Society: The Basics 13th Edition Ch. 8 Social Stratification

The American Dream: Still a Reality?

1) For may workers, earnings have stalled. 2) More jobs offer little income. 3) The recent recession brought economic decline. 4) Young people are remaining at home.

Aristocracy in England

first estate, second estate, and third estate.

Elizabeth Bott

found that most working-class couples divide their responsibilities according to traditional gender roles. Middle-class couples, by contrast, are more egalitarian, sharing more activities and expressing greater intimacy.

Jay Zagorsky

found that people who marry and stay married accumulate about twice as much wealth as people who remain single or who divorce. Reason for this difference include the fact that couple who live together typically enjoy double incomes and also pay only half the bills the two partners would have if they were single and living is separate households.

Average-Middle Class

have less prestige, do white-collar work, and most attend college.

Income, Wealth, and Power Inequality

-Top 20% earn as much as bottom 80% combined. -Top 5% earn 22% of total income, more than bottom 40% combined. -Top 1% owns nearly 40% of the wealth. -Median household wealth of whites is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Latino households.

Five Research Points About Social Mobility in the United States.

1) Social mobility over the past century has been fairly high. Which is what you would expect in an industrial class system. 2) Within a single generation, social mobility is usually small. Most social mobility involves small movement within one class level rather than large movement between classes. 3) The long-term trend in social mobility has been upward. Industrialization, which greatly expanded the US economy, and growth of white-collar work over the course of the twentieth century have raised living standards. 4) Since the 1970's, social mobility has been uneven. Real income rose during the 20th century until the 1970's. Since then, real income has risen and fallen, with overall smaller gains than was the case before. 5) The short-term trend in social mobility has been downward. Since 2007, the middle class has become smaller as income and wealth have declined. As a result, 85 percent of people who identify themselves as "middle class" say that keeping the same standard of living has become more difficult.

Four Stages of Caste Systems

1) With the exception of farming, families in each caste perform one type of work, as priests, soldiers, barbers, leather workers, street sweepers, and so on. 2) a caste system demands that people marry others of the same ranking. Sociologists call this "endogamous" marriages. 3) caste guides everyday life by keeping people in the company of "their own kind." Norms reinforce this practice by teaching, for example, that a "purer" person of a higher caste position is "polluted" by contact with someone of lower standing. 4) Caste systems rest on powerful cultural beliefs.

England's Class System Today

1) nobility: Queen and King, parliament, the rich. 2) middle class: earn comfortable incomes from professions and businesses, have investments in stocks and bonds. 3) working class: earn modest incomes through service work or manual labor. 4) lower class: poor who lack steady work or who work full time but are paid too little to live comfortably.

Third Estate

97% of the population (the rest of France/Europe) They consisted of the bourgeoisie, the san-culottes and the peasants; they paid high taxes and had no special privileges

Values and Attitudes

Affluent people, with greater education and financial security, display greater tolerance than working-class people.

Max Weber's Multidimensional view on Class, Status, and Power

He viewed social stratification as involving three dimensions of inequality. 1st - Class position - economic inequality. 2nd - Status - social prestige. 3rd - Power.

Schooling Inequality

Industrial societies have expanded opportunities for schooling, but some people still receive much more than others. Schooling affects both occupation and income because most of the better-paying white-collar jobs require a college degree.

Explaining Stratification: Social-Conflict Theories

Macro-level analysis.Social-conflict analysis argues that rather than benefiting society as a whole, social stratification benefits some people and disadvantages others. Draws heavily on the ideals of Max Weber and Karl Marx. According to this theory, stratification is a division of a society's resources that benefits some people and harms others. Social positions reflects the way society divides resources. Believes that unequal rewards are not fair. Unequal rewards only serve to divide society, creating haves and have-nots. There is widespread opposition to social inequality.

Explaining Stratification: Symbolic Interaction Theory

Micro-level analysis. Stratification guides people's interactions in everyday life. According to this theory, the reason for our social position is the products we consume all say something about social position. Believes that maybe unequal rewards are fair. People may or may not define inequality as fair. People may view their social positions as a measure of self-worth, justifying inequality in terms of personal differences. Explores how inequality shapes everyday life, explains that we size people up by looking for clues to their social standing.

Four Main Systems of Stratification

Slavery, Caste system, class system, and estate system.

Karl Marx: Class Conflict

Social stratification is rooted in people's relationship to the means of production. He believed that social stratification existed because of the apposing forces of Capitalists and Proletarians. Believed that eventually the working majority would overthrow the capitalist once and for all. Capitalism would bring about its own downfall. Because it makes workers poorer and poorer and gives them little control over what they make or how they make it. Under capitalism, work produces only alienation.

Upper-Upper Class

The blue bloods less then 1% of the populations. Old money

Fragmentation of the Capitalist Class

Today, tens of millions of stockholders, rather than single families, own most large companies. Daily operations are in the hands of a large class of managers, who may or may not be major stockholders. With stock widely held-about half of U.S. households own at least some stocks-more and more people have a direct stake in the capitalist system.

Social Mobility

a change in position within the social hierarchy. Some people, especially in industrial societies, experience this. Can be upward or downward. Most people move horizontally from one job to another, usually of the same social standing.

Intragenerational Social Mobility

a change in social position occurring during a person's lifetime. Latin for "within."

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

a composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality. Max Weber characterized social stratification in industrial societies as a multidimensional ranking rather than a hierarchy of clearly defined classes.

