Inequality, Stratification, and Theoretical Explanations

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering fundamental definitions, historical forms, and classical theoretical paradigms (functionalist, Marxist, and Weberian) of economic inequality and social stratification.

Income

_____ refers to flows of money into the household from wages, salaries, and other sources such as government benefits.

Income Distribution

________ is a list of all individuals according to their total income that reveals the percentage of people at various income levels.

Wealth

_____ is the total value of things people own—including homes, savings, investments, real estate, businesses, and vehicles.

Wealth Distribution

_______ is a list of all households according to their total wealth.

Dividends

Income can be earned through ______, which are returns from investments.

Social Differentiation

_________ is a very general term that refers to the fact that people are not the same within a society. Some traits on which people differ are relatively apparent, such as hair color, height, and age.

Occupation is an important characteristic on which people differ

Social Stratification

______ refers to the ranked ordering of people based on their social and economic traits.

Resource Access

______ refers to the notion that social and economic resources are unequally distributed, and the people who occupy privileged positions have access to more desirable resources (income, wealth, homes, vehicles, education, healthcare and jobs)

Inequality of Condition

Inequality usually refers to _______ or disparities in the resources, power, and prestige that people or groups currently have.

Inequality of Opportunity

______ refers to disparities in access to important resources such as educational and occupational experiences.

Prestige

____ is the status or esteem associated with certain traits or positions. An indicator of the importance or standing that people are afforded by others, and it often reflects the value that others associate with the characteristics of a person, a job, or an achievement. (Ex: specialized or unique knowledge, training, skills)

Power

_____ on which people are unequal, is influence, authority, or persuasion. The ability to make others do what you want them to, and it is central to all forms of inequality.

Achievement

When a person’s position in the social structure is primarily the result of individual merit, sociologists term this _____. The idea is that factors such as individual merit, work, and adherence to social norms determine whether people do well.

Ascription

When a person’s position in the social structure is the result of factors beyond his or her control, sociologists label this _____. Includes characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class at birth, family size in childhood, and other traits that are primarily inherited.

Paradigm

______ is the fundamental points of view that distinguish a science, as defined by Thomas Kuhn (1970).

Hunting and Gathering Societies

_______ are early human societies spanning from approximately 100,000 B.C. to 8,000 B.C. which all tended to be relatively geographically mobile, were seldom able to store food for any significant length of time, and rarely domesticated animals. (Noadic, very primitive technology, divison of labor was based on gender)

Simple Horticultural Societies

______ are the most basic stationary societies that were slightly larger, more productive, and more unequal than hunting and gathering societies.

(Ex: hoe and digging sticks)

Complex Horticultural Societies

_____ are advanced agricultural societies emerging around 4,000 B.C. characterized by permanent residences, specialized division of labor, considerable economic surplus, and land ownership that created extreme inequality between landowners and laborers. (Ex: the plow)

Industrial Society

_____ is a modern capitalist society originating in the late 18th century marked by machine-based production, powerful nation-states, widespread private ownership, advanced technology, and an extremely complex division of labor.

Functionalist Theories

______ approach inequality as a necessary and normal part of society, which assumes that societies are largely orderly and that more talented individuals occupy more desirable social positions.

Conflict Theories

Theories that consider stratification to be dysfunctional are usually called _____ because they assume that force and oppression - neither functional necessity nor large-scale-agreement - lead to inequality.

Davis and Moore Theory of Stratification

_____ is a 1945 functionalist theory proposing that society resembles a biological organism like the human body. The body has many organs that must work together for the whole to operate properly.

• Began by proposing that some social positions are more important than others.

• Just as some organs are more essential to the body, some social positions are more essential to the functioning of society.

• When people go to school or otherwise undergo training to develop the skills necessary to fill the most important positions, they must sacrifice valuable time and other resources.

Class-Based Theories

_____ assume distinct groups, or social classes, and explain why each class has (or lacks) certain resources and advantages.

Social Class

______ refers to groups of people with similar education, income, wealth, occupation, and prestige. People also often have similar tastes and mannerisms, and they may share a general ideology as well.

Gradational Theories

______ assume that society is a continuum along which people can be arrayed rather than focusing on distinct classes.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

____ is a single measure of well-being that generally incorporates income, wealth, occupation, and education.

Historical Materialism

______ is Karl Marx's foundational concept that the economic substructure and the material mode of production dictate the development and organization of all other social structures and historical change.

