Breaking down the question
The question rests on a claim drawn from classical modernisation theory: as societies industrialise, urbanise and rationalise, stratification is expected to shift from ascription to achievement, so that class — a category of the market — replaces older, birth-based hierarchies. The examiner then confronts you with an awkward empirical fact: caste, ethnicity and race have not withered away but remain powerful axes of inequality across the modern world.
Your task is to explain this apparent contradiction, not merely to assert it. The command word is Explain, which asks for the mechanisms behind the persistence of ascriptive stratification alongside class. A strong answer holds both truths together — modernity does expand class relations, yet it also reworks and sometimes intensifies caste, ethnic and racial divisions rather than dissolving them.
The framework of achievement against ascription, and the distinction between class and status, supplies the analytical spine. Grounding is available in the note on the dimensions of stratification.
How to approach it
Open by stating the modernisation thesis fairly: the expectation, associated with Parsons and much of post-war sociology, that universalistic, achievement-oriented criteria would supplant particularistic, ascriptive ones. Then turn the argument, using evidence to show that ascriptive markers persist and adapt.
Organise the persistence thematically rather than as a loose list. Show how caste in India, ethnicity in plural societies, and race in Western societies each continue to structure life chances despite formal equality. Then explain why — the reproduction of advantage, the political utility of identity, and the incompleteness of the market's levelling logic. Close with a balanced verdict: modernity multiplies class relations without erasing ascription; the two coexist and interpenetrate.
Model answer
Classical modernisation theory presupposes that industrial society is a class society. As production moves to the market, status is expected to be allocated by achievement — education, skill and occupation — rather than by birth. Talcott Parsons framed this as a shift from particularistic, ascriptive criteria to universalistic, achievement-oriented ones, and Weber's account of rational-legal authority and the expanding market pointed the same way. On this view, caste, ethnicity and race, as ascriptive identities, should recede as impersonal economic class becomes the master principle of inequality.
The empirical record refutes any simple version of this prediction. Class relations have indeed spread, but ascriptive divisions remain predominant, often reinforced by the very processes that were meant to dissolve them.
In India, caste has survived industrialisation and democracy by adapting rather than disappearing. Endogamy persists, so the group reproduces itself each generation; caste and class correlate strongly, with formerly untouchable groups concentrated in low-paid, stigmatised work. M. N. Srinivas showed that mobility often occurs within the caste idiom through Sanskritisation, while competitive democratic politics has made caste an organised electoral resource rather than a fading relic. Caste has thus shed some ritual forms while retaining its grip on marriage, occupation and political mobilisation.
Ethnicity displays the same resilience in plural societies. Far from melting into a single national class structure, ethnic identities have hardened in many modern states, structuring access to jobs, housing and political power. The modern nation-state, by defining citizenship and distributing resources, frequently sharpens ethnic competition rather than transcending it.
Race remains a decisive axis of stratification in the most industrialised societies. In the United States and elsewhere, formal legal equality coexists with persistent racial gaps in income, wealth, education and incarceration. Discrimination operates through housing, schooling and labour markets, so that race continues to shape life chances long after ascriptive law has been abolished.
Why does ascription persist alongside class? Three mechanisms stand out. First, advantage is reproduced across generations: inherited wealth, cultural capital and unequal schooling ensure that market outcomes track ascriptive origins, so class and status reinforce rather than replace one another. Second, ascriptive identities are politically useful — in electoral systems, caste, ethnic and racial blocs mobilise for recognition and resources, giving these identities a fresh public role. Third, the market's levelling logic is incomplete: employers, landlords and networks discriminate, and informal exclusion survives formal equality.
A Weberian reading clarifies the coexistence. Class and status are distinct dimensions of stratification. Modernity expands the class dimension without abolishing status honour, so caste, ethnicity and race operate as status categories that overlay and interact with class position. The result is not the triumph of class over ascription but their entanglement.
In sum, modernisation does presuppose and enlarge class society, yet it neither requires nor produces the disappearance of ascriptive stratification. Caste, ethnicity and race persist because inequality is reproduced through the family and the market, because identity is mobilised in democratic politics, and because formal equality leaves informal exclusion intact. Modern stratification is best understood as a layering of class upon persistent status divisions rather than the replacement of one by the other.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who treat the statement as a paradox to be explained rather than a proposition to be simply endorsed or rejected. The weakest scripts either recite modernisation theory or list examples of surviving caste and race without connecting the two; the strongest hold both in tension and specify the mechanisms of persistence.
Anchoring the answer in the Weberian distinction between class and status lifts it above description, because it explains how achievement-based class and ascriptive status can coexist. Concrete evidence across all three markers named in the question — caste in India, ethnicity in plural societies, race in the West — signals range, while a closing judgement that modernity layers class upon ascription rather than erasing it demonstrates the analytical balance a 20-mark answer demands.