Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil

1 Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil C. Scalon Inequality and Stratification According to Grusky (2008: 13), The task of identifying the essential dynamics underlying social change has long been fundamental to Sociology, but nowhere is this interest better developed or more fundamental than within the field of inequality analysis. Thus social transformation cannot be discussed without also taking into consideration transformations in the distribution of wealth and how individuals are allocated within the social structure. This is all the more important given that inequality is the most expressive trait of Brazilian society, appearing as a multi-dimensional, transversal, and durable phenomenon. Inequality is largely the result of the way in which social stratification is configured within a given society. It depends on circumstances and on choices made throughout the history of each society. This is why analyzing class structure is so relevant to understanding Brazil. All contemporary societies are unequal and the inequality is manifested in many different ways: power, wealth, income, and prestige, among others. Its origins are as varied as its manifestations. What makes Brazil distinct is that such historical inequality persists even though the country has been going through an accelerated process of modernization. This trend becomes clearer when looking at the extremely elevated rates of income inequality. Even as the Gini coefficient has steadily decreased over the last decade, the degree of inequality in income is still quite high, even when considering how unequal the Latin American continent is as a whole. 3

4 C. Scalon Percentage 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1991 2000 2010 Urban Rural Fig. 1.1. Brazilian population in rural and urban areas by decade. Source: Population censuses, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). It is therefore crucial that we take a better look at the structural changes that have taken place in emerging countries during the last few decades. In Brazil, the greatest transformation in the country s social structure in the last decades is still, to this day, the transference of labor force from the countryside to the city. Until 1960, the population was still mostly rural, with 54.92% living in the countryside. Since then there has been significant growth within the urban population (see Fig. 1.1). According to the 2010 census, Brazil has a population of 190,732,694 inhabitants, 84.35% of whom (160,879,708) live in urban areas. These rates vary from region to region, for instance, the urbanization rate in the Southeast is 92.92%, while in the Northeast the rate is 73.13%. Note that the latter is the poorest region of the country, having the largest rural population, approximately 27%. On a purely demographic level, this transformation is meaningful since it incorporates transformations in the occupational and economic structures, as well as access to goods and services. Naturally, this transformation also has an impact on the composition of the labor force because every year legions of workers become employed in urban sectors. Brazil s economy grew at an average rate of 7% per year between 1950 and 1980, a development rate made possible because of the transference of labor force from country to city, and also because of importing technology. These factors were also facilitated by the accelerating growth of the GDP and rising productivity. The country started industrializing at the end of the 19th century, but industrial growth started accelerating only after 1950. Until then, Brazil s

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 5 economy was based on traditional labor relationships. With modernization, an increasingly unequal income distribution has run parallel to this development. In 1940 and 1950, over 60% of the EAP (Economically Active Population 1 ) was employed in the primary sector, but in 1980, this percentage dropped to 31%, further dropping to 26% in 1996. This reduction is still in progress since demographic statistics from the year 2000 census show that out of an EAP 2 comprising 87.2 million people or 48.5% of the country s total population, only 24.2% still worked in the primary sector. Here, special attention should be given to the progressive mechanization of agricultural work in the country. The secondary sector employed 19.3% of the EAP in the year 2000. This small proportion may be explained by mechanization and robotization in industrial activity. In any case, this phenomenon may be explained by the de-industrializing process that took place in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s. Already in the 1980s, workers in the secondary sector only comprised 29% of the EAP. The tertiary sector currently employs the greatest number of Brazilian workers, corresponding in 2000 to 56.5% of the EAP. Activities that in 1960 incorporated merely 33.3% rose to 40% in 1980. However, we need to keep in mind that this kind of work is not dominated by modern businesses but, on the contrary, personal care and services that generally employ unqualified labor. The tertiary sector enjoyed the greatest growth rate in the country. In 1940, it employed only 20% of the EAP; in 1980 this proportion had doubled and by 1996 it had already come to incorporate 56% of the 68 million people making up the economically active population in the country. The tertiarization of Brazil s economy, which reached a peak during the 1980s economic crisis, relocated labor force from the secondary and primary sectors to the tertiary sector, and grew at a rate of 16% between 1980 and 1996. Figure 1.2 shows the evolution of the distribution of the three sectors between 1940 and 2000. 1 The Economically Active Population (EAP) corresponds to individuals who are currently employed or are effectively seeking for employment. 2 This number represents 48.5% of the Brazilian population in 2000. However, it can be underestimated, considering that many workers are not registered, such as children, teenagers, domestic workers and street vendors, among others.

