Social Issues in McMinden, Fictional Town

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The narrative about a fictional town named McMinden contains a number of sociological concepts, among which the notion of social stratification appears to be the most expressively stated. As such, social stratification presupposes a hierarchical organization of society, where the division of people into classes is based on the amount of power and wealth.

Discussed, inter alia, by such theorists as Karl Marx and Max Weber, social stratification finds its expression in the division of society into classes, among which three major groups are singled out: the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. In the town of McMinden, the aforementioned classes are represented by bankers, business owners, and professional people as the upper class; people employed in various white-collar, blue-collar, retail, service, and agribusiness jobs as middle class; and unskilled workers as the lower class (¶¶ 3-4). In my real-life situation, I can observe the same tendency of social stratification.

Such stratification roots in the social division of labor, discussed by Karl Marx and defined as categorizing different jobs to different workers depending on the job type and complexity. Apparently, in the town of McMinden, the upper-class people are involved in more intellectual, white-collar jobs that bring more income, and the lower-class citizens content themselves with working at the meat-packing factory (¶¶ 3-4).

In the modern world, there is observed a tendency of crossing the borders of social stratification and involving in jobs that correspond to the level of education rather than to the economic or social background.

In addition to the division of labor, social stratification in the town of McMinden results in strict social distancing. The concept of social distance was developed by Emory S. Bogardus and is employed to describe the level of closeness and acceptance between different social groups. In case with McMinden, social distance reveals itself in the icy and even hostile attitude among the different racial groups living in the town.

Apart from the white settlers, the racial composition of the town is by a quarter made up of Hispanic, black, Native American, and Asian people who are not treated respectfully by the white population (¶¶ 1, 7, 9). The same problem of social distancing and unwillingness to maintain good neighborly relation can be witnessed nowadays in countries where the number of immigrants is high.

Due to mechanization of agriculture around the town of McMinden, fewer workers were needed to support farming, and the area witnessed the phenomenon of depopulation. As young people preferred to obtain education and prestigious jobs elsewhere, they moved out of the town (¶ 10). This process of rural flight from the more rural areas to the less rural ones has led to such thinning out of the town population that McMinden is only alive and breathing due to the immigrants attracted by the perspective of unskilled work at the meat-packing factory. Nowadays, the tendency to rural flight is still observed to a certain degree in more rural areas, while inhabitants of large megapolises tend to move out to the less densely populated suburbs.

The concepts of social stratification, division of labor, and social distance discussed in the essay appear to be connected by cause-and-effect relation. As a result of division of labor, there emerges social stratification. And resulting from the strict borders set by social stratification appears social distance. The process of depopulation and rural flight can be considered as related to the aforementioned concepts as well. Depopulation of McMinden occurs since young people are escaping from the established social division to larger cities where it is easier to overcome social and racial borders.

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