Sociology Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 835–854. Printed in the United Kingdom © 2001 BSA Publications Limited
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising
Social Stratification: Looking at Ethnicity and Class
Floya Anthias
Department of Sociology
University of Greenwich
One of the most characteristic features of contemporary debates in the social
sciences is the growth of interest in non-class forms of social division and identity,
accompanied by an increasing focus on ethnic and gender inequalities. This paper attempts
to provide a frame for incorporating such divisions into stratification theory by placing the
notion of ‘social division’ at centre stage and redrawing its boundaries. The paper pays
particular attention to ethnicity and class for the purposes of the argument. It is argued
that a theorisation of social divisions can show how non-class forms of division and
identity constitute central elements of the stratification system of modern societies. Such
an approach also marries better with the wealth of evidence that scholars of ethnicity and
‘race’ have been collecting on the importance of race/ethnicity as structuring social
location and differential and unequal social outcomes.
A B S T R AC T
K EY WO R D S
class, ethnicity, exclusion, social divisions, status, stratification.
Introduction
A key feature of contemporary sociology is the growth of interest in non-class
forms of social division and identity, accompanied by an increasing focus on ethnic
and gender inequalities (Therborn 2000). However, this has not been accompanied
by a rethinking of social stratification theory; the latter is still generally seen to be
about economic inequalities organised on the basis of class (Scott 2000). Despite
acknowledging that gender and ethnic/race processes are relevant in determining
social positioning and that they may influence an individual’s class position, within
stratification theory non-class forms of differentiation tend to be seen as either
manifestations of class or as ‘status’ categories (Crompton 1998).
There is no doubt that gender inequalities have been widely explored and
theorised and the theoretical means for understanding these have been appraised
and developed substantially (for example, see Pollert 1996, Crompton 1997, Bottero
1998, Reay 1998, Gottfried 2000). This is also the case for ethnic inequalities (for
example, see Modood et al (1997) and the discussion later on in this paper).
Moreover, the relationship between gender, ethnicity and class is an important
debate in sociology today (for example, Anthias and Yuval Davis 1983, 1992, Brah
1996, Bradley 1996). There have been attempts to measure or understand the
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correlation between class position and gender or ethnic position, such as the extent
to which women and men tend to be concentrated into particular occupational
clusters and economic groupings (for a good summary on gender and class, see
Crompton 1997). These correlations have been explained in terms of factors such as
cultural or personal choices, the existence of social constraints such as sexism or
racism, the sexual division of labour in the household, the existence of dual labour
markets and the idea that women and ethnic minorities constitute a reserve army of
labour (for a summary of these debates, see Anthias, 2001). There is also a great deal
of literature that attempts to refine the notion of class by developing neo-Marxist or
neo-Weberian concepts such as those of the New Middle Classes or the Service Class
(see Scott 2000 for a good summary). However, these developments have not led to a
substantial revision of traditional stratification theory. This paper does not
minimise the importance of these developments, but rather tries to build on this
work by attempting to redraw the boundaries theoretically for understanding social
stratification by delineating and delimiting the concept of ‘social division’.
Whilst stratification theory clings to the traditional focus on ‘class’, much of the
impetus for engaging with class divisions, so primary for the sociological tradition,
has disappeared, placing stratification approaches arguably somewhat on the
periphery of modern sociological debates. The growth of more consensual forms of
class politics in the West has been accompanied by the impending demise of ‘class’ as
a significant arena of struggle, found in modern academic debates as well as in
political arguments (Pakulski and Waters 1996). Social movement theory has
heralded new types of political allegiances by a range of social forces, around the
environment and around other specific campaigns often organised in terms of local
identities and concerns (Touraine 1981).
At the same time, the twin poles of postmodern theory and globalisation theory
have made the conception of social divisions and identities more problematical
despite the increasing literature produced around ‘identity and difference’ (Rattansi
and Westwood 1994). Postmodern theory, in seeking to correct homogenising and
essentialising notions found in earlier sociological work, has dismantled the ‘social’:
the view of society as composed of systems and practices that cohere around a stable
set of defining elements. Globalisation theory, by contrast, whilst varying in focus,
constructs a universal process whereby social categories are displaced by a global
world view and global practices, particularly in the economic and cultural variants of
the theory (Featherstone 1990). These override the old divisions and unities of class,
ethnicity and gender whilst constructing new social forms.
The growth of fragmented social forces is also a key element in current debates
on class (Bradley 1996). The focus on fragmentation and the growth of flexible and
differentiated labour markets mirrors some of the conclusions of postmodern
theory, although the theoretical assumptions that underpin these are different.
Arguably, given both changing social relations and a shift in the terrain of sociology
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
(see Therborn 2000), it is vital to turn to the concepts we use in order to give them a
greater heuristic potential. Rethinking social stratification is one important aspect of
this.
Class debates have retained a concern with empirically delineating ‘class places’
and sorting out ‘who belongs where’ in the class schema as well as the ways class
reproduction or change takes place (for a good account, see Crompton 1998). Whilst
class is a central component of social relations, despite arguments that it has lost its
central dynamic as the motor of social change, it is again important to consider how it
may be incorporated into a broader based approach to social stratification. The
recognition of multiple forms of inequality in modern societies has led to attempts to
find alternatives to the traditional stratification approach by developing the
essentially Weberian notions of social exclusion and status. Concurrently, a whole
industry has grown around the study of ‘social exclusion’, a term in the past associated
with Max Weber but which few contemporary writers have sought to define clearly.
