Social stratification involves the division of people into groups that are characterized by certain characteristics. There are special criteria of social stratification that allow us to determine how classes are formed in a modern state and how differences between people affect the development of society.

The main criteria for social stratification

The concept of a criterion in this case carries the meaning of a sign, on the basis of which the definition of social strata in the structure of modern society is given.

The main criteria for the division of society are:

Income

This refers to all the money that a person receives for a certain period of time. Income stands out as a criterion, since it is not the same for all people.

• a large income that allows you to satisfy all needs and accumulate funds, purchase luxury goods;
• the average income that is spent exclusively on meeting the needs of a person and his family;
• insignificant income, which is not enough even to support life.

Power

Opens opportunities for managing society. Depending on the level, it can apply to a different number of people.

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Decisions of the Ministry of Education and Science Russian Federation must be implemented by all educational institutions in the country, and the orders of the director of a particular school are binding only on its employees and students.

Part of the population has power (Ministers, leaders of political parties, directors and others). Others do not have such features. This also allows us to consider power as a criterion for the differentiation of society.

Education

This criterion is measured by the number of years that a person has spent studying in an educational organization.

This indicator is also not the same for all people: if a professor of philosophy can have more than 20 years that he spent on education, then an electrician or a driver - only 12.

Prestige

Prestige is understood as society's respect for the position a person occupies. There are things that people strive to have in order to be respected. For example, in modern society it is highly valued if a person has his own expensive car. Professions can also be prestigious. Now these include a lawyer, a doctor, a manager, a pilot. And vice versa, such professions as a driver, janitor, plumber and others are not popular and respected.

According to research, in Russia the prestige of those professions that allow you to receive high salaries and provide great opportunities to make a career (lawyer, manager) is growing, and the prestige of professions that require high qualifications and a level of education (engineer, teacher) is noticeably declining.

The peculiarity of society is that most often representatives of the upper classes concentrate in their hands all the top positions of these criteria: wealth, power, prestige and quality education. Although some indicators may not match.

The division of society into groups

Thus, the following are distinguished in society group types :

• by income level;
• if possible, influence the policy of the state, control the actions of other people;
• by level of education;
• by prestige.

What have we learned?

Criteria of social stratification are signs by which special groups of people with common features can be distinguished in society. There are four such criteria: income, power, education, prestige. All people do not have the same access to these phenomena and objects. For example, the income received by citizens of our country is not the same.

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The term "stratification" comes from "stratum" (lat.) - layer and "facio" (lat.) - I do. Stratification- this is not just differentiation, enumeration of differences between individual layers, strata in society. The task of stratification is to identify the vertical sequence of the positions of social strata, their hierarchy.

The theory of social stratification is one of the most developed parts of social theory. Its foundations were laid by M. Weber, K. Marx, P. Sorokin, T. Parsons. The basis of the stratification structure is the natural and social inequality of people.

In the English Dictionary of the Social Sciences, stratification is understood as a process by which families and individuals are not equal to each other and are grouped into hierarchically arranged strata with different prestige, property and power.

All criteria of social stratification must comply with the following principles (according to M. Weber and E. Durkheim):

• 1) all social strata of a given society should be studied without exception;
• 2) it is necessary to measure and compare groups using the same criteria;
• 3) criteria should be no less than required for a sufficiently complete description of each layer.

P. Sorokin defined social stratification as “the differentiation of a given set of people (population) into classes in a hierarchical rank. It finds expression in the existence of higher and lower strata. Its basis and essence lies in the uneven distribution of rights and privileges, responsibilities and duties, the presence or absence of social values, power and influence among members of a particular community” ?5?. Stratification model of society ( pyramid divided into strata) was borrowed by P. Sorokin from geology. However, unlike the structure of rocks, in society:

the lower layers are always much wider than the upper ones,

the number of layers is not strictly defined: it all depends on how many stratification criteria are taken into account,

the thickness of the layer is not constant, since people can move from one layer to another (processes of social mobility).

There are two main ways to stratify a society, depending on the number of underlying features:

• 1. One-dimensional stratification. It is based on one-dimensional strata, i.e., strata distinguished by any one social attribute. This approach assumes the stratification of society according to the following groups of features:
• 1) gender and age;
• 2) national language;
• 3) professional;
• 4) educational;
• 5) religious;
• 6) by settlement.

Some researchers base the classification on other features.

2. Multidimensional stratification. At the same time, stratification is based on several features.

The second method of stratification includes the division of society into:

• 1) socio-territorial communities (population of a city, village, region);
• 2) ethnic communities (tribe, nationality, nation);
• 3) the system of slavery (an economic, social and legal form of fixing people, bordering on complete lack of rights and an extreme degree of inequality);
• 4) castes (social groups, membership in which a person is obliged by birth);
• 5) estates (social groups supported by established customs or laws, and in which rights and obligations are inherited);
• 6) social classes.

The modern English researcher E. Giddens offers a number of differences between the class system and the slave, caste and class system:

• 1. Classes are not formed on the basis of religious beliefs. Belonging to a class is not determined by adherence to certain customs, traditions and mores. The class system is more fluid than other types of stratification. Labor is the basis of class division.
• 2. A person's belonging to a particular class is often achieved by himself, and is not given from birth.
• 3. An economic attribute is the basis for assigning an individual to a particular class.
• 4. In other types of social structure, inequality expresses mainly the personal dependence of one individual on another. The class structure of society, on the contrary, is characterized by the personal independence of individuals from each other?6?.

In sociology, there are several main approaches to the stratification structure.

