SOCI 333 Reading Set

Saez

Main argument: U.S. income inequality follows a U-shaped pattern over the twentieth century: high in the 1920s, sharply compressed during WWII, and rising steeply again after the 1970s. Using detailed IRS tax data—the only consistent long-run source—he shows that the top 1% of earners drive most changes in inequality, with their share falling from about 24% in the 1920s to 9% in the mid-century, then rebounding to 23-24% by the early 2000s

The WWII collapse in top incomes occurred within a few years—too abrupt to reflect slow technological or market forces. Instead, it resulted from political and institutional shocks: wartime wage controls, powerful unions, and exceptionally progressive taxation. Inequality then stayed low through the postwar decades when those policies remained in place, and rose again after neoliberal reforms—tax cuts, deregulation, and weakened labor protections—from the 1980s onward.

From 1993-2015, average real income grew 25.7% overall, but only 14.3% for the bottom 99%; the top 1% gained 94.5%, capturing over half of all real income growth. Even though elite incomes fall hardest during recessions (due to market exposure), they recover fastest, while middle and lower incomes experience deeper and longer losses.

This pattern underscores that inequality is historically contingent and policy-driven—not an inevitable result of markets or technology. The level of inequality at any moment reflects the political choices and institutional arrangements of the period. Government action—especially tax policy and labor regulation—determines whether growth is broadly shared or captured at the top. Markets and technology set the stage, but policy writes the script.

Piketty

Main argument: modern capitalism naturally tends toward the concentration of wealth because the rate of return on capital (r) generally exceeds the rate of economic growth (g). When r > g, wealth accumulated in the past grows faster than wages and output, allowing inherited wealth to dominate new income. Over time, this produces a self-reinforcing concentration of capital in ever fewer hands (principle of infinite accumulation)

This dynamic contradicts the mid-20th-century optimism of the Kuznets Curve, which suggested that inequality naturally declines as economies develop.

- life outcomes increasingly depend on inheritance, not work, threatening meritocracy and democracy itself.

Inequality is political, not purely economic. Tax codes, inheritance laws, and education systems determine whether r > g translates into extreme concentration or is moderated by redistribution. He calls for a global progressive wealth tax to restore transparency and democratic control over capital — arguing that national-level policies are insufficient in a globalized economy

Computerization and other general-purpose technologies have increased returns to skill, but inequality depends on whether the supply of education and training keeps pace. The "race between technology and education" framework explains why inequality widened after 1980 — demand for skilled labor accelerated faster than educational expansion. Yet, technology alone does not dictate inequality; institutions and political decisions mediate its effects

Chancel World Inequality Report

Main argument: global inequality remains extremely high, both within countries and between regions, despite some convergence between richer and emerging economies. The data reveal that the global top 10% captures 52% of total income, while the bottom 50% captures only 8.5% meaning the poorest half of the world earns barely one-fifth the world average.

For wealth: the poorest 50% owns just 2% of all net wealth, while the richest 10% owns 76%. Wealth inequality far exceeds income inequality, reflecting the cumulative power of capital accumulation and price effects over time. The average person in North America earns 6-10x more than someone in Africa or Southeast Asia.

- between country inequality remains very large, even as within country inequality has surged to historic highs

Inequality is not an automatic by-product of economic growth, but the outcome of policy, institutions, and political choices. Countries with strong pre-distribution policies (minimum wage laws, free education, rent controls, antitrust enforcement) and redistribution policies (taxes and social transfers that reduce inequality after income) achieve far lower inequality overall

Chancel World Inequality Report 2

Pre-distribution: Policies that make the initial distribution of income more equal, before taxes or government transfers.

→ Example: minimum wage laws, free education, strong unions, equal pay rules.

→ Goal: make market outcomes fairer from the start.

Redistribution: Policies that reduce inequality after income is earned, through taxes and transfers.

→ Example: progressive income taxes, social welfare programs, unemployment benefits.

→ Goal: use government revenue to rebalance incomes after the market.