This term potentially broadens the foci of stratification to include political, civic and
cultural forms of stratification. Since the matter of exclusion and inclusion spans a
number of important parameters of differentiation and stratification, this potentially
opens the way (as Parkin 1979 noted) to considering gender and ethnicity as aspects of
stratification. This view has been gaining ground: the issue is how to do it in ways
which do not mirror the triple burden approach of those early theorisations of class,
ethnicity and gender that treated them as additive in producing subordination, that is
merely referring to multiple sources of inequality. Such an approach tends to be
mechanistic and descriptive (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992).
In this paper, I will find a different way of overcoming the problems, through
placing the notion of ‘social division’ at centre stage. Whilst some have used this term
to refer to a wide range of social differences (such as Payne 2000), I shall delimit the
term ‘social division’ for the purpose of stratification analysis. A ‘social division’
involves a classification of a population (i.e. a taxonomy of persons) and a range of
systematic social processes which relate to that taxonomy, and which then serve to
produce socially meaningful and systematic (although not unitary) practices and
outcomes of inequality. Such taxonomies construct boundaries of membership
which involve both attributions by others and self-attributions. The practices and
outcomes of inequality involve experiential, intersubjective, organisational and
representational processes which relate to hierarchical difference, unequal resource
allocation and inferiorisation (see Anthias 1998 for a fuller discussion). I will explore
the question of social divisions and identities as forms of stratification, paying
particular attention to ethnicity and class for the purposes of the argument, although
gender forms an essential element within the framework that I develop. In this I want
to make it clear that I am not prioritising one social division over the others but
developing a framework of analysis that takes the character of social division as the
central umbrella category for understanding stratified social relations. This does not
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necessarily preclude other divisions such as health and disability, however, from
being incorporated into this analysis.
Social exclusion
One way out of the difficulties facing traditional stratification theory and an
acknowledgement of a crisis at its heart, is the current concern with social exclusion,
potentially breaking the impasse found in the concepts and debates that dominated
sociology for so long. This is redrawing the boundaries of the discussion towards a
broader recognition of the objects and mechanisms of inequality. Within these
discussions poverty, for example, is acknowledged as being linked to social divisions
such as gender, ethnicity, age and so on. Here the concept of exclusion is used to draw
attention to how life chances are structured through relations that do not fit easily
into the traditional view of class.
Gender and ethnicity provide mechanisms for exclusion because the centrality of
boundaries is crucial to them (i.e. they contain exclusionary processes at their heart),
but they are also essentially hierarchical and inferiorising discourses and practices.
Although the formation of social identities cannot be reduced to the effects of social
exclusion or inclusion, these processes have important structuring effects on
identities. Moreover, identities involve the construction of where, how and why
particular boundaries are formed of exclusion and inclusion. From this point of view
the formation of identities is itself part of the ways in which exclusions and
inclusions operate within social relations. In other words, to treat gender and
ethnicity as operating to produce inequality ignores the fact that as social relations
they are already constituted as parameters of stratification as well as differentiation,
rather than operating a posteriori to produce inequalities in tandem with those of
class. Such identities already involve processes of differentiation and processes of
stratification, as well as psychic and solidary social investments.
There are a number of problems, however, worth highlighting in the analysis of
social exclusion. One is the tendency to identify persons as ‘the excluded’. Social
exclusion appears to be identified in many debates with social polarisation (for
example, through focusing on those on the bottom rung of the stratification order,
such as the poor or the underclass). One of the dangers is that it may reduce those
subject to processes of ‘social exclusion’ to either passive victims or willing agents in
their own denigration. In much of Europe exclusion has been related to lack of social
integration or anomie, utilising a Durkheimian problematic relating to the
conditions for social cohesion, and often being another term for poverty and its
effects (van Berkel 1997). The danger here is a tendency to pathologise and
homogenise: and produce a disqualified identity. Moreover, it could be argued that
focusing on ‘the excluded’ focuses too much at the bottom of the scale and does not
allow for looking at forms of inequality and hierarchy more generally.
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
The processes/mechanisms of exclusion moreover may be located in different
social spheres and affect categories of persons differently depending on whether they
are to be treated in terms of gender, in terms of ethnicity or in terms of class: they are
relational and multidimensional. These include institutional processes and
mechanisms such as civil and social rights; economic, such as restructuring of the
labour market; cultural such as cultural practices and different norms/life styles,
xenophobia, stigmatisation, racism etc. (but the latter is also institutional); spatial
such as urban development and housing markets; those linked to social capital such
as exclusion from social networks that are socially valued, i.e. of the right sort. These
dimensions interact with and reinforce each other. This means that the domain of
investigating exclusion is extremely broad, making it difficult to delineate the
boundaries of the subject matter for research.
In terms of thinking through social exclusion in terms of outcomes the question
needs to be posed with regard to a distinction between outcomes for social relations,
for persons and for the formation of social categories and identities. There is also a
problem in identifying from where the outcomes are derived, particularly important
in their correction, with direct policy implications; for example, if minority groups
are excluded, what are the racist, gendered and economic aspects that produce these;
if poverty is the outcome, then how are the variety of processes relating to organised
exclusionary mechanisms of gender, race and class to be evaluated?
