Because of the human tendency to rank one another, inequality emerges. Soon some people are at the top of the hierarchy while others are at the bottom. In the classic novel animal farm, George Orwell created a barnyard society where pigs where ultimately take over the previous classless animal society by altering one of their cardinal rules " all animals are equal" to " all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Sociologist call this social ranking social stratification.
Social stratification is the creation of layers of a population who possess unequal shares of scarce desirables, the most important which are income, wealth, power, and prestige. Each of the layers are social class a segment of population whose members hold a relatively similiar share of scarce desirables and who share values, norms, and an identifiable lifestyle. A stratification structure might include upper upper, middle upper, lower upper,upper middle, middle middle and lower lower classes. Karl marx and max weber made the most significant contributions to the study of social stratification. Marx demonstrated the importance of the economic foundations of social classes, while weber accented the prestige and power aspects of stratification. Together the work of these two great minds reveal to us that stratification is multidimensional. Although both marx and weber were concerned with inequality their emphases were different. For marx, the economic factor was an independent variable explaining the existence of social classes. Weber on the other hand viewed the economic dimension as a dependent variable. Weber was more concerned with the economic consequences of