child marriage — the marriage of a child below the legal age of marriage.
- child sex ratio — the number of girls per 1000 boys among children aged 0–6.
- class consciousness — awareness among the members of a class that they share a common position and common interests.
- closed system — a system of stratification, like caste, in which the layer of birth is sealed and individual movement between layers is not allowed.
- domestic violence — abuse of a person by an intimate partner or family member within the home.
- dowry — money or goods demanded from a bride’s family at the time of marriage.
- egalitarian society — a society with almost no fixed ranking, where positions of prestige are open to all who can earn them and are not inherited.
- endogamy — the rule requiring a person to marry within their own group, such as their caste.
- female foeticide — the selective abortion of female foetuses after the sex is determined before birth.
- female infanticide — the killing of girl infants.
- gender — the socially learned traits, roles and positions a society attaches to being male or female.
- gender bias — the unequal treatment of people on the basis of their gender.
- gender stratification — the unequal distribution of wealth, power and prestige between women and men.
- hereditary occupation — an occupation fixed by birth and passed from parent to child, as in the traditional caste system.
- hierarchy — an ordered arrangement of positions ranked as higher and lower.
- horizontal mobility — movement between positions at the same level of the stratification system, without a change of rank.
- jati — the actual endogamous birth-group into which a person is born; thousands exist within the four varnas.
- life chances — the real opportunities a person has to obtain the things a society values, shaped by their position in it.
- means of production — the land, factories, tools and capital used to produce wealth.
- meritocracy — a system in which social position depends on ability and effort rather than on birth.
- middle class — the broad, varied class between the upper and lower classes, ranging from professionals to junior salaried workers.
- open class system — a system of stratification in which movement between classes is possible.
- patriarchal ideology — the set of beliefs that justifies male dominance and treats it as natural.
- patriarchy — a form of social organisation in which men hold most power and women are largely excluded from it.
- power — the ability to impose one’s will on others, even against resistance.
- prestige — the honour, respect or standing granted to a group by others.
- proletariat — in Marx’s theory, the working class, which owns no means of production and lives by selling its labour.
- rank society — a society with unequal access to prestige but not, in any large way, to wealth or power.
- rape — a grave sexual offence that violates a person’s bodily integrity.
- ritual purity and pollution — the belief underlying caste ranking that higher castes are purer and that contact with lower castes is defiling.
- Sanskritisation — the process by which a low caste, tribe or group adopts the customs and way of life of a higher, twice-born caste and claims a higher rank.
- sati — the historical practice, now illegal, of a widow being burned on her husband’s funeral pyre.
- sex — the biological distinction between male and female.
- sexism — the belief that one sex is innately superior to the other.
- sexual harassment — unwelcome sexual conduct or advances, especially at the workplace.
- social class — a group marked off from others by its economic position and the status and way of life that go with it.
- social difference — variation between people or groups that is not ranked as higher or lower.
- social inequality — the unequal distribution of valued resources so that some groups have more of them than others.
- social mobility — the movement of individuals or groups from one position in the stratification system to another.
- social stratification — the ranking of categories of people into a hierarchy of layers with unequal, lasting access to valued resources.
- stratified society — a society unequal in prestige, wealth and power at once, ranging from open class to closed caste.
- stratum (plural: strata) — a single ranked layer of people within a stratified society.
- untouchability — the practice of treating certain groups as so low that contact with them was held to pollute others; now unlawful.
- varna — the classical fourfold ranking of Hindu society into Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.
- vertical mobility — movement up or down between the layers of the stratification system.
- Westernisation — the changes in Indian society and culture brought about by British rule, across technology, institutions, ideology and values.
- widowhood — the state of having lost one’s spouse, historically carrying a fall in status for women.
6.9 Points to Ponder
Caste is often said to be weakening in modern India, yet it still decides many marriages. Why might the marriage rule (endogamy) outlast so many of caste’s other features?
A class system claims to reward ability and effort. If that were fully true, why do the children of the wealthy so often remain wealthy? Can any society be a pure meritocracy?
Wealth, power and prestige do not always travel together. Does honour without power mean much in a modern society — or has one of the three quietly become more important than the rest?
When a lower group rises through Sanskritisation by imitating the customs of those above it, does it challenge the caste hierarchy or, by accepting its standards of “higher” and “lower”, actually strengthen it?
If gender is largely made by society rather than fixed by biology, why has patriarchy proved so hard to change even where laws now promise equality? What would have to shift, beyond the law, for the change to hold?