6 C. Scalon Fig. 1.2. Economic sectors by year. Source: Population censuses and 1996 demographic counting, IBGE. In 2009, of the 162.8 million people who were 10 years or older, 101.1 million were economically active. Out of these, 92.7 million were employed and 8.4 million were looking for work during the week the survey was carried out (PNAD, 2009). In other words, the unemployment rate was 8.3%. Urbanization and industrialization led to the appearance of new urban social groups with ties to the modernized sector of the national economy. At the same time, however, the urban industrial sector remained concentrated in the Southeast (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) and these new classes lived alongside traditional structures located in less developed regions. This is the typical scenario throughout Latin America. As Shanin (1976: 53) has affirmed: In Latin America capitalist production is combined in a variety of ways with other modes of production, thus constituting a degree of complexity difficult to comprehend. In addition, urban development in Brazil has increased at a much greater rate than industrial development. Consequently, the economy is incapable of absorbing all of the available labor force, thus resulting in unemployment and underemployment. In 2009, merely 50% of the salary-earning workforce had registered jobs, 44.7% were either independent or working without signed documents, and 4.4% worked merely for their own subsistence (PNAD, 2009). Different from poverty, which is more visible and easier to target for specific eradication policies, inequality is not always perceived and framed as a problem. As an all-encompassing and diffuse problem, inequality may be found wherever we look: income, education, employment, physically

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 7 0.61 0.6 0.59 0.58 0.57 0.56 0.55 0.54 0.53 0.52 0.51 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Fig. 1.3. Evolution of the Gini Index for Brazil (1995 2005). Source: Paes de Barros et al. (2007). occupying geographic space, and even citizenship are stratified and unequally distributed. Despite a decrease in income inequality (see Fig. 1.3), with a 0.05 drop in the Gini index within a decade, Brazil still possesses one of the worst income concentration rates in the world. In 2009, the Gini still hovered at 0.54. In Brazil, it is clear that poverty is the result of an unequal income distribution. Poor people work and may thus be considered to be deserving poor. Yet due to a lack of capital both educational capital and property they actually earn much less than what would be necessary to lead a dignified life. There has been some debate over the methodologies used to measure the poverty line. These discussions end up revealing divergences over the concept of poverty itself. For example, one may speak in terms of absolute and relative poverty. According to Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, deprivation cannot be understood in absolute terms since it is present at diverse levels. As such, the concept of poverty cannot be reduced to the notion of unstable income; poverty must be understood in a more complex and encompassing way as a lack of basic capabilities that lead to vulnerability, exclusion, exposure to fear and violence lack of power, participation, and voice. In sum, this amounts to being excluded from basic rights and wellbeing. Hence, the problem of inequality should not be limited to income, since this factor is related to other forms of inequality, such as race, gender,