In regions where market inequality levels are relatively low there tend to be more social forces pushing for higher redistribution as well

Conversely, when the institutional and policy set-up does little to reduce inequality in the first place, there are fewer mechanisms to reduce inequality after taxes as well

High levels of redistribution are difficult to attain with low levels of pre-distribution

Extends Saez's and Piketty's insights to the global scale, showing that inequality is both national and transnational, and that its shape depends on institutional choices—not just globalization or technology. Redistribution works best when underpinned by strong pre-distribution, revealing that equality must be built into markets, not merely corrected afterward

Tumin

Main argument: critiques the functionalist theory of stratification developed by Davis and Moore, which argues that social inequality is necessary and beneficial because it ensures that the most important positions are filled by the most capable individuals, who are motivated by greater rewards

- he argues that stratification produces as many dysfunctions as functions and often undermines the very efficiency and fairness that functionalists claim it sustains. Inequality is a system that distorts opportunity, establishes privilege, and limits collective potential

Reframes stratification as a conservative system of social control that benefits elites by legitimating inequality as "natural" and "functional." Far from ensuring efficiency, stratification reduces overall productivity, social mobility, and integration

Tumin 2

Identified dysfunctions of stratification:

1) Wastes Talent: Restricts access to education and opportunity, preventing full use of human potential.

2) Reduces Productivity: Limits the pool of talent that can contribute to society's development.

3) Entrenches Elite Power: Gives dominant groups control over ideology and institutions that justify inequality.

4) Damages Self-Concept: Unequal esteem produces inferior self-images among the lower strata, suppressing creativity.

5) Breeds Hostility: Creates resentment, distrust, and conflict between classes.

6) Weakens Social Integration: Unequal "membership" feelings reduce cohesion and loyalty.

7) Reduces Civic Engagement: Inequality discourages participation and encourages apathy among the disadvantaged.

Stratification restricts mobility, reproduces privilege, and damages collective welfare, proving that inequality is neither inevitable nor always functional. A truly efficient society would maximize talent and motivation through equality of opportunity, not rigid hierarchy

Davis and Moore

Main argument: present the functionalist theory of social stratification, arguing that inequality is both universal and necessary for societies to function effectively. Stratification serves essential functions by ensuring that the most important roles are filled by the most capable individuals, who are motivated to perform them competently

Every society must accomplish two key tasks:

1) placement: assigning individuals to positions

2) motivation: ensuring they perform their duties

Since roles differ in functional importance (how crucial they are to societal survival) and difficulty or scarcity (how much skill and training they require), societies must use differential rewards—economic, social, and psychological incentives—to attract and retain the most qualified people in key positions. These rewards generate prestige and esteem differences, which then solidify into institutionalized inequality (stratification)

In this model, inequality is not seen as a flaw but as a mechanism of efficiency and meritocracy:

- It motivates ambition and competition.

- It channels talent into roles requiring long training or rare skills.

- It maintains stability by attaching moral and status legitimacy to unequal rewards

Davis and Moore 2

All societies are stratified, but systems vary by:

- Degree of specialization (complex vs. simple societies)

- Functional emphasis (which roles are deemed vital)

- Magnitude of inequality (size of reward differentials)

- Social mobility (how easily people can move between strata)

- Class solidarity (how rigidly classes are bounded)

Stratification is inevitable because any functioning society must differentiate and reward roles unequally to survive and progress.

Conard

Main argument: income inequality, particularly the success of the wealthy 1%, can benefit society by incentivizing risk-taking, innovation, and economic growth. He challenges the widespread belief that the rich harm middle and working class prosperity

Higher rewards for success create stronger incentives for entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors which:

1) expands the supply of trained talent --> higher pay motivates individuals to invest in skills and education

2) encourages productive risk-taking --> people are willing to take on ventures with uncertain outcomes because potential rewards are large

This dynamic drives economic growth, which ultimately benefits the broader society, including middle- and working-class wages and employment, especially when skilled labor is scarce. Contends that slower growth, not inequality, is the real threat to prosperity, and that attempts to redistribute wealth blunt incentives, dampen innovation, and slow the economy.

