Basic Concepts

Defining social differentiation, social stratification and social inequality; Introduction to inequality, power and ideology.

Measuring Social Class

What is social class? Operationalising social class (objective and subjective dimensions); The uses and limitations of a range of class measurement scales.  

Marxist Perspectives

How social class is defined; How social order is created and maintained; Base and Superstructure explained; How societies change; Modern Marxism.

Weberian Perspectives

How social stratification is defined; Class, Status and Party; Social Action theory; Marxism and the problem of the Middle Class.  

Ethnicity and Inequality

Ethnicity and social stratification; Institutionalised racism; Class and status-based theories of ethnic group inequalities (class cultures, class subcultures, class fractions); Marxist, Weberian and New Right conceptions of an underclass; Weberian perspectives; The "Underclass" thesis examined.

Gender Stratification

An introduction to models of gender stratification: The conventional model; The cross-class model; The individual model; The Radical Feminist model; The class accentuation model.  

Social Inequality Chapter

This complete textbook chapter taken from A2 Sociology for AQA covers:

1. Different theories of stratification.

2. Different ways of measuring social class and the relationship between occupation and social class.

3. Different explanations of changes in the class structure and the implications of these changes.

4. Differences in life chances by social class, gender, ethnicity and age.