class & inequality

biiitch

Class

A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society's resources

Egalitarian society

A group based on the sharing of resources to ensure success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violence

(most modern humans who have ever lived have been hunter-gatherers)

Ex: hunter-gatherer groups such as the Ju/Hoansi

Reciprocity

The exchange of resources, goods, and services among people of relatively equal status; meant to create and reinforce social ties

Archaeological evidence suggests human evolutionary success relied on cooperation and sharing of food, child rearing, and hunting and gathering responsibilities, NOT Aggression or violence

Ranked societies

A group in which wealth is not stratified but prestige and status are

-Chief position is HEREDITARY

-social rank of society is set regardless of skills, wisdom, or efforts of other members

-chief redistributes gifts to group members

Redistribution

A form of exchange in which accumulated wealth is collected from the members of the group and reallocated in a different pattern

-rank and status reinforced through reciprocity and generosity, NOT wealth

Potlach

Elaborate redistribution ceremony practiced among the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest

-The more elaborate the gift giving, the more status and rank the chief gained in the community. The chief 's generosity also applied pressure on his guests to reciprocate in like manner, or even more elaborately in a later ceremony

- Served to distribute key community resources of food and clothing broadly among group members. As a ritual ceremony, it represented a tradition among the Kwakiutl and other ranked societies in which social status is established not by wealth and power, but by the prestige earned via one's capacity for generosity

stratification

The extreme ___________ in today's world is a fairly recent development.

and this uneven development appears to be accelerating under the forces of globalization, further concentrating wealth in the hands of the few

Prestige

The reputation, influence, and deference bestowed on certain people because of their membership in certain groups

Life chances

An individual's opportunities to improve quality of life and achieve life goals

-also social resources

-class position determines access to wealth, power, and prestige (Max Weber)

Social reproduction

The phenomenon whereby social and class relations of prestige or lack of prestige are passed from one generation to the next

Habitus

Bourdieu's term to describe the self-perceptions and beliefs that develop as part of one's social identity and shape one's conceptions of the world and where one fits into it

-taught and learned at an early age and is culturally reinforced through family, education, and the media (instinctive sense of one's potential)

-Emerges among a class of people as a set of common perceptions that shape expectations and aspirations and guide the individual in assessing is or her life chances and the potential for social mobility

-Life decisions--like college education or career---are made on the basis of the family's _____________

Cultural capital

The knowledge, habits, and tastes learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources in society

-Schools reward _____________. In the process, schools reproduce social class advantage (Pierre Bourdieu)

Intersectionality

An analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification

-Harlem Birth Right Project: Had demonstrated that African American women in the United States, at every socioeconomic level, have more problematic birth outcomes than white women regardless of social class.

-Mullings's research team gathered data through participant observation in community organizations and other sites in Harlem, as well as through surveys, in-depth interviews

-The Harlem Birth Right Project illustrates a powerful application of the INTERSECTIONAL approach to understanding class and inequality. It reveals how inequality of resources (class), institutional racism, and gender discrimination combine to affect opportunities for employment, housing, and health care in the Harlem community.

Income

What people earn from work, plus dividends and interest on investments, along with rents and royalties

Wealth

The total value of what someone owns, minus any debt

Karl Marx

The most widely read theorist of class, wrote against a background of economic change and social upheaval.

• Bourgeoisie: owners of the means of production
• Proletariat: working-class, lacked the means of production, owners of their labor power
• Labor the key source of value and profit
• Theorized surplus value created by the workers: profit for the capitalist

-Today anthropologists apply his ideas to analyze class and power in contemporary society while acknowledging that capitalism has grown much more complex since his time.

-He noted, however, the extreme difficulty for
workers to develop a class consciousness—a political awareness of their common position in the economy that would allow them to unite to change the system.
Why? Because their continuous struggle simply to make ends meet, as well as the creative means used by the bourgeoisie to keep the proletariat divided, work against a unified challenge to the stratification of society

Pierre Bourdieu

Education and Reproduction
• Art and human tastes
• Theorized the ties between class, culture, and power
• Social reproduction of class at schools
• Habitus-self-perceptions and beliefs that are reinforced through:
• Family
• Institution
• Education and the media
• Cultural capital: knowledge, habitus, tastes learned from parents

-habitus and cultural capital.

-Family wealth enables children to perpetuate cultural capital, including high motivation and a sense of possibilities that are crucial for academic success. Schools reward cultural capital. In the process, schools reproduce social class advantage

Max Weber

like Marx, wrote against the backdrop of economic and social upheavals in western Europe caused by the expansion of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution.

- He added consideration of power and prestige to Marx's concern for economic stratification of wealth and income.

