This commentary expands on Burt's concept of downward causation to include any association between genomic variants and a given outcome that is forged through social practices rather than biochemical pathways. It proposes the social stratification of population, through which endogamy over a period of generations produces allele frequency differences between socioeconomic strata, as a mechanism of downward causation.

While cellular phones have become common among Filipinos, it is contended that, even though, such accessibility may have bridged the digital gap, it is far from eradicating social divides between the rich and the poor. The class divide is very apparent based on usage alone. This divide is more a function of income and education than the availability of technology. Three aims of this study include: 1) finding out whether social stratification is evident in the text messages (...) of people from lower, middle, and upper classes; 2) affirming the relationship between social stratification and linguistic forms usage; and 3) exploring noticeable patterns in texting styles of participants. Employing mixed methods design, linguistic forms used by participants were described and analyzed. Noticeable patterns in the texting styles of 18 participants were also accounted. Three linguistic forms: shortenings, punctuations, and letters/numbers/homophones are frequently used by the participants across the three social classes to facilitate ease of texting and to shorten long words. Two form categories are socially stratified: punctuations and accent stylization. Thus, knowing the linguistic forms used by an individual can lead to knowledge of his/her social status. Keywords- Sociolinguistics, Computer-mediated Communication, social stratification, linguistic forms, textual analysis, mixed methods design, Philippines. (shrink)

Moodhevi Theyyam, a Malayalam natakam by G. Sankara Pillai, critically examines the complex dynamics of caste, gender and sexual violence. Moodhevi, traditionally an inauspicious figure in Hindu mythology and a derogatory term for women, is reimagined and transformed into an epithet of divine potency. This strategic reinterpretation allows Pillai to expose the paradoxical nature of ritual performances that provide temporary empowerment to lower-caste performers, only to be systematically returned to their socially prescribed positions once the ritual concludes. The natakam offers (...) a critical lens into the mechanisms of social marginalisation, revealing how ritualistic practices create a temporary illusion of social mobility. This cyclical dynamic serves as a powerful metaphor for the persistent structural inequalities embedded within social systems. Despite the inherent contextual constraints of the natakam, this research provides a critical analytical framework that interrogates the complex dialectic between ritualistic performance and social stratification. The study attempts to explore the intricate mechanisms by which theatrical practices simultaneously destabilise and reify existing social hierarchies, offering a nuanced epistemological intervention into contemporary theatre discourse in India and Indigenous performance studies. (shrink)

This article descends into Plato’s representation of justice in The Republic, focusing on exploring a notion that has been fundamental to society since its inception. While justice was formed to ensure equality within a stratified society, it frequently results in inequity for particular sectors of society. This paradoxical element of justice makes it biased and sometimes fictitious for some groups of people. An unfortunate consequence of pursuing justice is that specific segments of society are regularly deprived. Therefore, this article discusses (...) the essence of social stratification in Plato’s concept of justice and how far this stratification does justice for each class. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 241-257. (shrink)

This paper argues that in settings where you have intense social stratification in particular, those along racial lines, you will in turn have positivity violations which impede causal inference. Racial stratification often causes large differences in the distribution of various outcomes across different racial groups such that the covariate distribution for those groups do not overlap significantly. This lack of overlap constitutes a positivity violation. Because positivity is a necessary condition for causal inference, any failure to repair (...) social stratification that constitues a positivity violation undermines causal inference. As a result, I claim that if we have the epistemic goal of engaging in causal inquiry, we must remove barriers that impede the acquisition of causal knowledge. This means that repairing social stratification is required to have causal knowledge of the social world going forward. (shrink)

The modern tradition of stratification research has seen a lot of problems of both the ontological (global economic and social transformations brought about by shift to the post-industrial society) and epistemological nature. These problems are particularly pressing for the stratification scholars in Russia due to the lack of a long-standing tradition of social structure research as compared to developed countries, an abundance of contrary viewpoints, and highly contrasting lifestyles of Russians caused by significant economic inequality, as (...) well as cultural and regional differences. The authors of this publication believe that viewing lifestyles as a stratification aspect and criterion may be one of the solutions to the crisis. The publication presents a critical review of the existing approaches to lifestyle groups research. The authors put forward a number of suggestions on applying this approach in the Russian social structure studies. (shrink)