6.10 Objective Questions
- The English word “caste” comes from the Portuguese word casta, which means:
- bread
- breed or lineage
- worship
- village [1 mark]
- In Marx’s theory, the class that owns the means of production is called the:
- proletariat
- bourgeoisie
- middle class
- serfs [1 mark]
- A social position that is fixed at birth and cannot be changed by a person’s own effort is called:
- achieved status
- ascribed status
- open status
- earned status [1 mark]
- According to the Census of India, the child sex ratio (girls per 1000 boys, aged 0–6) recorded in 2011 was:
- 943
- 927
- 919
- 933 [1 mark]
- In the varna scheme, the group placed at the top, associated with priestly and teaching functions, is the:
- Kshatriyas
- Vaishyas
- Shudras
- Brahmins [1 mark]
- Read the assertion and reason and choose the correct option. Assertion (A): An individual can move from one caste to another through personal effort. Reason (R): Caste is a closed system in which membership is fixed by birth.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
- Read the assertion and reason and choose the correct option. Assertion (A): Gender is learned rather than inborn. Reason (R): What counts as masculine or feminine varies from one culture to another.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
- Match the thinker in Column A with the contribution in Column B:
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Karl Marx | i. gender varies from culture to culture |
| b. M.N. Srinivas | ii. class defined by the means of production |
| c. Margaret Mead | iii. the characteristics of social stratification |
| d. Melvin Tumin | iv. Sanskritisation |
[1 mark]
Fill in the blank: The rule that requires a person to marry within their own caste is called ______. [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: Social difference and social inequality mean the same thing. [1 mark]
6.11 Check Your Concepts
Define social stratification. [2 marks]
What is meant by patriarchy? [2 marks]
Differentiate between social difference and social inequality. [3 marks]
Distinguish between ascribed status and achieved status, giving one example of each. [3 marks]
Explain briefly why sociologists say that gender is made by society rather than fixed by biology. [3 marks]
Explain, with one example, the process of Sanskritisation. [4 marks]
“Wealth, power and prestige do not always coincide.” Explain this statement with an example. [4 marks]
Describe the Theory of Divine Origin of the caste system, and state one limitation that sociologists point to in it. [6 marks]
Compare the caste system and the class system, bringing out at least four points of difference between them. [6 marks]
Discuss any four gender issues faced by women in Indian society, giving an example of each. [6 marks]
6.12 Passage-Based Questions
- Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. Ravi’s grandfather worked as a landless labourer on other people’s fields. His father, after finishing school, became a bus conductor. Ravi has completed a technical diploma and now works as a technician in a city firm, and he hopes his own children will go to university.
- Which form of stratification — caste or class — is at work in this family’s story? [1]
- Name and explain the process the family illustrates. [2]
- Why would this kind of movement not be possible in a closed system? [1] [4 marks]
- Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. A well-educated urban family, at ease with modern life in every other way, places a newspaper advertisement seeking a marriage match for their daughter “from the same community only”.
- Which characteristic of the caste system does this advertisement show at work? [1]
- Is the family’s caste here an ascribed or an achieved status? Give a reason. [2]
- What does this example suggest about caste in modern India? [1] [4 marks]
- Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. Sunita works long hours on her family’s farm and runs the household, but her labour is unpaid and appears in no record. When her father’s land was divided, it went to her brothers. At the factory where she later takes a job, she is paid less than the men doing similar work.
- Identify the arenas of gender bias shown in this passage. [2]
- What term describes women’s work being left unrecorded and unseen? [1]
- Which law gave daughters an equal right to inherit ancestral property? [1] [4 marks]
6.13 Practice With Data
- In one district, among children aged 0–6 there are 4,560 girls and 4,800 boys.
- Using the child sex ratio formula, calculate the child sex ratio for this district. [2]
- Is the district’s figure higher or lower than the national child sex ratio of 919 recorded in 2011? [1]
- What social practice does a very low child sex ratio point to? [1] [4 marks]
- India’s child sex ratio fell from 927 in 2001 to 919 in 2011.
- By how many points did the child sex ratio fall over the decade? [1]
- What does a falling ratio suggest about the number of girls compared with boys? [1]
- Name one law meant to check this trend. [1] [3 marks]
6.1 Social Stratification: The Elements
Look closely at any society and you will find that it is not a flat, even sheet of people. It is layered. Some groups sit nearer the top, with more money, more say and more respect; others sit lower, with less of each. This chapter studies those layers — how they form, how they harden, and how they change.