• 1. Economic approach, whose supporters (K. Marx, E. Durkheim and others) considered the division of labor as the main cause of social differentiation. K. Marx was the first to develop the theory of the economic basis of classes. He associated the existence of classes only with certain historical forms of the development of production, where ownership of the means of production is distributed evenly among different sections of the population, as a result of which some exploit others, and struggle is inevitable between them.
• 2. Political approach to stratification. Its founders are L. Gumplovich, G. Mosca, V. Pareto, M. Weber. Political stratification is the difference between politically dominant groups and masses, in which the very vertical of the political hierarchy is built through the prism of belonging to certain political forces, and the level of possession of political power is the main criterion for distinguishing one or another political stratum. L. Gumplovich believed that the nature of class differences is a reflection of differences in power, which also determine the subsequent division of labor and the distribution of social responsibilities. G. Mosca and V. Pareto considered inequality and mobility as related aspects of the same phenomenon, the movement of people between the ruling class, the elite and the lower class - passive subordinates.
• 3. functionalist concept social stratification, which is based on the ideas of T. Parsons, K. Davis, W. Moore. T. Parsons considers stratification an aspect of any social system. He proceeds from the fact that any action is inevitably associated with choice and evaluation. Generally accepted scoring standards make it possible to rank positions as higher or lower. Since the desired positions are not enough, then in order to save the system, it is necessary to institutionalize inequality, allowing interactions to proceed without conflicts. Generalization and acceptance of the rating scale implies coverage of all types of rewards, of which “respect” is considered the most important.

Each given person, according to Parsons, actually enjoys respect, correlated with a graduated hierarchy, his relative respect in an ordered total system of differentiated evaluation is prestige, which means comparative evaluation. In turn, differentiated prestige is the basis of stratification.

Davies and Moore rightly believe that some positions in the social system are functionally more important than others and require special skills for their realization. However, the number of individuals with these abilities is limited. Therefore, these positions should be given stimulus in the form of differentiated access to society's limited and desirable rewards, in order to force talented individuals to make sacrifices and acquire the necessary training. These differentiated rewards lead to differentiation in stratum prestige and hence to social stratification.

Modern studies of social stratification use the theoretical basis of the above approaches, and also proceed from the principle of multidimensionality of stratified measurements. The foundations of this approach were already laid in the works of M. Weber, who studied the interdependence between various stratification criteria. Weber believed that class affiliation is determined not only by the nature of the relationship to the means of production, but also by economic differences that are not directly related to property: for example, qualifications, skills, education.

Other criteria for stratification, according to Weber, are status and party affiliation (groups of individuals with a common origin, goals, interests).

The American sociologist B. Barber, based on the multidimensionality and interconnectedness of measurements, proposed the following concept of the structure of social stratification.

• 1. The prestige of the profession, occupation, position, assessed by the functional contribution to social development.
• 2. Power, seen as an institutionally defined right to influence the actions of other people, contrary to or regardless of their wishes.
• 3. Income or wealth. Different occupational statuses in society have different capacities for generating income and for accumulating wealth in the form of capital; there are various chances of getting wealth as an inheritance.
• 4. Education. Unequal access to education predetermines the ability of individuals to occupy one position or another in society.
• 5. Religious or ritual purity. In some societies, belonging to a particular religion is crucial.
• 6. Ranking by kindred and ethnic groups.

Thus, income, power, prestige and education determine the total socio-economic status, that is, the position and place of a person in society.

In modern sociological science, various approaches to the analysis of social stratification coexist (the activity approach, the concept of "emergence" of the emergence of unexpected criteria of social inequality, etc.).

From the point of view of the activity-activist approach to the analysis of social inequalities (T.I. Zaslavskaya), the social hierarchy of modern Russian society can be represented as follows?7?:

elite - ruling political and economic - up to 0.5%;

the top layer - large and medium-sized entrepreneurs, directors of large and medium-sized privatized enterprises, other sub-elite groups - 6.5%;

the middle layer - representatives of small businesses, qualified professionals, middle management, officers - 20%;

the base layer - ordinary specialists, assistants to specialists, workers, peasants, trade and service workers - 60%;

the bottom layer - low-skilled and unskilled workers, temporarily unemployed - 7%;

social bottom - up to 5%.

At different times, there were different approaches to determining the causes of social inequality and social stratification.

The Marxist school of sociology indicates that social inequality is based on property relations, the degree, form, and nature of ownership of the means of production.

Functionalists (W. Moore, K. Davis) believe that the distribution of people into strata depends on the contribution made by their work to achieve the goals of society and the significance of their professional activities.

Representatives of the theory of exchange (J. Homans) showed that the emergence of social inequality in society is influenced by an unequal exchange of the results of human activity.

M. Weber proposed to single out the following criteria of social stratification: economic (level of income, attitude to property), social prestige (acquired or inherited status), belonging to certain political circles.

P. Sorokin singled out political (according to the criteria of power and influence), economic (according to the criteria of income and wealth) and professional (according to the criteria of professional skills, mastery, successful performance of social roles) stratification structures.

T. Parsons, the founder of structural functionalism, proposed groups of differentiating features: qualitative characteristics attributed to people from birth (gender and age characteristics, family ties, ethnicity, personal abilities); role characteristics (education, professional and labor activity, position); characteristics showing possession of material and spiritual values ​​(property, wealth, privileges, etc.)

The main criteria for social stratification

In modern sociology, the following criteria for social stratification are distinguished, according to which the division into strata of the population takes place:

1. Power - the ability to dictate your decisions and will to other people, regardless of their desire; measured by the number of people to whom it applies.
2. Education - a set of skills, knowledge, skills acquired during training; measured by the number of years of study in public or private schools/universities.
3. Income - depends on the amount of cash receipts received by an individual or family over a certain period of time, for example, one year or a month.
4. Wealth - accumulated income (cash or embodied money).
5. Prestige - respect, public assessment of the significance of the position, profession, status that has developed in the public mind.

Remark 1

The above criteria of social stratification are the most universal for all current societies.

