Ðåôåðàò: Social stratification and social inequality
Ðåôåðàò: Social stratification and social inequality
MINISTERY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS
Belarus State Economic University
REFERAT:
«SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY»
Minsk 2008
Understanding of social stratification and
social inequality
The grouping of people together is as old
as the society itself. Racial grouping is one way that societies have done
this, the example is the American South before the US civil war. Religion is
another way if parts of Northern Ireland until the 1960s are meant. One common
way is through the caste system to be found in India. Here, social
differentiation is stressed by the caste that each individual is born into, for
instance, the Brahmin caste is the top caste and the untouchables are the
bottom caste. Caste membership in this life is the result of good or bad
conduct in the previous life. In any medieval country, the feudal system of land
ownership meant that the nobility of land owners, with its sense of family
tradition, privilege and knightly conduct became the dominant ruling group.
Social
stratification is the dividing of a society into levels or strata based on wealth or
power. It is
regarded quite differently by the principal perspectives of sociology.
Proponents of structural functionalism suggest that since social stratification
exists in all societies, a hierarchy must be beneficial in helping to stabilize
their existence. Conflict theorists emphasize the inaccessibility of resources
and lack of social mobility in many stratified societies. Anyway, all theorists
share the opinion that social stratification has to do with inequality.
Social inequality refers to the distribution of material wealth in a society.
For instance, the current level of inequality is as follows: the richest 1% of
people (with an average income of US $24,000) earns more than the poorest 60%
of households in the world combined. Another illustration of this difference is
the fact that the world’s three richest people alone possess more assets than
600 million least wealthy people combined.
Although there appears to be a
consensus of what constitutes social inequality, there is far less agreement
over the causes of it. Many theorists accept inequality as a given, but some of
them see inequality as the natural consequence of Social Darwinism, proved by
gender, age, IQ or the wealth of nations. Others argue that inequality is in
large part the negative consequence of destructive state policies (such as
capitalism) and wars.
Some modern
economic theories, such as the neoclassical school, have suggested that functioning
of economy requires a certain level of unemployment; other theories, such as
Keynesianism and socialism, dispute this alleged positive role of unemployment.
However,
sociologists share the opinion that as soon as the society was reaching a
higher economic and cultural level, social inequality between people was
getting more and more obvious. Historically, inequality in a group might have been
caused by division of labour:
the more skilled the person was, the more and better products he could produce
and exchange for more wealth. If the person was wealthy, he could impose his
will on others and acquire more wealth that entailed professional, territorial,
religious and other differentiations.
More important
is the fact that wealth always entails power in the political sphere. In his
famous work, On the Origins of Inequality among Men, R. Dahrendorf
asserts that “the system of inequality which we call social stratification is
only a secondary consequence of the social structure of power” and modern
Russia is a good example to prove of.
A person is
viewed to show that he belongs to a certain stratum by using both objective and
subjective criteria. The objective criteria are those to describe the level of
education, income, property, power or occupation, the subjective ones are those
to describe the level of somebody’s honour, reputation or prestige in the eyes
of other people. Theories differ in numbers of criteria but they agree in
understanding that each stratum includes only those people who have
approximately equal income, power, education, prestige etc. seeing them as the
basic criteria of social stratification.
In other
words, social stratification has to do with ranking of people as individuals or
groups in the society. All societies everywhere show some degree of
stratification. Some societies are egalitarian, some are highly stratified. For
instance, in the primitive communal society inequality was insignificant, and
social stratification did not exist, so the society was egalitarian. All
complex societies are stratified societies with a high level of inequality.
Inequality
gave birth to castes, then to classes. But the principal sociological
perspectives interpret this concept differently. M. Weber spoke of a class as
an entity comprising people who are cohered by economic interests in acquiring
goods or getting income and who interact in the labour or goods market. In the society,
classes as well as strata have a certain social status which is determined by a
corresponding way of life. That’s why some theorists define social
stratification as the hierarchical arrangement of social classes, castes, and
strata within a society.
