Sociology Chapter 7

Thomas Malthus

- Viewed equality favorably, but only as a means for controlling population growth. - Thought that a more equal distribution of resources would increase the worlds population to unsustainable levels and ultimately bring about mass starvation and conflict. "Tina believes that inequality is necessary to keep Earth's population in check. Her view is most consistent with the views of which theorist?"

Social Equality

A condition Whereby no differences in wealth, power, prestige, or status based on nonnatural conventions exist.

Bourgeois Society

A society of commerce (modern capitalist society, for example) in which the maximization of profit is the primary business incentive.

Meritocracy

A society where status and mobility are based on individual attributes, ability, and achievement.

Middle Class

A term commonly used to describe those individuals with non manual jobs that pay significantly more than the poverty line - though this id a highly debated and expansive category, particularly in the united states, where broad swathes of the population consider themselves middle class

Upper Class

A term for the economic elite

Dialectic

A two directional relationship, one that goes both ways.

Status attainment model

Approach that ranks individuals by socioeconomic status, including income and educational attainment, and seeks to specify the attributes characteristic of people who end up in more desirable occupations.

SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx believed that private property leads to _________ __________ (p. 241).

Equality of outcome

Everyone in a society should end up with the same "rewards" regardless of starting point, opportunities, or contributions.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Master Slave Dialect

Hegel believed: -Most social relationships were based on a master-slave model. -Overtime, society would have more and more free people and the master-slave model would die out as the primary social relationship.

Higher wages for working-class whites gave these individuals greater access to markers of a middle-class lifestyle, such as home ownership, a college education for their children, and more leisure activities.

How did the post-World War II economic boom contribute to a blurring of the lines between the middle class and the working class?

Equality of Condition

Idea that everyone should have an equal starting point from which to pursue his or her goals.

EDUCATION, INCOME

In Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan's study of occupational prestige, much of the explanation of peoples' status ranking of occupations was attributed to the __________ necessary for the position rather than the corresponding ___________ (p. 255).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In the eighteenth century,________-_________ ____________ argued that private property creates social inequality and that this inequality ultimately leads to social conflict.

OUTPACED

Income growth for high-income individuals has far __________ that of middle- and low-income individuals. "Over the past three decades, the expected salary of corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States has increased by 81 percent. The income of a waitress has decreased by 1 percent over that same time period, and the income of a middle-class family with two parents and two children has increased by about 15 percent (p. 263)."

Equality of opportunity

Inequality is acceptable so long as everyone has the same opportunities for advancement and is judged by the same standards. -Civil rights activists argued in favor of equality of opportunity, the idea that everyone has an equal chance to achieve wealth, social prestige, and power because the rules of the game are the same for everyone. They believed that the rules of the game were not, in fact, the same for everyone (p. 247).

The cost of college is increasing, and a larger proportion of the costs are borne by individuals rather than states (p. 265).

Michael Hout's interview on the value of a college degree explains some of the difficulties for certain families to send their children to college. According to Hout, what is one source of difficulty?

Strucatural Mobility

Mobility that is inevitable from changes in the economy, such as the expansion of high tech jobs in the past 20 years. "The decline in manufacturing jobs and the growth of service-sector jobs over the last 30 years has created opportunities for what kind of mobility?"

Exchange Mobility

Occurs when people essentially trade positions --- the number of overall jobs stay the same, with some people moving up into better jobs and others moving down into worse ones.

Forms of Stratification

THE ESTATE SYSTEM- is a politically based system of stratification characterized by limited social mobility. It was primarily found in Europe from the medieval era through the eighteenth century and in the American South before the Civil War THE CASTE SYSTEM- is a religion-based system of stratification characterized by no social mobility. Today, it is primarily found in South Asia. THE CLASS SYSTEM- A economically based system of stratification with somewhat loose social mobility based on roles in the production process rather than individual characteristics.

Increased

Taking a broad view of history, it is clear that global inequality has _____________ dramatically in the past 500 years.

Elite-Mass Dichotomy System

The ______-_____ _________ System is a system of stratification that has a governing elite -- a few leaders who broadly hold the power of society.

Estate Tax

The _______ _______ in the united states is related to the issue of stratification because it goes to the heart of the questions about how to promote business growth, how wealth should be distributed, how to encourage meritocracy, and how to build a more equitable society.

Status Hierarchy System

The ________ __________ System is a system of stratification based on social prestige.

Increased

The income gap between high-income and low-income individuals has _______________ dramatically over the last 30 years.

Many Africans resisted globalization, as aspects of it threatened their traditional ways of life.

The interview with Jeffery Sachs highlights the structural, ecological, and historical aspects of global inequality. Which of the following reasons is NOT a reason Sachs gives for inequalities between many countries in Africa and many countries in the rest of the world? "According to Jeffrey Sachs, there are many reasons for inequalities between countries in Africa and countries around the world. These include, but are not limited to, colonialism, Africa's geography, and the higher burden of disease in Africa. See page 268 of the textbook and listen to the full interview for more details."

Social Mobility

The movement between different positions within a system of social stratification in any given society, can be either horizontal or vertical and can take place on the individual or group level.

Ontological equality

The notion that everyone is created equal in the eyes of god.

Free rider problem

The notion that when more than one person is responsible for getting something done, the incentive is for each individual to shirk responsibility and hope others will pull the extra weight. "A group of six teenagers is trying to get 100 signatures for a petition. They meet three days before their deadline to see how they are doing. Two of the teens have collected 25 signatures each, totaling 50. But the other four teenagers have only collected 25 signatures between the four of them, so the group is still 25 signatures short. The two teens who collected the most signatures are irritated about the poor results from the other four."

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

The term _____________ _______ is often used to describe an individual's position in a stratified social order. This includes any measure that attempts to classify groups, households, individuals, families, and so forth, such as occupation or wealth (p. 259).

C. WRIGHT MILLS

__.______ ______ opposed the idea of the elite-mass dichotomy and argued that it was neither natural nor beneficial for society (p. 257).

Mobility tables

________ ________ are used to analyze individual mobility. They traditionally included occupational categories of parents and children in order to facilitate comparison in occupational statuses between generations (p. 271).

Contradictory class locations

__________ _______ ___________ is the idea that people can occupy locations in the class structure that fall between the two "pure" classes. Erik Olin Wright created this term because Marx's two-class model of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat did not seem to fit modern society (p. 254). "The fact that they own their own business puts them in the capitalist class, but they do not control the labor of others."

Karl Marx

__________ __________ felt that society was divided strictly into two classes -- the PROLETARIAT or working class, and the BOURGEOISIE, or employing class.

Max Weber's

___________ ___________ concept of class is based on grouping people according to the value of their property or labor in the commercial market place.

Poverty

___________ has an official, government definition, but there are also less official categories, such as the working poor and the non working poor (sometimes called the underclass.)

Ferguson and Miller

_____________ and _____________ agreed with Rousseau, but they also argued that this is good because it means that some people are getting ahead and creating assets ( a form of wealth that can be stored for future.)

Stratification

______________________ refers to systematic inequalities between two groups of people that arise as intended or unintended consequences of social processes and relationships.

Wealth

a families or individual's net worth (that is, total assets minus total debts.)

Income

money received by a person for work, from transfers (gifts, inheritances, or government assistance or from returns on investments.)