Mode of Production

____ is the overarching economic system and organization through which a society produces its material necessities.

Substructure (Economic Base)

____ is the foundational economic arrangement of production in Marxist theory that forms the basis upon which the rest of society is built.

Superstructure

____ is all secondary social institutions in Marxist theory, such as government, family, religion, education, and dominant ideologies that arise in response to and reflect the economic base.

Means of Production

____ are the physical inputs used to create economic output, including land, tools, factories, machines, natural resources, and (more recently) office space and equipment, including computer servers.

Relations of Production

_____ are the social ties that follow from the dominant means of production and influence how goods are produced, including relations among workers, authority relations between workers and their bosses; and relations that develop around the ownership and distribution of goods.

Bourgeoisie

____ is the capitalist ruling class in Marxist theory that thrive from the profits of their land, tools, machinery, and factories. They own and control the means of production and accumulates wealth through profits.

Proletariat

____ is the working class in Marxist theory that does not own the means of production and have no choice but to sell their labor to survive.

Surplus Value of Labor

____ is the excess value generated by workers which is what allows capitalists to continue getting rich despite doing little manual labor. 

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

_____ describes the nature of the state that would emerge that there still would be a government or a state, but it elevates the proletariat to the ruling class and suggests that former workers would be the ultimate authority.

Socialism

____ would erode social classes in an inevitable dialectic and pave the way for the emergence of the final postcapitalist system: the communist system.

Communist system

____ is characterized by collective ownership of the means of production; however, a communist system is classless and stateless.

Class (Weber)

_____ refers to the economic order, or access to material resources. Weber recognized that control of property is a crucial determinant of stratification but also suggested that other factors were involved. People in the same ____ have common factors influencing their life chances, and he acknowledged that income and wealth are important factors in determining class position.

Status (Weber)

____ is the honor, prestige, or respect that certain people possess because of their lifestyle. Comes from their consumption, culture, social interests, and other elements of their lifestyle.

Status Community

____ refer to a group of people with similar social interests, culture, consumption patterns, and lifestyles. People with similar status tend to interact with one another.

Party or polticial power (Weber)

_____ refers to a person’s position relative to established bureaucratic organizations whose goal it is to influence a type of collective action.

Class

The primary basis for stratification in the United States is _____

Emile Durkheim

Modern functionalist thinking originates from French sociologist ______

Inequality

______ refers to the fact that there are inevitable disparities in people’s positions in these social rankings.

Net worth

Wealth is the value of the things people own such as their home and is typically measured as ______

Financial wealth

______ is the value of liquid assets such as stocks and bonds; it does not include housing wealth or the value of business assests or investment real estate.

Economic, prestige, and power

What are the three primary inequality dimensions in which people tend to be stratified?

Economic or financial inequality

________ refer to differences across groups in money including income and wealth.

Extremely high levels of inequality

A distinction between landowners and laborers followed from the increasingly detailed division of labor and became the basis for _______.

Occupational, educational, racial/ethic, and gender

Industrial societies also tend to be characterized by considerable ______ inequality.

Innante in individuals

William Graham Sumner also assumed that ability is _____, and he proposed that competitions such as education sort people by ability into corresponding social positions.

Karl Marx

Conflict theory is usually associated with the thinking of _____ and typically starts with the idea that dominant classes or elites, impose their will on lower classes to maintain order.

Davis and Moore Theory

•To convince the most talented people to go through the training necessary to fill the most important positions and to ensure that the most qualified people continue to do the important jobs, the positions need to be desirable.

•That is, they need to provide higher levels of pay, benefits, prestige, and other resources.

•The crucial result is that those who fill the most important positions receive the greatest rewards and have access to the most resources.

Conflict theorists

The primary critics of the functionalist approach are _____ who disagree with the assumption that inequality is necessary and normal.

Rigid and well-established class differences

In contrast, conflict theorists argue that _____ prevent many highly talented people from receiving the training they need to move into the best positions.

Equality of opportunity

The functionalist argument assumes a relatively high degree of ____ and conflict theorists point out that the assumption is unrealistic.

Free movement of labor

Critics also question the functionalist assumption of _____ among jobs.

Power differences

Conflict theorists argue that _______ allow certain positions to maintain their privilege and prevent free movement of labor.

The Communist Manifesto

____ originally published in 1848, was an action plan for a proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and create a classless society.

Ruling class

The capitalist class is also a _____.

Socialist system

____ is characterized by a collective ownership of the means of production and the elimination of markets, capital, and labor used as a commodity.