Additional criteria for social stratification

There are certain, specific criteria that influence the position of the individual in society, determine, first of all, his "starting opportunities". Additional criteria for social stratification include:

1. social background. It is the family that introduces the individual into the system of society, while determining in many respects his income, profession and education. Insolvent parents recreate probably poor children, which is determined by their education, health, acquired qualifications. Children from poor families are three times more likely to die due to neglect, disease, violence and accidents than children from wealthy families.
2. gender. Today, in the Russian Federation, an intensified process of the feminization of poverty can be traced. Regardless of the fact that women and men live in families that belong to different social levels, the status, income of women and the prestige of their professions are often less than that of men.
3. Ethnicity and race. For example, in the United States of America, people with white skin receive a better education and have a higher professional status than African Americans. Ethnicity also has its effect on social status.
4. Religion. For example, in American society, members of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches and Jews occupy the highest social positions. Baptists and Lutherans at a lower level.

social space

P. Sorokin made a significant contribution to the study of status inequality. To determine the sum of all social statuses, he introduced such a concept as social space.

Remark 2

In his work “Social mobility” (1927), P. Sorokin pointed out the impossibility of mixing or comparing such theses as “social space” and “geometric space”. A lower-class person can come into contact with a wealthy person on a physical level, but this circumstance will not at all reduce the prestige, economic or power differences that exist between them, that is, it will not reduce the existing social distance in any way. Consequently, two people between whom there are tangible official, family, property or other social differences do not have the opportunity to stay in the same social space.

Sorokin's social space has a three-dimensional model. It is characterized by three axes of coordinates - political status, professional status, economic status. The social position (general or integral status) of any individual who is an integral part of this social space is represented using three coordinates (x, y, z).

Status incompatibility is a situation in which an individual, having a high status along one of the coordinate axes, at the same time has a low status level along the other axis.

Individuals with a high level of education, providing a high social status relative to the professional dimension of stratification, may occupy a poorly paid position, and, as a result, will have a lower economic status.

The existence of status incompatibility favors the growth of discontent among people, as a result of which they will contribute to radical social changes aimed at changing stratification.

There is a part of the social system that acts as a set of the most stable elements and their connections that ensure the functioning and reproduction of the system. It expresses the objective division of society into classes, layers, pointing to the different position of people in relation to each other. The social structure forms the framework of the social system and largely determines the stability of society and its qualitative characteristics as a social organism.

The concept of stratification (from lat. stratum- layer, layer) denotes the stratification of society, differences in the social status of its members. social stratificationis a system of social inequality, consisting of hierarchically arranged social strata (strata). All people belonging to a particular stratum occupy approximately the same position and have common status characteristics.

Different sociologists explain the causes of social inequality and, consequently, social stratification in different ways. Yes, according to Marxist school of sociology, inequality is based on property relations, the nature, degree and form of ownership of the means of production. According to the functionalists (K. Davis, W. Moore), the distribution of individuals according to social strata depends on the importance of their professional activities and contribution which they contribute by their labor to the achievement of the goals of society. Supporters exchange theories(J. Homans) believe that inequality in society arises due to unequal exchange of results of human activity.

A number of classic sociologists considered the problem of stratification more broadly. For example, M. Weber, in addition to economic (attitude to property and level of income), proposed in addition such criteria as social prestige(inherited and acquired status) and belonging to certain political circles, hence - power, authority and influence.

One of creators P. Sorokin identified three types of stratification structures:

• economic(according to the criteria of income and wealth);
• political(according to the criteria of influence and power);
• professional(according to the criteria of mastery, professional skills, successful performance of social roles).

Founder structural functionalism T. Parsons proposed three groups of differentiating features:

• qualitative characteristics of people that they possess from birth (ethnicity, family ties, gender and age characteristics, personal qualities and abilities);
• role characteristics determined by a set of roles performed by an individual in society (education, position, different kinds professional and labor activity);
• characteristics due to the possession of material and spiritual values ​​(wealth, property, privileges, the ability to influence and manage other people, etc.).

In modern sociology, it is customary to distinguish the following main social stratification criteria:

• income - the amount of cash receipts for a certain period (month, year);
• wealth - accumulated income, i.e. the amount of cash or embodied money (in the second case, they act in the form of movable or immovable property);
• power - the ability and ability to exercise one's will, to exert a decisive influence on the activities of other people through various means (authority, law, violence, etc.). Power is measured by the number of people it extends to;
• education - a set of knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in the learning process. The level of education is measured by the number of years of education;
• prestige- public assessment of the attractiveness, significance of a particular profession, position, a certain type of occupation.

Despite the variety of different models of social stratification currently existing in sociology, most scientists distinguish three main classes: high, middle and low. At the same time, the share upper class in industrialized societies is approximately 5-7%; middle - 60-80% and lower - 13-35%.

In a number of cases, sociologists make a certain division within each class. Thus, the American sociologist W.L. Warner(1898-1970) identified six classes in his famous Yankee City study:

• top-top class(representatives of influential and wealthy dynasties with significant resources of power, wealth and prestige);
• lower-higher class("new rich" - bankers, politicians who do not have a noble origin and did not have time to create powerful role-playing clans);
• upper-middle class(successful businessmen, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists, managers, doctors, engineers, journalists, cultural and art figures);
• lower-middle class(employees - engineers, clerks, secretaries, employees and other categories, which are commonly called "white collars");
• upper-lower class(workers engaged mainly in physical labor);
• lower-lower class(poor, unemployed, homeless, foreign workers, declassed elements).

There are other schemes of social stratification. But they all boil down to the following: non-basic classes arise by adding strata and layers that are inside one of the main classes - rich, wealthy and poor.

Thus, social stratification is based on natural and social inequality between people, which is manifested in their social life and is hierarchical. It is sustainably supported and regulated by various social institutions, constantly reproduced and modified, which is an important condition for the functioning and development of any society.

1. INTRODUCTION

Social stratification is a central theme in sociology. It explains social stratification into the poor, the wealthy and the rich.