• Prestige: reputation, influence and deference
- Prestige rankings affect the way individuals are treated in social situations, their access to influential social networks, and their access to people of wealth and power.
• Life chances: opportunities to improve quality of life and realize life goals
-Life chances are determined by access not only to financial resources but also to social resources such as education, health care, food, clothing, and shelter

• Members of class share common life chances
- members of a class share common life chances,
experiences, and access to resources, as well as similar exposure and vulnerability to other systems of stratification

Leith Mullings

Intersectionality among race, gender, and class

• Reexamines class by analyzing the deep connections
• The Harlem Birth Right Project
• The impact of class, race, and gender on women's health and infant
mortality
• The underlying conditions: housing, employment, child care,
environment
• The loss of manufacturing jobs with good wages
• Cuts in the government social services
• Structural problems

-Suggested that factors other than education and social status were at work.

-His research team gathered data through participant observation in
community organizations and other sites in Harlem, as well as through surveys, in-depth interviews, and life histories

-The Harlem Birth Right Project illustrates a powerful application of the intersectional approach to understanding class and inequality.

It reveals how inequality of resources (class), institutional racism, and gender discrimination combine to affect opportunities for employment, housing, and health care in the Harlem community.

His study also points out the determination and creativity women use to overcome interlocking constraints of racism, sexism, and class inequality in order to survive in their chosen community

The Hazda

Efforts to establish more egalitarian systems of economic
and social relations have also occurred within highly stratified societies-Anthropologists have studied egalitarian societies among contemporary
hunter-gatherer groups such as the Ju / Hoansi of Africa's Kalahari region (Lee
2003), as well as the Canadian Inuit and the Hadza of Tanzania

Inequality

- Each society develops its own patterns of stratification that differentiate people into groups or classes

-Serve as the basis for unequal access to wealth, power, resources,
privileges, and status

-systems of social class create and maintain patterns of inequality, structuring the relationships between rich and poor, between the privileged and the less well off

Stratified society

-The extreme stratification in today's world is a fairly recent development

-Anthropologists trace its roots to the rise of intensive agriculture and populous market towns, where relatively small groups of elite merchants and landholders were able to accumulate wealth

-Stratification and inequality became more pronounced
in industrialized capitalist economies over recent centuries, and this
uneven development appears to be accelerating under the forces of globalization, further concentrating wealth in the hands of the few

Social capital

Habitus

Bourdieu's term to describe the self-perceptions and beliefs that develop as part of one's social identity and shape one's conceptions of the world and where one fits into it.

- Taught and learned at an early age and is culturally
reinforced through family, education, and the media. It is not fixed or predetermined, but it is so deeply enculturated that it becomes an almost instinctive sense of one's potential

-Emerges among a class of people as a set of common perceptions that shape expectations and aspirations and guide the individual in assessing his or her life chances and the potential for social mobility

-Life decisions, like college education or career are made on the basis of the family's habitus

Theories of class

Four key theorists of class and inequality

-European social philosophers Karl Marx and Max Weber, writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the context of the Industrial Revolution, are separated by a century from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and U.S. anthropologist
Leith Mullings, whose late twentieth-century writings are based in the context of a much more complicated and advanced capitalist economic system.

-Each theorist discussed below responds to the unique social and economic challenges of his or her time and offers key analytical insights that allow anthropologists today to more deeply investigate the realities of class and inequality

Surplus value

-Karl Marx theorized about __________ _________ created by the workers: profit for the capitalist

-In this relationship, capitalists increased their wealth by extracting the surplus labor value from workers.

Cultural capital

Pierre Boudieu: The knowledge, habits, and tastes
learned from parents and family that individuals can use to gain access to scarce and valuable resources in society

-Is another key to the social reproduction of class.

-Family wealth enables children to perpetuate _______ _________, including high motivation and a sense of possibilities that are crucial for academic success. Schools reward ___________. In the process, schools reproduce social class advantage.

Downward mobility

• Wealth vs. poverty
• Media ignores the stories of the downward mobility
• Focuses on a story of a meritocracy
• Newman: struggling middle class and their vulnerabilities
• Obstacles facing working poor
• What are the roots of poverty:
• The culture of poverty as pathology
• Maintaining the caste system: class stratification
• 46.7 million in 2012, 20% of US children live in poverty ($11,888/$23,834 per year)
• Designs of 3 major racial caste systems in the US
• Slavery, Jim Crow, and the New Jim Crow (mass incarceration)
• Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow

-Instead, our cultural
narrative is a story of a meritocracy where "worthy individuals rise to the top and the undeserving fall by the way side"

- Newman
explores the economic and psychological struggles of 150 families who strive
to maintain their class position in U.S. culture.

-Newman notes that many
do not blame the failure of the economic system; instead, they blame their own
failure, personal defects, and unworthiness.

-Many people in the United States believe that urban poverty is a
result of lack of motivation, welfare dependency, and a poor work ethic

- According to Newman, the main determinant of class position and social mobility is not one's work ethic, but structural barriers that have created an increasing gap between the life chances
of the well educated and highly skilled and those of high school dropouts

The culture of poverty theory

• What are the roots of poverty:
• ___________________ as pathology
• Maintaining the caste system: class stratification
• 46.7 million in 2012, 20% of US children live in poverty ($11,888/$23,834 per year)
• Designs of 3 major racial caste systems in the US
• Slavery, Jim Crow, and the New Jim Crow (mass incarceration)
• Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow