Chapter 7 "Social Stratification"

class consciousness

Marx's term for awareness of a common identity based on one's position in the means of production

false class consciousness

Marx's term to refer to workers identifying with the interests of capitalists

Structural mobility

movement up or down the social class ladder that is due more to changes in the structure of society than to the actions of individuals

What is slavery?

whose essential characteristic is that some individuals own other people

proletariat

working class

Social mobility

movement up or down the social class ladder

bourgeoisie

middle class

Why did Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore conclude was the reason why stratification was inevitable?

1. For society to function, its positions must be filled. 2. Some positions are more important than others. 3. The more important positions must be filled by the more qualified people. 4. To motivate the more qualified people to fill these positions, they must offer greater rewards.

What is the relationship between occupation and prestige?

1. They pay more. 2. They require more education. 3. They involve more abstract thought. 4. They offer greater autonomy (independence, or self-direction).

causes of slavery?

1. debt- In some societies, creditors would enslave people who could not pay their debts. 2. crime- Instead of being killed, a murderer or thief might be enslaved by the victim's family as compensation for their loss. 3. war- When one group of people conquered another, they often enslaved some of the vanquished. Historian Gerda Lerner (1986) notes that women were the first people enslaved through war- fare. When tribal men raided another group, they killed the men, raped the women, and then brought the women back as slaves. The women were valued for sexual purposes, for reproduction, and for their labor.

What is bonded labor a.k.a. indentured servitude?

A gray area between slavery and contract labor

How are children especially affected by poverty?

A major reason is the large number of births to women who are not married, about 1.7 million a year. This number has increased sharply, going from one in twenty in 1960 to eight of twenty today. With the total jumping eight times, single women now account for 41 percent of all U.S. births

racial caste systems.

All whites, even if they were poor and uneducated, considered themselves to have a higher status than all African Americans.

What did C. Wright Mills mean by the power elite?

C. Wright Mills' term for the top people in U.S. corporations, military, and politics who make the nation's major decisions

life chances (Max Weber)

Life chances refer to opportunities and probabilities for various life outcomes

maquiladora

Factories built by US companies in Mexico near the US border to take advantage of much lower labor costs in Mexico.

global stratification

First World referred to the industrialized capitalist nations Second World to the communist (or socialist) countries Third World to any nation that did not fit into the first two categories. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 made these terms outdated. In addition, although first, second, and third did not mean "best," "better," and "worst," they implied it.

What flaws did Melvin Tumin claim to identify in Davis and Moore's theory?

First, how do we know that the positions that offer the higher rewards are more important? A heart surgeon, for example, saves lives and earns much more than a garbage collector, but this doesn't mean that garbage collectors are less important to society. By helping to prevent contagious diseases, garbage collectors save more lives than heart surgeons do. We need independent methods of measuring importance, and we don't have them. Second, if stratification worked as Davis and Moore described it, society would be a meritocracy; that is, positions would be awarded on the basis of merit. But is this what we have? The best predictor of who goes to college, for example, is not ability but income: The more a family earns, the more likely their children are to go to college (Bailey and Dynarski 2011). Not merit, then, but money—another form of the inequality that is built into society. In short, people's positions in society are based on many factors other than merit. Third, if social stratification is so functional, it ought to benefit almost everyone. Yet social stratification is dysfunctional for many. Think of the people who could have made valuable contributions to society had they not been born in slums, dropped out of school, and taken menial jobs to help support their families. Then there are the many who, born female, are assigned "women's work," thus ensuring that they do not maximize their mental abilities.

Did Weber agree with or disagree with Marx?

For Marx, the only distinction that counted was property, more specifically people's relationship to the means of production. Whether we are owners or workers decides everything else, because this determines our lifestyle and shapes our orientation to life. Weber, in contrast, argued that social class has three components—a combination of property, power, and prestige.

What is Karl Marx's argument about class stratification?

From his point of view, the people in power are not there because of superior traits, as the functionalists would have us believe. This view is an ideology that members of the elite use to justify their being at the top—and to seduce the oppressed into believing that their welfare depends on keeping quiet and following authorities.

What, to Marx, determines social class?

Karl Marx (1818-1883) concluded that social class depends on a single factor: people's relationship to the means of production

Least Industrialized Nations?