Another difficulty relates to treating inclusion as the opposite of exclusion. This is
clearly problematic as subordination, economic exploitation and assimilation can be
seen as forms of inclusion. However, this does not mean that in the moral binary of
exclusion as bad and inclusion as good they can be fitted easily into the latter: indeed,
they are subordinating and disempowering forms of inclusion. For example, being
included in the workforce under unequal conditions, as are minorities, particularly
undocumented migrants, constitutes a disempowering form of inclusion which
indeed may also be referred to in terms of exclusion. Moreover, inclusion in one
social sphere, such as the labour market, can go hand in hand with exclusion from
another social sphere, such as the political process – namely, citizenship, as is the case
for migrants and refugees in many states. Additionally, not all can be included in
everything. In other words it is not possible to treat exclusion and inclusion as
mutually exclusive. Therefore, the opposite of exclusion may not be inclusion (since
inclusion can also mean subordination), but perhaps should be seen as citizenship or
participation/representation.
A proposed reformulation might be differential exclusion and inclusion. This has
a number of advantages and brings it closer to a more meaningful notion of social
stratification. Such an approach would see exclusion as not absolute but dynamic
and contextual. It would not only focus on the bottom but on the whole of the
stratification structure. It would be able to examine class subordination/stigmatisation and reproduction; gender subordination and sexism; race and ethnic
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subordination and racism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. It would enable a focus
on resource mobilisation including social capital (such as networks) and the role of
collective identities for this. However, it is preferable to reformulate this around
social divisions because this problematic goes beyond differentiated exclusions and
inclusions. It is also able to attend to stratification processes and outcomes, i.e. those
of hierarchical social relations.
The notion of status
The notion of status has been proposed recently as a way of thinking about
non-class forms of social hierarchy/stratification and as ‘relating to the overall
structuring of inequality along a range of dimensions’ (Crompton 1993:127). This is
also a position argued by Scott (2000). This involves a reiteration and return to the
Weberian notion that status is about life-style groupings on the one hand and the
social system of deference and honour on the other. Weber himself was clear in
seeing ethnic groups as particular types of status groups (Weber 1964). But treating
them as ways for allocating prestige and honour or as denoting life style or
consumption categories alone underestimates their centrality in terms of the ways
they enter material resource distribution, allocation and power. In some current
analyses, status has been used to refer to a wide range of social relations including
citizenship rights (Lockwood 1996). The Weberian notion of status is being asked to
do theoretical work of a different order here. In Weber, it was used to locate relations
that impacted on life chances within the market place as well as positing a parallel but
different basis for power. Certainly citizenship rights constitute a place for
formulating a range of conditions about resource access and allocation but the
juridical and other categories implicated are themselves highly gendered and
racialised in quite specific ways. The concept of ‘status’ is not able to attend to the
complex range of social relations involved here.
By treating non-class divisions as relating to status (as Scott 2000 does), a
particular definition of class operates that identifies it with everything to do with
economic distribution and production. The conflation between class and the
economic is significant and places a hurdle in taking gender and ethnicity seriously
as modes for organising the distribution and consumption of resources. This
approach assumes that class processes are distinctively material: about the
distribution and consumption of economic value (in some cases linked to the
production process) singularly related to the market place or the labour market/
employment system. The binary that Weber constructs between class and status is
purely heuristic: here it is interpreted to refer to actual groupings of people that can
be allocated a position under two different grids: those of economic resources, which
produce class populations, and those under life style and honour, which produce
status-group populations, like women and racialised minority ethnic groups. But
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
gender and ethnic populations are not simply groups with differential life style or
social honour: for their conditions of existence – given discourses, practices and
systemic institutional relations – actually mean that they enter into the whole system
of economic resource allocation.
Moreover, dividing people into permanent class and status groupings simply
does not work or have any heuristic value. This is because the people in class groups
are concurrently crosscut by gender and ethnicity. Moreover, treating gender and
ethnicity as ‘groupings’ and then allocating then to the ‘status’ category within a
Weberian problematic fails to attend to their specific characteristics and their
differences, both from each other as well as other types of status groupings such as
occupational or consumption based groups. When one looks at processes for the
production of unequal outcomes, by contrast, then one cannot use the class category
alone, unless it becomes merely a shorthand for all those processes that lead to
outcomes of unequal resource distribution. These problems do not imply
abandoning class but treating it as an heuristic device rather than about actual
groupings of people, i.e. for sociological purposes rather than for auditing purposes.
Class relations as related to the distribution of property and other resources is
central to the Weberian notion of class. But this should not be equated with social
stratification (as happens in Scott 2000). Weber’s focus is on the advantages or
disadvantages people have in the market vis-á-vis the use of their marketable
resources. The key for social stratification is precisely that market driven notions of
value are always mediated by the social. Class, ethnic and gender attributions and
competencies are centrally important in the market place, both as resources that
individuals bring to it, but also in terms of the allocation of value to the places in the
market (see, for example, the discussion of skill in the work of Phillips and Taylor
(1980) and the work of Cockburn (1991)). Indeed one could argue that social
divisions like gender and ethnicity lie at the heart of the social (Anthias 1998).
The symbolic, economic resources and class
It could be argued that it is possible to incorporate gender and ethnic divisions
into stratification analysis through using Bourdieu’s schema (1987). Bourdieu
distinguishes between four kinds of capital that enter into class relations:
• economic: this can be immediately converted into money as a ready form of
exchange
• social: this involves connections, networks and group membership
• cultural: this is the level of the informational, for example, educational
credentials, knowledge, dispositions, cultural goods
• symbolic: this depicts the form different types of capital take once perceived or
recognised as legitimate: can be converted to power .
