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Wiktionary
social stratification

n. (context sociology English) The hierarchical arrangement of social classes or castes within a society.

WordNet
social stratification

n. the condition of being arranged in social strata or classes within a group [syn: stratification]

Wikipedia
Social stratification

Social stratification is a society's categorization of people into socioeconomic strata, based upon their occupation and income, wealth and social status, or derived power (social and political). As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification typically is distinguished as three social classes: (i) the upper class, (ii) the middle class, and (iii) the lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into strata, e.g. the upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship or caste, or both.

The categorization of people by social strata occurs in all societies, ranging from the complex, state-based societies to tribal and feudal societies, which are based upon socio-economic relations among classes of nobility and classes of peasants. Historically, whether or not hunter-gatherer societies can be defined as socially stratified or if social stratification began with agriculture and common acts of social exchange, remains a debated matter in the social sciences. Determining the structures of social stratification arises from inequalities of status among persons, therefore, the degree of social inequality determines a person's social stratum. Generally, the greater the social complexity of a society, the more social strata exist, by way of social differentiation.

Usage examples of "social stratification".

Who would have expected the pre-Socratic stockingcap scarecrow to be conversing with the stale theory of social stratification?

Second, food production may be organized so as to generate stored food surpluses, which permit economic specialization and social stratification.

The Nakeds faced a Camelotian dilemma: whether to accede to the realities of social stratification and capitulate to appearances as eveiything and deny your own hunger and seek contentment in conformity and tone down your spiel, spritz, shtick, and performance capability and rework it to suit a mainstream audience-or go iconoclastic all the way and fuck this overweening adolescent urge to BELONG.

Only Aldous Huxley ever wrote a scenario for social stratification that was completely, if chillingly, self-consistent and stable.

For the Maya Sector, the harsh social stratification which characterized most of the League outside of the inner worlds was neither necessary nor economically advantageous—.

Cave art, spiritualism, proto-urbanization, social stratification.

In reality, the social stratification, especially on subject planets such as Prague, was horrible.

It was simply one of the forms of conspicuous waste by which human beings marked out the lines of social stratification—.

On Plateau it created a hideous social stratification, vestiges of which re mained long after ramrobot packages ended the organ bank problem itself.

Anyone with a penchant for exact social stratification would have classified it at the level where upper lower class meets lower middle class.

For the Maya Sector, the harsh social stratification which characterized most of the League outside of the inner worlds was neither necessary nor economically advantageous—.