Sociology Chapter 5 Notes

2. Political Power: Making Rules and Decisions

Power can also be used for political purposes. It enables people to set the conditions under which others are expected to live.

The Economic, Political, and Cultural Uses of Power 1. Economic Power: Allocating Resources

Power determines who will receive important resources and how those resources will be used.

4. Caste Systems: India, Feudal Estates, and Racial Segregation

- A caste system features stratification based on various ascribed characteristics determined at birth. - The caste into which people are born largely determines their life chances.

1. Class: Economic Conditions

- A class is a group of people who share a roughly similar economic position and lifestyle. - Marx looked at class in terms of the world of work; Weber, in terms of "life chances": the opportunities offered by a person's economic position.

5. Class Systems: Capitalist and Socialist

- A class system features stratification determined by economic position, which results from a combination of individual achievement and family of birth. - Class systems are more flexible than caste systems and offer more opportunities for social mobility.

3. Strategies of Empowerment: Educate, Organize, Network

- Education can be an important means of learning about one's situation and developing the skills necessary for rewarding employment and a more fulfilling life. - Organization involves bringing people together to identify common goals and work to achieve them. - Networking involves reaching outside one's immediate circle of contacts to find allies. Organizations also network.

Feudal Estate Systems

- Feudalism, a caste-like system that regulated economic, political, and social life based primarily on the unequal distribution of land, varied but commonly featured three estates: -- nobility, Christian clergy, and commoners.

Power in Small Groups and Organizations

- French and Raven's six bases of power in small groups and organizations: - reward power, the control one party has over valued resources that can be used to provide positive incentives; - coercive power, the ability to punish; - legitimate power, which is exercised by those who invoke a feeling of obligation; - referent power, based on feelings of identification, affection, and respect for another person; - expert power, which arises from the perception that a person has superior knowledge in a particular area; - informational power, which is based on a person's use of facts, data, or other evidence to argue rationally or persuade.

Class in Capitalist Systems

- Ideology emphasizes individualism: "With hard work and determination, you can accomplish whatever you want." -- Implicit explanation for inequality: Those at the bottom do not work hard; those at the top do. -- Inequality is seen as a motivator.

Class in Socialist Systems

- Ideology emphasizes the collective good and economic equality as coordinated by the government. - The major difference between capitalist and socialist class systems is the nature and degree of government intervention in the economy. -- Capitalist ideology suggests that individuals should compete in the marketplace free of government interference. -- Socialist ideology emphasizes the collective good and economic equality as coordinated by the government. - State socialism is characterized by totalitarian governments that downplayed the existence of inequality. Political dissent was not tolerated, and those holding political positions were at the highest levels of the stratification system. - Modern socialist societies incorporate some economic flexibility while maintaining centralized control, for example, China. - Democratic socialism combines a government accountable to the electorate with state intervention in the economy and tends to cultivate an ideology that values equality and the common good.

Power and Inequality

- Inequality refers to the unequal distribution of resources among groups of people. - All societies have some form of inequality, but its nature and extent vary significantly because patterns of unequal distribution are not natural, inevitable, or the product of chance. - It is socially constructed and multidimensional.

4. The Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

- Intersectionality theory highlights the connections and interactions between various forms of inequality, especially race, class, and gender. - Intersectionality theorists recognize the different dimensions of inequality and highlight the interactions that take place between these dimensions. - The focus on the interaction between power and inequality helps us understand social life in the following contexts: -- how we experience the social world, -- how the importance of different types of inequality varies depending on social context and circumstances, -- how different aspects of one's identity affects others, -- avoiding overgeneralizing about any one group of people. - Collins's "matrix of domination" refers to the interlocking systems of oppression associated with race, class, and gender. -- The metaphor of the matrix suggests more than one dimension and allows for the idea that people can be privileged in some ways and oppressed in others.

India's Caste System

- It is based on the unequal distribution of social honor or respect associated with four major castes - Brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas, sudras, jatis (subcastes), and Dalits (untouchables) - Membership in a particular caste is determined at birth and cannot be changed.

3. Political Power: Strength Through Organization

- Max Weber also argued that society is stratified in terms of political power. - For Weber, "parties" are a broad range of political groups, including social movements, advocacy groups, and citizens' organizations, as well as traditional political parties—all of which can constitute a form of empowerment. - Weber saw political power as potentially independent of class and status. - Political organization can accomplish social change through collective action.