Considering the subject of sociology, we found a close connection between the three fundamental concepts of sociology - social structure, social composition and social stratification. We expressed the structure in terms of a set of statuses and likened it to empty cells of a honeycomb. It is located, as it were, in a horizontal plane, but is created by the social division of labor. In a primitive society there are few statuses and a low level of division of labor, in a modern society there are many statuses and a high level of organization of the division of labor.

But no matter how many statuses there are, in the social structure they are equal and functionally related to each other. But now we have filled the empty cells with people, each status has turned into a large social group. The totality of statuses gave us a new concept - the social composition of the population. And here the groups are equal to each other, they are also located horizontally. Indeed, in terms of social composition, all Russians, women, engineers, non-party people and housewives are equal.

However, we know that in real life the inequality of people plays a huge role. Inequality is the criterion by which we can place some groups above or below others. Social composition turns into social stratification - a set of vertically arranged social strata, in particular, the poor, the wealthy, the rich. If we resort to a physical analogy, then the social composition is a disorderly collection of iron filings. But then they put a magnet, and they all lined up in a clear order. Stratification is a certain way "oriented" composition of the population.

What "orients" large social groups? It turns out that there is an unequal assessment by society of the meaning and role of each status or group. A plumber or a janitor is valued below a lawyer and a minister. Consequently, high statuses and people occupying them are better rewarded, they have more power, the prestige of their occupation is higher, and the level of education should also be higher. Here we got four main dimensions of stratification - income, power, education, prestige. And that's it, there are no others. Why? But because they exhaust the range of social benefits that people strive for. More precisely, not the goods themselves (there may just be many of them), but access channels to them. A home abroad, a luxury car, a yacht, a vacation in the Canary Islands, etc. - social benefits that are always in short supply (i.e. highly respected and inaccessible to the majority) and are acquired through access to money and power, which in turn are achieved through high education and personal qualities.

Thus, social structure arises about the social division of labor, and social stratification - about the social distribution of the results of labor, i.e. social benefits.

And it's always uneven. So there is an arrangement of social strata according to the criterion of unequal access to power, wealth, education and prestige.

2. MEASURING STRATIFICATION

Imagine a social space in which vertical and horizontal distances are not equal. P. Sorokin, the man who was the first in the world to give a complete theoretical explanation of the phenomenon, and who confirmed his theory with the help of a huge empirical material stretching throughout human history, thought this way or something like this.

Points in space are social statuses. The distance between the turner and the miller is one, it is horizontal, and the distance between the worker and the master is different, it is vertical. The master is the boss, the worker is the subordinate. They have different social ranks. Although the case can be presented in such a way that the master and worker will be located at an equal distance from each other. This will happen if we consider both of them not as a boss and a subordinate, but only as workers performing different labor functions. But then we will move from the vertical to the horizontal plane.

Curious fact

Among the Alans, the deformation of the skull served as a sure indicator of the social differentiation of society: among the leaders of the tribes, the elders of the clans and the priesthood, it was elongated.

The inequality of distances between statuses is the main property of stratification. She has four measuring rulers, or axes coordinates. All of them arranged vertically and next to each other:

income,

power,

education,

prestige.

Income is measured in rubles or dollars that an individual receives (individual income) or family (family income) over a specified period of time, say one month or one year.

On the coordinate axis, we plot equal intervals, for example, up to $5,000, from $5,001 to $10,000, from $10,001 to $15,000, and so on. up to $75,000 and above.

Education is measured by the number of years of study at a public or private school or university.

Let's say Primary School means 4 years, incomplete secondary - 9 years, complete secondary - 11, college - 4 years, university - 5 years, graduate school - 3 years, doctoral studies - 3 years. Thus, a professor has more than 20 years of formal education behind him, while a plumber may not have eight.

power is measured by the number of people affected by the decision you make (power- opportunity

Rice. Four dimensions of social stratification. People occupying the same positions in all dimensions constitute one stratum (the figure shows an example of one of the strata).

impose their will or decisions on other people, regardless of their desire).

The decisions of the President of Russia apply to 150 million people (whether they are implemented is another question, although it also concerns the issue of power), and the decisions of the brigadier - to 7-10 people. Three scales of stratification - income, education and power - have completely objective units of measurement: dollars, years, people. Prestige is outside this range, as it is a subjective indicator.

Prestige - respect for status, prevailing in public opinion.

Since 1947, the US National Public Opinion Research Center has periodically polled ordinary Americans, selected from a national sample, in order to determine the social prestige of various professions. Respondents are asked to rate each of 90 professions (occupations) on a 5-point scale: excellent (best),

Note: the scale has from 100 (the highest score) to 1 (the lowest score) points. The second column "points" shows the average score received by this type of occupation in the sample.

good, average, slightly worse than average, the worst occupation. List II included almost all occupations from the supreme judge, minister and doctor to plumber and janitor. Having calculated the average for each occupation, the sociologists obtained a public assessment of the prestige of each type of work in points. Arranging them in a hierarchical order from the most respected to the most unprestigious, they received a rating, or a scale of professional prestige. Unfortunately, periodic representative surveys of the population about professional prestige have never been conducted in our country. Therefore, we will have to use American data (see table).

Comparison of data for different years (1949, 1964, 1972, 1982) shows the stability of the prestige scale. The same types of occupations enjoyed the greatest, average and least prestige in these years. Lawyer, doctor, teacher, scientist, banker, pilot, engineer received invariably high marks. Their position on the scale changed slightly: the doctor in 1964 was in second place, and in 1982 - in first place, the minister, respectively, occupied 10th and 11th places.

If the upper part of the scale is occupied by representatives of creative, intellectual labor, then the lower part is occupied by representatives of predominantly physical low-skilled: a driver, a welder, a carpenter, a plumber, a janitor. They have the least status respect. People occupying the same positions on the four dimensions of stratification constitute one stratum.

For each status or individual, you can find a place on any scale.