The idea of
stratification had primarily a distinct ideological shade because it appeared
as a counterbalance to the idea of a class society suggested by K. Marx. Social
strata showing objective distinctions of various groups of the population
within a certain class were differentiated with regards to social mobility that
lead to the erosion of class boundaries. For instance, a worker after he has
got a higher education can work as a manager, a citizen can move to the
countryside to start up agro-business etc. In other words, the previous,
clear-cut boundaries existing, for instance, between peasants and landlords to
differentiate their class distinctions for many generations ahead, do not exist
in a modern society. It means that class boundaries have lost their sense
keeping only their theoretical character while the concept of a social stratum
has a definite meaning. It shows that social strata or layers do fix various
groups of people differentiating from each other by their income, role, status
and other social qualities.
Social strata
can be as large as to be close in meaning to social classes, for example, the
bourgeoisie in its division to very wealthy and petty ones, or the working
class including the working aristocracy and the proletariat, or the peasantry
etc. Other strata may represent intra-class or inter-class layers, for example,
representatives of intelligensia, service workers etc. At the same time within
a certain stratum some substrata can exist, so the intelligentsia can be
differentiated according to the area of activities as industrial, managerial,
scientific etc. Some castes, marginal layers such as the homeless, criminals or
lumpens can also be viewed as social strata.
Scientific conceptions of stratification of the
society
One of the known conceptions of the division of the society is the conception
of classes of K. Marx who emphasized the leading role of economy in
development of social phenomena. The Marxist idea of a class society is
centered on relations of individuals or social groups to the means of production while other class
characteristics are considered derived or secondary. K. Marx marked that in any
economic system there is a dominant class which owns the means of production,
and a suppressed class which works for the owners; a part of the society is
lumpens or people who are completely discarded by the society. It gave K. Marx
and F. Engels the right to consider inequality as a consequence of unfair
socio-economic relations between those who exploit and those who are exploited.
Works by K. Marx and his supporters were put into the grounds of the conflict
approach to the society. Conflict theorists consider the
inaccessibility of resources and lack of social mobility in many stratified
societies. They conclude that stratification means that working class people
are not likely to advance socio-economically, while the wealthy can continue to
exploit the proletariat generation after generation.
M.
Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with
social class, status class and party class (or politics) as conceptually
distinct elements.
·
social
class is based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner,
renter, employee etc.);
·
status
class is based on non-economic qualities like honour, prestige and religion;
·
party
class refers to the factors having to do with affiliations in the political
domain.
Other
views to emerging inequality are expressed in the conception of Kingsley
Davis and Wilbert Moore who defined stratification as the
unequal rights and perquisites of different positions in a society. They are
interested in the system of positions in the society and not in the individuals
occupying those positions. In their Some Principles of Stratification,
K. Davis and W. Moore consider stratification as the consequence of normal
development of the society. Their approach is strictly functionalist as they
argue that a society is to survive; then a functionally efficient means of
fitting talented individuals to the occupations must develop. Stratification
supplies this mechanism. Thus, social prestige is considered not as a quality
derived from the individual’s economic position in the society but as a quality
which has its own status. Their ideas seriously shook Marxist ideas that linked
stratification with social inequality.
In
the study of social stratification and social mobility P.A.
Sorokin holds a unique place. We owe to him the creation or definition of many
of the terms that have become standard in this field. His work Social
stratification and Social Mobility, published in 1927 and stimulated
further elaborations in the given area, still remains a veritable storehouse of
ideas on stratification.
P.A.
Sorokin defined social stratification as differentiation of the population into
hierarchically overlapped classes. To him, stratification may be based on economic
criterion, for instance, when the focus is on the wealthy and the poor. But
societies or groups are also politically stratified when their social
ranks are hierarchically structured with respect to authority and power. If,
however, members of the society are differentiated into various occupational
groups and some of these occupations are deemed more honourable than others, or
if occupations are internally divided between those who give orders and those
who receive orders, then occupational stratification is dealt with.
Although there may be other forms of stratification, of central sociological
importance are economic, political, and occupational stratification.
P.A.
Sorokin held that people move in the social space. Methods appropriate to find
their position in the social space are somewhat reminiscent of the system of
coordinates used for locating an object in the geometrical space. So, to find
one’s position in the social space means to define his relations to other
individuals and to other groups, the relation of these groups to each other
within the population, and the relation of this population to other populations
constituting the mankind. That’s why the social space is defined as the
population of the globe, and a social position – as the integrity of its
relations with the other groups of the population. These relations – between
groups and within a specific group – make up the system of coordinates enabling
to locate a social position of any person in the social space. This approach
helps to consider people holding different social positions.
