As is often the case in the social sciences, this term has different meanings depending upon who is using the term. From a general perspective, it can be used to refer—in a non-reified sense, it must be emphasized—to the major groupings of people connected to each other, both consensually and coercively, at the macro level by means of a relatively stable historically-determined socio-political and economic matrix of web-like connections. It is this constellation of groupings that we popularly call “society.” In my classes, however, I use the term primarily to refer to the arbitrary (usually) division of society in a hierarchic order by those in power (the ruling class) along one or more criteria, such as economic power, race, ethnicity, gender, age, income, and so on. This division is not always necessarily de jure, it can simply be de facto given the nature of existing power-relationships. So, for example, the hierarchic “racial structure” in this society today is far less a function of law than of historically-determined institutional, cultural, and ideological practices (though, one can legitimately argue that law is involved through the backdoor, so to speak, in so far as these practices are mediated by the state).