The present chapter formulates and illustrates a generalized approach to the understanding of the institutionalized system by which a society hierarchically ranks individuals and groups, producing structured inequalities in access to valued resources, power, prestige, and life opportunities based on socially recognized criteria such as wealth, occupation, education, gender, or ethnicity, i.e., “social stratification.” The chapter also demonstrates how social stratification shapes class positions through structured inequalities, while access to mobility resources determines the extent to which (...) individuals and groups can navigate, reproduce, or transform these unequal class locations over time. The influence of historical legacies, such as colonization that have divided African societies into classes; higher/lower, superior/inferior, and prestigious/insignificant are also explored. The starting point of the discussion of the preceding issues is to explain the concept of “social stratification,” and then later its dimensions and forms. (shrink)

This paper presents a simple mathematical model that shows how economic inequality between social groups can arise and be maintained even when the only adaptive learning process driving cultural evolution increases individuals’ economic gains. The key assumptions are that human populations are structured into groups and that cultural learning is more likely to occur within than between groups. Then, if groups are sufficiently isolated and there are potential gains from specialization and exchange, stable stratification can sometimes result. This (...) model predicts that stratification is favored, ceteris paribus, by (1) greater surplus production, (2) more equitable divisions of the surplus among specialists, (3) greater cultural isolation among subpopulations within a society, and (4) more weight given to economic success by cultural learners. (shrink)

The sharp leap in science and technology has given rise to a new state of human civilization, described as the 'information society.' Alongside the benefits of the unceasing flow of information exchanged through total communication, the negative consequences of 'information overload' have increasingly become apparent — both at the organizational and individual levels. Since it is not possible for the individual to self-isolate from this process, two options remain available: to develop automated protective mechanisms in the psyche, and/or to apply (...) volitional effort in selecting the amount of information processed by consciousness. Insofar as individuals are not identical, signs of a watershed are already clearly visible between the group of people who are able to exercise tighter control in the communication process and the group of those who succumb to the temptation to absorb information uncritically. Could this lead to a new principle of stratification in society? (shrink)

The Grand Calumet River is a 13-mile industrial sewer of toxic poison that flows into Lake Michigan, south of Chicago. It contains five Superfund sites, and several other EPA CERCLA cleanup arrangements with polluting companies. It encompasses an economically depressed area of three cities—Calumet City, East Chicago, and Gary Indiana—with little resident-citizen involvement in its restoration. The EPA, state agencies, and other private institutions are, however, pursuing environmental restorations despite significant problems. They are remediating areas of toxic sediment and restoring (...) natural habitat. These efforts are both necessary and heroic in extent and importance.The Hudson Estuary is also in great need for rehabilitation, which is being addressed through the US “National Estuary Program.” The New York City and Northern New Jersey metropolitan areas have significant poverty and wealth stratification which results in the impacts of environmental degradation disproportionately affecting lower strata. These impacts are partly being addressed through access developments and other aspects of restoration. Citizen involvements are significantly large for this restoration where the efforts are extraordinarily complex and massive. (shrink)

This chapter calls into question the driving desire behind AI, from both its proponents and its critics. That desire has been expressed as “taking away the tasks we hate.” But who designates contemptible tasks? And what does our contempt for this work say about how we regard the people who do it? To answer this question, I discuss how a history of raced and gendered labor, combined with industrialization and the “Ghost Work” of the digital era, have produced an Ideology (...) of Replacement that promises the elimination of inconvenience without any concept of the human cost of convenience. I then discuss how this ideology does not stop at what we currently deem “menial,” and is quickly proliferating through professions we once regarded as “respectable.” This proliferation is enabled by a metaeugenic worship of intelligence and a belief that most people do not possess enough of it. Our collective belief in our own inadequacy is required to sustain the AI project. A new digital divide is forming between those that have the privilege to opt-out of artificial services and those that are forced into the labor that sustains them. (shrink)

This article examines Charles Wright Mills’ sociological works and political thought : it shows how they provide the basis of a reflection on the social conditions of democratic conflict. First Mills’ work questions the impact of social stratification on democratic conflict. Second Mills’ approach of the notion of « mass society » puts emphasis on the way the decline of the autonomy of social orders contributes to a weakening of democratic conflict. Finally, we compare the way (...) Mills and Pierre Bourdieu defend a « politics of truth » : such an analysis emphazises that the autonomy of social orders or social fields is a condition and a stake at once pivotal and ambivalent of democratic struggles. (shrink)

