Sociology Quiz 2 : Stratification, Poverty

Describe the difference between income and wealth

Income refers to the flow of money received. Wealth is the total value of valuable assets owned.

Stratification

The hierarchical arrangement of individuals or groups in a society based on factors such as wealth, income, race, education, and power.

How does stratification influence induviduals?

Stratification influences individuals by determining their access to resources, opportunities, and social mobility.

How are the working rich different from the capitalist class?

The working rich depend on their income while the capitalist class depend on what they own to accumulate wealth.

What is achieved status?

A social position that an individual attains as a result of their actions, choices, and personal accomplishments.

Meritocracy

A social system where individuals achieve success based on their abilities and efforts rather than their social class or background.

Gentrification

The process of wealthy residents moving into a historically poorer neighborhood, which can lead to increased property values, new businesses, and economic revitalization.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A prediction that, once made, causes itself to become true by influencing the behavior of the individuals who are affected by it.

Whose perspective would note that prestige could play just as important a role as salary/income in someone's career satisfaction?

Weber

What is the Davis-Moore Hypothesis?

We have to incentivize jobs that are highly competitive and require skilled workers.

The poverty line is determined by

Comparing a household's total pre-tax money income to a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition

GINI INDEX

A statistical measurement of inequality that can be used to compare different nations.

Miscegenation

The mixing of different ethnicities or races.

Eugenics

Pseudoscientific belief that the human species can be "improved" by selective breeding, encouraging reproduction by people with "desirable" traits and discouraging or preventing it among those deemed "undesirable" or "unfit"

Implicit bias

An unconscious, automatic attitude or stereotype

Explicit bias

Conscious, deliberate prejudice that a person is aware of and can openly express

Internalized bias

The acceptance of negative social messages and stereotypes by the person who belongs to the targeted group, leading to self-doubt or self-hatred

Externalized bias

The outward expression of hostility or blame toward the systems, actors, or groups perceived as the source of one's oppression or problems.

Which Supreme Court case established "separate but equal" — Segregation

Plessy v Ferguson

Which supreme court case desegregated public schools in 1954?

Brown v Board of Education

Which supreme court case allowed gay marriage?

Obergefell v. Hodges

Which supreme court case allowed interracial marriage?

Loving v Virginia

What supreme court case allowed for legal involuntary sterilization?

Buck v Bell

Affirmative action aims to:

Rectify past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity

Contact theory

Proposes that positive intergroup relations can be fostered through contact between members of conflicting groups

According to Emile Durkheim, schools are essential for:

Instilling shared norms and values

What is the functionalist view of schools?

They help maintain social order and stability.

Hidden curriculum refers to:

The unspoken social lessons learned in schools

What is a key argument of conflict theorists regarding education?

Education perpetuates social inequalities and reinforces existing power structures, rather than serving as a tool for upward mobility.

What is the No Child Left Behind Act

A law that aimed to improve K-12 education by requiring annual testing in reading and math, holding schools accountable for student performance, and requiring teachers to meet higher standards

What is the Coleman report?

It assessed inequality in American public schools and its impact on student achievement, finding that family background and socioeconomic status were more influential than school resources.

What did the Coleman report do?

Shifted the focus of education reform from school inputs to student outcomes.

Phallocentrism

The belief that the male viewpoint, or the phallus, is the central organizing principle of the social world.

Androcentrism

A perspective that prioritizes male interests, experiences, and viewpoints, seeing male as the default or norm and female as a deviation.

Intersectional

How various aspects of a person's identity, such as race, gender, class, and sexuality, intersect to create unique experiences of discrimination and privilege.

Who observed that religion has been used as a guide to patriarchy in 'The Elementary Forms of Religious Life'?

Durkheim

Examples of stratification?

social classes based on wealth and income, caste systems with rigid, inherited social status, gender hierarchies that affect opportunities, and racial and ethnic hierarchies

What is economic class?

Income vs. wealth

Dennis Gilbert's model of Class Structure

A six-tier system that stratifies American society based on income, education, and occupation, distinguishing the following classes from top to bottom

How has the income and wealth gap between the most privileged classes and the rest of the population changed?

Significantly increased

The richest people in the world accumulated billions in wealth during the ____

Covid 19 pandemic

Mobility

The movement between different positions within a system of social stratification in any given society can be either horizontal or vertical and can take place on the individual or group level

How do we measure poverty?

Poverty Threshold determined by the Census Bureau

What is the Poverty Threshold?

The level of income below which one cannot afford to purchase all the resources one requires to live. People who have an income below the poverty line have no discretionary or disposable income, by definition

Gini Coefficient

a measure of statistical dispersion used to represent inequality within a population, most commonly for income or wealth

What is an Absolute measure of poverty?

Defines a person or household as poor if they lack the minimum income needed to meet basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and clean water

Examples of an Absolute measure of poverty

Relative Poverty/the Gini Coefficient, Gini Index, Measure of disparities in the income distribution of an area between 0 and 100.