8 C. Scalon class, and citizenship, among innumerous other dimensions of social reality. Sociology would be reductionist to limit itself to focusing on income as the major type of inequality; this kind of perspective is better adapted to economics than other social sciences. This is why they are more concerned with relationships, practices, and other dimensions of life within a society, and not merely the economic sphere. For Sen (2001: 171): Even the prerequisite of objectivity in a description does not require social invariability, as is sometimes supposed. What is considered as a terrible privation may vary naturally from one society to another, yet from the social analyst s perspective these variations all serve as material to be used in an objective study. Since Sen defends the proposition that poverty should be analyzed by considering deficiencies in basic functional capabilities and not in terms of functions that have already been carried out, he affirms that As far as income is concerned, the relevant concept of poverty should be inadequacy (to generate minimally acceptable capabilities). A poverty line that completely ignores individual characteristics cannot do justice to our genuine concerns over what is most basic to poverty; insufficient capabilities due to inadequate economical means. It is always a better idea to group individuals together into particular categories (related to class, sex, occupational group, employment status, etc.). If we chose to express poverty in terms of income, then the required income will have to be linked to the causal requirements of minimum capabilities (Sen, 2001: 175). This would explain why the relationship between income and capability is not the same for all social groups, but on the contrary, varies according to age, place of residence, race, and sex, among other social factors. Here, it is worth emphasizing that Sen s theory has been elaborated around the concept of an individual s capability to function according to the given values of this individual. This is the basis for liberty and equality. Even so, in order to implement and evaluate public policies used to combat poverty, it is still necessary to establish an objective base by using some sort of measurement of absolute poverty. This is because measuring relative poverty would have to incorporate an extensive debate about which particular consumer items should or should not be considered basic. Rocha (2005: 46) maintains that establishing a poverty line based on observed consumer patterns consists in selecting a theoretical basis, such as the nutritional necessities established by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). The value of consumption in and of itself, on the other hand, does not permit this nourishment is often accepted as an inevitable weakness.

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 9 There is no theoretical basis which can be used to establish the standard on what minimally adequate consumption should be in terms of clothing, living space, transport, etc. According to Rocha, absolute poverty refers to a lack of the minimal conditions necessary in order to survive, while relative poverty incorporates necessities associated to the predominant way of life in any given society. Thus, the absolute poverty line is tied to attending to the nutritional needs of a determined population, a pioneering approach created by Rowntree in a study on poverty in the city of York in 1901 (Rocha, 1988: 257). And yet, if relative poverty, or privation of capabilities, is not the most adequate way of establishing an objective criteria of measurement, neither are poverty lines based solely on income criteria, since they do not consider differentiations in the price of consumer items necessary to meet basic needs. There are still other relevant questions that should be taken into consideration, such as the inadequacy of a single poverty line to be applied to an entire country, since there may be significant price variation across the country for items considered part of a basic food basket. 3 Because of the deep inequalities still persistent in Brazil not only between urban and rural areas or between two regions of the country, but also between different localities within the same region it is necessary to construct more than one poverty line. Since 2003, poverty rates have been falling in Brazil. Between 2003 and 2008, the decrease in absolute poverty rates (meaning those who earn up to half a monthly minimum wage) and extreme poverty rates (those who earn up to a quarter of a monthly minimum wage) fell, on average, from 3.1% to 2.1% a year, respectively. Even so, around 45 million Brazilians were still living below the poverty line in 2009. Figure 1.4 shows the evolution of the number of poor people in the country. Regional Inequalities The Northeast where a third of the Brazilian population lives, is home to half of the poor people of Brazil, or 23.4 million individuals. This does not 3 Other measurements of poverty are based on the cost of a basic food basket that fulfills the needs of minimum caloric intake of an individual. It varies between regions, states and urban, rural and metropolitan areas, depending on assumptions about the cost and consumption patterns of different populations.