6.1.1 The Meaning of Social Stratification
The word comes from geology. A cliff face shows strata — layers of rock laid one above another over long ages. Sociologists borrowed the image. Just as rock is layered, so a society is divided into ranked layers of people, one placed above another.
Social stratification is the arrangement of a society into such a hierarchy of layers, in which whole categories of people have unequal access to what a society values — wealth, power and respect. The key word is categories. Stratification is not about one person being richer than a neighbour; it is about groups being ranked.
Social stratification is the ranking of categories of people in a society into a hierarchy of layers (strata), in which those layers have unequal and lasting access to valued resources such as wealth, power and prestige — an inequality that is passed on across generations.
Notice that a hierarchy — an order of higher and lower positions — is built into the idea. So is the idea of durability. A layer that lasts only a moment is not a stratum; stratification means the ranking holds firm and is handed down.
Sociologists usually draw out four points about stratification. First, it is a feature of society, not merely of individual talent — the layers exist before any single person is born into them. Second, it continues across generations; children tend to inherit the layer of their parents. Third, it is found very widely but takes different forms in different places. Fourth, it rests on shared beliefs — an ideology that makes the ranking seem natural or just to the people living inside it.
This is where the sociological imagination matters. Whether you inherit farmland or a debt, an English-medium schooling or none, is settled in large part before you are old enough to choose. Your effort is real, but it works within a position you did not pick.
Q. Does saying a society is stratified mean that people at the top are simply better than those below?
A. No. Stratification describes unequal access to resources that is built into the structure of society. It does not prove that higher groups are more able — only that they hold a more favoured position, usually one they were born into.
6.1.2 Difference, Inequality and Stratification
Not every way in which people vary is a matter of ranking. This is a distinction the topic asks you to hold firmly.
A social difference is simply variation — people or groups being unlike one another. Two people may speak different languages, prefer different food, follow different faiths or have different hobbies. Set side by side, these are differences without a higher or a lower. We can call this a horizontal arrangement.
Social inequality is different. Here the variation is ranked, and the ranking decides who gets more of the valued things. A landowner and a landless labourer are not merely different; one commands resources the other lacks. This is a vertical arrangement — some positions stand above others.
Social inequality is the unequal distribution of valued resources — such as income, power and honour — so that some groups have more of them than others.
You can see the two at work in Fig. 6.1-1. Stratification is what happens when inequality becomes structured: when the unequal positions settle into durable layers, are tied to whole groups, and are passed on to the next generation. Difference on its own does not stratify a society; inequality that hardens and endures does.
Diagram
Fig. 6.1-1 – two panels; left panel labelled “Difference” shows several figures placed side by side on one level (horizontal); right panel labelled “Inequality” shows figures placed on a staircase of levels, higher and lower (vertical)
Difference vs Inequality | Feature | Social difference | Social inequality | |—|—|—| | Direction | Horizontal — placed side by side | Vertical — placed higher and lower | | Ranking | Not ranked as better or worse | Ranked; some positions valued more | | Access to resources | Does not by itself decide who gets more | Decides who gets more of the valued things | | Example | Two people speaking different languages | A landowner and a landless labourer |
Walk down your street or through a market and list the different kinds of work you can see being done. Then ask, for each: is this just a difference from other work, or is it ranked higher or lower — in pay, in the respect it receives, in the comfort of the person doing it? The line between the two is not always obvious, and noticing where it falls is the beginning of thinking sociologically.
6.1.3 Features of Social Stratification
The sociologist Melvin M. Tumin summed up the character of social stratification in a set of features that are worth learning carefully.
It is social. Stratification comes from society, not from biology. Differences of strength or skill exist, but which of them a society decides to reward — and how richly — is a social choice, not a fact of nature.
It is ancient. Some ranking of people is found far back in recorded history; the impulse to place people high and low is very old.
It is universal, yet variable. Some form of ranking appears in virtually every society we know of. But how far it goes differs enormously — from the barest distinctions of age and skill in small groups to the rigid, birth-fixed layers of a caste order.
It takes diverse forms. A society may stratify chiefly by wealth, chiefly by birth, chiefly by descent, or by several of these at once. Class, caste and gender, which the rest of this chapter examines, are three such forms.
It is consequential. The layer you are born into shapes your life chances — the real opportunities you have to gain the things a society values, from good health and schooling to a secure income. Stratification is not a harmless label; it distributes life itself unequally.
