Power, Inequality & Social Justice (SOAN-2540)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, and substantive populations of interest in the study of power, social inequality, and social justice.

Survival Capital

The essential resources and opportunities required for people in a modern urban society to survive and potentially thrive, including employment income, childcare, formal education, housing, and healthcare.

Precarious Employment

Non-standard employment characterized by low wages, high insecurity, poor working conditions, and a lack of statutory protections; identified as the fastest-growing form of employment in Canada.

Working Poor

Individuals who earn income through part-time or precarious employment—frequently performing unpleasant or hazardous tasks and working multiple jobs—yet remain below Canada's low-income cut-off.

Culture of Poverty

A theoretical perspective arguing that living in persistent poverty fosters specific psychological traits, impulses, and short-term survival behaviors that sustain poverty intergenerationally, treating it as an individual rather than systemic failure.

Temporary Foreign Worker Program

A Canadian federal initiative permitting employers to hire foreign nationals on a temporary basis to resolve specific labor shortages when Canadian citizens or permanent residents are unavailable.

Two-Step Immigration

An immigration recruitment pathway where prospective newcomers are initially selected by employers on temporary work permits before transitioning to permanent residency as economic immigrants.

De-professionalization

The systemic tendency for skilled immigrants to take jobs that underutilize their education, professional training, and credentials, commonly resulting from non-recognition of foreign qualifications.

Racialized Stratification

The institutional process by which racial classification and membership serve as a primary foundation for social hierarchy, occupational sorting, and income disparities.

Skill Obsolescence

The extent to which workers lack current, modernized knowledge or technical competencies necessary to perform their occupational duties effectively.

Phasing Out

A transition strategy into retirement wherein an employee progressively reduces their labor participation through part-time or part-year employment prior to full withdrawal from the workforce.

Emotional Work

Paid labor that requires direct, face-to-face interaction with clients or customers and mandates the continuous display or suppression of specific affective states.

Social Reproduction

The biological and generational maintenance and provisioning of the workforce, encompassing unpaid and paid domestic responsibilities such as cooking, shelter upkeep, childcare, and healthcare.

Feminization of Work

The increasing representation, participation, and impact of women in labor sectors and leadership roles that were historically dominated by men.

Employment Equity Act

Federal legislation in Canada aimed at eliminating systemic workplace disadvantages by obligating federally regulated employers to actively recruit from designated historically disadvantaged groups.

Social Mobility

A measurable shift in an individual's or group's socioeconomic status, assessed across generations (intergenerational) or throughout a single lifetime (intragenerational or career mobility).

Exchange Mobility

Upward movement within a status hierarchy that directly depends on and necessitates the downward displacement of an existing position occupant, such as a Supreme Court justice appointment.

Structural Mobility

Socioeconomic advancement across an entire population resulting from macro-level economic transformations or technological expansions without displacing existing position holders.

Workforce Segmentation

The division of the labor pool into rigid, separate occupational strata based on skill levels, compensation tiers, and demographic boundaries that impede lateral or upward mobility.

Internal Labour Markets

Administrative mechanisms and promotion pathways within a firm that fill job openings through the advancement of current employees rather than hiring external applicants.

Categorical Fate

The sociological awareness experienced by downwardly mobile individuals that their decline in economic standing is the outcome of membership in a marginalized or victimized group rather than individual inadequacy.

Excorporation

The mandatory, involuntary retirement or exclusion of individuals from the elite stratum, representing a structural demotion deeper than standard occupational termination.

Excarceration

The formal expulsion, ejection, or detachment of former elites and officials from governing bodies and political ruling institutions.

Gig Economy

A labor market organized around short-term, on-demand, and fragmented work arrangements between independent workers and clients, characterized by unpredictable earnings and lack of job security.

Homophily

The sociological inclination of individuals to seek out, bond with, and form social associations with others possessing identical social backgrounds, values, traditions, and attitudes.

Institutional Completeness

The degree to which an ethno-cultural enclave or community establishes an autonomous array of social, economic, educational, and religious institutions supporting all facets of its members' lives.

Life Chances

A foundational concept articulated by Max Weber designating the probabilistic opportunities individuals hold to acquire material goods, living conditions, status, and life experiences.

Agency

An individual's autonomous capacity to act, exert personal power, formulate plans, and make intentional choices within surrounding societal structures.

Colonialism

The historical process of geopolitical expansion and domination wherein European imperial nations occupied sovereign foreign territories, exploited their resources, and subordinated Indigenous populations.

Lateral Violence

Destructive behaviors, aggression, and abuse perpetrated within oppressed or marginalized peer groups rather than targeted upward toward systemic oppressors.

Absolute Poverty

A condition in which an individual or household lacks the minimal financial resources required to secure the fundamental necessities of physical survival, such as nutrition and shelter.

Relative Poverty

An economic condition assessed by evaluating a person's material standard of living against the prevailing average income and customary consumption norms of their society.

Market Basket Measure (MBM)

Canada’s official poverty line metric, which calculates the income needed by a family to purchase a designated basket of essential goods and services consistent with biological survival and community norms.

Racialized Persons

Individuals from non-dominant ethno-racial communities who undergo racialization, a continuous social process that ascribes social meaning to physical differences and reinforces systemic inequalities.

