Sociology Notes

Chapter 9 Social Stratification

• A system by which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy.
• Four fundamental principles of stratification:
  • Social stratification is a characteristic of society.
  • Social stratification persists over generations.

Social Mobility

• Most societies allow some sort of social mobility or changes in people’s positions in a system of social stratification.
• Social mobility may be upwards, downward, or horizontal.
• Intragenerational Social Mobility:
  • A change in social position occurring during a person’s lifetime.
• Intergenerational Social Mobility:
  • Upward or Downward social mobility of children relative to their parents.
• Structural Social Mobility:
  • A shift in the social position of large numbers of people due more to changes in society than to individual efforts.

Two Types of Systems of Stratification

• Closed system:
  • Allow little change in social position.
• Open system:
  • Permit much more social mobility.
  • Schooling and skills lead to social mobility.
  • Work is no longer fixed at birth but involves some personal choices

Meritocracy

• Social stratification based on personal merit.

Status Consistency Inconsistency

• The degree of consistency in a person’s social standing across various dimensions of social inequality.

Caste System

• Social stratification based on ascription or birth.
• Little or no social mobility.
• Caste guides everyday life by keeping people in the company of their “own kind.”
• Typically agrarian because agriculture demands a lifelong routine of work.

Ideology

• Cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality.
• Every culture considers some type of inequality fair.
• Ideology changes with a society’s economy.
• Historically, challenges to the status quo always arise.

Fundamental Principles of Stratification

1. Social stratification is a characteristics of society.
2. Social stratification persists over generations.
3. Social stratification is universal but variable.
4. Social stratification involves both inequality and beliefs.

Patterned Inequality

• Saying that inequality is patterned indicates that the differences occur:
  1. On a wide-scale basis
  2. With regularity
  3. And along lines of certain specific identifiable characteristics

Three Premises

• Power:
  • The ability to impose one’s will on others
• Property:
  • Forms of wealth
• Prestige:
  • The respect given by others
• Life chances
  • Opportunities that individuals do or do not have to engage in certain activities
  • Opportunities that they do or do not have to accomplish certain goals

Explanations for Stratification

• Capitalists/Bourgeoisie:
  • People who own and operate factories and other business in pursuit of profit
• Proletariat:
  • Working people who sell their labor for wages

Class Status and Power

• Class:
  • Determined mainly by economic standings or wealth
• Party:
  • Which was equivalent to political power
• Status:
  • Social prestige and honor

Socio-Economic Status (SES)

• A composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality
  1. Education
  2. Wealth
     • Assets
     • Income
  3. Occupational Prestige

Explanations for Stratification

• Micro-level analysis (symbolic interactionism)
  • Social standing affects everyday interactions
  • People with different social standing keep their distance from one another
• Conspicuous consumption
  • Buying and using products with an eye to the “statement” they make about social position.

Poverty

• Relative poverty:
  • The deprivation of some people in relation who have more
• Absolute poverty:
  • A life-threatening deprivation of resources
• Poverty Line:
  • Government determination of what poverty is

Explaining Poverty

• Blame the poor:
  • The poor are responsible for their own poverty
• Culture of poverty:
  • A lower class subculture that can destroy people’s ambition to improve their lives
• Blame society:
  • Society is primarily responsible for poverty
  • Primary cause is loss of jobs in inner cities
  • Government should fund jobs and provide affordable child care for low-income mothers and father
• The truly disadvantaged
  • A group of people who live predominantly in the inner city and who are trapped in a cycle of joblessness, deviance, crime, welfare, dependency, and unstable family life.