Q1. Every society we know of — even those that preach equality — sorts its members into higher and lower layers. Why does this seem to happen everywhere?
A. Because some ranking of people appears in almost all societies — this is one of stratification’s defining features, its near-universality. Wherever a group must decide who gets the scarce and valued things (land, authority, honour), differences tend to be ranked rather than left flat. What varies is not whether societies rank, but how rigidly: from the light, shifting distinctions of a small foraging band to the fixed layers of caste. So the puzzle is answered on two levels — some inequality is nearly universal, but its extent is highly variable.
Sociologists have long argued about why this ranking persists. Some hold that stratification helps a society by drawing talented people into demanding roles; others reply that it mainly protects the advantages of those already on top. The debate is unsettled, and you will meet both kinds of argument again when you study class and caste.
6.1.4 The Bases of Stratification: Wealth, Power and Prestige
On what grounds are people ranked? Three answers come up again and again.
The first is wealth — command over economic resources: land, money, property, the means of earning a living. The second is power — the ability to impose one’s will on others, to make decisions stick even against resistance. The third is prestige — the honour, respect or standing a group is granted by others.
These three do not always sit in the same hands. Max Weber pointed out that a person or group may rank high on one and low on another. A moneylender may have wealth but little honour; a respected teacher may have prestige but modest wealth; an elected official may hold power for a term without owning much at all.
This mismatch answers a puzzle from the opening of the chapter. The most powerful family in a village may not be the one ritual tradition ranks highest, because power and wealth flow from land and numbers, while ritual prestige flows from birth-rank — and the two can come apart. It is a pattern we will see sharply in the caste system, where priestly groups have long held high prestige alongside limited wealth.
Q3. Why is the most powerful family in a village sometimes not the family from the caste that ritual tradition ranks highest?
A. Because stratification rests on three separate bases — wealth, power and prestige — and these do not always align. Ritual rank grants prestige by birth. But power and wealth grow from other sources: how much land a family controls, how many people depend on it, how large it is. A family may therefore command the village through land and numbers while standing below the ritually highest caste in honour. Weber’s insight — that the three dimensions of ranking can pull apart — is exactly what makes this possible.
Diagram
Fig. 6.1-2 – three overlapping circles labelled “Wealth”, “Power” and “Prestige”; show the region where all three overlap, and mark examples in the non-overlapping parts (e.g. a high-prestige, low-wealth priestly figure in the prestige-only zone)
6.1.5 The Extent of Stratification: Egalitarian, Rank and Stratified Societies
Because stratification is universal but variable, it helps to see it as a range. At one end are societies with barely any ranking; at the other, societies stratified into rigid layers. The anthropologist Morton Fried grouped societies into three broad types along this range.
An egalitarian society has almost no fixed ranking. There are as many positions of respect as there are people able to earn them, and respect cannot be inherited. The small foraging bands are the classic example: among the Mbuti of the Ituri forest, food is commonly shared, tools pass freely from hand to hand, and no one leads the hunting group by right. Skill earns momentary respect, but a great hunter cannot hand his standing to his son.
(Morton Fried) An egalitarian society is one that has as many positions of prestige in any age–sex group as there are persons able to fill them, so that no fixed ranking of persons develops.
A rank society has unequal access to prestige but not, in any large way, to wealth or power. A chief may hold a position by birth and be shown great deference, yet control little more wealth than ordinary people. Prestige is ranked and inherited; economic life is not sharply divided.
A stratified society is unequal in all three at once — prestige, wealth and power are divided into durable layers. Modern class societies and the caste order of India both fall here. Such societies range from fairly open, where people can move between layers, to almost closed, where the layer of birth holds for life. That contrast — open class against closed caste — is the subject of the sections that follow.
Egalitarian vs Rank vs Stratified societies | Feature | Egalitarian | Rank | Stratified | |—|—|—|—| | Unequal access to prestige | Minimal; open to any who qualify | Yes | Yes | | Unequal access to wealth | No | Little | Yes | | Unequal access to power | No | Little | Yes | | Is high rank inherited? | No | Chief’s rank often inherited | Yes, largely | | Example | Small foraging bands (e.g. Mbuti) | Some chiefdoms | Modern class societies; caste order |
Seen this way, stratification is not a single thing that a society either has or lacks. It is a matter of degree — and where a society falls on the range shapes almost everything about the lives lived inside it.