A classic example is the comparison between a police officer and a college professor. On the scales of education and prestige, the professor ranks higher than the policeman, and on the scales of income and power, the policeman ranks higher than the professor. Indeed, the professor has less power, the income is somewhat lower than that of a policeman, but the professor has more prestige and years of study. Noting both with points on each scale and connecting their lines, we get a stratification profile.

Each scale can be considered separately and denoted by an independent concept.

In sociology, there are three basic types of stratification:

economic (income),

political (power)

professional (prestige)

and many non-basic, for example, cultural and speech and age.

Rice. Stratified profile of a college professor and police officer.

3. BELONGING TO A STRATE

Affiliation measured by subjective and objective indicators:

subjective indicator - feeling of belonging to this group, identification with it;

objective indicators - income, power, education, prestige.

So, a large fortune, high education, great power and high professional prestige are the necessary conditions for you to be classified as the highest stratum of society.

A stratum is a social stratum of people who have similar objective indicators on four scales of stratification.

concept stratification (stratum- layer, facio- do) came to sociology from geology, where it denotes the vertical arrangement of layers of various rocks. If we make a cut of the earth's crust at a certain distance, it will be found that under the layer of chernozem there is a layer of clay, then sand, etc. Each layer consists of homogeneous elements. So is the stratum - it includes people with the same income, education, power and prestige. There is no stratum that includes highly educated people in power and powerless poor people in low-prestige jobs. The rich are in the same stratum with the rich, and the average with the average.

In a civilized country, a big mafioso cannot belong to the highest stratum. Although he has a very high income, perhaps a high education and strong power, his occupation does not enjoy high prestige among citizens. It is condemned. Subjectively, he may consider himself a member of the upper class and even fit the objective criteria. However, he lacks the main thing - the recognition of "significant others."

Under "significant others" are two large social groups: members of the upper class and the general population. The highest stratum will never recognize him as "their" because he compromises the entire group as a whole. The population will never recognize mafia activity as a socially approved occupation, as it contradicts the mores, traditions and ideals of this society.

Let's conclude: belonging to a stratum has two components - subjective (psychological identification with a certain layer) and objective (social entry into a certain layer).

Social entry has undergone a certain historical evolution. In primitive society, inequality was insignificant, so stratification was almost absent there. With the emergence of slavery, it suddenly intensified. slavery- a form of the most rigid fixing of people in unprivileged strata. castes- lifelong assignment of an individual to his (but not necessarily unprivileged) stratum. In medieval Europe, lifelong ownership is weakening. Estates imply legal attachment to the stratum. Rich merchants bought noble titles and thus moved to a higher class. Estates were replaced by classes - open to all strata, not implying any legitimate (legal) way of securing one stratum.

4. HISTORICAL TYPES OF STRATIFICATION

Known in sociology four main types of stratification - slavery, castes, estates and classes. The first three characterize closed societies and the last type is open.

Closed is a society where social movements from lower to higher strata are either completely prohibited, either significantly limited.

open called a society where movement from one stratum to another is not officially restricted in any way.

Slavery- an economic, social and legal form of enslavement of people, bordering on complete lack of rights and an extreme degree of inequality.

Slavery has historically evolved. There are two forms of it.

At patriarchal slavery (primitive form) a slave had all the rights of a younger member of the family: he lived in the same house with the owners, participated in public life, entered into marriage with the free, inherited the property of the owner. It was forbidden to kill him.

At classic bondage (mature form) the slave was finally enslaved: he lived in a separate room, did not participate in anything, did not inherit anything, did not marry and had no family. He was allowed to be killed. He did not own property, but he himself was considered the property of the owner ("talking tool").

Ancient slavery in Ancient Greece and plantation slavery in the USA before 1865 is closer to the second form, and servitude to the Geese of the 10th-12th centuries is closer to the first. The sources of slavery differ: the ancient was replenished mainly through conquests, and servitude was debt, or bonded slavery. The third source is criminals. In medieval China and in the Soviet GULAG (non-legal slavery), criminals were in the position of slaves.

At a mature stage slavery turns into slavery. When people talk about slavery as a historical type of stratification, they mean its highest stage. Slavery - the only form of social relations in history when one person acts as the property of another, and when the lower stratum is deprived of all rights and freedoms. There is no such thing in castes and estates, not to mention classes.

caste system not as ancient as the slave system, and less common. If almost all countries went through slavery, of course, to varying degrees, then castes were found only in India and partly in Africa. India is a classic example of a caste society. It arose on the ruins of the slaveholding in the first centuries of the new era.

Castoycalled a social group (stratum), membership in which a person owes solely to his birth.

He cannot move from his caste to another during his lifetime. To do this, he needs to be born again. The caste position is fixed by the Hindu religion (now it is clear why castes are not widespread). According to its canons, people live more than one life. Each person falls into the appropriate caste, depending on what his behavior was in a previous life. If bad, then after the next birth he should fall into a lower caste, and vice versa.

In India 4 main castes: Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), Shudras (workers and peasants) and about 5 thousand minor castes and podcasts. The untouchables are especially worthy - they are not included in any caste and occupy the lowest position. In the course of industrialization, castes are replaced by classes. The Indian city is becoming more and more class-based, while the village, in which 7/10 of the population lives, remains caste-based.

Estates precede classes and characterize the feudal societies that existed in Europe from the 4th to the 14th centuries.

estate- a social group that has fixed custom or legal law and inherited rights and obligations.

The estate system, which includes several strata, is characterized by a hierarchy, expressed in the inequality of position and privileges. Europe was a classic example of a class organization, where at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries society was divided into upper classes(nobility and clergy) and unprivileged third estate(artisans, merchants, peasants). In the X-XIII centuries there were three main estates: the clergy, the nobility and the peasantry. In Russia, from the second half of the 18th century, a class division into nobility, clergy, merchants, peasantry and philistinism (middle urban strata) was established. Estates were based on landed property.