10 C. Scalon 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1992 1993 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Fig. 1.4. Number of people below the poverty line in Brazil by year (in millions). Source: Rocha based on PNAD/IBGE. mean that the problem is not serious in other regions, but it should be emphasized that 44.2% of Northeasterners are in this situation. There is an evident cleavage between regions in Brazil, with the North and Northeast being the poorest and the South and Southeast being the richest. These differences are expressed not only from the income distribution, but are also manifested in the quality of life and opportunities for people. Regional inequalities can be observed in Fig. 1.5. These regional inequalities can be expressed in different factors that touch directly upon poverty and inequality. Since poverty in Brazil is related to whether one lives in the countryside or not, a greater proportion of the inhabitants in a rural population may also indicate a greater probability of privation. Figure 1.6 shows that the percentage of people living in rural areas is greater in the North and Northeast than in the rest of the country. Furthermore, the Northeast has the lowest employment rate in Brazil, where 55.6% of the EAP is unemployed, while the South has the highest: 61.8%. For other regions, the proportions are: North: 56.1%; Southeast: 57.2%, and Center-West: 59.7%. Considering the evolution of domestic income per capita in Brazil as a whole, this situation is not so distinct. In spite of being able to observe a constant increase in income, a large gap between regions is still visible (Fig. 1.7).

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 11 Fig. 1.5. Percentage of people living below and above the poverty line by region in 2009. Source: Rocha 4 based on PNAD/IBGE. Fig. 1.6. Source: Census 2010. Urban and rural populations by region. The 2010 Census indicated other factors of inequality between regions. The Northeast has the lowest life expectancy rate: 62.4 and 68.5 years for men and women, respectively, while the South registered the highest rate: 67.1 and 74.8 years, respectively. The infant mortality rate does not 4 Sonia Rocha at http://www.iets.org.br/rubrique.php3?id rubrique=12

12 C. Scalon 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1993 1992 Brazil North Northeast Center-West Southeast South Fig. 1.7. Real domestic income per capita, values in Brazilian Reals in 2009, using the INPC to measure deflation. Source: IETS based on PNAD. 5 Table 1.1. Distribution of EGP Classes by Year. Classes 2001 2009 I Higher-grade profs & adm 3.9 4.2 II Lower-grade prof & adm 4.4 5.0 IIIa Higher-grade routine non-manual 10.1 10.8 IIIb Lower-grade routine non-manual work 8.5 9.4 IVa Small proprietors, with employees 3.7 3.6 IVb Small proprietors, without employees 4.5 3.9 IVc2 Rural self-employed 5.7 4.6 IVc Rural employers 0.9 0.5 V Technicians and superv. manual work 1.5 2.2 VI Skilled manual workers 16.5 17.7 VIIa Semi- & unskilled manual workers 28.4 27.7 VIIb Agricultural workers 12.0 10.4 Total 100.0 100.0 Source: IBGE, PNADs (2001; 2009). present favorable statistics for the Northeast either: 58.9% for men and 46.3% for women, while in the South these percentages are 25.9% and 19.6%, respectively (See Tables 1.1 and 1.2). 5 Source: http://www.iets.org.br/. PNAD was not surveyed in 1994 and 2000.

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 13 Table 1.2. Per Capita Household Income Distribution by EGP Classes. Classes Mean Std. Deviation I Higher-grade profs & adm 213.4 206.5 II Lower-grade prof & adm 126.1 135.5 IIIa Higher-grade routine non-manual 96.8 103.8 IIIb Lower-grade routine non-manual work 69.2 68.1 IVa Small proprietors, with employees 142.0 216.8 IVb Small proprietors, without employees 58.2 69.0 IVc2 Rural self-employed 28.4 37.9 IVc Rural employers 106.6 247.3 V Technicians and superv. manual work 91.9 116.5 VI Skilled manual workers 50.7 85.7 VIIa Semi- & unskilled manual workers 42.3 39.3 VIIb Agricultural workers 27.0 30.1 Source: IBGE PNAD (2009). Class and Stratification Studying class structure fills an important gap in analyzing social stratification, which goes back to the classical sociology of Marx and Weber. How individuals are positioned in the class structure and what their chances in life are of attaining social positions are a fundamental theme in sociological literature. By using the bases that Marxist and Weberian theory laid, many different theoretical-conceptual guidelines have been drawn to analyze class. Sociological categories of class are quite relevant for describing and understanding the unequal distribution of opportunities and rewards in Brazil. These categories also draw attention to the role that class plays in mediating and conditioning the effects of other divisions as well as the social resources used to standardize inequality. Class divisions exercise important causal powers that affect different social processes and results, contributing both directly and indirectly to the existence of pronounced and durable inequality in Brazilian society (Scalon and Santos, 2010: 99). In this chapter, we have decided to adopt the EGP (Erickson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarrero) categories to define social strata according to the 12 classes; this scheme is widely used in international analyses on stratification and mobility (Breen, 2004). The scheme also incorporates characteristics that make reference to the Weberian concept of class, viewing class as groups sharing similar chances in life, different from other groups having distinct opportunities, including mobility. In his analyses of mobility, Goldthorpe (1987; 1993) defines categories by combining both occupation