Conard 2

He positions his argument against critics of capitalism post-2008, defending the idea that the success of the wealthy is not inherently exploitative but rather a driver of collective prosperity

Evidence:

- Median U.S. incomes are 15-30% higher than Germany, France, Japan due to stronger innovation and incentives.

- Constraints on growth arise from scarcity of trained talent and risk-capable individuals, not trade or immigration alone.

- Redistribution policies may slow growth by reducing incentives for skill acquisition and risk-taking.

- Investment is driven by ideas and talent, not consumer demand (contra Keynesians)

Inequality is a necessary tradeoff: higher rewards create disparities, but the resulting economic dynamism ultimately raises wages and employment opportunities for broader society by incentivizing talent development and innovation. Critiques of inequality misdiagnose the source of stagnation, it is not the rich but insufficient rewards for risk-taking and skill-building that slow growth

Lucas

Main argument: sustained improvement in living standards are a product of production growth, not distribution. In traditional agricultural societies, technological advances primarily lead to larger populations, not higher per capita living standards. Thus, while historical societies could achieve impressive civilizations, they could not materially improve the well-being of the masses

The Industrial Revolution marked a fundamental break: it enabled per-capita income growth through technological change and productivity improvements, often accompanied by the demographic transition (reduced fertility), which allowed rising living standards to persist rather than being offset by population growth

Role of property rights and human capital:

- landowners wealth and inheritance strategies shape population dynamics and living standards

- individuals with talent and education can earn high incomes, but historically, such gains were rare and often derivative of inherited wealth, rather than widely accessible

Lucas 2

Focusing on the distribution of current production is misleading: the real path to improving the lives of the poor is through increasing total production. Distributional efforts cannot rival the effects of technological progress and economic growth, which have the potential to lift living standards across entire societies

Economic development is primarily a problem of production, not distribution. Technological progress, human capital accumulation, and institutions (like property rights) determine long-term improvements in living standards, whereas focusing on redistributing output has limited potential to alleviate poverty in the absence of growth

Wilkinson Ted Talk

Main argument: income inequality, rather than absolute wealth, is the key driver of societal well-being in developed nations. Once basic economic needs are met, national income per capita no longer predicts social outcomes; instead, relative differences in income shape health, social cohesion, and human capital

Bigger income gaps lead to widespread social dysfunction, affecting nearly every aspect of society: from physical and mental health to education, crime, trust, and social mobility. Emphasizes that inequality harms everyone, not just the poor, because it erodes trust, social cohesion, and psychological well-being across all strata.

Evidence:

- In developed countries, average well-being is independent of national income, but strongly tied to relative inequality.

- High inequality weakens social cohesion and increases societal dysfunction across all classes

Emphasizes that inequality itself—not absolute income—is the key determinant of societal dysfunction, showing that both rich and poor suffer in unequal societies. Policy interventions that reduce relative income gaps and increase social participation can improve overall societal well-being

Wilkinson Ted Talk 2

Proposed solutions:

- reduce income differences before tax (fair pay, employee ownership, more internal promotion)

- strengthen progressive taxation and curb tax avoidance/tax havens

- promote inclusive workplace democracy to flatten power hierarchies

His work links inequality to concrete social outcomes, arguing that highly unequal societies experience: lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, more mental illness, obesity, drug abuse, violence, crime, teen births, poor child development, lower educational attainment, and lower social mobility

Ball Ch.4 Section 5

Main argument: examines how concentrated wealth shapes beliefs, behaviors, and social ideologies. Wealth inequality promotes belief in meritocracy, which in turn fosters selfishness, prejudice, and indifference

Key insights:

- The paradox of meritocracy: In organizations and societies that value merit, individuals overestimate their own deservingness and are less likely to recognize discrimination.

- Belief in meritocracy can amplify egocentrism, encouraging anti-social behaviors and reducing empathy for others.

