Chapter 9 Study Guide

It was time for Oli to marry. He had finished school and was starting a job. His parents chose a bride for him whose parents had the same amount of wealth and belonged to the same class as they did. Oli and his bride will have a(n) _________ marriage.

Endogamous

Cate is the daughter of a Senator and the former CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Harry grew up in poverty working on a farm, tilling the land for a living. Cate and Harry are planning a June wedding. What term describes a marriage between people from different social classes?

Exogamous

What seems to be the key (although not the rule) to upward social mobility?

How much education you have

Charlotte was born to a lower-class family in rural Pennsylvania. After taking a job in the mail room of a large corporate office, Charlotte is slowly promoted through the ranks and becomes CEO of the company by the age of 50. Compared to her parents, Charlotte's story demonstrates what type of social stratification?

INTRAgenerational Mobility

Whose work do conflict theorists rely on to help form their arguments surrounding social stratification?

Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx

A person's position in a country's social stratification is determined by what?

Wealth, power, income, race, education

Your text describes the term meritocracy as being a 'hypothetical' or 'idea' type of social stratification. Why is it described as 'hypothetical' or 'ideal'?

because no society has ever existed where social standing was based entirely on merit

You learned that sociologists distinguish between two types of systems of stratification. _______systems accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels. ______ systems are based on achievement and allow for movement and interaction between layers and classes.

closed systems; open systems

Hope is desperate for the new designer purse that she saw while window shopping at her local mall. She knew every girl in school would covet her bag and wish to be like her. When she walked in, she whipped out her credit card, and purchased the $5,000 bag. This kind of purchasing is called:

conspicuous consumption

Chris and Pat stated dating and eventually decided to get married. Both Chris and Pat come from a middle-class family. What term is used to describe a marriage between people from the same social class?

endogamous marriage

Women who are single heads of household tend to have a lower income and lower standard of living than their married or single male counterparts. This is a worldwide phenomenon known as ...what?

feminization of poverty

Which factor is considered when evaluating someone's standard of living?

income, employment, class

Elisa graduated from college with a double major and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society. She was then offered a job in New York where she worked 12 hours a day and produced excellent results. Within two years she had over 100 employees working under her. Elisa's hard work was rewarded with a raise and a bonus. This form of promotion is based on the principles of:

meritocracy

Social mobility refers to what?

refers to the ability of individuals to change positions within a social stratification system

Structural mobility happens when societal changes enable a group of people to move up or down social class ladder. Structural mobility is attributed to changes in - what?

society as a whole

In the nineteenth century, what created unprecedented wealth in Western Europe and North America and was greatly responsible for the global stratification we see today?

the Industrial Revolution

The Davis-Moore Thesis states what?

the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work

Mohit spent his days combing through garbage in Mumbai, India with his brothers and sisters. Sometimes he would find food, or something to sell for money. He never tried to overcome his lower-class status because he had seen his friends try and fail. So, he accepted his fate, and tried to live life as best he could in a closed society. Mohit is an example of someone living under what kind of system?

A caste system

What does the term absolute poverty refer to?

an economic condition in which a family or individual cannot afford basic necessities, such as food and shelter, so that day-to-day survival is in

GNI PPP, or gross national income divided by purchasing power parity, helps measure what?

average relative income of a resident of that country helps researchers accurately compare countries' standard of living