Power and Social Relationships 1. Types of Authority: Traditional, Rational-Legal, and Charismatic

- Max Weber made an important distinction between legitimate and illegitimate power. ---- Legitimate power or authority is power that is voluntarily accepted by those who are subject to it. ---- Illegitimate power is a form of authority that relies on force or coercion to generate obedience. - Weber further specified three types of legitimate power, or authority. ---- Traditional authority refers to authority through compliance with well-established cultural practices. ---- Rational-legal authority is legitimate because it is based on established laws, rules, and procedures. ---- In charismatic authority legitimacy is derived from extraordinary personal characteristics of an individual leader who inspires loyalty and devotion.

5. Strategies to Overcome Opposition: Persuade, Reward, Coerce

- Participants in any conflict, whether minor or serious, have these same three basic options: ----To persuade is to get people's compliance by convincing them of the correctness of your position and goals. ----To reward is to encourage people's compliance by offering a positive incentive. ----To coerce is to force compliance by threatening, intimidating, pressuring, or harming someone. - Reward and coercion are sometimes two sides of the same coin. - In many cases, coercion is much more sinister, involving threats to people's livelihood, freedom, or physical well-being. - Ultimately, people in power cannot rely for long on coercion alone. It is more efficient if people control their own behavior.

6. Patriarchy

- Patriarchy is an example of systematic stratification based on gender. - Male domination is maintained through social institutions and cultural practices. - Patriarchy emphasizes separate and unequal groups, distributes resources unequally, and justifies this inequality with an ideology that assumes the superiority of men.

Power in Everyday Life

- Power is an essential part of social relationships at every level of social life. - Max Weber and Karl Marx focused much of their attention on the operation of power at the macro level of society. - Power is also involved in social interactions at the micro level.

2. The Role of Compliance

- Power is limited by the social relationships on which it is based. ---- Examples include power of the presidency; authoritarian regimes; and situations in everyday life, such as the power relationships between students and teachers or between workers and bosses. ---- An extreme example is the Stockholm syndrome. - Those with power in everyday life also depend on compliance to maintain their position. ---- For example, students must agree to complete the paper assigned by their teacher. - The degree of compliance in a social situation is often not apparent at first glance. - It takes a sociological understanding of power to see that simmering conflict can lurk just beneath the calm, orderly surface of societies. - When compliance is withdrawn, conflict may seem to erupt suddenly and dramatically.

Power Tactics

- Power tactics are the specific strategies people use to influence others in everyday life. - There are three dimensions of power tactics: - Hard and soft: Hard tactics are forceful, direct, or harsh. Soft tactics focus on relationships. - Rational and nonrational: Rational tactics appeal to logic and include bargaining and rational persuasion. Nonrational tactics include emotional appeals. - Unilateral and bilateral: Unilateral tactics do not require cooperation to initiate. They include demands, orders, or disengagement. Bilateral tactics involve give-and-take, such as negotiations and discussions.

4. Power and Privilege

- Privilege is a special advantage or benefit that not everyone enjoys. - The fact that most people go about their daily lives unaware of the privileges they enjoy is an indicator of power. - The point of recognizing privilege is not about making people feel guilty; rather, it helps us see how power operates. -- - Everyone in a society is connected through relations of power. - Standpoint theory questions taken-for-granted assumptions about society by looking at it from multiple viewpoints, especially from the perspective of people in subordinate positions. People with different standpoints see and understand the world differently; this is especially true in societies with deep inequalities.

2. Status: Prestige

- Status can be a person's position in a social system or the prestige associated with that position. A person has a given status because he or she belongs—usually informally—to a community of those with the same lifestyle, ethnicity, race, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, education, or occupation. - Membership in a status group is not formal. - Members define some shared feature as important or valuable. - Status groups develop formal and informal rules that designate who belongs. - Members of a status group can sometimes use membership to gain power over nonmembers. - Social closure, the process whereby a status group maximizes its own advantages by restricting access to rewards only to members of the group. Social closure involves excluding outsiders from the benefits of group member. - This process can involve subtle or blatant discrimination, which refers to treating others unequally based on their background or other personal characteristics. - Status and class are often linked in our society.

