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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]
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 is delineated by a number of variables, some of which change across time and place. For Karl Marx, there exist two major social classes with significant inequality between the two. The two are delineated by their relationship to the means of production in a given society. Those two classes are defined as the owners of the means of ...
Social inequality is "the state or quality of being unequal". [7] Inequality is the root of several social problems that occur when factors such as gender, disability, race, and age may affect the way a person is treated. A past example of inequality as a social problem is slavery in the United States.
In modern Western societies, stratification is often broadly classified into three major divisions of social class: upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each of these classes can be further subdivided into smaller classes (e.g. "upper middle"). [5] Social strata may also be delineated on the basis of kinship ties or caste relations.
Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of the lower class .
Marx's theory of history asserts that in the history of economic systems such as capitalism and feudalism, class struggle is "the central fact of social evolution." [8] Indeed, the first sentence of Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto reads: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
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.