Least development countries

Max Weber: Property, Power, and Prestige

Property (or wealth), said Weber, is certainly significant in determining a person's standing in society. On this point he agreed with Marx. But, added Weber, ownership is not the only significant aspect of property. For example, some powerful people, such as managers of corporations, control the means of production even though they do not own them. If managers can control property for their own benefit—awarding themselves huge bonuses and magnificent perks—it makes no practical difference that they do not own the property that they use so generously for their own benefit. Power, the second element of social class, is the ability to control others, even over their objections. Weber agreed with Marx that property is a major source of power, but he added that it is not the only source. For example, prestige can be turned into power. Two well-known examples are actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became governor of California, and Ronald Reagan, who was elected governor of California and president of the United States. Figure 7.3 shows how property, power, and prestige are interrelated. Prestige, the third element in Weber's analysis, is often derived from property and power, since people tend to admire the wealthy and powerful. Prestige, however, can be based on other factors. Olympic gold medalists, for example, might not own property or be powerful, yet they have high prestige. Some are even able to exchange their prestige for property—such as those who are paid a small fortune for endorsing a certain brand of sportswear or for claiming that they start their day with "the breakfast of champions." In other words, property and prestige are not one-way streets: Although property can bring prestige, prestige can also bring property.

Is slavery still a problem in the world today?

Slavery continues to rear its ugly head in several parts of the world (Crane 2012). The Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Niger, and Sudan

Industrializing Nations

Soviet Union

Most Industrialized Nations

The Most Industrialized Nations are the United States and Canada in North America, and china

What are the conditions of slavery? Are they uniform across time and place?

The conditions of slavery have varied widely around the world. In some places, slavery was temporary. Slaves of the Israelites were set free in the year of jubilee, which occurred every fifty years. slavery was a lifelong condition. Some criminals, for example, became slaves when they were given life sentences as oarsmen on Roman war- ships. There they served until death, which often came quickly to those in this exhaust- ing service.

World System Theory

The first group consists of the core nations, the countries that industrialized first (Britain, France, Holland, and later Germany), which grew rich and powerful. The second group is the semiperiphery. The economies of these nations, located around the Mediterranean, stagnated because they grew dependent on trade with the core nations. The economies of the third group, the periphery, or fringe nations, developed even less. These are the eastern European countries, which sold cash crops to the core nations.

Semiperiphery

The second group is the semiperiphery. The economies of these nations, located around the Mediterranean, stagnated because they grew dependent on trade with the core nations.

What is the poverty line

The statistical threshold that denotes whether an individual or family possesses resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living such as food, shelter, and clothing.

Intergenerational mobility

Think of intergenerational mobility like this: it would be the difference between where you end up in the class system from that of your parents. So, it is change that takes place in the social position of family members from one generation to the next.

how is wealth distributed in the United States?

Unequally, millions of men and women struggle to pay rent, buy food, find work, and afford basic medical care

What is the difference between wealth and income?

Wealth and income are sometimes confused, but they are not the same. Where wealth is a person's net worth, income is a flow of money.

caste system

a form of social stratification in which people's statuses are lifelong conditions deter- mined by birth

Exchange Mobility

a large number of people moving up the social class ladder, while a large number move down; it is as though they have exchanged places, and the social class system shows little change

HOW DID THE WORLD'S NATIONS BECOME STRATIFIED?

a simple model was used to depict global stratification the poorer nations have fewer resources than the richer nations. As with many commonsense answers, however, this one falls short. Many of the Industrializing and Least Industrialized Nations are rich in natural resources, while one Most Industrialized Nation, Japan, has few.

how is income distributed in the United States?

a striking image of income inequality in the United States. Another picture emerges if we divide the U.S. population into five equal groups and rank them from highest to lowest income. As Figure 7.6 on the next page shows, the top 20 percent of the population receive half (50.2 percent) of all income in the United States. In contrast, the bottom 20 percent of Americans receive only 3.3 percent of the nation's income.

meritocracy

a system in which promotion is based on individual ability or achievement

ideology

beliefs about the way things ought to be that justify social arrangements

Social stratification

is the division of large numbers of people into layers according to their relative power, property, income, and prestige. Social stratification can apply to nations within the world-system or to people within a nation, society, or group.

status inconsistency

ranking high on some dimensions of social status and low on others; also called status discrepancy

status consistency

ranking high or low on all three dimensions of social class

What forms did slavery in the Americas take?

slaves became the property of the slave owners

What is power?

the ability to carry out your will, even over the resistance of others

globalization of capitalism?

the adoption of capitalism around the world— has created extensive ties among the world's nations.

culture of poverty

the assumption that the values and behaviors of the poor make them fundamentally different from other people, that these factors are largely responsible for their poverty, and that parents perpetuate poverty across generations by passing these characteristics to their children

What is the Horatio Alger Myth?

the belief that due to limitless possibilities anyone can get ahead if he or she tries hard enough

core countries

the most powerful capitalist nations

periphery

the periphery, or fringe nations, developed even less. These are the eastern European countries, which sold cash crops to the core nations.

endogamy

the practice of marrying within one's own group

colonialism

the process by which one nation takes over another nation, usually for the purpose of exploiting its labor and natural resources

means of production

the tools, factories, land, and investment capital used to produce wealth

global superclass

the top members of the capitalist class, who, through their worldwide interconnections, make the major decisions that affect the world

economic colony

to exploit the nation's people and resources for the benefit of the "mother" country.