What is Relative Poverty/ the Gini Index?

a measure of statistical dispersion used to represent inequality, most commonly income inequality, within a population

Why is there Structured Inequality - MARX?

Conflict Theory - Sees it as a result of power struggles between social classes

Why is there Structured Inequality - DURKHEIM?

Functionalism - Davis Moore Hypothesis - views it as a necessary and functional system to ensure important jobs are filled

Why is there Structured Inequality - WEBER?

Focuses on how other social and economic factors contribute to inequality - Points to the role of social action, rationalization, and bureaucracy in creating and maintaining social structures and inequality.

What are some of the "uses" of poverty according to Durkheim?

Ensuring that undesirable jobs are filled, teaching the poor discipline and moderation, and creating jobs for people who work in programs to assist the poor

Absolute Poverty

Poverty measure that considers the basic necessities

Relative Poverty

Poverty measure that takes into account the relative economic status of people in a society by looking at how income is distributed.

Poverty Threshold

Establishes minimum income levels required to obtain the necessities of life

Point-in-time-counts

1 night estimates of sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations

Define Inequality

The growing gap between the poor and the rich

Cumulative advantages

Advantages that are built up over generations and contribute to social class inequality

Racial Wealth Gap

Drastic and growing difference in wealth accumulation between black and white people

How does the US rank for the GINE Index?

Second highest - behind Chile

Race

A system that humans have created to classify and stratify groups of people based mostly on phenotypic characteristics

Ethnicity

Common culture, religion, history, or ancestry shared by a group of people

Symbolic ethnicity

Ethnicity that is individualistic in nature and without real social cost for the individual

Patterns of Inter-Group Relations:

Genocide, expulsion, pluralism, segregation, assimilation, amalgamation, etc

Genocide

Actual or attempted systematic annihilation of a race or ethnic group that has been labeled as less than fully human by the dominant group

Expulsion

Direct or indirect physical movement of groups based upon race.

Pluralism

Mutual respect, both dominant and subordinate, creating a multicultural environment of acceptance

Segregation

Formal separation of groups

Assimilation

The minority group is absorbed into mainstream culture

Amalgamation

A minority group and a majority group combine to form a new group

The "Model Minority" Myth

A racialized social construct that frames certain minority groups, known as "model minority" as comparatively successful, culturally adaptable, and morally disciplined to the same or different minority groups.

Immigrant selectivity

refers to the idea that migrants are not a random sample of their home population and tend to have characteristics, such as age, education, gender, and health, that differ from non-migrants

Negative Discrimination

Unjust/unfavorable treatment

Positive Discrimination

Efforts used to rectify historical and contemporary forms of negative discrimination

John Dewey's Theory

Progressive Education - based on the idea that education is life itself and should be learned through hands-on, experiential learning

Functionalist view of education

Education is a vital social institution that promotes social stability and cohesion by providing both primary (manifest) and secondary (latent) functions

Hidden curriculum

The unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons students learn in school, such as social norms, behaviors, and values

Culture and the Reproduction of Inequality Circle - Bordeau

social inequality is passed down through generations, not just by wealth, but through the transmission of cultural capital like knowledge, tastes, and behaviors.

Digital Divide

Providing computers to schools - sorting

Sex

The different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, and hormones

Gender

The socially-constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men

What does "Doing Gender" mean?

Wes and Zimmerman note that gender isn't something we "are", it's something we "do".

What is Hegemonic Masculinity?

Culturally dominant and idealized form of manhood that reinforces hierarchies between men and subordinates other masculinities and women - "real man"

What is Hegemonic Femininity?

Traditional, mainstream brand of feminism that historically focused on the experiences of white, urban, middle-to-upper-class women in Western countries.

What is the problem with hegemonic masculinity and femininity?

They create harmful and restrictive social hierarchies based on narrow and often contradictory ideals

Intersex

Individuals that are born with a different chromosomal makeup that XX and XY

Gender Roles

Sets of behavioral norms are assumed to accompany one's status as a male or female

"Elephant in the Valley" Project

Results of a survey of 210 women in the technology industry that shows discrimination of women in the workplace

The Glass Ceiling

An invisible limit on women's climb up the occupational ladder

The Glass Escalator

The accelerated promotion of men to the top of an organization, particularly in feminized jobs

Pink Tax

term for the higher prices women often pay for products and services marketed specifically to them, compared to similar or identical items marketed to men

Kathleen Bogle argues two factors led to increases in hooking up:

Millennials delay marriage, more students in college

Increasing number of people in college

Theory of Gender

a framework that analyzes gender as a social and cultural construct, distinguishing it from biological sex

Durkheim theorized that complex societies…

Reduce social integration

"Men's dominance means they are also dominated by their own dominance"

Bordeau

Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Basic ideas in religion that shape people's actions - collective consciousness that helps keep everyone together

Who coined Intersectionality

Kimberly Crenshaw

who coined Color-Blind Racism

Eduardo Bonilla Silva

Who said we "Do" Gender

Zimmerman