People moving or transition from one social position to another in the
social space, P.A. Sorokin defines as social mobility. There are two types of
social mobility, horizontal and vertical. The first concerns
movements from one social position to another situated on the same level, as in
a movement from work as a foreman with Volvo to similar work with Ford. The second
refers to transitions of people from one social stratum to one higher or lower
in the social scale, as in ascendant movements from the rags to the riches.
Both
ascending and descending movements occur in two principal forms. The first form
deals with individuals and includes the penetration of individuals of a lower
stratum into a higher one, called the ascent, and the descent of
individuals from a higher social position to one lower on the scale. The second
form deals with groups and includes the collective ascent or descent of whole
groups relative to other groups in the social pyramid. But P.A. Sorokin
considered that individual ascent and descent needs no explanation. What must
be considered more carefully was the second form of social ascending and
descending, or the rise and fall of groups. This main focus upon collective,
not on individual phenomena distinguished P.A. Sorokin’s approach from others
on stratification and mobility.
The theory of social stratification developed by R. Dahrendorf
takes into account the concept of political authority which most exactly
characterizes the relations of power and struggle for power between social
groups. He believes that distribution of property in production determines
distribution of political power in the society. As classes are political groups
cohered by common interests, the struggle between two classes is a political
struggle. Within this approach, the society’s structure is represented by those
who manage and those who are managed. The first ones are further divided into
owners and non-owners or bureaucrats-managers; the second ones – into a higher
group of working aristocrats and a lower group of low qualified workers.
Between them there is a new middle class.
Another example of a stratum class model was developed by the American
sociologist William Lloyd Warner in his book, Social Class in
America (1949). In the 1930-40s he studied the stratification structure of
American cities. Based on social anthropology, W. Warner divided Americans into
three classes (upper, middle, and lower), then further subdivided each of these
into an upper and lower segment, with the following postulates:
·
upper-upper
class called
“old money” is represented by people who have been born into and raised with
wealth, for instance, Rockerfeller;
·
lower-upper
class or “new
money” is represented by individuals who have become rich within their own
lifetimes; known examples are Bill Gates in the USA, Richard Branson in the
United Kingdom;
·
upper-middle
class comprises
high-salaried professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, corporate executives;
·
lower-middle
class comprises
lower-paid professionals, but not manual labourers, for instance, police
officers, non-management office workers, small business owners;
·
upper-lower
class, also
known as the “working class” comprises blue-collar workers and manual
labourers;
·
lower-lower
class is represented by the homeless and permanently unemployed, as well as the “working poor.”
To W. Warner, American social class was based more on shared attitudes
than on the actual amount of money an individual has made. Such attitudes are
income, prestige of job, education and ethnicity. For example, the richest
people in the United States belong to the lower-upper class like Bill Gates,
but members of the upper-upper class tend to be more respected, as a simple
survey of US presidents may demonstrate (for instance, the Roosevelts; John
Kennedy; the Bushes).
Another observation concerns members of the upper-lower class who might
make more than members of the lower-middle class, for instance, a well-salaried
mechanic versus a secretarial worker, but the class difference is based on the
type of work they perform.
There are also stratification theories developed by modern Russian
sociologists. For instance, G.V. Osipov, V.V. Radaev, O.I. Shkaratan
distinguished between essential and additional criteria of a social stratum.
The essential criteria are people’s economic position (private property, size
of income, level of material wealth), division of labour (area of activities, character of labour, level of education and
qualification), size of authority (types and forms of governance) and social
prestige (impact, roles); the additional criteria are gender, age, ethnic
qualities, religion, character of family relations, kinship relations and place
of living.
At the same time a modern French theorist A. Touraine
considers those criteria out-dated. His stratum model is based on the access to
information: those who have an access to more information occupy dominant
positions in the society.
Thus, elaborators of stratification conceptions do not postulate social
equality. Moreover, they consider social inequality as a natural state of the
society. Despite people’s everlasting strive for equality that lead to
revolutions and wars (for example, the October revolution and Civil war in
Russia), a desired equality is impossible to achieve. Inequality did, does and
will exist. The point is how to make inequality less painful to the members of
the society. Here of importance are various social programmes aimed at supporting
the population with low income. Such programmes are gaining more significance
in a transitive society because stabilizing the standards of living and
struggle against poverty are indispensable factors of success of political and
socio-economic reforms in the society.