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In Bourdieu’s work cultural, symbolic and social capital are treated as aspects of class
and as translatable into the economic (Bourdieu 1986), so that gender and ethnicity,
for example, could form part of the cultural and symbolic schema, which then enters
class relations. Bourdieu however, does not treat gender as a form of capital, though
gendered dispositions are seen as part of the habitus. Male and female are treated as
equivalent to feminine and masculine dispositions. Gendered differences are
regarded as epitomisations of class groupings, that is they serve as differentiators of
class but not as constitutive of material positionality. Moreover, race and ethnicity
have no place in his theory of culture (Li Puma 1993). Therefore, Bourdieu’s
framework consciously rejects incorporating gender and ethnicity into social
stratification.
Whilst for Bourdieu class relations are not exclusively those of employment and
occupation, as in the work of Goldthorpe (1990), Lockwood (1996) and others, for
Bourdieu they constitute the central determining component of class (Li Puma 1993).
Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital goes some way in acknowledging the role of
cultural resources as a form of capital. However, the analogy with capital focuses on
how they might enter into providing access, in the final analysis, to economic resources,
a heritage of the focus on class as the primary social division (Bourdieu 1986).
It is relevant here to differentiate between the attempt to provide an analysis of
systems of production (such as capitalism) and the attempt to analyse the processes
involved in the social allocation of resources to concrete individuals. Whereas the
former entails a focus on the ‘economic’ as a primary principle (whether from a neoliberal or Marxist perspective), this is not the case for the second. For example, the
epistemological primacy given to ‘the economic’ in the final analysis within
Althusserian revisions of Marx (Althusser 1969, 1971) does not imply a primacy in
relation to the social allocation of resources to concrete individuals and groups. The
latter involves social relations of hierarchisation and inferiorisation, important
elements of ‘social division’ in modern society. Gender and ethnicity involve the
allocation of hierarchies of value, inferiorisation as well as unequal resource
allocation (on their own basis and not through the intermediate relation of
production relations). For example, women may be paid less for doing the same job
as men, or jobs that women do may be allocated a different economic value. Being a
woman or black can exclude an individual from access to the resources of a group, for
example, male-dominated occupations or those defined as ‘masculine’ or defined by
the state as only appropriate for British nationals (such as top civil service jobs).
Moreover, economic resources, beyond a certain reproductive point of human
sustainability, need to be endowed with a symbolic or cultural value (as Bourdieu
recognises), for them to be seen as socially meaningful in the construction of
hierarchical social relations relating to life conditions and life chances. This can also
be considered the other way round: that roles in the production system will structure
life outcomes and chances, not only in economic/material ways but also in symbolic
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
ways which themselves lead to concrete/material outcomes for individuals and
groups. For example, there are a range of resources that are gained from the
performance of more ‘desirable’ jobs that enter into an assessment of an individual’s
life conditions and life chances, such as deference or authority which may not
immediately translate into high economic rewards. However, whilst the knowledge
base of some work is valued in and of itself, such positions may give privileged access
to resources, which can be translated into life conditions, such as knowledge of the
best areas for good schools, or the best forms of health care. Moreover, some
bureaucratic jobs are invested with authority to decide how resources should be
distributed to populations and individuals, indicating that resource allocation is not
only market led. Social places are not merely subject to the determination of class but
of cultural and embodied social positionalities, specifying types of human persons
(Anthias, 2001).
Social divisions and stratification
As I argued earlier the incorporation of non-class based inequalities into an
understanding of social stratification cannot be done by merely arguing for a
multidimensional approach. It is important to develop a ‘frame’ for delineating social
identities and divisions which constitute both central classificatory elements in
society and systems for allocating social value and positionality (see Anthias 1998).
This requires developing the concept of ‘social division’beyond it being used to signify
a multitude of different categories of the population such as age groups, health
differences and so on (as found in Payne 2000 for example). I will argue that class,
gender and ethnicity are the primary divisions from the point of view of stratification
in modern societies. However, this does not preclude incorporating other divisions
into the framework (I am thinking particularly of disability (Oliver 1995)).
The term ‘social division’ is very broad and it is possible to include under its
ambit all types of ‘difference’ such as age, health, religion, styles of life and so on, as
mentioned earlier. However, a ‘social division’ such as gender or ethnicity could be
seen as differing from one constructed by age in a very important way. This is because
the systematic social practices around different age groups (such as children and old
people) construct places for all people to fill at particular stages of their life: i.e. they
pertain to all persons. However, the practices and outcomes around childhood and
age will be systematically impacted on by class, gender and ethnicity. A social division
is therefore more than a taxonomy: it also involves attributions of capacities and
human value and the existence of differential treatment on this basis, including
systematic social processes of inferiorisation, hierarchisation and unequal resource
allocation (Anthias 1998).
A social division involves boundaries which can be identified in terms of the
principle of relationality/dichotomy, the principle of naturalisation and the principle of
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collective attributions (for a fuller discussion see Anthias 1996, 1998). Relationality
constructs difference and identity in terms of a dichotomy or binary opposition
between those within and those outside the boundary. For example, the categories of
men and women are binary, as are those of black and white ‘race’ groups. In addition,
the categorial formations naturalise social outcomes treating them as generic and
fixed, bringing us to naturalisation. For example, both gender difference and ethnic
difference appear in social discourse and understandings as though they are ‘natural’
or unchangeable and fixed. Social stereotypes exist about the aptitudes of women
seeing them, for example, as ‘naturally’ more dextrous than men. Asians in Britain
are often seen to have a natural preference for entrepreneurial behaviour. In
addition, sexual difference is commonly regarded as being at the root of job
preferences between men and women. Collective attributions function to homogenise: for example, the gender category uses the attribution of sexual difference and
ideas of its necessary social effects to treat all women as a unity, and so women are
seen to share certain social characteristics purely because they are women (i.e. all
women may be seen to be more expressive as a group than men). The categories of
‘race’, ethnicity and class also homogenise. The individuals within may be treated as
though they are all the same and sensitivity to difference, contradiction, diversity and
multiplicity may be absent.