This article focuses on the sociological field of stratification theory and research in Weimar Germany, and pursues the following objectives: (1) to offer for consideration some of the most significant theoretical and empirical essays bearing on stratification that were produced in the German-speaking world during the Weimar period; (2) to classify their authors according to cultural, ideological and epistemological orientations; (3) to account by means of this classification for their propensity to conduct empirical research; and (4) to discuss (...) the reasons for their interest in social stratification, their interpretations of the research findings, their reception of Marx and Weber, and their differential success in finding an audience among other scholars. (shrink)

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the (...) author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to investigate how sex segregation, social class, and gender are analytically related to occupational stratification. Recent discussions of women and men in the labor force revolve around whether a sex-segregated model in which sex of the worker affects placement, a pure social class model using classical criteria, or a gendered social class model in which social organizational processes of a gendered social class structure affect positioning in the (...) class='Hi'>stratification system. This article addresses the influence that social class and gender have on stratification in the labor market. Data from the 1972-82 General Social Survey on 371 occupations, representing 7,541 male and female workers, are used to formulate a social class scheme based on all workers' characteristics. In comparing the models, the analyses show that an integrated gendered social class perspective is consistent with the empirical differentiation found among women and men in the labor force. (shrink)

In the last couple of years there have been some attempts to introduce Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts into the critical realist conception of social science. But these attempts either limit themselves to the constitution of a philosophical connection between Bourdieu and critical realism or confine Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions to analyses of human agency, whereas Bourdieu’s habitus can provide a deepening of the critical realist conception of what the ‘social’ is. We can establish a socio-ontological connection between the concept of (...) habitus and the idea of the social as a stratified reality. In this way, it may be possible to employ real-actual-empirical stratification for the purpose of defining the domain-specific ontology of social science, and to comprehend the habitus-field relation as a component of the stratification in question. To this end, the paper suggests that habitus is ‘the missing link between structure and agency’. (shrink)

Humans are probably the most emotional animals on earth, when range, intensity, and depth of emotional responses are considered. It was the enhancement of hominins’ emotional capacities that later allowed humans to form cohesive groups and, eventually, ever-larger societies. Humans’ biology, like all mammalian biology, generally has a ratio of about 3 to 1 in the valences of negative to positive emotions, and yet, it is activation of the positive emotions that allow humans to experience solidarity and, eventually, to build (...) complex societies organizing millions and even billions of individuals. And ironically, the dynamics of repression and transmutation of emotions that hide negative from self an others can also promote emotions faciliting commitments to social structures. Yet, there is a constant danger of activating negative emotions in situations, but the building up of social structures and their cultures, while creating integrative problems, also enhances positive emotional arousal activated by localized interpersonal rituals, thereby increasing commitment behaviors and relations that can sustain the micro, meso, and macro structures of human societies. This paper seeks to offer the beginning of a theory emotional stratification and its effects on commitments to institutional domains and whole societies by analyzing human emotions as a valued resources that are distributed unequally in a system of emotional stratification. Systems of emotional stratification can be both a potent force behind social conflicts at all levels of societies as well as powerful generating commitments to meso- and maco-structures and their cultures. (shrink)

Long run success in watershed management requires understanding of how economic stratification and social values affect water quality protection. Feedback effects on water quality are produced by three aspects of economic well-being: income levels, quality of life and inequality, including the effects of gender based inequality. In the US emphasis on individualistic values leads to reliance on local and private policy solutions to social problems. Analysis of the context of New York City's internationally famous watershed agreement with (...) communities 120 miles distant provides a case study of these relationships. The nature of economic stratification in these upstate communities and the insufficient response of social policies were an impediment to achieving New York City's water quality goals. As a consequence the City's watershed agreement contains direct economic aid to Watershed communities. The Agreement does not address all stratification issues. Some call for solutions beyond the local level and an approach that benefits from the European emphasis on community. It is in the interest of watershed managers to broaden the scope of their concerns to understand and support state and national programs which address problems created by economic stratification. The expansion of the European Union increases the relevance of these lessons for Europe. (shrink)

