Week 10 Exam 2

Together these two classes make up the majority of the American class structure:

middle and working classes

The research reported in Evicted, suggests a. that most poor people spend over half of their income on rent. b. All of the answers are correct. c. that the extent of evictions and forced moves is severely underestimated in official records. d. that evictions have drastic social, psychological, and physical effects on families.

All of the answers are correct

Of the following, which factor(s) shape(s), in general, improve one's chances of making it from the bottom to the top of the American class structure? a. Getting a college education b. All of these factors improve one's chances of making it to the top. c. Being white d. Being raised by married parents

All of these factors improve one's chances of making it to the top

"A friend said recently that one definitive marker of social class is whether you know how to eat an artichoke." This quote reflects which of the following types of capital, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu?

Cultural capital

After moving to the United States from Haiti, Jacques Fleury and his family immediately experienced _________________.

Downward social mobility

Mary is a real estate agent who makes $100,000 a year. She lives in a three bedroom house and has a Lexus. The economy takes a downturn and she loses her job. Within a year, she loses her home and her vehicle and she is forced to take a job as a waiter in order to afford the rent of a small apartment. This is an example of:

Downward social mobility

According to the documentary Class Dismissed, American television has long focused on problems caused by downsizing, poor wages and benefits, and other corporate practices. Moreover, it generally depicts workers as victims, rather than as the source, of social problems.

False

Americans vastly overestimate wealth inequality in America.

False

As evidenced by the contributors to Class Lives, most people have clear-cut class identities.

False

Dennis Gilbert depicts the American class system as a pyramid, with most people at the very bottom and successively smaller numbers in the upper tiers of more economically advantaged members.

False

In the United States, there are few, if any, barriers to upward social mobility. As long as someone works hard enough, they will achieve middle- or upper-class status.

False

Interestingly, Janet Lightfoot criticizes the government's measurement of poverty, arguing that it overestimates the number of people in poverty.

False

Karl Marx invented and popularized the term "class consciousness."

False

Noam Chomsky's broad definition of class from Requiem for the American Dream as based on "who gives the orders and who follows the orders" is most consistent with Max Weber's definition of class.

False

The Marxist approach conceptualizes class as existing on a continuum, that is, with some, having more income, more education, and more prestige than others.

False

The essays in Class Lives suggest that, overall, the contributors did not become aware of class differences until they became adults.

False

Sue is a cashier at grocery store and has been at her position for 5 years, making $20,000 a year. When the store goes out of business she takes a job at a department store, making $20,000 a year. This would be an example of:

Horizontal mobility

Which term did Max Weber use to describe and emphasize the extent to which class position shapes an individual's chances of attaining the good things in life?

life chances

According to Marx, which of the following is NOT one of the preconditions for the development of a class consciousness? a. The identification of a leader. b. The deprived living conditions of members of the working class. c. Increased participation in political organizations, such as unions, dedicated to the interests of the working class. d. The geographic concentration of large masses of industrial workers.

The identification of a leader

Class Matters tells the story of Della Mae Justice, a lawyer, who was born into poverty but went to college on her way to a high-powered legal career. "I think class is everything, I really do," she said recently. "When you are poor and from a low socioeconomic group, you don't have a lot of choices in life. To me, being from an upper class is all about confidence. It is knowing you have choices, knowing you set the standards, knowing you have connections." The above paragraph reflects which of the following concepts? a. Social capital b. Upward social mobility c. The paragraph reflects all four concepts. d. Life chances e. Power

The paragraph reflects all four concepts

"Crouteau still seems impressed by his wife's family, and their being among "the ones with their fames on buildings." It is he who shows a visitor the framed print of the old Woolner Distillery in Peoria, Illinois, and, describing the pictures on the wall, mentions that this in-law went to Yale, and that one knew Gerald Ford." This excerpt from Class Matters is an example of how prestige works, that is, how it is expressed in an attitude of respect or deference.

True

"We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said when announcing in 2004 that Harvard would give full scholarships to its lowest-income students. This excerpt speaks to the fact that the class position one is born into shapes one's life chances, as originally described by Max Weber, one of the "founding fathers" of sociology.

True

According to the BBC documentary Who Gets the Best Jobs?, although having a college degree is crucial for occupational success, the best jobs are increasingly being snapped up by people who come from wealthy and well-connected families.

True

According to the documentary Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class, the majority of working class individuals are no longer white male industrial laborers but female, and/or immigrant, service and retail workers.