An aggregated socio-economic status
As various stratification
models show, numbers of criteria to grouping people in each may vary. But their
authors share the opinion that such parameters as income, power, education and
prestige must be enlisted as the basic ones.
Income as an economic status is an amount of money a person or
family makes for a definite period of time (month or year). Income is spent to
satisfy needs but if it is high, it is accumulated and turns to wealth.
Wealth is accumulated income in the form of cash or materialized
money. The later can be movable property (car, yacht, securities) and real
estate (house, masterpieces of art). Wealth can be inherited. It differs from
income in the way that wealth can be inherited by those who work and who don’t,
and income is earned only by those who work. Pensioners and unemployed have
income but rags – don’t. The rich either can or cannot work as they are owners
of wealth. Accumulated property is the parameter used to differentiate the high
class from middle and low classes who live on income.
Wealth and income are distributed unequally and means economic
inequality. Sociologists interpret economic inequality to show unequal chances
of different groups of the population. Those who have more money have better
food, live in more comfortable houses, prefer going by private car to public
transport, can afford an expensive holiday etc. Besides having economic
advantages, the rich possess a number of hidden privileges: they live longer
than the poor even if the latter use the same medical achievements, children
from poor families are less educated even if they go to the same public schools
as children from wealthy families etc.
Power is a possibility to impose
one’s will or decision on others regardless of their desire. It is measured by
a number of people who have to follow one’s will or decision. Decisions made by
the President or Prime-Minister of the country should be accepted by the whole
population of the given country, and decisions by a sole proprietor – by his
employees only.
In a highly stratified
society power is guarded by law and tradition, it means privileges, a wider
access to social wealth, and possibility to make decisions which are most
essential to the society, laws for the benefit of the higher class being among
them. People possessing power (political, economic or religious) constitute the
elite of the society.
Education is measured by a number of years studied in state or
private school, university etc. For instance, a professor has studied for more
than 20 years (11 years at school, 5 – university, 3 – post-graduate courses, 3
– doctorate courses), a low qualified worker – not more than 11. A weak point of the criterion is that quality of education is not taken into account.
Establishments of learning located in the capital of the country are likely to
provide better quality than those located on the periphery. Another distinction
is character of knowledge – theoretic, fundamental or branch, applied – that a
person can get.
Income, power and education are objective parameters, and they have units
of measure, correspondingly local currency, people, years; unlike them prestige
is of subjective character.
Prestige is respect that public opinion gives to a certain
job, profession or occupation. No doubt, the profession of a banker is more
prestigious than that of a cleaner or plumber. All professions, occupations and
jobs existing in the society can be ranked from top to bottom according to their
prestige. Although professional prestige is very often defined by intuition,
approximately, in some countries, for instance in the USA sociologists measure
it with special methods.
Income, power, education and prestige combined together define an aggregated
socio-economic status, or position and place of a person in the
society. In its sense the status is a generalized parameter of stratification.
An ascribed status characterizes a strictly fixed system of stratification or
closed society where transition from one stratum to another is practically
forbidden. Examples of a closed society are caste and slave-owning systems. An
achieved status characterizes a mobile system of stratification, or open
society with people’s free ascending and descending on the social ladder. An
example is a capitalist society with its class differentiation. A feudal
society is an intermediate type as it belongs to a relatively closed system:
transitions are formally forbidden but in practice they are not excluded. Such
are the historic types of stratification.
Stratification
profile
Four parameters of
stratification are made use of to create analytical models and instruments
which can be applied to define not only the status of separate individuals but
groups as well, i.e. dynamics and structure of the society in general.
Sociologists distinguish
the stratification profile which enables to apply a deeper consideration of the
problem of status incompatibility. Status incompatibility is a
contradiction between statuses in the person’s set or between status
characteristics in his status set. If some parameters of a definite status set
go beyond the boundaries of a class, status incompatibility turns to stratification
incompatibility.
