Introduction
Social class is the acknowledgment that people inherently occupy different status in the society. The existing social classes are differentiated in terms of the authority and power held in the society, their working conditions which go hand in hand with the living conditions, their lifestyles and levels of education which are determined by the wealth they hold, their cultural practices and religion. (Cody, 2002). It can simply be defined as the hierarchical differences that exist between distinct people in the society. (Absolute astronomy, 2002).
Main body
William Lloyd Warner, an American sociologist wrote his book Social Class in America in 1949 in which he espoused a social class model with various levels. From the perspective of social anthropology he developed three distinct classes for the American society and the three classes had other subdivisions of upper and lower sections. (Absolute Astronomy, 2002).
Using the Warner’s model, I would place myself in the “true middle class” category. According to the description given to this social class as those professionals whose earnings and their level of education is considerably of a higher standing in comparison to those of the lower middle class workers. This I consider to be the case since at the moment as a nursing student, I may not easily be able to earn very high salaries as compared to those of the professionals in the financial sector. The earnings from the salaried profession may also not be comparable to that of the businessmen. Due these facts, I may not fit in the upper three classes and I justifiably fit the true middle class.
The reputational approach of classifying society into social classes has its basis on the supposed reputation by the members in that particular society and it mainly focuses on the level of education attained, the earning of the individual which are dependent on the profession of the individual or the career.(Russ, 2007) This approach has similarities with the Coleman and Rainwater’s SCH social class hierarchy which is divided into (i.)Upper Class: Upper upper, Lower upper and Upper middle. (ii) Middle: Middle Class, Working Class. (iii)Lower: Upper Lower, Lower lower. Using this approach I would place my friend in the Middle class. The reason for this is because at the moment she basically has a bachelor’s college degree and this gives a roughly comparable income to that class.
Though Warner’s model is quite accurate in a lot of perspectives, it is not necessarily excellent in its stratification of the classes. This is because it tends to lean towards the notion that for an individual to belong to the highest social class, his lineage must be already originating from that class. There are also some cases where people in lower classes also tend to make more money than those perceived to be in a higher social classes and this comes about because of the classification of their job types.
Conclusion
To a large extent Warner’s classification model is generally acceptable. If I were to design a model for social class, there are some changes that I consider necessary to be made to Warner’s social class model. I think it should be that all social classes are a matter of an individuals achievement through personal effort and not like the case whereby for a person to be in the highest social class he has to be born in it. This will dispel the notion of people resigning to destiny. The result of this classification is that an individual can actually move from one social class to another depending on their achievements. In this model the element of permanence of a person’s social class will be removed from social classification.
Works Cited
Absolute astronomy. Social class. 2002. Web.
David Cody. The Victorian web. Social class. 2002. Web.
Russ Long. Introductory Psychology. Social Class. 2007. Web.