The rights and obligations of each estate were determined by legal law and consecrated by religious doctrine. Membership in the estate was determined inheritance. Social barriers between classes were quite rigid, therefore social mobility existed not so much between as within the estates. Each estate included many layers, ranks, levels, professions, ranks. So, public service could only be done by the nobility. The aristocracy was considered a military class (chivalry).

The higher in the social hierarchy an estate stood, the higher was its status. In contrast to castes, inter-class marriages were quite allowed. Sometimes individual mobility was allowed. A simple person could become a knight by purchasing a special permit from the ruler. As a relic, this practice has survived in modern England.

5. Social stratification and prospects for civil society in Russia

Russia in its history has experienced more than one wave of restructuring of the social space, when the old social structure collapsed, the world of values ​​changed, guidelines, patterns and norms of behavior were formed, entire layers perished, new communities were born. On the threshold of the XXI century. Russia is once again going through a complex and controversial process of renewal.

In order to understand the ongoing changes, it is first necessary to consider the foundations on which the social structure of Soviet society was built before the reforms of the second half of the 1980s.

The nature of the social structure of Soviet Russia can be revealed by analyzing Russian society as a combination of various stratification systems.

In the stratification of Soviet society, permeated with administrative and political control, the etacratic system played a key role. The place of social groups in the party-state hierarchy predetermined the volume of distributive rights, the level of decision-making and the scope of opportunities in all areas. The stability of the political system was ensured by the stability of the position of the ruling elite (“the nomenklatura”), in which the key positions were occupied by the political and military elites, and the economic and cultural elite occupied a subordinate place.

A etacratic society is characterized by a fusion of power and property; the predominance of state property; state-monopoly mode of production; dominance of centralized distribution; militarization of the economy; class-layer stratification of a hierarchical type, in which the positions of individuals and social groups are determined by their place in the structure state power, extending to the vast majority of material, labor, information resources; social mobility in the form of organized from above selection of the most obedient and loyal people to the system.

A distinctive characteristic of the social structure of a Soviet-type society was that it was not class-based, although in terms of the parameters of professional structure and economic differentiation it remained outwardly similar to the stratification of Western societies. As a result of the elimination of the basis of class division - private ownership of the means of production - the classes gradually destructured.

The monopoly of state property, in principle, cannot give a class society, since all citizens are employees of the state, differing only in the amount of powers delegated to them. Distinctive features of social groups in the USSR were special functions, formalized as a legal inequality of these groups. Such inequality led to the isolation of these groups, the destruction of "social lifts" that serve for upward social mobility. Accordingly, the life and consumption of elite groups acquired an increasingly significant character, reminiscent of a phenomenon called “prestigious consumption”. All these signs form a picture of a class society.

Class stratification is inherent in a society in which economic relations are rudimentary and do not play a differentiating role, and the main mechanism of social regulation is the state, which divides people into legally unequal estates.

From the first years of Soviet power, for example, the peasantry was formed into a special estate: its political rights were limited until 1936. The inequality of the rights of workers and peasants manifested itself for many years (attachment to collective farms through the system of a passportless regime, privileges for workers in obtaining education and promotion, the propiska system, etc.). In fact, employees of the party and state apparatus have become a special class with a whole range of special rights and privileges. The social status of the mass and heterogeneous class of prisoners was fixed in the legal and administrative order.

In the 60-70s. in conditions of chronic shortages and limited purchasing power of money, the process of leveling wages is intensifying, while the consumer market is simultaneously split into closed “special sectors” and the role of privileges is growing. The material and social situation of groups involved in distribution processes in the sphere of trade, supply, and transport has improved. The social influence of these groups increased as the shortage of goods and services worsened. During this period, shadow socio-economic ties and associations arise and develop. A more open type of social relations is being formed: in the economy, the bureaucracy acquires the ability to achieve the most favorable results for itself; the spirit of entrepreneurship also covers the lower social strata - numerous groups of private traders, manufacturers of "left" products, builders - "shabashniks" are being formed. Thus, there is a doubling of the social structure, when fundamentally different social groups coexist in a bizarre way within its framework.

Important social changes that took place in the Soviet Union in 1965 - 1985 are associated with the development of the scientific and technological revolution, urbanization and, accordingly, an increase in general level education.

From the early 60s to the mid 80s. More than 35 million people migrated to the city. However, urbanization in our country had a clearly deformed character: mass movements of rural migrants to the city were not accompanied by a corresponding deployment of social infrastructure. A huge mass of superfluous people, social outsiders, has appeared. Having lost contact with the rural subculture and unable to join the urban one, the migrants created a typically marginal subculture.

The figure of a migrant from the countryside to the city is a classic model of the marginal: no longer a peasant, not yet a worker; the norms of the rural subculture have been undermined, the urban subculture has not yet been assimilated. The main sign of marginalization is the rupture of social, economic, and spiritual ties.

The economic reasons for marginalization were the extensive development of the Soviet economy, the dominance of outdated technologies and primitive forms of labor, the discrepancy between the education system and the real needs of production, etc. This is closely related to the social causes of marginalization - the hypertrophy of the accumulation fund to the detriment of the consumption fund, which gave rise to an extremely low standard of living and a shortage of goods. Among the political and legal reasons for the marginalization of society, the main one is that during the Soviet period in the country there was a destruction of any kind of social ties “horizontally”. The state strove for global dominance over all spheres of public life, deforming civil society, minimizing the autonomy and independence of individuals and social groups.

In the 60-80s. an increase in the general level of education, the development of an urban subculture gave rise to a more complex and differentiated social structure. In the early 80s. specialists who received higher or secondary specialized education already accounted for 40% of the urban population.

By the beginning of the 90s. in terms of their educational level and professional positions, the Soviet middle stratum was not inferior to the Western “new middle class”. In this regard, the English political scientist R. Sakwa noted: “The communist regime gave rise to a kind of paradox: millions of people were bourgeois in their culture and aspirations, but were included in the socio-economic system that denied these aspirations.”

