UYEN NGUYEN

SOC 001

Culture and Social Norms

The documentary Ups and Downs: Social Stratification depicts the gap between the “haves

and have nots” in our society and emphasizes the social inequalities that exist in the United

States. What stands out the most to me was when the speaker Gloria Hamzai, the founder of Our

Kids Child Care Preschool who grew up from a small town, community where dream is the only

hope for the future talks about her experience. When she was in the third grade, her dream was to

become a doctor. However, after her father got arrested, everything in her world collapse. Her

dream of becoming a doctor has to be replaced by another dream. What stands out to me was the

fact that social inequality has an enormous effect on a person’s opportunity to become

successful. Reflecting on reality, a lot of people gave up their chances to continue higher

education because they cannot financially afford tuition. It is a cycle of poverty because when

those people who consider lower class, who has low income, come together and have a family;

their children don’t have the opportunity to achieve social mobility, to change their life and their

social status by becoming doctors, lawyer, engineer. Just like that, the poverty, the social

stratification continues on for many generation. The rich continue to be rich, and the poor

continues to be poor

Stratification by mean is a differences in classes. It refers to a system that society use to

categorize and rank people in different hierarchy and social status base on their wealth and

power. In chemistry, stratification happens when there is a density differential between two

water layers, arise as a result. of the differences in salinity or temperature. Social stratification

has always existed in all society at all time. It is universal and takes different forms in different
societies. As the world becoming more and more innovative and develop, we see social

stratification clearer each day. It divided the society into 3 different classes: low class, middle

class and high class, the hierarchy that rank them as the superior or inferior. According to Karl

Max in Marx’s theory of Class Polarisation, capitalist class structure divided into 2 social

classes: The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. As a result, social stratification almost always will

lead to social inequality. Or in another word, social stratification and inequality tightly link

together. Inequalities that stand out in the society include but not limited to income, education,

health and career. Inequality occurs when resources in the society are not distributed evenly.

Because of social stratification, social inequality happens.

Putting the social stratification to the three sociological perspective: functionalism,

conflict and symbolic interactionism. Social mobility is a small part of social stratification, refers

to the movement of individuals, families and groups among social positions. Functionalism

perspective believe that each aspects of society exist because they have a purpose. So is social

stratification. Sociologist believes that social stratification is essential to encourage and promote

productivity and efficiency in the society. It gives people a sense of motivation and

encouragement to strive harder. Conflict theory believes that social stratification benefits some

components of society, not the society as a whole like functionalist. It brings awareness to

inequalities in the society. Conflict theorists believes that stratification creates class conflict.

Symbolic interactionism believes that human relationship and interaction makes up society as a

whole. This theory explains that how social stratification and social status affects human

interaction. In society, we see in our daily life that people tend to interact with people that have

the same social standing as them. As we have discussed, one of the biggest barriers that hinders

social mobility or the change in status of people living in the society could be education, income,
health, race, gender, family structure, racial and economic segregation, school quality and social

capital… To obtain social mobility is to shorten or erase the gap between the rich and the poor,

to eradicate social stratification. To overcome the barrier, some of the social campaigns address

improve early childhood development, establishing viable pathways to careers, decreasing over

criminalization and over incarceration, building capacity for continuous learning and

improvement of social service programs and providers...