- Concentrated wealth not only shapes self-perception among the wealthy but also affects public attitudes toward inequality:

-- Lower-income individuals may feel resentment.

--Many people perceive economic inequality as natural or unavoidable, even if they oppose it in principle.

- Across political and income lines, Americans generally favor a more equitable distribution of wealth than currently exists, but dominant ideologies can obscure this preference.

Highlights the ideological and psychological dimensions of inequality: concentrated wealth not only creates material disparities but also shapes beliefs, behaviors, and social norms in ways that justify and perpetuate the status quo. Meritocracy, rather than being inherently fair, can legitimize selfishness and prejudice, masking structural inequities.

Sen

Main argument: development is fundamentally about expanding human freedoms, not just increasing GNP or incomes. Economic growth is valuable only insofar as it enhances substantive freedoms. True development requires removing unfreedoms, such as poverty, tyranny, social deprivation, lack of public facilities, and restrictive social or political structures

Freedoms matter for development for two reasons:

1) evaluative reason: progress should be measured by the enhancement of freedoms, not just wealth or utility

2) effectiveness reason: the achievement of development depends on people's ability to act freely; free agency is crucial for innovation, enterprise, and well being

Freedom itself (political, economic, social) is both the means and the end of development. market access, transparency, and protective security are examples of freedoms that enable people to improve their lives independently of state or market mechanisms

Sen 2

Development requires removing major sources of unfreedom:

→ Poverty, poor economic opportunities, social deprivation, neglect of public services, repression

Freedom to enter markets is a crucial contribution to development, aside from market growth itself

Focus on utility or income alone neglects the intrinsic value of freedom

Five types of freedom studied empirically:

1) political freedoms

2) economic facilities

3) social opportunities

4) transparency guarantees

5) protective security

Culmination outcomes: focus only on end results, ignoring process

Comprehensive outcomes: consider both outcomes and the processes by which they are achieved

Freedom is the ultimate measure of societal progress. Policies or growth strategies that increase income but restrict agency fail to deliver real development. Economic and social institutions should be evaluated by their ability to expand substantive freedoms, highlighting a human centered, capability oriented approach to inequality and prosperity

Marx and Engels

Main argument: modern bourgeois society perpetuates class conflict, replacing feudal hierarchies with the antagonism between two main classes: the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (working class). This conflict is structurally inevitable due to the dynamics of capitalism

Key insights:

- the bourgeoisie constantly revolutionizes production, which transforms social relations, erodes traditional occupations, and concentrates wealth and power

- the proletariat emerges as a product of capitalism: industrialization creates large, concentrated masses of workers with shared conditions of life and low wages

- capitalism's own mechanisms undermine the bourgeois: the system creates the grave diggers (proletariat) through wage labor, competition, and industrial organization

- the proletariat's liberation requires abolishing bourgeois property relations, as they have nothing to protect individually, making revolutionary change inevitable

- capital accumulation and wage labor generate class antagonism, industrialization facilitated proletarian solidarity and sets the stage for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie

Inequality and exploitation are structural and systemic, not individual or accidental. Inequality is neither neutral nor beneficial; it is intrinsically antagonistic.

Western and Rosenfeld

Main argument: the decline of organized labor in the US is a major driver of rising wage inequality, not just for union members but across the labor market. Unions create and enforce norms of fair pay, shaping both union and nonunion wages. As unions weaken, these moral economy norms erode, leading to increased wage dispersion

Key insights:

1) threat effect: nonunion employers raise wages to preempt unionization

2) moral economy effect: unions institutionalize norms of equity culturally, politically, and institutionally, influencing wages even for nonunion workers

- Decline in union membership coincided with a large rise in U.S. wage inequality.

