| Summary, etc |
Today’s society is stratified. In other words, individuals are categorized into classes through which<br/>they are delineated. People are barely defined by their aptitude or dexterity but rather by their<br/>perceived class in the society. In every sector of the society there are stratifications; in the<br/>economic sector, we have the rich and the poor; among the religious we have the sinners and<br/>righteous; health-wise we have able, disabled, strong and weak. Even within each group<br/>stratification there are still further stratifications. For instance, in the class of the rich, we have<br/>“trillionaires”, billionaires, millionaires and “thousandaires”. Among the poor, there are the<br/>chronic poor, churning poor, transient poor and street urchins. Above it all, the stratification<br/>element is being used predominantly to determine an individual’s fate in any given society. The<br/>cognizance and demarcation of this class has led to struggles, protests and rallies by the<br/>disadvantaged and the oppressed group for an egalitarian society. Hence class consciousness,<br/>which is simply the awareness of one’s position or ranking in society, has been a major tool of<br/>social engineering. Thus, this research focuses on the struggle of socio-economic conflict between<br/>the haves and the have-nots. It is in this light we shall explore the place of class consciousness as<br/>social engineering in an egalitarian society through the selected poems of A.J. Dagga Tolar. |
