Sociology Ch 9
Which statement illustrates low status consistency?
A college dropout launches an online company that earns millions in its first year.
What is GDP (Gross Domestic Product)?
A country's national wealth
Which of the following scenarios is an example of intragenerational mobility?
A lawyer belongs to a different class than her sister
Which statement represents stratification from the perspective of symbolic interactionism?
After work, Pat, a janitor, feels more comfortable eating in a truck stop than a French restaurant.
What is the most significant threat to the relatively high standard of living people are accustomed to in the United States?
Decline of the middle class
Which factor is considered when evaluating someone's standard of living?
Employment, class, and income
. Which person best illustrates opportunities for upward social mobility in the United States?
First generation college student
What seems to be the key (although not the rule) to upward social mobility?
How much education you have
In the United States, most people define themselves as?
Middle class
. Occupational prestige means that jobs are?
Not equally valued
What factor makes caste systems closed?
People cannot change their social standing.
One main issue in studying global social inequality is:
Social inequality is relative and therefore, difficult to compare across cultures.
Which event created a significant divide between Western Europe/America and the rest of the world?
The Industrial Revolution
How do traditional models of global stratification breakdown different categories of countries?
They analyze the degree of industrialization.
A person's position in a country's social stratification is determined by?
Wealth, power, income, race, education
What is global stratification?
a comparison of the wealth, status, power, and economic stability of countries as a whole
What is intergenerational mobility?
a difference in social class between different generations of a family
What is a class?
a group who shares a common social status based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation
What is primogeniture?
a law stating that all property passes to the firstborn son
What is downward mobility?
a lowering of one's social class
What is structural mobility?
a societal change that enables a whole group of people to move up or down the class ladder
What is social stratification?
a socioeconomic system that divides society's members into categories ranking from high to low, based on things like wealth, power, and prestige. Also called inequality.
What are caste systems?
a system in which people are born into a social standing that they will retain their entire lives
What are closed systems?
a system of stratification that accommodates little change in social position.
What are open systems?
a system of stratification, based on achievement, that allows some movement and interaction between layers and classes.
What is the Davis-Moore Thesis?
a thesis that argues some social stratification is a social necessity and is functional
Unlike Davis and Moore, Melvin Tumin believed that, because of social stratification, some qualified people were _______ higher-level job positions.
denied the opportunity to obtain
What is absolute poverty?
deprivation so severe that it puts day-to-day survival in jeopardy.
When Karl Marx said workers experience alienation, he meant that workers?
do not feel connected to their work or to one another
Based on meritocracy, a physician's assistant would?
earn a pay raise for doing excellent work
Conflict theorists view capitalists as those who:
get rich while workers stay poor
What is relative poverty?
is not having the means to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country
What is GNI (Gross National Income)?
measures the current value of goods and services produced by a country.
What is PPP (Purchasing Power Parity)?
measures the relative power a country has to purchase those same goods and services
The basic premise of the Davis-Moore thesis is that the unequal distribution of rewards in social stratification?
serves a purpose in society
What is the class system?
social standing based on social factors and individual accomplishments
What is social mobility?
the ability to change positions within a social stratification system
What is conspicuous consumption?
the act of buying and using products to make a statement about one's social standing
The GNI PPP figure represents:
the average annual income of a country's citizens
What is status consistency?
the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual's rank across social categories like wealth, power, and prestige
What is an ideology?
the cultural belief system that justifies a society's system of stratification
What is standard of living?
the level of wealth available to acquire material goods and comforts to maintain a particular socioeconomic lifestyle
What is income?
the money a person earns from work or investments
What are class traits?
the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class (also called class markers)
What is GNP (Gross National Product)?
the value of goods and services produced by a nation's citizens both within its boarders and abroad.
What is wealth?
the value of money and assets a person has from, for example, inheritance or salary
What are endogamous marriages?
unions of people within the same social category
What are exogamous marriages?
unions of spouses from different social categories
What is the feminization of poverty?
which acknowledges that women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals in poverty across the globe and have a lower standard of living.
What is meritocracy?
an ideal system in which personal effort—or merit—determines social standing
What is upward mobility?
an increase—or upward shift—in social class
What is socioeconomic status (SES)?
an individual's level of wealth, power, and prestige
What is intragenerational mobility?
changes in a person's social mobility over the course of their lifetime.
Which of these systems allows for the most social mobility?
class
