Revision summary
Marx, Weber and Davis–Moore mapped class, status, power and function, usually with a male default. Gender-blindness means treating the household as a unit and unpaid care as non-economic. Hartmann, Walby, Oakley and Acker made patriarchy a structure of stratification. Crenshaw’s intersectionality warns against adding gender as an afterthought. Indian work on Brahmanical patriarchy and Dalit feminism shows caste and gender as one field. The elucidation is critical but not a dismissal of class analysis.
Model answer
Introduction
- Social stratification theory explains structured inequality: who gets resources, honour and power, and how that pattern is reproduced. Karl Marx organised the map around class and property. Max Weber added status and party. Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore asked what functions inequality serves. For a long time this canon treated the household as a unit and the worker as male. Feminist sociology calls that gender-blindness, and the charge is largely just.
Body
Where the classical theories look away
Marx’s classes are owners and labourers. Women’s unpaid domestic labour, reproduction and the wage gap inside the working class are not central to Capital. Weber’s status groups can include honour and lifestyle, which could have opened a door to gender, but his political sociology still writes citizens and officials in a masculine default. Davis and Moore speak of functionally important positions as if recruitment were sex-neutral. Even Pierre Bourdieu’s later capital theory, which is richer on taste and embodiment, was criticised for underplaying gender until feminist readers pushed habitus toward the patriarchal household.
- Heidi Hartmann described Marxism and feminism as an unhappy marriage: class analysis needs a theory of patriarchy, and gender analysis needs a theory of capitalism. Sylvia Walby listed structures of patriarchy, including paid work, household production, the state and culture. Ann Oakley and later Joan Acker showed that “job” and “organisation” are already gendered. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality, though born in legal studies, matters for sociology: caste, class and gender do not add as separate columns.
Indian elucidation
In India a class-only map misses how endogamy, dowry and honour reproduce hierarchy. Uma Chakravarti’s Brahmanical patriarchy and Sharmila Rege’s Dalit feminist standpoint argue that stratification is sexed at the foundation. The canon is not wholly blind: Weberian status helps. As a tradition, though, it explained public class and forgot private gender.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD ST[Stratification canon] --> CL[Class Marx] ST --> SP[Status and party Weber] ST --> FN[Function Davis-Moore] ST -.-> GB[Gender often missing] FEM[Feminist theory] --> GB IND[Caste-gender India] --> GB
Conclusion
Classical stratification theory is gender-blind when it takes the male public actor as the unit and treats the family as a black box. Feminist and Indian caste–gender work show that sex and kinship are structures of inequality, not side topics. A full account of stratification has to hold class, status, caste and gender together.
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Its origin is there, but the method of not separating axes is used in Indian caste–class–gender analysis.
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Davis and Moore treat unequal rewards as devices to fill important positions. Parsons ties ranking to a shared value system and role allocation. That logic easily sanctifies the present hierarchy as necessary. Tumin asked who defines importance and why talent and reward match so neatly. Unpaid gendered labour and caste inheritance expose the payoff story. Merton’s dysfunctions qualify equilibrium but do not make functionalism a conflict theory.
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Sen’s approach defines poverty as capability deprivation, not income shortfall alone. Functionings are beings and doings; capabilities are the real set of lives one can choose. Social capital is networks, trust and norms in Coleman, Putnam and Bourdieu, unequally held. Chronic poverty lasts because freedoms stay contracted or because bridges to work and credit stay closed. Dense caste bonding can coexist with capability failure. Indian SHGs, migration networks and multidimensional poverty measures illustrate the comparison.
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What is social mobility? Critically examine the classification of 'closed' and 'open' models of social stratification
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