Exam 3 (Chapters 6 and 7) - Plume Sociology 101

The upper class makes up just 1 percent of the total U.S. population, but its total net worth is greater than that of ____________ of the rest of the population.

90 percent

Today using the wrong fork to eat a salad at a dinner party would not usually qualify as deviance. Why not?

It is not a serious enough norm violation to provoke sanctions

Which of the following is NOT one of the basic principles of social stratification?

Low-level groups often have access to all the rewards and privileges of higher level groups.

Why are people more likely to marry individuals with social and cultural backgrounds very similar to their own?

NOT parents and other family members exert pressure to marry within the group AND NOT People spend a great deal of time seeking out similar individuals.

If an upper-middle-class white college student is sentenced to rehab for the same drug crime that a lower-class black man is sentenced to jail for committing, what might a conflict theorist conclude about deviance?

The rules are applied unequally, and those with power or influence are punished much less harshly.

When studying deviance, sociologists often focus on the most obvious and extreme forms of deviant behavior. What are the consequences of this approach?

The values and norms of the powerful are left unexamined, while the deviance of the poor is scrutinized.

What sort of social mobility is possible in a caste system?

There is little or no chance of social mobility.

What is realistic about "Cinderella stories" like the film Pretty Woman?

When class boundaries are crossed, women usually marry up, while men marry down.

Being born into a lower social class means that an individual will be:

all of the above

What general predictions can be made about a person's life chances if all that is known is her social class?

all of the above

Which kinds of departures from the norm can have a stigmatizing effect on an individual's identity?

all of the above

Emile Durkheim worried that, in an increasingly fragmented modern world, individuals would feel less and less connected to groups, which would lead to:

anomie, or normlessness.

Poverty can be defined in either relative or absolute terms. How does relative deprivation measure poverty?

by comparing the poor to more affluent members of society

Traditionally most of the sociological literature on deviance focuses on:

crime

If an individual takes adult education classes, attends lectures and concerts, or travels to Europe, what might he be trying to gain more of?

cultural capital

In House of Yes, a play by Wendy MacLeod, the character Marty brings his fiancée, Lesly, to meet his family. She comes from a different class, which leads to exchanges like this one between Lesly, Marty, and Marty's two siblings, Anthony and Jackie:Anthony: Would you like a glass of Liebfraumilch? Lesly: No thank you. I'll just have a glass of wine. Marty: That's the name of the wine. Lesly: Oh! [laughs] I don't speak French. Jackie: Who does? Anthony: You do. Jackie: Oh, that's right, I do.According to Pierre Bourdieu, Marty's siblings are unhappy with Lesly because she doesn't have enough:

cultural capital

In order for a behavior, trait, or belief to be considered deviant, it must:

depart from a norm and generate a negative reaction

The parents of a deviant child often want to find some way to excuse their offspring's behavior, and it's common to hear them say, "He just fell in with a bad crowd." Which symbolic interactionist theory of deviance does this explanation most closely resemble?

differential association

The fact that many individuals who engage in deviant behaviors have never associated with other deviants is evidence against which theory?

differential association theory

According to Karl Marx, what social relations matter in a capitalist system?

economic relations

A reporter, who covers the police beat at a newspaper, changes careers. She becomes an editor of nonfiction books and is paid the same salary as she was at the newspaper. What has she experienced?

horizontal social mobility

What do sociologists call it when an individual changes her career but remains within the same social class?

horizontal social mobility

Social mobility that occurs over the course of an individual's lifetime is called:

intragenerational mobility

The difference between a person's ascribed status and his achieved status is measured in terms of his:

intragenerational mobility.

What sort of jobs can support a middle-class lifestyle in America today?

jobs in the service, information, and technology sectors

It is often said that you can always tell a millionaire by her shoes. She may dress like a slob in every other respect, but someone from the upper class is bound to have expensive, custom-made footwear. Whether this is true or not, it helps demonstrate the way that we:

make split-second judgments about who people are and what social status they occupy based on their appearances.

Today ecoterrorists in America have taken many radical actions, including burning down ski lodges, blowing up Hummers, freeing lab animals, and chaining themselves to trees. These actions are often seen as extremely deviant, but many of the perpetrators believe that in the future they will be hailed as heroes, in which case their actions will be seen as

positive deviance.

When we compare the salaries of the worst paid members of a corporation with the salary of the CEO, what sort of measure of poverty are we using?

relative deprivation

What system of stratification is commonly used in capitalist societies?

social class

The folk-pop singer Jewel is famous for having lived in her van when she first moved to San Diego and started performing in a coffee shop. Soon after she was signed by Atlantic Records, her advance allowed her to rent a house and buy a new car. What class-based phenomenon is this an example of?

social mobility

Sociologists often point out that systems of stratification in the United States systematically favor white men. Sometimes people contest this, pointing to wealthy and powerful black women like Oprah Winfrey or Toni Morrison. A valid counterpoint to this argument is that:

stratification is a characteristic of a society, rather than a reflection of individual differences.

Although the United States lost many jobs in the recession of the late 2000s, many people are optimistic that the lost jobs will be replaced with others. However, even if the optimists are right, this shift in the economy may permanently alter the class status of many, as jobs being lost are largely in manufacturing, and new jobs are often in information technology, suggesting that the newly unemployed will have trouble competing for newly created jobs. If this is the case, what is it called?

structural mobility

What do sociologists call it when large numbers of people move up or down the social class ladder as a result of changes to society as a whole?

structural mobility

Although we usually think of social mobility as a result of individual effort, during the "dot-com boom" of the late 1990s, many people became instant millionaires. This is an example of:

structural mobility.

What social class do "white-collar" workers (workers employed in technical and lower-management positions) belong to?

the middle class

How do observers determine someone's socioeconomic status when meeting them for the first time?

their speech and gestures

Which of the following is true of the upper class in the United States today?

they are a largely self-sustaining group and rarely add new members

What do most Americans claim about their class status?

they are middle class

An accountant with a college degree and a license from the state accounting board works for the Department of Defense as a senior auditor. He makes about $100,000 a year and will soon retire with benefits and a pension. What class would you expect him to belong to?

upper middle class

What sort of social mobility often results from losing a job?

vertical social mobility