A standing, a layer, and a class that knows itself

The page is a set of lecture notes, from an introduction to sociology prepared for the self-taught bachelor’s examination, on social hierarchy and social mobility. A social status, as the notes define it, is the single standing that sums the separate standings a person holds in each of the groups they occupy. A social stratum is a layer of people thought to hold equivalent statuses and to receive a roughly equivalent share of scarce values. Because a stratum sits, in practice, as one part of a hierarchical structure, the notes say, it is commonly called a social class, or hierarchy. Stratification is the process by which layers are gradually arranged in a rank order over time; the hierarchical structure is the shape that results. Class, in a narrower use, is the word chosen when the members clearly know that they belong.

A ruling class, the notes say, may form in stages. First there is a loose, scattered sense of likeness in social force or standing, without yet a feeling of being one body or a sense of solidarity. Then a solidarity appears: a centripetal feeling of belonging, and with it a sense of being of the same kind and of standing together. Then a sense of standing against another class, in competition or in struggle, which itself tightens the bond.

How a hierarchy is measured differs by writer. Marx is given two tests: ownership of the means of production, and participation in productive labour. Weber is given economic goods and chance, political power, and social honour or prestige. Geiger is listed with production relations, race, income, culture, and occupation; MacIver with origin, means, occupation, political power, and intellectual achievement; Warner with occupation, source of income, type of house, place of residence, education, amount of income, and a racial factor; Packard and others with occupation, education, source of income, and type of house. In Korea, the notes say, occupation, education, and income are the main scales, and the national census often uses the UN classification of occupations.

Yankee City, a poet with a high name, and a position that matters more

Three methods of placing people in a hierarchy are named. An objective method uses scales of the kind just listed. An evaluative method chooses a small community and asks judges who know it well to rank all its members, then takes the average of those judgements; Warner’s Yankee City study is the type. A subjective method classifies by social consciousness: where a person thinks they belong, and how they value that place, in order to bring out the hierarchy that exists in people’s minds. Status inconsistency is a situation in which the ranks a person or a group holds do not agree with one another — a company president with little schooling, or a poor poet whose name and prestige are very high.

A hierarchy, the notes say, is an institutionalised system of inequality. Davis and Moore hold that some positions in a society are functionally more important than others, and that their performance needs a special skill. Functionalist accounts of mobility add that the right person must be supplied to each graded position, that motivation to move matters, and that a differential system of reward — including prestige, income, and free time — is both the premise of placing talent where it is needed and the premise of mobility. Veblen’s theory of the leisure class is named as an early analysis of that motivation, and as a strong influence on the functionalist approach. A person, on that reading, evaluates themselves on the basis of a social evaluation, tries to draw a favourable one, and reflects it in what they do.

Tumin points to the other side. A hierarchy, he says in the notes, limits the chance of discovering useful talent fully; by narrowing the range of that talent, it constrains the growth of a society’s productive resources; it makes a society conservative; it holds back a creative possibility proper to human beings; the inequality of social reward breeds hostility, suspicion, and distrust between layers and so hinders a wide social integration; and it distributes a sense of membership, and a sense of loyalty, unequally among the members of a society.

A closed order, a vacant seat, and a marriage or a school

Closed class systems are illustrated first by the Indian caste order, as the notes describe it: four varnas — Brahmin priests, Kshatriya warriors, Vaishya commoners, and Shudra, which the notes call slaves — with strict endogamy and hereditary occupation, vegetarian practice, a ban on sitting at table with another caste, external separation by tribe, region, and occupation, and an internal claim of a common ancestor, a common work, and a common standing. Feudal ranks follow: in the West, a ruling estate of nobles, clergy, and warriors, and a subject estate of serfs, dependent peasants, artisans, and merchants; in the East, nobles (yangban officials), commoners, and outcasts. An open system, in a modern society, is one whose class structure has been differentiated by an economic occasion. A later, contemporary split is into upper, middle, and lower; Pareto’s circulation of elites is noted, in which those inside an elite layer who lack the capacity for power fall away, and people who can carry the work of rule are brought in. An older middle class is named, though the notes do not fill it at length here.

Social mobility, the notes say, means a change in the way reward is distributed. The structural features that shape its form include whether human ability is judged by ascription or by achievement, how far a social structure is differentiated, and how social control is exercised. Lipset and Zetterberg name two kinds of occasion for a move. A vacant position appears when social change creates a new standing — a technical revolution, industrialisation, a political revolution — or when a person must be found for a seat that has simply fallen empty. An exchange between ranks becomes possible when a member of a lower layer is given a means to compete with a member of a higher one: marriage, or education. Marxist accounts treat mobility as a necessary product of an economic structure or a relation of rule, and look less at personal motive than at the effect of an economic and political system. Riesman is named for a distinction among occupational, income, and educational moves. A move may bring a psychological satisfaction or a frustration, depending on how it meets an aspiration; a relative deprivation can appear when educated people, rising only in part, carry a modern idea and an ambition, and know their own ability to be superior. For mobility to help a society hold together, the notes say, the wish to move must be widely felt and taken as important. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Lecture notes on social hierarchy and social mobility, from an introduction to sociology for the self-taught bachelor’s examination (dokhaksa), as the page names that source.
2. Davis and Moore; Tumin’s dysfunctions of a hierarchy; Veblen’s leisure class, as the notes use those accounts.
3. Warner’s Yankee City study as the type of an evaluative method; status inconsistency as illustrated in the notes.
4. Marx, Weber, Geiger, MacIver, Warner, and Packard on the measurement of a hierarchy; in Korea, occupation, education, and income, and the UN classification of occupations in the census, as the notes state that practice.
5. The Indian caste order and feudal ranks, as the notes describe them; Lipset and Zetterberg on the occasions of a move; Pareto on the circulation of elites; Riesman on kinds of move.

Last updated: 14 November 2026