14 C. Scalon and employment status, which both report to the general market and labor situation in a given place (Lockwood, 1958). In Weberian analysis, class corresponds to an aggregate of class situations, basically, market positions that do not necessarily form communities. As such, a class refers to a group of individuals who share a common market situation, in terms of the goods and skills they possess (Giddens, 1973). According to Weber (1977), class refers to (1) a certain number of people who have in common a specific causal component of their chances in life as long as (2) this component is represented exclusively by an interest in possessing income goods and opportunities and (3) is represented by prevailing commodity and labor market conditions. For this author, the quoted points regarding class situation, are expressed in what would be consideredtypicalchances in terms of offer of goods, external life conditions, and personal experiences in life, and these chances are determined by a certain quantity of power, or lack of power, which may be used to dispose of income goods and qualifications. Employing this class scheme, we may now summarize the class distribution in Brazil, as shown in Table 1.1. The data reveals just how stable the distribution of strata remained during the eight-year period considered here. In spite of all the attention given to transformations, especially regarding how such transformations affect income or the capacity of the Brazilian population to consume, the country s class structure has remained practically unaltered. It is a wellknown fact that structural change is slow and demands great social transformations. What we see in Table 1.1 are small variations that do not imply more meaningful alterations in class composition in Brazil. From 2001 to 2009, limiting our consideration to those jobs varying 1% or more, are skilled manual workers, whose numbers increased by 1.2%, the rural self-employed, who decreased by 1.1%, and agricultural workers, who decreased by 1.6%. We may thus observe that the rural sector is still changing more quickly than the rest, handing over labor force to the urban sector. In addition, the table indicates that Brazil is still far from constituting a middle-class society, since in 2009, 47.6% of the workforce was concentrated in manual occupations, and this percentage only includes urban jobs (V, VI, and VIIa). In the aggregate, the urban non-manual sector grew from 2001 to 2009. White-collar positions (I, II, IIIa, and IIIb) represented, in 2001, 26.9% of the total number of people considered in this sample, while in 2009 they totaled 29.4%. However, it is difficult to affirm that this 2.5% increase has been meaningful in transforming the Brazilian class structure.

