together and build up boundaries that close one stratum and divide it off from another. Social stratification links almost all aspects of society together, and therefore understanding what is happening in it. Most sociologists feel that social stratification constitutes a core feature of all societies, shaping both the lives of individuals and other characteristics of societies. In society today, there are unequal social relations of three kinds: power, property, and prestige. It is these terms that help make every society a functional one. Social stratification is also one of the most contentious features of a society, and hence it is not surprising that there are a large number of resources designed to educate people about it and also to propose changes or alternatives. Social stratification helps us understand a wide range of other changes in society. Despite lacking in visibility, and however imperfectly measured in the existing social classification. Of course, we recognise that in contemporary society, people are less likely spontaneously to describe their own experiences in the language of class. They search for more direct and specific determinants of their life chances to put alongside their recognition of class, and they recognise the independent part played by age, gender, and ethnicity. We do not, then, live in a 'classless' society, though we do live in a society whose members no longer spontaneously and unambiguously use the language of class as the obvious, taken-for-granted way of describing social inequalities. Class is not dead, but perhaps the monolithic social imagery of class has, indeed, had its day. It is this, which makes our society a functional one, and what will help shape it to be a stronger one in the future....