Social divisions are neither permanent nor fixed and given social constructions
(such as are found in the idea of social groups composed of particular individuals).
Although seeing men and women as groups posits a form of classification of
individuals according to certain criteria, usually dependent on genitalia, but also
behavioural, identificational and performative criteria (as in being able to pass
muster as a woman), this does not mean that these individuals always belong
together, i.e. to the same group, for they can be allocated or allocate themselves to
others on other criteria (such as colour of hair, language, occupation etc). In this way,
gender, ethnic and class categories are ways by which categories of the population are
produced and organised. In other words they are modes for classifying populations
and therefore do not denote either necessary or absolute ontological realms. Class
can be defined in terms of the organisation and production of economic resources;
gender involves the production and reproduction of sexual difference and biological
reproduction; and ethnicity the production and reproduction of collective and
solidary bonds relating to origin or cultural difference (Anthias and Yuval Davis
1992). Whilst not constituting them as autonomous systems this denotes a specificity
to the forms of subordination that characterise them (Anthias 1996, 1998). They are
historically produced and therefore variable and contingent. They may or may not be
prerequisites of sociality but they are certainly forms that sociality historically takes.
They are cultural constructions with experiential, intersubjective, organisational
and representational facets (the latter being the prime place for the discursive), each
one of which provides the field and habitus for the others (Bourdieu 1990, Anthias
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
1998). They are also implicated in the development of particular types of social
relationships. These range from forms of closure, where the group has resources it
wishes to protect, to exploitation which is a form of subordinated inclusion
(although this also entails closure in terms of the denial of access to the resources of
the exploiting group). From this discussion, it is clear that there are some general as
well as specific features of ‘social divisions’ for the purposes of relating them to
stratification.
In terms of social outcomes/relations, social divisions entail hierarchisation and
unequal resource allocation. Hierarchisation (or hierarchical difference), relates to the
ways in which social divisions involve the structuration of places or positions in the
social order of things. Sometimes this involves the allocation of specific social roles
such as occupational (caste and class) or familial (gender) but more often than not
these are accompanied by a pecking order of roles and places (Anthias 1998).
Alongside the allocation of value, unequal resource allocation takes place, at times
legitimated by socially constructed notions of value (of capacities or functions).
Unequal resource allocation is not only a question of economic resources: it also
involves the issue of power at the political, cultural and representational levels.
Regarding cultural resources, for example, such as language, education and religious
values, the dominant ethnic,‘race’ and gender groups within the state have privileges
in terms of cultural production and reproduction, which relates to issues of access in
terms of exclusion and inclusion in various dimensions of social life. Processes of
hierarchisation and unequal resource allocation are accompanied by notions of
inferiorisation. This may construct the ‘otherness’ of the lower social position as a
deviation from a human norm (as in the case of the ‘race’ category), entailing ideas
about normality and pathology: one side of the binary divide is seen as the standard,
as the norm, as expressive also of the ideal, the other side is seen as deficient in some
way and not merely as different. For example, the yardstick for the individual where
gender is concerned, becomes male capacities or achievements, male needs or
interests.
This analysis makes a distinction between social practices, on the one hand, and
social outcomes on the other. The notion of social outcomes is itself a heuristic
device and not dependent on the idea of an end or fixing of a set of processes:
outcomes here are like still shots which capture a particular constellation of
effectivities within a particular moment. However, outcomes can also be seen as
patterns which indicate the effectivity for individuals and groups of social relations,
endowing places and positions. The approach treats social divisions as emergent and
subject to historical contingencies, variable, irreducible and changeable but not ad hoc
or uninvestigable. In terms of social outcomes, it is necessary to consider the ways in
which the divisions intersect within specific and local contexts and in relation to agency
(as social action rather than will). Agency is not only at the level of the person but also
at the collective level, involving solidary and collective allegiances and struggles. Nor
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are the social relations relating to the divisions a product of any originary or
determinate set of social relations: they are emergent and therefore far from being
monolithic or systematic (in any teleological sense). Experience, intersubjectivity,
the organisational framework and the broader level of social representation
(including within it the discursive and ideological), will enter into the production of
narratives of experience. Such narratives will also produce experience for they
function as the filter through which individual experience is made to assume
meaning. Narratives of experience draw on available interpretative repertoires and
will produce specific and differential investments in identity constructions and
attributions.
It is useful to summarise some of the implications of the argument so far:
• Gender, ethnicity and class are primary social divisions involving distinctive
relations of differentiation and stratification, which in relation to one another,
provide the formation of both life conditions and life chances.
• This implies that the category of class uses as its referent the location of
individuals within work-based relations and systems of ownership and
control of property, but the determinations of this location do not lie
exclusively within either class processes or economic processes.
• It is important to distinguish between class effects and economic effects. This
is because class is not in fact an economic relation per se but a social relation
which involves forms of social organisation and cultural modes of expression
related to production and consumption processes. It is highly differentiated in
terms of the cross-cuttings of gender and ethnicity as well as in relation to
occupational cultures and life styles.