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 15 At the very least, it seems not to have hadmuchofanimpactontheincome growth seen during this period, while it did allow for greater consumption among a sliver of the population. The stability of the social structure is a known fact, sustainable even in light of the meaningful transformations occurring in the working world. In dealing with large aggregates, occupational changes within class groups have not seemed to have caused any sort of greater impact within the more all-encompassing framework of class structure. Migrating from a skilled manual job in the industrial sector to the service sector does not provoke variations in the distribution of strata per se, as they have been defined here. Table 1.2 shows income averages and standard deviations for the 12 EGP classes, thus permitting an evaluation of income inequality between them. There are clear income disparities between strata, despite significant variation within each of them. Only the higher non-manual strata (I and II) and individuals possessing property and domestic help, whether in the urban (IVa) or rural sectors (IVc) have a per capita domestic income greater than 100,00 reals. Rural workers, whether self-employed (IVc2) or employed by others (VIIb) have the least amount of registered income. Note the expressive cleavage between the manual and non-manual sectors, as well as between the urban and rural sectors. Identity is also an important factor in the composition of the social structure. Here, we will consider gender and ethnicity. Of the diverse sociodemographic factors that influence one s chances of being allocated in the class structure, and even the occupational structure, gender ends up having the largest impact in any society. Many social groups suffer disadvantages when competing for positions in the social structure, but few incorporate the segmentation of the labor market as much as gender does. It may be said that minority groups tend to be concentrated in more or less privileged sectors, yet even so, it would be difficult to affirm that there is a segmented labor market, such as what appears between men and women. In this segmented market, women have their own rather peculiar place. The unequal distribution of positions in the labor market according to gender has been widely debated by many different authors (see Crompton and Mann, 1986; Siltanen, 1994; Dex, 1987; Scalon, 1999). It would be an oversight, therefore, for this study to fail to ascertain the composition of the classes analyzed according to gender. Table 1.3 highlights the results. The data in Table 1.3 reveals that class distribution suffers from the effects of gender. Men and women, as observed in a previous study of class

16 C. Scalon Table 1.3. Distribution of EGP Classes by Gender. Classes Men Women Total I Higher-grade profs & adm 4.3 4.1 4.2 II Lower-grade prof & adm 4.7 5.5 5.0 IIIa Higher-grade routine non-manual 7.2 15.3 10.8 IIIb Lower-grade routine non-manual work 7.2 12.2 9.4 IVa Small proprietors, with employees 4.5 2.5 3.6 IVb Small proprietors, without employees 3.7 4.2 3.9 IVc2 Rural self-employed 7.1 1.3 4.6 IVc Rural employers 0.8 0.1 0.5 V Technicians and superv. manual work 2.7 1.5 2.2 VI Skilled manual workers 20.9 13.8 17.7 VIIa Semi- & unskilled manual workers 26.4 29.3 27.7 VIIb Agricultural workers 10.5 10.2 10.4 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Source: IBGE, PNAD (2009). mobility (Scalon, 1999), were placed in distinct segments of the labor market and, consequently, are distributed in different kinds of occupations. Hence, the stratification structure is also segmented by sex. Women are better represented in the non-manual sectors, especially routine occupations on the lowest ranks of this sector. And the literature shows that, within these strata, women s occupations enjoy less status and prestige (Scalon and Santos, 2010). By observing strata IVa, IVc, and IVc2, a male predominance may be noted. Literature on work and gender has frequently pointed this characteristic of the job market; categories characterized by property and control over others work tend to be held by men, except for small proprietors without employees (IVb), a highly precarious category, in which women are in greater proportion. On the other hand, within the manual sector, women are generally employed in low-skilled occupations, while among qualified workers, technicians, and supervisors of manual labor, the proportion of male workers is greater. This effect is certainly enhanced by domestic work, an essentially female chore. In general, women occupy jobs that reproduce domestic attributions, i.e., activities corresponding to their social role. Thus, the spaces destined for women in the labor market are concentrated in activities implying caretaking and nurturing of others, such as nursing, teaching, cleaning, sales, attending, etc. (Scalon, 2009).