This article sketches out a multifactorial approach to the analysis of social conflict, based primarily on studies by Max Weber and prominent contemporary historical macrosociologists such as Michael Mann, Richard Lachman, and Ivan Szelenyi. The approach offers opportunities to bridge the gap between two key strands of the sociological tradition of conflict — Marxist and Weberian. It is argued that they do not exclude each other but work on the principle of complementarity, operating on a similar set of terms (...) (primarily class and capital) and reducing the diversity of social phenomena to a common ground — conflict. Michael Mann’s theory of sources of social power, to which the first part of the article is devoted, warns against the fundamental one-sidedness of interpreting any conflict related to power (any conflict falling within the perimeter of macrosociology can be classified as such) exclusively as political, economic, ideological, or military. A complete description of such a conflict requires engaging all four of these aspects of social power, even if some of them do not manifest themselves sufficiently in a particular conflict. The approaches outlined in the second part of the article to the analysis of its direct participants — social classes with their resources (capital in its various forms), which ultimately determine the specific configuration of inequality — the driving force of any conflict— are based on this initial marking of the conflict field. Such a comprehensive approach allows us to overcome the dogmatism of Marxist schemes without abandoning the theoretical legacy of Marxism: the reinterpretation of its key terms in the Weberian paradigm thus enriches the sociological tradition of conflict, forming the necessary kaleidoscopic view of this social phenomenon. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a renewed interest in the concept of (...) alienation, contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

While social scientists and geneticists have a shared interest in the personal characteristics instrumental to status attainment, little has been done to integrate these disparate perspectives. This is unfortunate, as the perspectives offer complementary insights, which, if properly combined, stand to substantially improve understanding of the stratification process. This article synthesizes research from the social sciences and genetics to develop a multistage theory of how social structure moderates the influence of the genome on status outcomes. Its (...) thesis is that the strength of the genome's influence on status is primarily moderated by two properties of social structure—levels of resource inequality and social mobility. Thus, it is theorized that under conditions of low inequality and high social mobility, the influence of the genome on status will be high relative to conditions of high inequality and low social mobility. The essential logic is (1) as inequality increases, the characteristics and abilities intrinsically useful in status attainment are increasingly influenced by individuals' social backgrounds and decreasingly determined by their genomes; and (2) as social closure and inequality increase, the utility of these characteristics and abilities to status attainment is diminished. In sum, a model of status attainment is developed proposing that while both genome and social background influence the status attainment process, the relative importance of these factors is determined by the surrounding structure of the society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A key selling point of pharmacogenetics is the genetic stratification of either patients or diseases in order to target the prescribing of medicine. The hope is that genetically ‘tailored’ medicines will replace the current ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ paradigm of drug development and usage. This paper is concerned with the relationship between difference and justice in the use of pharmacogenetics. This new technology, which facilitates the identification and use of difference, has, we shall argue, the potential to lead to injustice either (...) by the inappropriate use of difference or through the inappropriate failure to use difference. We build on empirical data from a detailed study of the range of options for the development of pharmacogenetics to present a consideration of the ethical issues that surround patient and disease stratification. In it we explore the ways in which the use of pharmacogenetics may lead to the creation of new, genetically stratified, forms of difference and new forms of injustice based on these divisions. We also examine the ways in which existing forms of difference and social stratification may interact with the use of pharmacogenetics. In conclusion, we suggest how an understanding of these ethical issues could usefully inform future policy discussions. (shrink)

This paper tries to explain why the Lenski (1970) theory of stratification based on ecology and subsistence technology had relatively little effect on theories of sex inequality. In cultural anthropology, generalization was held to be impossible. Feminist explanation in sociology was social-psychological. Moreover, by the 1980s, the bias against biology in feminist theory came to include all of science. Exceptions to these trends include the work of Blumberg, Chafetz, Collins, Coltrane, and Turner. Whether feminist sociologists will follow their (...) lead remains to be seen. (shrink)

Stratification, that is, the structuring of society on the basis of differential social status of various groups, is a common feature of human societies. But the traditional pattern of social stratification in India has certain characteristics which are rather unique, and these have attracted and intrigued many scholars all over the world. The structural and cultural characteristics of the traditional pattern of stratification in India have deep roots in the past. They have stemmed from certain (...) peculiar ethnic constellations that came into being some three thousand years ago, and they have been given many twists and turns by numerous socio-cultural currents and cross currents through all these millennia. (shrink)

Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative-thus creative-force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a gender (...) imaginary on the other. The ontological metaphor (meaning the metaphor that brings about social modes of being) as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)

: Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative—thus creative—force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a (...) gender imaginary on the other. The ontological metaphor (meaning the metaphor that brings about social modes of being) as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)

Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative-thus creative-force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a gender (...) imaginary on the other. The ontological metaphor as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)