• The notion of the material is broadened to incorporate different kinds of
resources which enter into producing positional outcomes (such as cultural as
well as economic resources where they impact on social placement), without
treating them (as Bourdieu does) as analogies of economic capital or only
important in determining access to the economic in the final analysis.
• The distinction between practices and outcomes needs to be upheld. This
allows an investigation into social practices within different social spheres on
the one hand (looking, for example, at different types of institutional practice
and action) and outcomes for individuals and constellations of individuals, on
the other, within a time space focus (looking at the effects of these practices
and actions for different categories). For example, the economy can be seen as
both process and outcome depending on the time/space frame. In other
words, it is not necessary to give an a priori determination to production or
work-based relations from the outset for understanding economic outcomes.
I will now turn to looking at ethnicity and class in order to develop the argument
further.
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
Ethnicity and class as social divisions
Class as a mode of classification involves the allocation of individuals to
positions on the basis of a range of criteria or markers: these may include work role
or relations, skills, educational credentials, personal competencies, property and
knowledge (as well as consumption criteria in some approaches). Membership of
individuals in ethnic and ‘race’ groups involves the use of a range of criteria or
markers such as country of origin, self-identification, religion, colour of skin or
language. Individuals are attributed competencies on some or all of these bases.
Arguably, there is a greater tendency where ethnicity is concerned to attribute
personal competencies on the basis of an already formulated group identification or
attribution. Competencies are ascribed when other criteria of membership are met
(such as colour of skin). In concrete labour markets what is regarded as a marketable
skill may be dependent on who possesses the skill. For example, the market value of
an administrative or secretarial set of skills or teaching qualifications may go down if
the people possessing them are already seen as having an intrinsically lower social
value or not regarded as major family breadwinners: the feminisation (or
ethnicisation) of occupations may lead to such an outcome.
The class category allocates people on the basis of individual outcomes or
functions despite the facts of class reproduction via socialisation and other social
processes that often lead to continuities of class within families and neighbourhoods. Movement in or out is seen as a product of individual capacities even though
the processes that produce such capacities are subject to social determinations (in
modern class systems, individuals ‘achieve’ their positions although it is clear that
this achievement is determined by a range of structural and cultural processes).
However, in the case of race and ethnicity there can be no movement in and out in
terms of capacity (in as much as ethnicity and ‘race’ are ascribed rather than achieved
by individuals). In other words, the classification process already assumes the
capacity. However, we should bear in mind that some writers have argued that class
also involves ideas about a generic capacity (for example, see Cohen 1988).
Sociological literature has tended to look at ethnic minorities as either
characterised by distinctive cultural values and practices brought from their place of
‘origin’, or as structured by their position of marginality (particularly racism) in the
receiving country. In other words, ethnic groups have been characterised by their
symbolic power or lack of it; as made up of people who share a culture and/or an
identity rather than those who have access and rights to particular resource claims
within the state. The exception is the instrumental political view of ethnicity which is
found in the work of writers such as Abner Cohen (1974) and Hechter (1987), but here
ethnic groups are particular types of interest groups formulated in order to pursue
economic ends. Culturalist and symbolic ends are not conceived as involving power
or material dimensions in terms of life chances. Ethnic organisation has been
regarded as facilitating the expression of socio-economic interests – as a vehicle
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utilised at particular conjunctures (Hechter 1987). Although in this view ethnicity is
devoid of ‘essence’ the political mobilisation for resources is always defined as
economic. However, it could be argued that cultural resources not only have symbolic
value but political and economic value: this is clearly found in the exchange value of
cultural artefacts, in the exchange value of knowledge (what Bourdieu calls cultural
capital) and in the exchange value of ‘breeding’ (say in marriage amongst higher social
groups). In other words, different cultural resources have either negative or positive
material value with some forms of culture being more acceptable than others: for
example, European languages have a greater purchase in Britain than Asian languages.
The category of ethnos involves an attribution of difference from the ‘other’ and
identification ‘within’ of a population in terms of supposed common or shared
origin, using a range of elements, including language, tradition, culture, heritage,
history, territory or stock/blood or destiny. Ethnic mobilisation often emerges in
terms of resource claims which may be symbolic (like culture, language, religion)
territorial, or economic. Ethnicity involves the social construction of an origin (and
all its identity markers which vary) as a central arena for struggle vis-à-vis resources
of different types (Anthias 1992). Ethnicity can therefore be regarded as a form of
mobilisation around material and symbolic aspects, dedicated to making claims for
resources of different types which determine, in their broadest sense, life conditions
on the one hand, and life chances on the other.
Linking ethnicity and class
Attempts to examine the relationship between ethnicity/race and class have
led, at times, to forms of reductionism. In some accounts, ethnicity is treated as a
disguise for class or its symbolic manifestation; Marxist approaches may treat it as
false consciousness, where the real divisions of class take on symbolic forms.
Ethnicity may also be seen as a form of class mobilisation (not as a disguise but as a
vehicle), and instrumental in struggles over economic resources, as in the work of
writers such as Hechter (1987). This is less reductionist, but again ethnicity is treated
as a dependent phenomenon, whereas class is treated as about ‘real’ resource claims.
Alternatively, attempts to connect ethnicity/race and class may focus on ‘race’ or
class as causal in relation to each other. For example, class or class/colonialist
interests may be seen as the basis for ‘race’ driven forms of ideology and practice
(such as in the work of Oliver Cox (1970)). Another facet of this is to consider the role
of different forms of racism (such as prejudice/discrimination/exclusion/
violence/institutional) on class outcomes. Racist social relations have in fact been
used to explain material positionality within employment relations (Rex 1981, Miles
1989). A less strong form of interlinking ethnicity/race and class is found in
approaches that stress the correlations between the actors who occupy particular
racial/ethnic positions and particular class positions. As an example, black groups
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
who suffer racial disadvantage are then seen to occupy a particular class position, or
class fraction (Phizacklea and Miles 1980), or are seen as a sub-proletariat (Rex 1981).