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 17 Table 1.4. Distribution of EGP Classes by Race. Classes White Black Total I Higher-grade profs & adm 6.5 1.8 4.1 II Lower-grade prof & adm 6.8 3.1 5.0 IIIa Higher-grade routine non-manual 12.7 8.7 10.8 IIIb Lower-grade routine non-manual work 10.3 8.5 9.4 IVa Small proprietors, with employees 4.9 2.2 3.5 IVb Small proprietors, without employees 3.9 3.9 3.9 IVc2 Rural self-employed 3.9 5.3 4.6 IVc Rural employers 0.6 0.3 0.5 V Technicians and superv. manual work 2.5 1.8 2.2 VI Skilled manual workers 17.0 18.6 17.8 VIIa Semi- & unskilled manual workers 23.5 32.2 27.8 VIIb Agricultural workers 7.3 13.6 10.4 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 Source: IBGE, PNAD (2009). Another important dimension of inequality in the Brazilian class structure pertains to ethnic distinctions. The blacks have traditionally suffered discrimination and systematic disadvantages throughout Brazil s history. Despite recent policies aimed at social inclusion, such as racial quotas in public universities for the blacks and public school students, this gap still has not been covered and this is most certainly a social problem that will take decades to be addressed. Table 1.4 shows the distribution of the blacks and the whites per social strata. In the category of black, we joined people who identify themselves as black and pardos (mixed or mullatos). Here, inequality between the whites and the blacks is quite clear. While 6.5% of the whites, both men and women, occupy the top of the social pyramid (class I), only 1.8% of the blacks appear in this grouping. Whitecollar jobs (I, II, IIIa, and IIIb) incorporate 36.3% of the white workers, while there are only 22.1% of black workers. When considering proprietors with employees (IVa), the proportion of the whites is more than double that of the blacks. At the same time, the percentage of proprietors with no employees (IVb) is surprisingly similar, being equal for both groups. In the urban manual sector, the proportions differ more expressively in the non-qualified manual sector which incorporates almost a third of the black workers. That is the least well-paid and prestigious of the strata with the lowest status. In the rural sectors as well, the blacks are concentrated

18 C. Scalon in the lowest level, working in agriculture (VIIb), in a proportion that is double that of registered for the whites. It is also revealing to complement this information with an analysis of white and black participation in the formal and informal sectors, and also as consumers. Here it is fundamental to separate men and women, since the labor market is segmented and women more frequently tend to carry out activities related to their own and their families consumption. This is why we have only analyzed information referring to men between 24 and 65, i.e., the group considered in the class analysis as a general rule. White men enjoy more formalized employment situations; 60.2% are registered workers. This percentage declines significantly for black men: 49.8%. A slightly higher percentage of blacks work in the informal sector (corresponding to 47.7%. The percentage of men who work merely for their own subsistence is low 1.3% for whites and 2.5% for blacks. We may therefore conclude that besides being placed in less favorable positions in the class structure, blacks are also at a greater disadvantage in the labor market, having more precarious jobs. Final Considerations Today the debate on social inequality encompasses a wide range of elements that are part of social relationships, especially those based on identity-based traits. A wider notion of justice and equality that contemporary societies have developed as a common discourse has led many to strive towards more equal living conditions. The problem of inequality stimulates debate on topics such as environmental justice, for example, topics that in the past did not bother sociologists who work with inequality. Contemporary conditions present challenges that make evident the complexity of social relationships and expose our theoretical and methodological limitations (Scalon and Santos, 2010). We should ask ourselves, as Pakulski and Waters (1996) have already done, if classes are dead. At least, we must consider the death of classes in the way we traditionally understood them which is before the fragmentation and diversification brought on by contemporaneity. We must be attentive to the rapid mutations of contemporary society that deeply threaten sedimented concepts that no longer help us comprehend social phenomena. This is why it is important to reflect on stratification as a field of study. Despite its great contributions to describing income disparities and class inequality, little has been done to identify the causes of such disparities and inequality. More specifically, what is lacking are the political and

Social Stratification and Its Transformation in Brazil 19 cultural dimensions, values, understandings and perceptions on inequality that influence lifestyles, changes to the stratification structure and acquiring status, and also delineate social agents place in social life. In this field of knowledge almost no space is provided for agency, which makes it difficult to observe and explain change in social life and in the system of opportunities. I would, therefore, like to conclude by pointing out these gaps and limitations within stratification studies, which is still largely trapped in a generalizing perspective unable to grasp the growing complexity of social life and has tended to reproduce the same analytical format from the 1970s and 1980s. This kind of perspective may be adequate for economic studies, but is insufficient for sociological analysis.