Chapter 9. Social Inequality in Canada

Habitus - The deeply seated schemas, habits, feelings, dispositions, and forms of know-how that people hold due to their specific social backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences
Social inequality - Describes the unequal distribution of valued resources, rewards, and positions in a society
Social differentiation - systemic social characteristics - differences, identities, and roles - are used to differentiate people and divide them into different categories
Social stratification - refers to an institutionalized system of social inequality

Equality of opportunity - Everyone has an equal chance at success
Equality of condition - Situation in which everyone in a society has a similar level of wealth, status, and power
Meritocracy - Where individual merit determines social standing

Factors that define stratification, wealth, income, power and status
Wealth - the net value of money and assets a person has
Income - a person’s wages, salary, or investment dividends
Power - how many people a person must take orders from versus how many people a person can give orders to
Status - the degree of honour or prestige one has in the eyes of others
Status consistency - describe the consistency of an individual’s rank across these factors

Two types of systems of stratification - Closed systems and Open systems
Closed systems - accommodate little change in social position - do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relations between levels
Open systems - which are based on achievement - allow movement and interaction between layers and classes

Caste system - one in which people are born into their social standing and remain in it their whole lives - based on fixed status
Ascribed status - a status one receives by virtue of being born into a category or group (e.g. hereditary position, gender, race, etc)
Achieved status - a status one receives through individual effort or merits (e.g. occupation, educational level, moral character, etc)

Class system - based on both social factors and individual achievement
A class - consists of a set of people who have the same relationship to the means of production
Means of production - the things used to produce the goods and services needed for survival: tools, technologies, resources, land, workplaces, etc

The first class divisions developed between those who owned and controlled the agricultural land and surplus production and those who were dispossessed of ownership and control - early Neolithic horticultural societies
Primogeniture - a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son
Social class - as a grouping based on similar social factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation

Standard of living - the level of wealth available to acquire the material necessities and comforts to maintain one’s lifestyle
Absolute poverty - “a severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information”
Relative poverty - refers to the minimum amount of income or resources needed to be able to participate in the “ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities” of a society

Gini Index - is a measure of income inequality in which zero is absolute equality and one is absolute inequality
Socio-economic status (SES) - their social position relative to others based on income, education, and occupation

Social mobility - refers to the ability to change positions within a social stratification system
Upward mobility refers to an increase - or upward shift - in social class
Downward mobility - indicates a lowering of one’s social class

Intergenerational mobility - explains a difference in social class between different generations of a family
Intragenerational mobility - describes a difference in social class between different members of the same generation
Structural mobility - happens when societal changes enable a whole group of people to move up or down the social class ladder

Class traits - called class markers, are the typical behaviours, customs, and norms that define each class
Global stratification - compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries across the world
Neoliberalism - used to define the new rationality of government, which abandons the interventionist model of the welfare state to emphasize the use of “free market” mechanisms to regulate society

The changing configuration of global capitalism and politics has been described - reemergence of empire
Empire - form of imperialism like that which dominated in the era of colonialism, is a new political form that has emerged in response to the dynamics of global capitalism
Davis-Moore thesis - which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward

Proletarianized - meaning that in terms of income, property, control over working conditions, and overall life chances, the middle class is becoming more and more indistinguishable from the wage-earning working class
Cultural capital - suggests that cultural “assets” such as education and taste are accumulated and passed down between generations in the same manner as financial capital or wealth
Conspicuous consumption - as the tendency of people to buy things as a display of status rather than out of need