Here is an example. As
practice shows, in transitive societies like those on the post-soviet area a
professor belongs to the lower class according to his income, and to the upper
one – according to his prestige. It means a large dispersion of parameters extending
the boundaries of the middle class to which a professor belongs in developed
societies and testifies about stratification incompatibility. There are two
ways to liquidate it and make status characteristics more or less equal: either
to raise a professor’s salary to the level of the middle class or to decrease
the level of education. Both things can hardly be done in a transitive society:
the first one – due to economic reasons, the second one – due professional
reasons.
Stratification
incompatibility may entail a feeling of social discomfort which may turn to
frustration, the latter – to dissatisfaction with one’s place in the society.
That’s why the fewer are the cases of status and stratification incompatibility
in the society the more stable and sustainable is the society. Russia of
1995-2000 is a typical example of a transitive society characterized by both
status and stratification incompatibility.
As far as the society is
concerned, its stratification profile, or a profile of social inequality,
should be distinguished. A stratification profile is defined as
structural distribution of wealth and income. As a rule, it shows a ratio of
the upper, middle and lower classes in the country’s population, or the level
of social inequality in the given society. If the ratio is in interest, the
table is made up.
The stratification
profile is also easily viewed graphically. It can have three forms – that of a
rhombus or diamond, and a pyramid with either broad or narrow footing. For instance, in modern
highly developed countries the profile is a rhombus.
Types of stratification
profile
Upper class
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Middle class |
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Lower class |
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a) b) c)
Picture 1. a) rhombus; b) pyramid with
broad footing; c) pyramid with narrow footing.
The stratification profile
may speak a lot of stability in the society. Its extreme stretching or increase
of social distance between the poles of differentiation of the society (as in
case c) leads to strengthening social tension in the society. On the
other hand, extreme compression (as in case b) can also have negative
consequences as egalitarian principles in income, property, power, status
positions deprive people of both important stimuli to activities and source of
social development, which is social inequality. In other words, it leads to
stagnation of the society.
Sociologists are unanimous in their opinion that middle class plays an
important role in ensuring stability in the society. Sociological surveys prove
that in modern Western countries middle class accounts for about 60% of the
population. Occupying an intermediate position in a social hierarchy it serves
as a kind of shock-absorber that partially puts out contradictions arising
between the poles of social differentiation of the society and reduces the
poles’ opposition. The larger is the share of the middle class in the
population the larger is the impact it has on the socio-economic policy of the
state, on formation of the public opinion etc.
Social stratification of modern Belarusian society
Under transferring from one socio-economic system to another in
post-soviet societies in general and in Belarusian society in particular some
deconstruction of criteria for social stratification has taken place. The
following three parameters are of primary importance nowadays:
·
owning
the capital brining in profit;
·
participation
in redistribution of public wealth resulted from privatization of state
property;
·
level
of personal income and consumption.
These parameters in a generalized form may represent material well-being
measured per capita monthly in US dollars. Such methods are used by Russian
sociologists, for instance, by N.M. Rimashevskaya and others who consider as
rich those people whose monthly current income exceeds $ 3,000 per capita and
as poor – those people whose monthly income is less than $ 50.
Having applied these methods of calculations a Belarusian sociologist
E.M. Babosov suggested a seven-step socio-structural matrix which shows social
stratification of the Belarusian society by 2002:
1) rich people (1,5-2% of the population);
2) prosperous people who can afford expensive goods, trips, holidays etc.
(3-4%);
3) well-doing people with the income of $1,000-500 who feel a bit
restrained while buying expensive cars, visiting restaurants, going abroad etc.
(8-9%);
4) moderately-doing people with the income of $300-100 who have to make a
choice how to spend spare money with focusing on the family primary needs: to
buy either good clothes or good food or high-tech equipment but never all these
things at a time (38%);
5) little-doing people who feel seriously restrained as they can’t buy
household or other expensive equipment, good clothes etc. (14-15%);
6) poor people who only sometimes afford to buy meat, fruit, clothes, who
can’t pay for their children’s education (31%);
7) rags who can’t buy meat, fruit, clothes for themselves and their
children; being beggars they often live on handout (7%).
