Prestige Hierarchies Research Articles

Changing Social Stratification in a Danish Village

In his research on class, Warner has been criticized for not separating more definitively the various dimensions of social stratification, and specifically for merging economic and prestige hierarchies (Mills, 1942, 264-265). It has, however, never seriously been challenged that a very salient relationship does exist between the two categories. In the following pages we record what happened to the class structure of a Danish village when its marine-based economy collapsed and the community was urbanized, giving particular attention to the bases of prestige-ranking before and after this change. Dragor was, in the 1890's (baseline for our study), a home port for full-riggers, schooners and fishing smacks. Its 2,000 inhabitants were supported primarily by sailing or fishing or related servicing stores and industries. The village may be characterized as having been culturally isolated and conservative. Dragor's harbor opened upon the turbulent Kattigat which linked the busy Baltic and the North Sea, and these sea-lanes provided Dragor's principal contact with the world beyond and around her. Copenhagen, only 14 kilometers away, also faced the sea but contact between village and capital city, particularly by land routes, was spasmodic and infrequent. Marine employment was highly regarded and other work held in invidious comparison. The hierarchy by which individuals were ranked in prestige by others of the community was based upon the hierarchy of command aboard ship, somewhat modified to incorporate the whole population. The resultant social divisions were correlated, as we shall see, with a stratified pan-