Defining and Measuring Social Class; Key Words

Acheived Status = the degree of social honour and prestige accorded to a person or group because of their acheivements or other merits.

Ascribed Status = the degree of social honour and prestige accorded to the person or group because of their origin or inherited characteristics.

Black Economy= illegal ways of increasing income.

Caste System = Hindu system of stratification, now officially banned to India but still influential.

Closed Societies = societies with no social mobility.

Differentiation = perceived social differences between people. e. g. along lines of gender, age or race.

Employment Relations and Work Relations = whether people are employed or self-employed and are able to excercise authority over others.

Ethnographic = research which focuses on the everyday life of the group being studied, usually observation and, or unstructured interviews..

Feudal Estate System = Stratification system of medieval Europe.

Intermediate Class = according to Goldthorpe, a lower grouping of middle class containing those with poorer work and market situations than the service class. e. g. clerical workers.

Life Chances = Opportunities for acheiving things that provide a high quality of life, such as good housing, health and education.

Loaded = questions that suggest or encourage a particular answer.

Market Position or Conditions = income and economic life chances, such as promotion prospects, sick pay and control over hours worked and how work is done.

Material = physical, often economic, things such as money and consumer goods.

Meritocratic = rewarding hard work or talent, rather than inherited wealth or position.

Open Societies = societies with a high degree of social  mobility, where status is usually allocated on the basis of acheivement and merit.

Operationalise = define something in such a way that it can be measured.

 Patriachal = male dominated.

Service Class = according to Goldthorpe, those with the highest work and market situations: the upper middle class. e. g. large proprieters as well as administrators, amnagers and professionals.

Social Class = hierarchically arranged groups in modern industrial societies based on similarities in status, wealth, income and occupation.

 Social Stratification = the lierarchical layering of a society into distinct groups with different levels of wealth, status and power.

Social Status = degree of social honour, prestige and importance accorded to a person or group.