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An overview of Social Stratification Some of the world’s nations are wealthy, others poor and some are in between. The layering is called social stratification. Pg 154 Social Stratification affects the way we think about life. If were born in Ethiopian you would be literate and you would expect the same from your children. You would not be surprised when children died young. Social Stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided into layers according to their relative power, property, and prestige. It is a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges. Every society stratifies its members. Some societies have greater inequality than others, but social stratification is universal. What determines social class? Marx argued that the distinctions people often make among themselves such as clothing, speech, education, paycheck or what type of car they drive are superficial matters. Modern society, said Marx is made up of just two classes of people; the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production and the proletariat, those who work for the owners. In short, people relationship to the means of production determines their social class. Beggars,