Actually, this structural matrix of social stratification shows the
distribution of wealth and income in Belarus but the population of the country
can also be stratified according to people’s social statuses. E.M. Babosov
suggested his own hierarchy with seven strata which is superposed with his
socio-structural matrix. Obviously, his matrix differs from that of W. Warner
with three basic strata further subdivided into upper and lower ones, because
in modern Belarus, due to its historic development, there is no “old money”
class, middle class is subdivided in three layers etc. So, due to statuses, in
2002 the Belarusian society was viewed by E.M. Babosov as follows:
·
upper
class – new elite is at the top of the pyramid: rich entrepreneurs, top
officials like ministers and higher who are in fact a new bourgeoisie and
higher state bureaucracy;
·
upper
middle class – middle and petty entrepreneurs, directors of enterprises,
popular artists, actors, famous scientists, owners of medical centers etc.;
·
middle
class – professors, lawyers and doctors possessing a private practice, middle
management of efficient enterprises, senior offices etc.;
·
lower
middle class – teachers, line managers and engineers, employees of cultural
establishments, qualified workers etc.;
·
lower
class – low qualified workers, peasants, etc.;
·
parasite
layers – mafia groups, racketeers, gangsters, witches, magicians etc. They may
belong to various classes due to their level of wealth, even to the upper class
but their status in the society is not high that’s why they have to put on a
mask of other statuses;
·
marginal
layers – the homeless adults and teenagers, beggars who descended from other
social classes, refugees etc.
Sociological surveys carried out in 1990-2002 show that a stratification
profile of Belarusian transitive society had the form of a pyramid with broad
footing (poor or lower classes of the society) and small peak (economic and
political elite). The footing was a zone of poverty which extended from 3% of
the population in 1990 to 76,8% in 2001. The other area of the pyramid was for
the elite and middle class, they being not numerous in number. Of four basic
parameters of social stratification (income, power, education and prestige)
only power and income worked here as clearly defined. As for the political
elite, these parameters were power and, to some extent, income which enabled to
define the political elite as the middle class, as for the economic elite –
mainly income.
As for prestige, the rich couldn’t be defined by this parameter as most
of them got money by robbing the society and sometimes by crimes. As for
education, the political elite are university graduates, but only few of the
economic elite (the so called “new Belarusians”) can have boasted having university
diplomas. It means that in the Republic of Belarus characteristics of the
middle class were less defined as compared to highly developed countries.
But over the last three years a tendency of increasing monthly wages and
salaries has been observed in the country. The income of the population is
gradually increasing that together with the results of various socio-economic
reforms undertaken in the Republic of Belarus may soon lead to changing the
structural matrix of social stratification of its society.
BASIC
CONCEPTS
Aggregated
socio-economic status – a person’s position and place in the society; a
generalized parameter of stratification.
Economic
stratification – a form of stratification when the focus is on the wealthy
and the poor.
Horizontal social mobility – movements from one
social position to another situated on the same level.
Income – amount of money a
person or family makes for a definite period of time (month or year).
Lumpens – people who are
completely discarded by the society.
Occupational
stratification – a form of stratification if members of the society are
differentiated into various occupational groups and some of these occupations
are deemed more honorable than others, or if occupations are internally divided
between those who give orders and those who receive orders.
Political
stratification – a form of stratification when social ranks in a society
are hierarchically structured with respect to authority and power.
Prestige – respect that public
opinion gives to a certain job, profession or occupation.
Social
inequality – unequal distribution of material wealth in a society.
Social mobility – people’s moving or
transition from one social position to another in the social space.
Social
stratification – differentiation
of the population into hierarchically overlapped classes or strata (by P.A.
Sorokin).
Status
incompatibility – a contradiction between statuses or between status
characteristics in the person’s status set.
Stratification
profile – structural distribution of wealth and income that shows a ratio of the
upper, middle and lower classes in the country’s population, or the level of
social inequality in the given society.
Vertical social mobility – transitions of people
from one social stratum to one higher or lower in the social scale.
Wealth – accumulated income in
the form of cash or materialized money; it can be movable property and real
estate.
Additional
literature
·
Blau
P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). – New Brunswick and
London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. – 354 p.
·
Bourdeiu
P. Logic of Practice. – Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. – 382 p.
·
Coser
L. The Functions of Social Conflict. – Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. – 188 p.
·
Durkheim
E. The Division of Labour in Society. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. – 272 p.
·
Durkheim
E. Suicide. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1951. – 345 p.
·
Sztompka
P. Sociology in Action: The Theory of Social Decoding. – Oxford: Polity Press,
2001. – 415 p