- Unions enforce distributional norms through:

→ Public discourse on inequality (cultural)

→ Social policy influence (political)

→ Labor market rules (institutional)

Spillovers: higher union wages may reduce nonunion employment or push nonunion wages up temporarily

Unions are not only bargaining agents for members but also social institutions that enforce equity norms across the labor market. Their decline increases wage inequality by eroding moral norms, illustrating how institutions and social structures mediate the effects of markets on inequality

Whiteford

Main argument: the welfare state is a universal social protection system, not a handout for a marginal other. Social programs (healthcare, unemployment insurance, pensions, and family support) protect everyone at different life stages against risks such as illness, unemployment, or family breakdown

Key insights:

- The common stereotype of the "welfare-dependent other" is largely false: long-term welfare recipients constitute only 1.2% of the population.

- Welfare systems are a form of societal insurance, shielding individuals from life's inevitable vulnerabilities.

- Industrialization created new economic and social risks that necessitated collective social protection.

- "We're all them": everyone benefits from welfare at some point, highlighting the collective, not individualistic, nature of social protection

Social spending is life-course-based, focusing resources at periods of highest vulnerability.

The notion of a long-term welfare-dependent minority is a myth, reinforcing stigma

Reframes welfare as collective insurance against universal risks, debunking the myth of "us vs. them." By emphasizing that all citizens benefit at different stages, he underscores the social and institutional foundations that reduce inequality and protect societal well-being

Gaetz

Main argument: homelessness in Canada is structurally produced by policy choices, economic shifts, and the dismantling of social housing programs, rather than being solely a result of individual failings. Efforts to address homelessness are limited unless. the underlying structural conditions (affordable housing supply, income supports, and social safety nets) are restored

Key insights:

- Post-WWII, Canada had strong government commitment to affordable housing, including insured mortgages, social housing investment, and rental subsidies.

- Starting in the 1980s-1990s, neoliberal economic policies—smaller government, privatization, lower taxes, and trade liberalization—reduced affordable housing supply and social supports.

- The private sector expanded home ownership but failed to provide adequate rental or affordable housing, with many units demolished or converted to condos.

- Homelessness is exacerbated by shifts in income patterns and weakened social policies.

- Current strategies (prevention, emergency services, rapid transition) are insufficient without structural reforms

Affordable housing stock has declined in many Canadian cities.

Neo-liberal reforms did not reduce poverty or government spending as intended.

Approaches to address homelessness:

1) Prevention: Rent supplements, coordinated supports, adequate housing supply.

2) Emergency management: Shelters, drop-in centers, soup kitchens.

3) Transition support: Case management, motivational counseling, transitional and supportive housing

Homelessness is a systemic issue, created and perpetuated by policy choices and economic restructuring. Effective solutions require both immediate supports and structural reforms to restore affordable housing, income supports, and social safety nets

Pierson and Hacker

Main argument: the rise in US inequality is primarily political, not technological. The hyper concentration of income at the very top results from policy choices, political organization, and institutional drift, rather than skill-biased technological change alone. US inequality diverged sharply from peer nations due to policy and political mechanisms that structured markets and rewards in favor of the elite

Key insights:

- Inequality is about the very top pulling away, not just college-educated vs. non-college workers.

- Comparative evidence: U.S. inequality far exceeds other rich nations; top 1% share doubled since the 1970s.

- Policy and political drivers include: tax cuts, deregulation, weakening unions, corporate governance favoring executives, and financial market deregulation.

- Policy drift: failing to update minimum wage, labor laws, and other regulations increased inequality passively.

- Markets and technology alone cannot explain hyper-inequality; political processes actively shaped outcomes

Evidence:

- Taxation: Top 0.01% tax rate ~70% in 1960s → dramatic decline by 2000; corporate and estate tax cuts concentrated wealth.

- Union decline: Extreme in U.S., reducing bargaining power; politically enabled via appointments and actions against unions (e.g., PATCO).

- Executive pay: Boards often captured by executives, stock options and managerialism fueled top incomes.

- Financial deregulation: Repeal of Glass-Steagall and policy support for large financial conglomerates enabled massive gains.

