Learning Our Place in the Social Hierarchy: An EcoJustice Approach to Class Inequality

This chapter will examine class divisions-that is, the persisting economic and social divisions in society. This is a familiar subject in sociology, and is usually talked about in economic terms, primarily in terms of one’s relationship to the means of production (the ways goods and services deemed necessary to our society are produced and distributed). In this chapter, we will look at class stratification in a broader way. EcoJustice Education looks at the cultural habit of hierarchy and the logic of domination as the larger frame in which class divisions seem to be accepted or taken for granted as part of the natural order of things.