Skip to Content
Sociology
book

Sociology

by Yogesh Atal
January 2012
Intermediate to advanced
536 pages
18h 9m
English
Pearson India
Content preview from Sociology

15

Race, Tribe, Caste and Class

Of the several ways in which societies get stratified, three ascriptive groups (namely Race, Tribe and Caste) and a category based on the criterion of achievement (Class) are used as the prominent strata. Reviewing the trends in sociological research in the 1980s, Neil J. Smelser noted that the ‘three words … —“race”, “ethnicity”, and “class”—enjoy wide currency both as categories in social sciences and as terms in everyday discourse. Each is employed as if it enjoys a common meaning, yet none is used with precision in either arena’ (Smelser, 1994: 280). The comment would equally apply to the word ‘caste’. Therefore, there is a need for some conceptual clarification of all these terms.

In this chapter we shall ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Sociological Theory

Sociological Theory

Abhijit Kundu

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9788131760796