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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 31. Caste and Class - 2. The “Meaning” of the Concepts “Caste” and “Class”
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674 An American Dilemma
this inquiry conceived of as the result of restriction of free competition
and, consequently, of the lack of full social integration. The upper classes
enjoy their privileges because the lower classes are restricted in their
^^pursuit of happiness” by various types of relative or absolute social monop-
olies. Attaching importance to family background instead of, or in addition
to, merit is one type of monopoly and the basic one for the degree of closed-
ness and rigidity of a class system. The ownership of wealth and income
and, in America, national origin or religion become other causes of monop-
olies, if education is not absolutely democratic and if positions in the
occupational hierarchy are not filled with regard to merit only. In view of
the inequality of opportunity in getting an occupation, and since occupational
positions carry incomes roughly in proportion to their status associations, it
is possible, in an approximate way, to determine social class by considering
income or occupation as the chief index of social monopoly.
This view of the American class structure also gives a nucleus of a theory
for the causal relations between income, wealth, occupation, education,
family background, home ownership, national origin, language and religion,
on the one hand, and the integration of them to form a class system, on the
other hand. In America, as elsewhere in the Western world, the develop-
ment of democracy and of economic and social technology, as well as the
growth of occupational organizations and their increasing stress on pro-
fessionalism, all tend to make education more and more important as a
vehicle for social mobility. Education gives respectability by Itself and opens
the road to higher occupations and incomes. The ‘^self-made man” without
educational background and professional training is disappearing even in
America. Higher education is held a monopoly practically closed not only
to older generations who have passed their chance—which is not contrary
to the American Creed with its stress on equality of opportunity—^but often
also to youth without a certain minimum amount of wealth, parental push,
and all the other factors associated with high social status.
In a similar way each of the other factors can be linked to the rest and
used as an index of social status in general. Participation in cliques, clubs,
associations—^which Warner considers to be most important for determining
one’s class position—is itself a factor determined in large part by these
other factors and contributes to their significance by emphasizing them, by
serving as a source of information that helps one to make money, by
encouraging a certain type of social behavior. Class consciousness may or
may not be present in this system of Interrelated factors determining class
position, depending, among other things, upon how shut up in their pigeon
holes the individuals of a class actually feel themselves. If class con-
sciousness is present, it will tend to have reciprocal influences with other
factors.
Caste, as distinguished from class, consists of such drastic restrictions
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