Alternatively, the mutually reinforcing disadvantages of ethnicity and class may be
stressed (Myrdal 1969).
Some of these positions have been extensively critiqued (Gabriel and Ben Tovim
1978, Solomos 1986, Anthias 1990). Many of the problems relate to the difficulty in
specifying the mechanisms involved in the production of class or ‘race’ outcomes. A
particular difficulty is the treatment of ‘race’ or class categories as internally
homogeneous and as mutually exclusive, for instance, an assumption is made that all
class members belong to a particular ethnic group and vice versa. The depiction of
black people as an underclass (Castles and Kosack 1973) or as a class fraction
(Phizacklea and Miles 1980), for example, underemphasises the heterogeneity given
by the distinct employment characteristics of different ‘racialised’ groups (such as
Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and other colonial migrants in Britain). It also takes no
account of gender differentiation (Anthias 1990). The concern to show the class bases
of ‘race’ leads to glossing over the differences and divisions within racialised groups.
Many of the difficulties of these forms of analysis relate to the view that class is a
structuring element producing economic/material inequality. For Marxists this is
linked to production and determined by relations of exploitation, whereas for
Weberians it is linked to the area of distribution and to relations of the market.
Ethnicity or racism are then treated as ‘ideological’ or cultural constructs or forms of
organisation involving common cultural and symbolic ingredients and action.
In fact the highly differentiated position of ‘race’ and ethnic groups in class and
racialised terms is by now well charted. For example, different groups have different
employment characteristics and the differences within minorities is as great, if not
greater, than those between minorities and non-minorities (Modood et al. 1997).
However, some minority ethnic groups are systematically under-represented in the
higher social categories, despite this diversity, and suffer particular disadvantages
economically (Anthias 1990).
One distinctive discussion relates to the extent to which ethnic relations are
hierarchical, an important parameter of social divisions as outcomes and one of the
principles I discussed earlier in the paper. Ethnic relations need not be hierarchical,
according to Jenkins (1994), whereas race always is. However, if ethnicity and race are
seen as connected discourses that posit boundaries of belonging, then hierarchy is
implicit in notions of belonging and non-belonging or inclusion and exclusion. This
is because belonging determines access to resources of different types such as access
to full citizenship rights, access to welfare or access to jobs or particular levels of
income (although other criteria may also be used for such access also). In addition,
‘race’ and racism (as the discourse and practice of inferiorisation on the basis of an
inalienable essence, physiognomic or cultural) is more deterministic and more
concerned with identifying the ‘other’ in a hierarchical relation to ‘self ’.
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It could be argued that ethnicity is not related to the allocation of economic
resources but is instead embedded in the whole of culture, whereas class is actually
derived from the allocation of economic resources. But class could also be seen as
embedded in the whole of culture. Culture includes referents to classifying
populations positively or negatively on the basis of a range of criteria which include
those of class, or economic allocation. The idea that ethnicity is cultural whereas
class is economic is a result of a tautology, of a way of defining ethnicity that
identifies it with culture. This does not allow a distinction to be drawn between
culture as a set of rules and parameters for social action in general (even though
cultural rules are interpreted through the lens of the power structures of a society
which includes class, gender, ethnic and racialised dimensions) and ethnicity as a
particular form of mobilisation which uses cultural symbols of a particular type
(allocating primacy to them for the purpose of identifying its legitimate members)
and as entry points to the allocation of resources.
The question about ethnicity being a primary feature and an integral part of
ourselves and having a psycho-social reality has often been voiced (Jenkins 1994).
Geerz (1973) sees ethnicity as a primordial attachment but this has been heavily
criticised by social constructionism including instrumentalism (Cohen 1974,
Hechter 1987). Social constructionism may also include the idea that ethnicity
becomes socially constructed as a more fundamental part of our identity (Jenkins
1994) than class which is then to be seen to be more about how we define ourselves in
the labour market or solidary allegiances which are more situational and do not
permeate our very being. However, ethnicity is itself highly variable and does not
have necessary cultural contents; it may be a mode for pursuing collective interests
and may be as situational as class. By contrast, the relationality of ethnicity means
that otherness is practised and experienced and is thus important as a mode of
inferiorisation; this is also the case for class.
The view that ethnicity is voluntary, for it is about how we identify ourselves, is a
common position found in the work of Banton (1987), where class, and indeed ‘race’
for different reasons, are regarded as not voluntary because they are about position
or about exclusion. Ethnicity however, is also how you are positioned and can be
imposed upon you by circumstances ; can a Pakistani choose not to be bracketed in
the ethnic category of Paki or Asian in Britain, or a Cypriot choose to abandon the
identifications constructing him/her as a minority ethnic in British society? More
concretely this raises the issue of ‘passing’. Even if one can ‘pass’ successfully as a
member of the dominant ethnic group, the need to do so is itself a mode of
differentiation and indicative of social place.
