Stratification

Creation is the first word and it settles the argument. Stratification is something done rather than something observed, so the classes exist because they were made and the hierarchy is formed rather than discovered. Roles are the basis, which connects the entry to the rest of the framework, since the roles in question are the endogroup roles, endo-ideal, reflector and negative image, and the strata are what those roles look like when a whole society is sorted by them. Class in Marsh's glossary is defined the same way, as a social construct resulting from classification of people relative to the endo-ideal, so stratification is the process and class is the product. What makes the arrangement durable is that people can move within it, which is what strata slipping and strata slumming describe, and movement between positions makes the positions themselves appear natural. The energy account runs underneath. A power imbalance is created from the outset in most established hierarchies because an initial advantage can be used to come out ahead in every subsequent interaction, so a hierarchy once formed maintains itself without further intervention. Marsh's objection is not to differences between people, since she holds that there is diversity between every two humans and that equality is an observably false idea. It is to ranking, since a scale measuring distance from an endo-ideal produces the concentration she describes as a ponzi scheme rather than any useful ordering.

Social stratification is a core topic in sociology, with functionalist accounts from Davis and Moore arguing that unequal rewards are necessary to fill important roles, and conflict accounts from Marx and Weber treating stratification as the outcome of struggle. Mobility research measures movement between strata and generally treats high mobility as mitigating inequality. Marsh's account is closer to the conflict tradition and departs from the mobility consensus, since on her reading movement between positions legitimates the structure rather than softening it, which reverses the usual conclusion about why mobility matters.