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A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, [1] 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. [2]
Social class in the United States refers to the idea of grouping Americans by some measure of social status, typically by economic status. However, it could also refer to social status and/or location. [1] The idea that American society can be divided into social classes is disputed, and there are many competing class systems. [2]
The psychology of social class is a branch of social psychology dedicated to understanding how social class affects individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. While social class has long been a subject of analysis in fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology, medicine and epidemiology, its emergence within the field of psychology is much more recent.
In modern Western societies, social stratification is defined in terms of three social classes: an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into an upper-stratum, a middle-stratum, and a lower stratum. [5]
According to Weber, the ability to possess power derives from the individual's ability to control various "social resources". "The mode of distribution gives to the propertied a monopoly on the possibility of transferring property from the sphere of use as 'wealth' to the sphere of 'capital,' that is, it gives them the entrepreneurial function and all chances to share directly or indirectly in ...
Sociologists use the concept of occupational prestige (also known as job prestige) to measure the relative social-class positions people may achieve by practicing a given occupation. Occupational prestige results from the consensual rating of a job - based on the belief of that job's worthiness.
Fussell argues that social class in the United States is more complex in structure than simply three (upper, middle, and lower) classes.According to Bruce Weber, writing for the New York Times, Fussell divided American society into nine strata — from the idle rich, which he called "the top out-of-sight," to the institutionalized and imprisoned, which he labeled "the bottom out-of-sight."
Class analysis is research in sociology, politics and economics from the point of view of the stratification of the society into dynamic classes.It implies that there is no universal or uniform social outlook, rather that there are fundamental conflicts that exist inherent to how society is currently organized.