Situational Stratification: A Micro-Macro Theory of Inequality:

Are received sociological theories capable of grasping the realities of contemporary stratification? We think in terms of a structured hierarchy of inequality. A prominent imagery is Bourdieu's (1984) field of economic power and a hierarchy of cultural tastes internalized in individuals, with these two hierarchies mutually reproducing one another; the image helps explain the frustrations of reformers attacking inequality by attempting to change educational attainment. Empirical researchers report on inequalities in income and wealth, education and occupation, as changing slices of a pie, and as distributional shares for races, ethnicities, genders and ages. We see an abstract scaffolding of hierarchy manifested in a shell of objective-looking quantitative data. Does this image of fixed, objective hierarchy come to grips with the realities of lived experience? The distribution of income and wealth has become increasingly unequal since 1970 (Morris and Western 1999). Yet observe a typical scene in an expensive restaurant, where the wealthy go to spend their money: Waiters greet customers informally, introducing themselves by name and assuming the manners of an equal inviting a guest into their home; they interrupt the customers to announce menu specials and advise what they should order; as Goffmanian ritual, it is the waiters who command attention for their performance while the customers are constrained to act as polite audience. Other examples: Celebrities of the entertainment world appear on ceremonial occasions in deliberately casual attire, unshaven, or in torn clothes; far from a demeanor giving ritual honor to the occasion, they adopt a style that a previous generation would have associated with laborers or beggars; this style, widely adopted among youth and others when occasions allow (e.g., "casual Fridays" at work), constitutes a historically unprecedented form of anti-status or reverse snobbery. High-ranking government officials, corporation executives, and entertainment celebrities are targets of public scandals involving their sexual lives, employment of housekeepers, use of intoxicants, and efforts at privacy; social eminence, far from providing immunity for petty derelictions, opens up the high-ranking to attacks by lower-ranking functionaries. A muscular black youth, wearing baggy pants and hat turned backwards and carrying a boom box loudly playing angry-voiced rap music, dominates the sidewalk space of a public shopping area while middle-class whites palpably shrink back in deference. In public meetings, when women and ethnic minorities take the role of spokespersons and denounce social discrimination against their group, white men of the higher social classes sit in embarrassed silence or join in a chorus of support; in public opinion-expressing and policy-making settings, it is the voice of the underdog that carries moral authority. How are we to conceptualize these kinds of events? The examples given are microevidence; my contention is that they characterize the flow of everyday life in sharp contrast to the ideal type of a macrohierarchy. The hierarchic image dominates our theories, as well as our folk concepts for talking about stratification; indeed, the rhetorical tactic of taking the morally superior stance of the underdog depends upon asserting the existence of a macrohierarchy while tacitly assuming underdog dominance in the immediate speech situation. Conflicts over the issue of so-called "political correctness," which might be called authoritative imposition of special consideration for the underdog, hinge upon this unrecognized disjunction between micro and macro. In social science, we generally accord