- Without political changes, tech and market innovations would not have produced such extreme income concentration

Understanding inequality requires a political economy perspective, showing that government and governance—not just markets or technology—determine who gains at the top

Ball Ch.5 Section 3

Main argument: employment quality and job security have declined in recent decades, with well-paying, stable unionized jobs disappearing and precarious, non-standard work rising. These trends contribute to working poverty and economic insecurity, even for those with full-time jobs

Key insights:

- Recessions produce unemployment because companies cut labor costs.

- Decline of unionized manufacturing jobs reduces well-paid employment opportunities.

- Job relocation/offshoring shifts jobs to cheaper labor markets, worsening domestic employment quality.

- Temporary and gig work—also called non-standard or precarious employment—is growing rapidly in developed countries.

- Many full-time minimum wage workers are working poor, unable to meet basic living needs

Non-standard employment includes:

→ Part-time work

→ Self-employment

→ Fixed-term or temporary contracts

→ On-call, telecommuting, homework arrangements

- This employment is the fastest-growing in Canada and other developed nations

Structural economic changes—job loss, offshoring, and the rise of precarious work—undermine job security and living standards, contributing to economic inequality and vulnerability among the working population

Adkins, Cooper, Konings

Main argument: modern inequality is increasingly driven by asset ownership rather than labor income. Policies like quantitative easing have boosted asset values without generating proportional employment or wage growth, benefiting asset owners at the expense of wage earners. The asset economy transforms wealth accumulation, inheritance, and class structure

Key insights:

- Quantitative easing (QE): Injects liquidity into financial systems to stimulate growth, but in practice mainly inflates asset prices.

- Asset ownership > labor: Returns on assets often exceed wage growth or inflation, shifting inequality drivers from employment to capital.

- Inheritance strategy: Wealth transfer now often involves leveraging funds for investment, not just passing property titles.

- Housing markets: Policies enabling some to buy property often push prices higher, reducing accessibility for others.

- Secular stagnation: Each economic recovery is weaker; top financial claims accumulate faster than the productive capacity of the real economy

QE has primarily propped up financial assets, enriching owners rather than stimulating broad economic growth.

Wealth inequality increasingly reflects speculative logic of asset markets rather than wages or salaries.

Long-term stagnation and asset inflation create structural barriers to social mobility

The authors highlight a shift in the locus of inequality: from labor markets to asset ownership and financial speculation, reinforced by monetary policy. This reframes class and wealth dynamics, showing how capital accumulation, housing, and inheritance perpetuate inequality independently of traditional employment.

Guy Standing

Main argument: neoliberal labor policies since the 1970s have produced a new social class: the precariat, distinct from the proletariat and middle class. This group is characterized by precarious employment, lack of social protections, and fragmented identities, creating widespread insecurity, alienation, and political volatility

Key insights:

- Neoliberalism & Precarity: Labor market flexibility shifts risks to workers; stable industrial citizenship erodes.

- Defining Features: Loss of seven securities: labour market, employment, job, work, skill, income, representation.

- Varieties of the Precariat: Temps, gig workers, interns, call center staff, part-timers. Precarity ≠ low income alone; it's lack of security and career trajectory.

- Early Mobilization: EuroMayDay protests (2001-2005) highlighted shared precarity and rejected traditional unionism.

- Globalization Example: Chinese migrant influx in Italy → displacement, exploitation, populist backlash.

- Psychological / Social Effects:

-- Four A's:

→ Anger: Frustration at blocked opportunities; relative deprivation fuels inward/outward aggression.

→ Anomie: Career-less work leads to normlessness, disengagement, stigma.

→ Anxiety: Chronic insecurity threatens housing, healthcare, and dignity; over/underemployment stresses mental health.

→ Alienation: Temporary, fragmented jobs create "failed occupationality" → cynicism, opportunism, isolation

Precarious work shapes identity, social cohesion, and political behavior, creating both progressive and reactionary potential in society

Bourdieu Cultural Capital

Main argument: what we think of as personal taste, our preferences in art, food, style are not natural of individual, but socially conditioned expressions of class position and upbringing

Key ideas:

- Taste as Social Construct:

→ Choices that seem like personal preference are actually products of one's social environment, education, and upbringing.

