Toplumsal Tabakalaşma ve Rasyonel İktidar: Sağlık Hizmetleri Sektöründe Yer Alan Meslek Grupları Üzerine Bir Çalışma

Abstract

This study investigates and questions the relation between rational power and social stratification. This investigation is based on an analysis of empirical data collected by means of in-depth interviews done with 35 individuals from 5 different sets of occupational groups and that work in the health care sector as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, pharmacy technician and hospital cleaning staff. The study makes, in light of this empirical and limited data, a critical evaluation of the ability and practical adequacy of the theories of social stratification to explain social stratification in contemporary societies and thus aims at making make a theoretical contribution to providing an alternative explanation of the phenomenon of social stratification in its connection with rational power. By considering rationality as the distinctive feature of modern societies and by taking critical-realist approach to the issue at hand, the study makes an assessment of the adequacy of rational power in its crucial role in forming the relation of individuals to the system of social stratification The main argument of the study is that rational power has no practical adequacy in its claim to form the basis of social stratification based on the occupational requisites but it has an internal relation with the same structure. This internal relation is established and the dominant power of the rational authority exercised through acceptance of this theoretical authority by individuals with regard to the current rational qualifications that vocational system and the system of education requires of the individuals to have in the case of the occupational groups comprised in the study while the past advantages and disadvantages of the individuals are reproduced as structured inequalities under the banner of rational power. So, since rational power may create taxonomic positions, it may also create relations in taxonomic forms in which the positions are rewarded differently with a theoretical internal coherence and consistency under the roof of the rational power. The class relations under the rational power, both separated from the field of production and instead of the contradiction and antagonism between the dominant and the dominated, assumes a form of relationship which arises from the relations of individuals with rational power. On the basis of these empirical observations made about the causal relationships between rational power and the stratification system, the study makes a critical assessment of the practical relevance of contemporary stratification theories and offers a structural and causal explanation of social stratification in connection with practical qualities of rational patterns, professional closure strategies, modern-rational crises, class relations and lifestyle orientations.