True

Alfred Lubrano developed the term "straddler" to describe those who straddle the worlds between the working-class origins and new middle class status and prestige.

True

Both Marx and Weber identified a class distinction between those who owned property and those who did not.

True

Class awareness is not equivalent to class consciousness. Instead, class awareness is only the most emergent level of class consciousness. In other words, being conscious of class is not the same as being class conscious.

True

Classism refers, in part, to prejudice and differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class. Some of the contributors to Class Lives discuss their challenges they have had dealing with their own internalized classism.

True

Manufacturing is still an important part of the U.S. economy, but computers and robots have decreased the need for unskilled labor.

True

Matthew Desmond argues that the surge of evictions and forced moves stems to a large extent from rising rents, stagnating incomes, and less money for public housing assistance.

True

Max Weber noted that high prestige groups may seek to limit the entrance of others to prestigious places and organizations.

True

Noam Chomsky argues that since the mid-20th century, the United States has seen an increase in the ranks of the precariat, that is, people who lack economic security, which affects their material, social, and psychological well-being.

True

One of Chomsky's principles of the concentration of wealth and power is to reduce democracy to further protect the haves from the have-nots.

True

Social mobility in the U.S. is characterized by structural mobility and circulation mobility.

True

Studies reported on in the PBS-segment, "Exploring the Psychology of Wealth, 'Pernicious' Effects of Economic Inequality," suggest that higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.

True

The United States is one of the five most wealth-unequal countries in the world.

True

Max is the owner of a leading food distributor and owns a large share of the company's stock. According to Karl Marx, to which class does Max belong?

capitalist class

In the Disney film A Bug's Life, greedy grasshoppers exploit ants by having them harvest food. In one scene, the leader of the grasshoppers, Hopper, berates one of his minions for suggesting that they should give in to the demands of one ant. Hopper says that one ant's actions may be minuscule in effect, but several ants acting in unified collective action can overthrow the entire system that allows the grasshoppers to live such a comfortable life of abundance. Hopper notes, "those puny little ants outnumber us 100-to-1, and if they figure that out, there goes our way of life." Hence, if the ants were to recognize their class interests in this system, they would be likely to organize and fight back against the exploitative grasshoppers. He further notes "it's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line." Hopper's words reflect the desire to prevent the ants from attaining ____________ a. intragenerational social mobility b. structural mobility c. class consciousness d. status parity

class consciousness

Karl Marx used the phrase ___________ to describe the common class situation of a group of people and the phrase _________ to denote a class that has achieved class consciousness.

class-in-itself; class-for-itself

Consuming goods and services with the intention of impressing others and solidifying one's social position, is what Thorstein Veblen referred to as _______________

conspicuous consumption

In her research, Annette Lareau found differences in how middle-class and working-class parents raised their children. Which term did she use to describe how middle-class parents raise their children?

cultivated growth

Betsy Leondar-Wright defines _________________ as the knowledge and style valued by those in power.

cultural capital

"My own family is overflowing with intellectual conversations, elite education, and owning-class expectations, but our bank accounts are not overflowing with money." In this excerpt from Class Lives, Zoe Greenberg describes her family as having high levels of ___________________ but not of ____________________.

cultural capital; economic capital

Jesse is a stockbroker who makes $100,000 a year. He also makes $20,000 a year from rental properties. Both of these are examples of John's yearly __________.

income

The income gap between the top 1% of earners in the United States and the bottom 20% of the population has __________________ since the 1970s.

increased

Referring to child rearing practices, Lareau argues that the accomplishment of __________ leads to ___________; whereas __________ yields a ________________. a. natural entitlement, concerted constraint; natural constraint, emerging entitlement. b. natural growth, an emerging sense of constraint; concerted cultivation, robust sense of entitlement. c. X, Y; A, B. d. natural growth, robust sense of entitlement; concerted cultivation, an emerging sense of constraint.

natural growth, an emerging sense of constraint; concerted cultivation, robust sense of entitlement

The ________ model views politics as an arena of compromises, alliances, and negotiations among many competing special interest groups.

pluralist

The Gilbert model of the American class structure emphasizes:

sources of income

Max Weber defined power as

the ability to achieve one's will in spite of opposition

When a daughter or a son goes into an occupation that is higher or lower in rank and prestige than their parent's occupation, sociologists talk about ____________

vertical social mobility