→ "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier": the things we like signal our social class and cultural capital.

- Cultural Capital:

→ Refers to forms of knowledge, skills, habits, and aesthetic sensibilities acquired through education and socialization.

— Habitus: the power of what we know and how we act 

→ Works alongside economic and social capital to reproduce class inequality.

→ "School capital" (formal education) is one form of this.

- Three Types of Taste:

1) Legitimate taste: Associated with the elite and higher education (e.g., classical music, fine art).

2) Middle/average taste: Associated with the middle class, often emulating elite preferences but more accessible.

3) Popular taste: Associated with working-class preferences, rooted in necessity and everyday life

Social Function of Taste:

- Taste operates as a marker of distinction, legitimizing the hierarchy between classes.

- Cultural preferences become a way to express and reproduce social status.

Psychological Depth:

- People identify deeply with their tastes, even more than with their opinions—taste feels natural, but it is socially learned.

- Because of this, aesthetic judgment feels like moral or personal identity ("this is who I am")

Culture and consumption serve as subtle mechanisms of class reproduction. "Taste" is not innocent—it encodes social hierarchies and shapes how individuals understand themselves and others

Rivera

Main argument: hiring in elite professional firms (law, consulting, finance) is not only about assessing skills or qualifications, it’s a process of cultural matching. Employers seek candidates who feel right, meaning they share similar cultural tastes, hobbies, and self presentation styles

Key insights:

• Beyond Skills Sorting:

  • Hiring involves selecting people who are both competent and culturally similar to evaluators.

  • “Cultural similarity” acts as an informal but powerful criterion in elite hiring.

• Mechanisms of Cultural Matching (Three Processes):

  1. Organizational: Firms explicitly encourage hiring for “fit.”

  2. Cognitive: Similarity makes evaluators better understand and value candidates’ achievements.

  3. Affective: Similarity generates positive emotion (“excitement”) and motivates evaluators to advocate for candidates.

• Cultural Fit as Capital:

  • Shared extracurriculars (sports, travel, elite hobbies, arts) signal belonging to the same social world.

  • “Cultural similarity” functions as a form of cultural capital that has economic value in elite labor markets.

• Construction of Merit:

  • Evaluators perceive culturally similar candidates as more capable — merit is assessed in the evaluator’s own image.

  • Thus, the idea of “fit” disguises class and cultural reproduction as neutral meritocracy.

• Class Inequality & Access:

  • Upper-middle-class candidates are advantaged: they share the leisure activities and conversational styles valued by elites.

  • Less affluent students, who focus on academic achievement, may seem “one-dimensional” or “less interesting.”

• Implications:

  • Cultural matching sustains class homogeneity in elite firms.

  • It undermines diversity efforts by reproducing social boundaries under the guise of organizational cohesion.

  • Hiring outcomes reflect not only human capital (skills) and social capital (networks), but also cultural capital (shared tastes and dispositions)

Exposes how elite labor markets reproduce inequality through cultural evaluation, not just credentials. “Fit” acts as a gatekeeping device that converts elite upbringing into employability — an updated mechanism of class reproduction parallel to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital

Shachar

Main argument: Birthright citizenship (assigning political membership by birth) operates as a hereditary system of global privilege, structuring access to life chances, rights, and resources. It functions less like a civic principle and more like a property regime, reproducing global inequality through the intergenerational transmission of membership

Key insights:

• Citizenship as Inherited Privilege:

  • Citizenship, alongside material wealth, remains one of the few key resources transferred by birth rather than merit or achievement.

  • Where a person is born largely determines their life expectancy, access to basic services, and prospects for well-being.

• Global Inequality in Birth Outcomes:

  • Children born in the poorest nations face dramatically worse life chances — higher child mortality, malnutrition, and lack of basic infrastructure.

