y respected artist."(2001,de Swaan, 45) Nevertheless, high prestige and high income go hand in hand. "Occupational prestige ranking are much the same in all industrial societies. In almost every society, the more highly ranked work that involves the mental activity from extensive supervision, confers greater prestige than lower class occupations that require supervised manual labour."(1998, Macionis and Plummer, 269)Property too often goes hand in hand with prestige; but not always and not automatically. Status discrepancy comes into play when a gap opens between the position someone occupies in the ranking order of power and property. This applies to both someone who has a great deal of power, property, and little status, but to someone with high status but little power or property. "Property can be converted into esteem, in the case of multi-millionaires who show-off their wealth by extravagant displays of luxury." (2001, de Swaan, 46) Societies witness the conversion of prestige into power in the case of the film star who was elected president,' and with the convergence of prestige into property, and in the case of a member of a prominent family who secures a well paid position in business or a wealthy souse solely on the basis of birth.Social inequalities are central to any understanding of social stratification; but social stratification itself consists of more than simply inequalities in life chances. The concept of social stratification as a particular form of social division emphasises the idea that individuals are distributed among the levels or layers of a social hierarchy because of their economic relations. These layers or 'social strata' are real social groupings, forged together through both their economic relations and their associated social relations and interactions; groupings that are able to reproduce themselves over time. Work in similar occupations, marriage, kinship, and informal interaction connect individuals...
