“Modernisation presupposes class society; however, caste, ethnicity and race are still predominant. Explain.” (2019)
Classical theory expected modernisation to replace ascription with achievement, so that birth-based hierarchies would give way to open, market-based classes. Yet caste, ethnicity and race remain central to how opportunities, identities and politics are organised. The reason is that modernisation reconstitutes these identities rather than dissolving them.
Why modernisation was expected to produce class society
- Talcott Parsons‘ pattern variables held that industrial societies value achievement over ascription and universalism over particularism.
- Clark Kerr and colleagues (Industrialism and Industrial Man, 1960) predicted convergence on meritocratic occupational hierarchies.
- Karl Marx (“The Future Results of British Rule in India”, 1853) expected railways and modern industry to dissolve the hereditary division of labour on which caste rests.
- Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore (1945) linked rewards to functional importance and talent, not lineage.
Evidence of persistence
- Caste: only about 5% of Indian marriages were inter-caste (IHDS-II, 2011–12). Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell (2007) found that equally qualified Dalit applicants had 0.67 times the odds of high-caste Hindu applicants of being called for interview. Census 2027 will enumerate caste for all communities.
- Race: in the US Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, median White family wealth ($285,000) was about six times that of Black families ($44,900).
- Ethnicity: the Meitei–Kuki conflict in Manipur since 2023 and the racism against people from the Northeast documented by the Bezbaruah Committee (2014) show ethnicity shaping conflict and exclusion.
Explaining the paradox
- Modernity of tradition: Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (1967) showed caste associations becoming vehicles of democracy, and Rajni Kothari (1970) showed caste becoming politicised. Democracy rewards numbers, and ascriptive groups supply them.
- Social closure in markets: after Max Weber, Frank Parkin argued that groups use ascribed traits to monopolise jobs and credentials. Markets do not erase status; they price it. Employers in India screen for “family background” (Surinder S. Jodhka and Katherine S. Newman, 2007).
- Capitalism uses division: Edna Bonacich‘s split labour market theory (1972) shows ethnic antagonism arising where labour is priced differently by group. Marxists add that race and caste divide workers and cheapen labour.
- Competition, not isolation: Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Beyond the Melting Pot, 1963) found ethnic groups persisting in New York as interest groups. Myron Weiner (Sons of the Soil, 1978) traced nativist movements in Assam and Maharashtra to competition for urban jobs.
- Identity in globalisation: Manuel Castells (The Power of Identity, 1997) argued that network society provokes resistance identities.
- Institutional forms: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Racism without Racists, 2003) described “colour-blind” racism reproduced through institutions rather than open prejudice.
Assessment
- The persistence is not simple survival. Caste has shifted from ritual hierarchy to political identity, and race from legal segregation to structural disadvantage.
- Modernisation has made a difference. William Julius Wilson (The Declining Significance of Race, 1978) argued that class increasingly shapes Black Americans’ life chances, and Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkind (2024) found rising intergenerational mobility among Scheduled Caste sons, aided by affirmative action.
- Class and ascription are intersecting, not alternative, systems. Ascribed identity channels entry into classes, and class position shapes how identity is lived.
Conclusion
Modernisation produced class society without abolishing ascription; it gave ascription new functions in markets, democracy and globalisation. Contemporary stratification is therefore best read intersectionally, as caste, ethnicity and race working through class rather than being replaced by it.