Structured Inequality: Stratification Systems

- Stratification systems are made up of social structures and cultural norms that create and maintain inequality by ranking people into a hierarchy of groups that receive unequal resources. Key elements: -- unequal distribution of valued resources -- distinct groups that make up a society's strata (layers) -- an ideology that explains and justifies inequality

2. Empowerment: "Power To"

- The "power to" approach emphasizes the ability to bring about an intended outcome. - Empowerment increases people's capacity to bring about an intended outcome. - It is the focus of much feminist scholarship on power. - People often discuss power and empowerment in terms of individual effort and achievement. - Empowerment often involves individual enhancement and self-improvement. - The "power to" approach can also apply to social systems, such as schools, governments, or even entire societies.

A Changing World: Algorithms and the Power of Tech Companies

- The algorithms created by technology companies play a surprisingly powerful role in shaping our Internet experiences, whether we are aware of it or not. - Algorithms are software code created to accomplish various tasks without human intervention. - Programmers write guiding rules for how the algorithm should operate and then apply it to vast quantities of data generated by our use of the Internet, credit cards, and so on. - Racist material can be written into the code by programmers or hackers, and algorithms can also be misused in the sense that they allow companies to narrow their targets. - They have a degree of autonomy. - Thus, the companies that create them can have a good deal of power in shaping how we experience the world every day.

3. The Power of Disobedience

- The eruption of conflict when compliance is withdrawn can include protests, riots, strikes, and revolution and also includes nonviolent protest, such as in the U.S. civil rights movement. - Everyone has some power. At a minimum, you always have power over your own actions. - The success of efforts on behalf of oppressed groups, as well as student activism, demonstrates simple truths about power. - Since power is a social relationship, people ultimately have the power to refuse to comply. - When people unite in an act of civil disobedience, they can instigate enormous change.

2. Stratified Groups

- The second element of all stratification systems is the groups that make up the various strata in society. - Stratification based on class, race, and gender is especially widespread and significant. - Stratification can also be based on ethnicity, age, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, disability, and so on. - Groups within stratification systems can be based on ascribed or achieved statuses. - Open stratification systems are based primarily on achieved statuses and allow for individuals to achieve social mobility. -- Social mobility refers to movement from one stratum of a stratification system to another. - The social categories associated with inequality are not natural, inevitable, or biologically based. They are socially constructed.

4. Domination: "Power Over"

- The second part of the power definition emphasizes the "power over" approach, since it focuses on overcoming opposition or domination of others. - Robert Dahl: "A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do." - Domination can occur at any level of society. - The most obvious use of power as a means of domination is political and economic conflicts, as powerful elites attempt to maintain their advantages over others.

7. Can Inequality Be Reduced?

- The simple answer is yes. - Some forms are easier to combat than others. - Sociology teaches us that inequality is socially constructed; people can organize to empower themselves and reduce inequality.

Racial Segregation in the United States

- The system of racial segregation in the United States, which evolved between the Civil War and the 1960s, can be considered a caste-based stratification system. - The division between blacks and whites was based on birth and could not be changed. - The ideology that justified racial segregation was racism.

3. Ideologies that Justify Inequality

- The third element of all stratification systems is a related ideology, a system of beliefs that helps define and explain the world and justifies the existence of inequality. - Those in power produce and promote these ideas to maintain the stratification system, but others sometimes internalize them as well. - Justifying ideologies vary within stratification systems.

3. Cultural Power: Defining Reality

- To prepare others to comply with their agenda, those with power define social reality in a particular way and encourage others to agree with their interpretation. - Examples: Parents steer children toward or away from certain books, entertainment, and religious instruction. In the larger society, media and schools shape our worldview. - A similar process operates in society at large, as media and schools shape our worldview. - Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) argued that the class in power maintains its dominance through the use of force and through the manipulation of ideas. He applied the word hegemony to this situation. ---- Hegemony exists when those in power have successfully spread their ideas—and marginalized alternative viewpoints—so that their perspectives and interests are accepted widely as being universal and true. ----- It is a tenuous condition that must be actively maintained.

1. Unequal Resources

- Valued resources include -- economic resources, such as money, property, and land; -- human resources, such as education, training, and skills; -- cultural resources, such as knowledge and socialization; -- social resources, such as important networks of people; -- honorific resources, such as prestige and status; -- civil resources, such as legal rights; -- political resources, such as authority in the home, workplace, political arena, or social life.

Understanding Forms of Power 1. Defining Power

- Weber viewed power as the ability to bring about an intended outcome, even when opposed by others. - Some sociologists focus on a "power to" approach. Other sociologists focus on the ability to overcome opposition, or the "power over" approach. - These aspects are not mutually exclusive.