Under the influence of socio-economic and political reforms in the second half of the 80s. big changes have taken place in Russia. Compared to Soviet times, the structure of Russian society has undergone significant changes, although it retains many of its former features. The transformation of the institutions of Russian society has seriously affected its social structure: property and power relations have changed and continue to change, new social groups are emerging, the level and quality of life of each social group is changing, and the mechanism of social stratification is being rebuilt.

As an initial multivariate stratification model modern Russia Let's take four main parameters: power, prestige of professions, level of income and level of education.

Power is the most important dimension of social stratification. Power is necessary for the sustainable existence of any socio-political system; the most important public interests intersect in it. The system of power bodies of post-Soviet Russia has been substantially restructured - some of them have been liquidated, others have only been organized, some have changed their functions, their personal composition has been updated. The previously closed upper stratum of society opened up to people from other groups.

The place of the monolith of the nomenklatura pyramid was occupied by numerous elite groupings that are in competition with each other. The elite has lost a significant part of the levers of power inherent in the old ruling class. This led to a gradual transition from political and ideological methods of management to economic ones. Instead of a stable ruling class with strong vertical ties between its floors, many elite groups have been created, between which horizontal ties have intensified.

The sphere of administrative activity, where the role of political power has increased, is the redistribution of accumulated wealth. Direct or indirect involvement in the redistribution of state property is in modern Russia the most important factor determining the social status of management groups.

In the social structure of modern Russia, the features of the former etacratic society, built on power hierarchies, are preserved. However, at the same time, the revival of economic classes on the basis of privatized state property begins. There is a transition from stratification based on the basis of power (appropriation through privileges, distribution in accordance with the place of the individual in the party-state hierarchy) to stratification of the proprietary type (appropriation by profit and market-valued labor). Next to the power hierarchies, an "entrepreneurial structure" appears, which includes the following main groups: 1) large and medium-sized entrepreneurs; 2) small entrepreneurs (owners and managers of firms with minimal use of hired labor); 3) independent workers; 4) employees.

There is a tendency for the formation of new social groups claiming high places in the hierarchy of social prestige.

The prestige of professions is the second important dimension of social stratification. We can talk about a number of fundamentally new trends in the professional structure associated with the emergence of new prestigious social roles. The set of professions is becoming more complex, their comparative attractiveness is changing in favor of those that provide more substantial and faster material rewards. In this regard, assessments of the social prestige of various types of activity change, when physically or ethically “dirty” work is still considered attractive in terms of monetary reward.

The newly emerged and therefore "deficient" in terms of personnel, the financial sector, business, and commerce are filled with a large number of semi- and non-professionals. Entire professional strata are lowered to the "bottom" of social rating scales - their special training turned out to be unclaimed and the income from it is negligible.

The role of the intelligentsia in society has changed. As a result of the reduction of state support for science, education, culture and art, there was a drop in the prestige and social status of knowledge workers.

In modern conditions in Russia there has been a tendency to form a number of social strata belonging to the middle class - these are entrepreneurs, managers, certain categories of the intelligentsia, highly skilled workers. But this trend is contradictory, since the common interests of various social strata, potentially forming the middle class, are not supported by the processes of their convergence on such important criteria as the prestige of the profession and the level of income.

The level of income of various groups is the third essential parameter of social stratification. Economic status is the most important indicator of social stratification, because the level of income affects such aspects of social status as the type of consumption and lifestyle, the opportunity to do business, advance in the service, give children a good education, etc.

In 1997, the income received by the top 10% of Russians was almost 27 times higher than the income of the bottom 10%. The 20% of the wealthiest strata accounted for 47.5% of total cash income, while the 20% of the poorest received only 5.4%. 4% of Russians are super-wealthy - their income is approximately 300 times higher than the income of the bulk of the population.

The most acute problem in the social sphere today is the problem of mass poverty - the beggarly existence of almost 1/3 of the country's population is being conserved. Of particular concern is the change in the composition of the poor: today they include not only the traditionally low-income (disabled, pensioners, large families), the ranks of the poor have been joined by the unemployed and employed, whose wages (and this is a quarter of all those employed in enterprises) are below the subsistence level. Almost 64% of the population has incomes below the average (average income is considered to be 8-10 times the minimum wage per person) (see: Zaslavskaya T.I. The social structure of modern and certain society // Social sciences and modernity. 1997 No. 2. S. 17).

One of the manifestations of the declining standard of living of a significant part of the population was the growing need for secondary employment. However, it is not possible to determine the real scale of secondary employment and additional earnings (bringing even higher income than the main job). The criteria used today in Russia give only a conditional characterization of the income structure of the population, the data obtained are often limited and incomplete. Nevertheless, social stratification on an economic basis testifies to the ongoing process of restructuring of Russian society with great intensity. He was artificially limited in Soviet time and openly develops

The deepening of the processes of social differentiation of income groups is beginning to have a noticeable impact on the education system.

The level of education is another important criterion for stratification; education is one of the main channels of vertical mobility. During the Soviet period, higher education was accessible to many segments of the population, and secondary education was compulsory. However, such an education system was ineffective; higher education trained specialists without taking into account the real needs of society.

In modern Russia, the breadth of educational offerings is becoming a new differentiating factor.

In the new high-status groups, receiving a scarce and high-quality education is considered not only prestigious, but also functionally important.

Newly emerging professions require more qualifications and better training, and are better paid. As a consequence, education becomes an increasingly important entry factor into the professional hierarchy. The result is increased social mobility. It depends less and less on the social characteristics of the family and is more determined by the personal qualities and education of the individual.

An analysis of the changes taking place in the system of social stratification according to four main parameters speaks of the depth and inconsistency of the transformation process experienced by Russia and allows us to conclude that today it continues to retain the old pyramidal form (characteristic of pre-industrial society), although the content characteristics of its constituent layers have changed significantly.

