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Social Stratification and Health in the Western Context

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Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology

Introduction and Definitions

The concept of social stratification and the concept of health embody two areas of research interest to social scientists. Social stratification is a commonly accepted term in the social sciences, particularly in examining of the ways that humans organize themselves into various cultural and social groupings. For the purposes of this discussion, social stratification is:

plurality of strata within a single society, with some sense of their internal identity, of their internal similarity, of their external differences vis a vis other strata...These qualities by which strata identify themselves and others, are frequently referred to by shorthand terminology such as wealth or poverty, or rulers or people, or workers or bosses. These terms refer to positions on particular distributions such as wealth...income, power and occupational role...The connections between positions of the individual on different distribution are of two sorts. One is...through life...

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Authors
  1. Arushi Sinha
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  2. Tyson Gibbs
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human Relations Area Files, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Carol R. Ember  & Melvin Ember  & 

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Sinha, A., Gibbs, T. (2004). Social Stratification and Health in the Western Context. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47754-6

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