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Stratification structures may take various forms of which four are typical: 1. Slavery 2. Estates 3. Caste 4. Class.
Stratification Structure: Form # 1. Slavery:
Slavery is an age-old institution. It prevailed in its extreme form in ancient Greece and Rome and in the southern states of the U.S.A. in the eighteenth century and continued till the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In its modified form, slavery existed in almost all parts of the world. The features of slavery in its extreme form are the following. First, slave belongs to his master to whom he is subjected in all respects.
The master possesses him in the same manner and to the same extent that he possesses his household goods — furniture, utensils, etc.
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Second, the question of enjoyment of political rights by slaves does not naturally arise.
Third, socially he is despised. Fourth, ‘beggar’ or compulsory labour is a must for a slave. The master can make him work for as many hours as he wants and in as arduous works as he chooses. This is the motive force which sustains the institution. The basis of slavery is economic.
The decline of slavery may be attributed to two causes. To begin with, there has been in all periods of history a conflict between the conception of slave as an object or property and the conception of slave as a human being with inherent emotions, feelings and potentials for growth of personality.
In ancient Greece, the Sophists denounced the institution of slavery as barbaric and unnatural. The voice of protest against the inequities of the institution has been raised in all subsequent periods in all parts of the world. Second, the inefficiency of slave labour also accounts for its steady decline and ultimate disappearance.
Stratification Structure: Form # 2. Estates:
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The people of a feudal society were divided into three groups:
(i) The First Estate which consisted of the clergy,
(ii) The Second Estate which consisted of the aristocracy, and
(iii) The Third Estate which consisted of the common people.
The feudal estates of Mediaeval Europe had three important characteristics. In the first place, the estates were legally defined – each estate having a status in the sense of a complex of rights and duties, of privileges and obligations. Secondly, the estates represented a broad division of labour.
The nobility were ordained to defend all, the clergy to pray for all, and the commons to provide food for all’. Thirdly, the feudal estates were political groups. It should be noted that classical feudalism consisted of only two estates, the clergy and the nobility. These two groups possessed political power. The serfs, in this sense, did not constitute an estate.
“The decline of European feudalism after the twelfth century is associated with the rise of a third estate, not of the serfs or villains, but of the burghers, who behaved for a long period as a distinctive group within the feudal system before they transformed or overthrew it”.
Stratification Structure: Form # 3. Caste:
The caste system, in cruel or mild form, has always existed, and is still existing, in every civilized country in the world. That the line of demarcation between different- employments or grades of work, “almost equivalent to an hereditary distinction of caste”, was known in the 19th century England was admitted by J.S. Mill.
In The Republic Plato addresses the Athenian Citizens with the following words:
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“You are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, where-for they have also the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will be generally preserved in the children……………. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the race”.
In this famous parable of the metals we have in a nutshell the Indian caste system. Regarding the professions of the caste, Plato says that the husbandmen should always remain a husbandman, a soldier always a soldier, etc. (in. 397 D). But he does not say that in every caste the son should practise his father’s profession as is implied in the caste rules of India.
The special features of the Indian caste system, which distinguishes the Indian variety from other similar systems of social stratification, consists in this hereditary principle. It is the existence of this principle alone that justifies translating Varna dharma as caste- system instead of class-system. But the traces of this hereditary principle grow fainter as we look back further and further into Rigvedic and Indo-Iranian times.
Stratification Structure: Form # 4. Class:
There is a vast literature on the definition of class, or social class. A distinction is sometimes made between the two terms. Class is defined in terms of objective criteria such as economic power, while social class is defined in terms of subjective criteria, such as class consciousness. The general tendency, however, is to use these two terms as synonymous.