Feminization of Poverty

The worldwide and national pattern showing women—especially lone female parents—to be disproportionately concentrated among the impoverished population.

Heteronormativity

The structural presumption that heterosexuality is the standard, natural, and default sexual orientation and relationship model within social institutions.

Bill C-16

Canadian federal legislation enacted in $2017$ that updated the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to explicitly prohibit discrimination and hate speech based on gender identity and expression.

Senescence

The natural, physiological biological deterioration of physical stamina and cognitive capacities associated with normal aging.

Sandwich Generation

A demographic stratum of middle-aged adults simultaneously tasked with caring for both their elderly aging parents and their dependent offspring.

Underemployment

Employment in an occupational role that requires substantially lower levels of education, skill sets, and professional preparation than the worker holds.

Sociological Imagination

The analytical framework conceptualized by C. Wright Mills that enables an observer to connect individual private troubles to public historical patterns and structural dynamics.

Moral Community

A collective entity—such as a town, neighborhood, or nation—whose members maintain unified ethical standards and collective values that they actively implement in civic life.

Davis-Moore Hypothesis

A structural functionalist thesis asserting that social inequality is an essential and functional mechanism designed to motivate the most talented individuals to assume society's most demanding roles.

Human Capital

The accumulated educational credentials, practical skills, training experiences, and physical vitality possessed by an individual that enhance their economic productivity.

Bourgeoisie

Karl Marx's term designating the capitalist property-owning class that commands the means of production and extracts profit by purchasing wage labor.

Proletariat

The Marxist designation for the wage-earning working class who lack ownership of productive assets and must sell their labor power to survive.

Reserve Army of Labour

A pool of unemployed job-seekers in capitalist economies whose presence suppresses wage demands and forces workers to accept substandard labor conditions out of fear of replacement.

Class Consciousness

The subjective realization and political mobilization of the working class regarding their shared objective economic exploitation and collective capacity for systemic transformation.

False Consciousness

An ideological distortion wherein subordinate classes subscribe to values, cultural narratives, and political systems that actively undermine their material class interests.

Critical Theory

A neo-Marxist theoretical tradition examining how historical and cultural apparatuses, consumerism, and mass media sustain hegemony and normalize capitalist inequality.

Cultural Capital

Pierre Bourdieu's concept designating accumulated educational credentials, aesthetic tastes, knowledge, and manners that confer social advantages and reproduce class boundaries.

Social Capital

Pierre Bourdieu's term for the durable network of institutionalized social connections, reciprocal relationships, and memberships that yield preferential access to resources.

Neoliberalism

An ideological and economic model that promotes the deregulation of global trade, reductions in state intervention, and budget austerity, relying on market-driven resource allocation.

Social Justice

The political and moral standard calling for the equitable distribution of collective assets, recognition of human rights, unbiased legal institutional treatment, and living wages for all.

Intersectionality

A theoretical framework pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw analyzing how race, gender, and other social categories intersect to create unique, compounded configurations of discrimination.

Interlocking Disadvantages

The cumulative overlap of multiple subordinate status dimensions—such as disability, socioeconomic deprivation, and sexual orientation—that synergistically worsen life chances.

The Stacked Deck: An Introduction to Social Inequality

The course textbook authored by Lorne Tepperman, Jennifer Ball, and Katherine Lyon (3rd edition) exploring theories, structural mechanisms, and population-level impacts of Canadian inequality.

Settler Colonialism

An ongoing structure of colonial domination where colonizers permanently stay, displacing and eliminating Indigenous populations to establish uninterrupted control over land, resources, and governance.

Re-neighbouring as Reconciliation

A community-engaged research project led by Dr. Vanessa Watts that examines parallel histories of displacement between Inuit tuberculosis patients in sanatoria and Mohawk Institute residential school survivors.

C.D. Howe

A Canadian government patrol vessel used in the $1950\text{s}$ to perform Arctic tuberculosis medical surveys and physically transport diagnosed Inuit patients southward to sanatoria.

Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium

A treatment facility in Hamilton, Ontario where hundreds of Inuit tuberculosis patients were relocated for care throughout the mid-$20\text{th}$ century, away from northern communities.

OCAP® Principles

Data governance protocols established by the First Nations Information Governance Centre guaranteeing Indigenous Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession over community data.

Narrative Quantification

A mixed-methods empirical methodology wherein qualitative narratives and transcripts are segmented into discrete semantic thought units and systematically categorized for statistical examination.

Thought Unit

The standardized unit of analysis within narrative quantification, defined as a distinct textual segment expressing a single complete idea, regardless of syntactic length.

Close Reading

A qualitative textual analysis method that investigates the subtle relationships between linguistic choices and political systems, highlighting gaps, silences, and institutional omissions.

Security State

A governmental framework that uses surveillance, policing, and intelligence apparatuses to monitor political dissent, frequently pathologizing Indigenous activists as national security threats.

Good Mother vs. Bad Mother Dichotomy

A colonial maternal ideology that equates acceptable motherhood with White, middle-class, domestic norms while stigmatizing Indigenous, queer, poor, and racialized mothers as unfit or neglectful.