  • Citizenship laws thus serve as mechanisms of global stratification.

• Membership Transfer as a Legal Regime:

  • Birthright attribution (by parentage or territory) allocates entitlement to belonging, protection, and access to collective goods.

  • Citizenship rules therefore operate as systems of allocation, akin to property rights governing scarce resources.

• Citizenship as Property:

  • Political membership determines access to public goods, social protections, and participatory rights — much like ownership confers control over material assets.

  • Citizenship’s hereditary transmission perpetuates “birthright privilege”, insulating wealthy polities from redistributive obligations.

• Three Reasons Citizenship Distribution Must Be Rethought:

  1. Universality: It affects every human being — no one is outside this system.

  2. Profound Consequences: It shapes material life chances far more than abstract notions of identity or belonging.

  3. Theoretical Gap: Political theory has failed to fully interrogate why birth remains the moral and legal basis for allocating political membership.

• Critical Implication:

  • Birthright citizenship naturalizes inherited inequality at the global scale, turning accidents of birth into structural determinants of opportunity.

  • Challenges the liberal ideal of equal moral worth by revealing how citizenship functions as a form of global apartheid rooted in heredity

Reframes citizenship as a form of property—a legal and moral inheritance that locks in global inequality. Her argument exposes the contradiction between liberal commitments to equality and the ascriptive nature of political membership. Citizenship, she shows, is the “birthright lottery” that structures modern inequality as deeply as class or capital

Small and Pager

Main argument: Economic theories of discrimination explain only part of the picture. Sociology expands this framework, showing that discrimination is not just individual or intentional but institutional, historical, cumulative, and perceptual—a system that reproduces racial inequality across generations

Key insights:

• Economic vs. Sociological Approaches:

  • Economics: focuses on individual bias (taste) or rational inference (statistics).

  • Sociology: focuses on differential treatment by race, whether intentional or not. Discrimination can be implicit or structural, embedded in institutions and norms.

• Organizations as Engines of Inequality:

  • Organizational routines—like referral hiring, layoffs by tenure, or neutral-seeming HR rules—can systematically disadvantage minorities without overt prejudice.

  • These practices become institutionalized, persisting even when actors see themselves as fair.

• Historical Legacies:

  • Through Organizations: Discriminatory systems like redlining were built into mortgage and banking structures, cementing racialized wealth gaps.

  • Through Law: Race-neutral policies (e.g., felon disenfranchisement) with racist origins continue to shape political and economic inequality.

• Everyday Discrimination:

  • “Minor” microaggressions—being watched in stores, ignored in schools, profiled in public—have cumulative effects on stress, health, and opportunity.

  • These small harms compound into durable disadvantage.

• Perceived Discrimination:

  • Perception matters independently—believing one is treated unfairly affects health, trust, and participation.

  • Discrimination is both an objective pattern and a subjective experience that shapes social outcomes

Discrimination must be understood as a multilevel process: 

• micro: implicit bias, microaggressions 

• meso: organizational rules and norms 

• macro: legal, historical, and structural contexts 

This broader lens reveals that racial inequality persists not because of a few biased individuals, but because institutions, histories, and everyday interactions continually reproduce unequal outcomes

Ball Ch.5 Section 5

Key concept:

Racialized stratification: the process through which belonging to a racial category becomes the basis for unequal treatment and opportunity within society

Core paradox:

• Educational Attainment:

  • Racialized Canadians are more likely to have postsecondary education than non-racialized Canadians.

  • They are 15% more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree.

• Employment Outcomes:

  • Despite higher education levels, racialized Canadians are more likely to be unemployed.

  • Those employed are often concentrated in low-paying, precarious jobs — such as administrative support, waste management, and remediation services

• Demonstrates a disconnect between education and economic reward for racialized groups.

• Suggests that structural and institutional discrimination, not individual achievement, continues to shape labor market outcomes.

• Reflects broader patterns of racialized stratification — where education does not guarantee equal access to stable or well-paying employment