Definitions [3]
Morris Ginsberg: “as portions of the community, or collections of individuals, standing to each other in the relation of equality, and marked off from other portions by accepted or sanctioned standards of inferiority and superiority”.
Oxford Dictionary: “The division of society into strata based on social position or class.”
Harry Johnson: “Social stratification is the process in which layers of persons or groups are ranked differently so that anyone stratum contains many persons or groups of roughly the same rank.”
H. H. Risley: “Caste is collection of families or group of families bearing a common name, claiming a common descent from a mythical ancestor, human or divine; professing to follow the same hereditary calling and regarded by those who are competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community.”
George Lundberg: “A caste is merely a rigid social class into which members are born and from which they can withdraw or escape only with extreme difficulty.”
S. V. Ketkar: “A caste is a group having two characteristics- i) membership is confined to those who are born of members and include all persons so born, ii) the membership is forbidden by an inexorable social law to men outside the group.”
Definition of class:
Ogburn and Nimkoff: “A social class is one or two or more broad groups of individuals who are ranked by the members of the community in socially superior and inferior positions.”
Max Weber: “Classes are aggregates of individuals who have the same opportunities of acquiring goods, the same exhibited standard of living.”
Morris Ginsberg: “A class is a group of individuals who through common descent, the similarity of occupation, wealth and education have come to have a similar mode of life, a similar stock of ideas, feelings, attitudes, and forms of behaviour.”
Mac Iver & Page - "A social class is any portion of community marked off the from the rest by social status 'Ongburn & Nimk off. A social class is the aggregate of persons having essentially the same social status in a given society." i.e. a class consciousness.
