Social class facts for kids
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A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of social categories, the most common being the working class, middle class, and upper class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network.
The existence of social classes is considered normal in many societies, both historic and modern, to varying degrees. It is important to note that not all systems that have social classes are the same, rather, they can vary to each other in substantial ways that reflect the respective cultures of said societies, at times even only having the shared creation of social class in common.
Contents
History
Ancient Egypt
The existence of a class system dates back to times of Ancient Egypt, where the position of elite was also characterized by literacy. The wealthier people were at the top in the social order and common people and slaves being at the bottom. However, the class was not rigid; a man of humble origins could ascend to a high post.
The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress.
Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land. Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system. Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of their rank. The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt; there is difference of opinions among authors.
Not a single Egyptian was, in our sense of the word, free. No individual could call in question a hierarchy of authority which culminated in a living god.
Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the workplace.
Elsewhere
In Ancient Greece when the clan system was declining. The classes replaced the clan society when it became too small to sustain the needs of increasing population. The division of labor is also essential for the growth of classes.
Historically, social class and behavior were laid down in law. For example, permitted mode of dress in some times and places was strictly regulated, with sumptuous dressing only for the high ranks of society and aristocracy, whereas sumptuary laws stipulated the dress and jewelry appropriate for a person's social rank and station. In Europe, these laws became increasingly commonplace during the Middle Ages. However, these laws were prone to change due to societal changes, and in many cases, these distinctions may either almost disappear, such as the distinction between a patrician and a plebeian being almost erased during the late Roman Republic.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a large influence over political ideals of the French Revolution because of his views of inequality and classes. Rousseau saw humans as "naturally pure and good," meaning that humans from birth were seen as innocent and any evilness was learned. He believed that social problems arise through the development of society and suppress the innate pureness of humankind. He also believed that private property is the main reason for social issues in society because private property creates inequality through the property's value. Even though his theory predicted if there were no private property then there would be wide spread equality, Rousseau accepted that there will always be social inequality because of how society is viewed and run.
Later Enlightenment thinkers viewed inequality as valuable and crucial to society's development and prosperity. They also acknowledged that private property will ultimately cause inequality because specific resources that are privately owned can be stored and the owners profit off of the deficit of the resource. This can create competition between the classes that was seen as necessary by these thinkers. This also creates stratification between the classes keeping a distinct difference between lower, poorer classes and the higher, wealthier classes.
India (↑), Nepal, North Korea (↑), Sri Lanka (↑) and some Indigenous peoples maintain social classes today.
In class societies, class conflict has tended to recur or is ongoing, depending on the sociological and anthropolitical perspective. Class societies have not always existed; there have been widely different types of class communities. For example, societies based on age rather than capital. During colonialism, social relations were dismantled by force, which gave rise to societies based on the social categories of waged labor, private property, and capital.
Determinants of class
In societies where classes exist, one's class is determined largely by:
- occupation
- education and qualifications
- income, personal, household and per capita
- wealth, including the ownership of land, property, means of production, et cetera
- family background.
In the United Kingdom there are upper class, middle class, working class and underclass people.
Class society
Class society or class-based society is an organizing principle society in which ownership of property, means of production, and wealth is the determining factor of the distribution of power, in which those with more property and wealth are stratified higher in the society and those without access to the means of production and without wealth are stratified lower in the society. In a class society, at least implicitly, people are divided into distinct social strata, commonly referred to as social classes or castes. The nature of class society is a matter of sociological research. Class societies exist all over the globe in both industrialized and developing nations. Class stratification is theorized to come directly from capitalism. In terms of public opinion, nine out of ten people in a Swedish survey considered it correct that they are living in a class society.
Class conflict
Class conflict, frequently referred to as class struggle, is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests and desires between people of different classes.
For Marx, the history of class society was a history of class conflict. He pointed to the successful rise of the bourgeoisie and the necessity of revolutionary violence—a heightened form of class conflict—in securing the bourgeois rights that supported the capitalist economy.
Marx believed that the exploitation and poverty inherent in capitalism were a pre-existing form of class conflict. Marx believed that wage labourers would need to revolt to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power.
Classless society
A "classless" society is one in which no one is born into a social class. Distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture or social network might arise and would only be determined by individual experience and achievement in such a society.
Since these distinctions are difficult to avoid, advocates of a classless society (such as anarchists and communists) propose various means to achieve and maintain it and attach varying degrees of importance to it as an end in their overall programs/philosophy.
Related pages
- Bohemianism
- Caste
- Constitution
- Constitutional economics
- Class struggle
- Clergy
- Household income in the United States
- Social status
- Working class
Images for kids
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A symbolic image of three orders of feudal society in Europe prior to the French Revolution, which shows the rural third estate carrying the clergy and the nobility
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In many countries, the lowest stratum of the working class, the underclass, often lives in urban areas with low-quality civil services
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Equestrian portrait of Empress Elizabeth of Russia with a Moor servant
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See also
In Spanish: Clase social para niños
- Class stratification
- Drift hypothesis
- Elite theory
- Elitism
- Four occupations
- Health equity
- Hostile architecture
- Inca society
- Mass society
- National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
- Passing (sociology)
- Post-industrial society
- Ranked society
- Raznochintsy
- Psychology of social class
- Welfare state