Chapter 11 The Social Significance of Race

• Race:
  • A category composed of men and women who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society deem socially significant
  • Race is a significant concept only because most people consider it to be
  • Europeans began to use them the term “race” to refer to the categories of people they encountered in 1500s
• People who have common cultural characteristics and an ethnic identity (common ancestors, language, religion, etc.)
• Race can be analyzed as ethnic categories in many cases
• They share a common culture and a common identity
• Were racist because we made this society racist
• A scientific standpoint, physical variation is real, but racial categories do not deserve human variation.
• No biologically Because of migration, there is there is physical diversity everywhere
• Physical Whites has dropped because they are having less kids

Race and Ethnicity

• Ethnicity:
  • A shared culture heritage
• Nationality:
  • the status of belonging to a particular nation
• An ethnic group forming a part of one or more political nations

Power and Race

• Dominant Group:
  • Those who control the central institutional spheres, including power to define standards of beauty and social worth.
  • The most powerful group in the united states
  • Dominant group does not have to be a numerical majority, but mainly deals with actual powers and perception power in society.
  • In the U.S. White Anglo-Saxon Protests (WASPs) are the dominant group, but they comprise only a function of the population.
• Power Structure
• Minority:
  • A group that has less power than the dominant group, and therefore is usually poorer than the majority, has less prestige, and suffers from discrimination.
  • The sociological meaning minority does not refer to the numerical size of a group.
• Minority Group Status
  • Involves four major elements
    1. Visible ascribed trait by which a person can be clearly recognize
    2. Differential (unequal) treatment on the basis of this trait
    3. Organization of one’s own self- image around this identity
    4. Awareness of a shared identity with similar other
• White Privileges:
  • Implicit or systemic advantages that people who are deemed white have relative to people who are not deemed white
  • Not having to experience suspicion and other adverse reactions to one’s race is also often termed a type if white privilege.
• Peggy McIntosh “The Invisible Knapsack”

Prejudice

• Prejudice and attitude, which predisposes an individual to prejudge entire categories of people unfairly.
• This attitude is rigid, emotionally loaded, and resistant to change
• Stereotypes:
  • a rigid and inaccurate image that summarizes a belief.
  • Because stereotypes reflects beliefs rather than facts, they are illogical and self-serving
• Racism:
  • the belief that race determines human ability and as a result, certain races deserve to be treated as inferior while other races deserve to be treated as superior.
  • Racism refers to the belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to another
• Discrimination
  • Discrimination is a behavior, or and the unfair and harmful treatment of people based on their group membership
  • It is an action that involves treating various categories of people unequally
  • Focuses on the practice of treating people unequally

Theories of Prejudice

• Scapegoat theory
  • argues that prejudice results from frustrations among the disadvantaged
  • A scapegoat is a person or category of people, typically with little power whom people unfairly blame of their own troubles
• Authoritarian personality
  • theory views prejudice as a personality-level trait
• Cultural theory of prejudice
  • notes that prejudice may Be embedded in popular cultural values
  • Symbolic Racism: The belief in equal rights couples with the belief that certain racial and ethnic groups have achieved an unfair advantage over whites
• Conflict theory:
  • views prejudice as a product of social struggles

Patterns of Interactions

1. Assimilation
   • Anglo-conformity
   • Melting pot assimilation
2. Pluralism
3. Segregation
   • Hyper-segregation
   • De facto vs de jure
4. Internal colonialism
5. Expulsion (population movement)
6. Annihilation (Genocide)

Chapter 12 Sex and Gender

• Sex:
  • the biological distinction between females and males
• Intersexed:
  • Individuals with anatomical categories that are not easily identifiable with either sex
• Gender:
  • the significance a society attaches to biological categories of females and males
• Gender identity:
  • Traits that females and males, guided by their culture, incorporate into their perspective personalities
• Gender socialization
  • Gender socialization begins virtually at the moment of birth and as consequences of early experiences
• Gender roles
  • are attitudes and activities that a culture links to each sex
• By the tenth month of life children are already identifying themselves as masculine or feminine and not too long after that, their gender identity is firmly fixed
• In No sex is inherently inferior or superior to the other - society defines these attitudes.
• Every society goes beyond biology to establish to more complex social concept of gender: the cultural and attitudinal, which are associated with being male and female
• In many small-scale hunting and gathering societies men and women play complementary roles and their lives revolve around many shared activities
• In industrial societies the male roles comes to be defined by:
  • success on the job
  • independence
  • aggressiveness
• The female role comes to be defined by:
  • child-nurturing activities
  • subjectivity
  • dependence on men
• Gender market
  • American society is filled with gender markers: Symbols and signs that identify a person’s gender
  • As people mature, gender markers become more prominent, and much of gender socialization involves learning, which are appropriate for women