Ethnicity and racism involve a range of practices and outcomes which do not
emanate exclusively from ethnic or race categories, but are linked to broader social
processes such as those of class and gender (see also Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992,
Anthias 1998). Some of the ways in which racism operates is in terms of taken-for-
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
granted aspects of ethnic culture more broadly and in tandem with class-based and
gender-based constructs and identities. A racist practice, as well as being one that has
explicit racist facets or is ethnocentric can be any practice that produces racist effects,
and where ethnic markers correlate with differential treatment. Amongst other
factors, this may be a product of procedures which may lead to processes and policies
impacting differentially on minority ethnic groups, serving to disadvantage or
exclude them. An example may be council house allocation that is based on
individuals being on a list for a certain amount of time. If some ethnic groups lack
information on the criteria for council house allocation, or if they are less likely to
stay in an area for the amount of time required, this may produce exclusionary and
subordinating effects (this could discriminate against refugees or migrants
particularly). These are economic effects which have class implications but the
processes involved cannot be depicted as class processes. They may also be a product
of a failure to provide enabling opportunities where issues of language proficiencies
and cultural insider knowledges may be aspects of inclusion. The lack of such
opportunities to acquire skills may become the basis for practices that produce
positional effects, i.e. lead to harassment, discrimination, lack of legal rights, or
exclusion from opportunities or allocations. Again these have economic
implications but cannot be defined as a product of class processes. In practice, as
Miles (1989) has pointed out, it is difficult to distinguish between the effects of class
inequality, gender inequality and racism (this is one reason why he doesn’t like the
term ‘institutional racism’ or the idea of racism as an outcome).
Gender and ethnicity may be given the characteristics of marketable attributes in
the market place. Where the market place requires sexual attributes, ranging from
explicit sexual services like prostitution or surrogacy, to personality traits or physical
traits, then gendered characteristics may sit with education or technical skills, that is
as resources which individuals can bring to the market place and use for determining
their life chances. In terms of ethnicity, knowledge of certain cultures including
language or other facilities to interact may be skills that allow entry into the market
and then become constitutive of class positioning. The Weberian paradigm certainly
allows such connections to be made, but this does not mean that gender and
race/ethnic divisions are merely criteria by which class positionality may be
constructed, as I argued earlier.
Concluding remarks
The social divisions of race/ethnicity, gender and class relate to outcomes of
both a material and symbolic type. For example, class is not merely a system for
allocating economic resources but also involves cultural and symbolic facets which
endow competencies to, and valuations of, particular types of human persons. This
is also mirrored in ideas about ‘race’ and gender as expressions and performances of
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the stigmata of the body or of nature. The symbolic value attached to these involves
allocating individuals and groupings of individuals to particular places in the social
order of things in a hierarchical fashion. This involves unequal resource allocation as
well as differential social value to types of human persons, which at times acts to
pathologise. These processes function in interplay with systems of production and
allocation that are driven by macro-economic processes. Unequal power relations,
particularly vis-à-vis the state (and in the actions of the state, such as the police
force), produce material effects even where no explicit intentionalities around
racism or sexism can be identified. The need for a broader conceptualisation of
exclusion and inclusion, as well as differential social and economic access to
resources is raised by this discussion.
The social divisions of ethnicity, gender and class can function to reinforce the
material inequalities of individuals or interrelate to produce contradictory locations
(cf E. O.Wright 1985) where human subjects are positioned differentially within
these social divisions (Anthias 1998). For example black working-class men may be in
a position of dominance in terms of gender but subordination in terms of ‘race’ and
‘class’. This indicates that they cannot be looked at in terms of a view of social divisions as
constituting permanent groupings of individuals. It is more useful to see individuals as
subject to the effectivities of a range of processes and social relations which produce
particular outcomes in interplay with agency (not as free will but as social action).
This may lead to highly contradictory processes in terms of positionality and
identity. The latter may also involve psychological costs where you may identify with
one position but are located in another – this may apply to transsexuals, middle-class
children in working-class schools, ethnic minority children who identify with the
majority but are excluded, women who identify with male-defined occupations and
attitudes: all these may involve bullying and harassment as well as new forms of
social avoidance.
In this paper, I have tried to show that a multidimensional model of stratification
does not imply an endless proliferation of factors that construct people’s lives. The
fact that societies are interrelating and complex entities with multiple
determinations is now a fairly standard sociological position (some would say even
indicating a crisis in sociological theory) and I take no exception to this; quite the
opposite. The concept of ‘social division’ as I have delimited it conceptually, provides
us with a useful conceptual tool for investigating the practices and outcomes of
material inequality in society, however. Such an approach treats persons as subjected
to the effectivities of social location across the dimensions of class, ethnicity/race and
gender but in non-deterministic ways. This recognises the role of agency at both the
individual and collective levels and the importance of context and process. Such an
approach provides a more useful way of addressing social inequalities and their
correction than the notions of social exclusion and status that sociologists have
turned to in filling the gaps left by traditional stratification theory. Such an approach
The Concept of ‘Social Division’ and Theorising Social Stratification
also marries better with the wealth of evidence that scholars of ethnicity and ‘race’
have been collecting on the importance of race/ethnicity as structuring social
location and differential and unequal social outcomes.
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Biographical note: FLOYA ANTHIAS is Professor of Sociology and Head of Sociology at the
University of Greenwich, London. She has published extensively on the social divisions of
gender, ethnicity/race and class, as well as on Cypriot society and Cypriots in Britain. Her latest
book (co-edited) is Gender and Migration in Southern Europe: Women on the Move (Oxford:
Berg, 2000). Another new book, on The Social Division of Identity, will be published by
Macmillan.
Address: Department of Sociology, University of Greenwich, Southwood Site, Avery Hill Road,
Eltham, London SE9 2UG.