In the social structure of modern Russia, six layers can be distinguished: 1) the upper one - the economic, political and power elite; 2) upper middle - medium and large entrepreneurs; 3) medium - small entrepreneurs, managers of the production sector, the highest intelligentsia, the working elite, military personnel; 4) basic - the mass intelligentsia, the main part of the working class, peasants, trade and service workers; 5) lower - unskilled workers, long-term unemployed, single pensioners; 6) "social bottom" - the homeless, released from places of detention, etc.

At the same time, a number of significant clarifications should be made related to the processes of changing the stratification system in the process of reforms:

Most social formations are mutually transitional in nature, have fuzzy, vague boundaries;

There is no internal unity of the newly emerging social groups;

There is a total marginalization of almost all social groups;

The new Russian state does not ensure the security of citizens and does not alleviate their economic situation. In turn, these dysfunctions of the state deform the social structure of society, give it a criminal character;

The criminal nature of class formation gives rise to a growing property polarization of society;

The current level of income cannot stimulate the labor and business activity of the bulk of the economically active population;

Russia retains a stratum of the population that can be called a potential resource for the middle class. Today, about 15% of those employed in the national economy can be attributed to this layer, but its maturation to a "critical mass" will require a lot of time. So far, in Russia, the socio-economic priorities characteristic of the "classical" middle class can only be observed in the upper strata of the social hierarchy.

A significant transformation of the structure of Russian society, which requires the transformation of the institutions of property and power, is a long process. Meanwhile, the stratification of society will continue to lose rigidity and unambiguity, taking the form of a blurred system in which layer and class structures are intertwined.

Undoubtedly, the formation of a civil society should become the guarantor of the renewal of Russia.

The problem of civil society in our country is of particular theoretical and practical interest. In terms of the nature of the dominant role of the state, Russia was initially closer to the eastern type of societies, but in our country this role was even more pronounced. According to A. Gramsci, "in Russia, the state represents everything, and civil society is primitive and vague."

In contrast to the West, a different type of social system has developed in Russia, based on the efficiency of power, and not the efficiency of property. One should also take into account the fact that for a long time in Russia there were practically no public organizations and such values ​​as the inviolability of the person and private property, legal thinking, which constitute the context of civil society in the West, remained undeveloped, the social initiative belonged not to associations of individuals, but to bureaucratic apparatus.

From the second half of XIX V. the problem of civil society began to be developed in Russian social and scientific thought (B.N. Chicherin, E.N. Trubetskoy, S.L., Frank, etc.). The formation of civil society in Russia begins during the reign of Alexander I. It was at this time that separate spheres of civil life appeared that were not related to military and court officials - salons, clubs, etc. As a result of the reforms of Alexander II, zemstvos, various unions of entrepreneurs, charity institutions, and cultural societies arose. However, the process of formation of civil society was interrupted by the revolution of 1917. Totalitarianism blocked the very possibility of the emergence and development of civil society.

The era of totalitarianism led to a grandiose leveling of all members of society before the all-powerful state, washing out any groups pursuing private interests. The totalitarian state significantly narrowed the autonomy of sociality and civil society, securing control over all spheres of public life.

The peculiarity of the current situation in Russia is that the elements of civil society will have to be created largely anew. Let us single out the most fundamental directions of the formation of civil society in modern Russia:

Formation and development of new economic relations, including pluralism of forms of ownership and the market, as well as the open social structure of society caused by them;

The emergence of a system of real interests adequate to this structure, uniting individuals, social groups and strata into a single community;

The emergence of various forms of labor associations, social and cultural associations, socio-political movements that make up the main institutions of civil society;

Renewal of relationships between social groups and communities (national, professional, regional, gender and age, etc.);

Creation of economic, social and spiritual prerequisites for the creative self-realization of the individual;

Formation and deployment of mechanisms of social self-regulation and self-government at all levels of the social organism.

The ideas of civil society found themselves in post-communist Russia in that peculiar context that distinguishes our country from Western states(with their strongest mechanisms of rational legal relations), and from the countries of the East (with their specifics of traditional primary groups). Unlike Western countries, the modern Russian state does not deal with a structured society, but, on the one hand, with rapidly emerging elite groups, and on the other, with an amorphous, atomized society dominated by individual consumer interests. Today, civil society in Russia is not developed, many of its elements have been forced out or "blocked", although during the years of reform there have been significant changes in the direction of its formation.

Modern Russian society is quasi-civil, its structures and institutions have many formal features of civil society formations. There are up to 50 thousand voluntary associations in the country - consumer associations, trade unions, environmental groups, political clubs, etc. However, many of them, having survived at the turn of the 80-90s. a short period of rapid growth, in last years bureaucratized, weakened, lost activity. An ordinary Russian underestimates group self-organization, and the most common social type has become an individual, closed in his aspirations for himself and his family. In overcoming such a state, due to the process of transformation, is the specificity of the current stage of development.

1. Social stratification - a system of social inequality, consisting of a set of interconnected and hierarchically organized social strata (strata). The stratification system is formed on the basis of such characteristics as the prestige of professions, the amount of power, income level and education level.

2. The theory of stratification makes it possible to model the political pyramid of society, identify and take into account the interests of individual social groups, determine the level of their political activity, the degree of influence on political decision-making.

3. The main purpose of civil society is to reach consensus among various social groups and interests. Civil society is a set of social formations united specifically by economic, ethnic, cultural, etc. interests realized outside the sphere of state activity.

4. The formation of civil society in Russia is associated with significant changes in the social structure. The new social hierarchy differs in many ways from the one that existed in the Soviet era and is characterized by extreme instability. The mechanisms of stratification are being rebuilt, social mobility is increasing, and many marginal groups with an indefinite status are emerging. Objective possibilities for the formation of a middle class are beginning to take shape. For a significant transformation of the structure of Russian society, it is necessary to transform the institutions of property and power, accompanied by a blurring of the boundaries between groups, a change in group interests and social interactions.

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