The Kuznets Curve

a formula showing that inequality increases during the early stages of capitalist development, then declines, and eventually stabilizes at a relatively low level; advanced by the economist Simon Kuznets. New data is proving that the long-term trend predicted by Kuznets is possibly wrong, as shown by the United States suffering from greater economic inequality.

Absolute Poverty

a lack of resources that is life-threatening.

Ideology

a major reason the social hierarchies endure the test of time. Cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangement, including patterns of inequality. Ex. the idea that the rich are smart and the poor are lazy is ideological to the extent that it supports inequality by defining it as fair. Changes along with a society's economy and technology. Agrarian societies depend on most of their people performing a lifetime of labor, they develop caste systems that make carrying out the duties of a person's social position or "station" a moral responsibility.

Apartheid

a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.

The Working Class

a social class broadly composed of people working in blue-collar, or manual, occupations. Usually have no wealth and are subject to suffer due to illness, injury, and job loss.

The Lower Class

a social class composed of those who work part time or not at all and whose household income is typically low.

The Middle Class

a social class made up of skilled workers, professionals, business people, and wealthy farmers. Much more racial and ethnic diversity than the upper class.

Primogeniture

a system of inheritance in which the eldest son in a family received all of his father's land. The nobility remained powerful and owned land, while the 2nd and 3rd sons were forced to seek fortune elsewhere. Many of them turned to the New World for their financial purposes and individual wealth. This was used to prevent the dividing up of the fathers land between his heirs.

Estate System

a system of stratification under which peasants were required to work land leased to them by nobles in exchange for military protection and other services. Also known as feudalism.

Plato and Marx on Ideology

according to Plato, every culture considers some type of inequality fair. Although Marx understood this, he was far more critical of inequality than Plato. Marx criticized capitalist societies for defending wealth and power in the hands of a few as a "law of the market place." Capitalist law defines the right to own property, which encourages money to remain within the same families from one generation to the next. In short, culture and institutions combine to support a society's elite, which is why established hierarchies last such a long time.

Family and Gender

affluent families pass on advantages in the form of "cultural capital" to their children which teaches them to express their individuality and imagination more freely. Class also shapes the division of family responsibilities, with lower-class people maintaining more traditional gender roles.

Capitalist

also known as the bourgeoisie, a French word meaning "town dwellers." People who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits.

Homelessness

an extreme form of poverty defined by lack of permanent shelter to live in.

Conspicuous Consumption

buying and using products because of the "statement" they make about social position.

Three Types of Class Systems

caste system, class system, meritocracy.

Horizontal Social Mobility

changing jobs at the same class level.

Oscar Lewis

concluded that the poor become trapped in a culture of poverty, a lower-class subculture that can destroy people's ambition to improve their lives. Socialized in poor families, children become resigned to their situation, producing a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.

Melvin Tumin

disagreed with Davis and Moore's assumption that the relative importance of a particular job can always be measured by how much money or prestige is given. Wondered 1) how we assess the importance of a particular occupation. Do rewards actually reflect the contribution someone make to society. Does the high rewards our society gives to physicians result partly from deliberate efforts by medical schools to limit the supply of physicians and thereby increase the demand for their services. 2) claimed that Davis and Moore ignore how the caste elements of social stratification can prevent the development of individual talent. Born to privilege, rich children have opportunities to develop their abilities, which is something many gifted poor children never have. 3) living in a society that places so much emphasis on money, we tend to over-estimate the importance of high-paying work; how much do stockbrokers or people who trade international currencies really contribute to the well-being of people in our society? For this reason, it is difficult for us to see the value of any work not oriented toward making money, such as parenting, creative writing, playing in a symphony, or just being a good friend to someone in need. 4) by suggesting the social stratification benefits all of society, the Davis-Moore thesis ignores how social inequality can harm society and even promote conflict. Some inequality can promote people to strive to do better, but if there is too much inequality, people can start to see their society as unjust and in need of a revolutionary change.

Gerhard Lenski on Social Stratification and Technology: A Global Perspective

draws on Gerhard Lenski's model of sociocultural evolution. Looks at the relationship between a society's technology and its type of social stratification. Analyzes through 1) Hunting and Gathering Societies. 2) Horticultural, Pastoral, and Agrarian Societies. 3) Industrial Societies.

Downward Social Mobility

dropping out of school, losing a job, or becoming divorced (especially for women) can cause this type of social mobility.

Upward Social Mobility

earning a college degree, landing a higher paying job, or marrying someone who earns a good income can cause this kind of mobility.

Income

earnings from work or investments. Distributed unequally throughout the population. 90% of the population makes less thank $18k per year while the top 1% make $1.6mil annually.

Russian Revolution

ended the feudal estate system ruled by a hereditary nobility and transferred most farms, factories, and other productive property from private ownership to state control. Lead by Karl Marx, who believed that private ownership of property was the source of social stratification, Soviet leaders boasted of becoming a classless society. However, based on their job titles, the Soviet people were already stratified into four unequal categories. At the top were high government officials, known as apparatchiks. Next came the Soviet intelligentsia, including lower government officials, college professors, scientists, physicians, and engineers. Below them were manual workers and , at the lowest level, the rural peasantry. The act of putting control of factories, farms, colleges, and hospitals under state control did create greater economic equality (although with sharp differences in power) than in capitalist societies such as the U.S.

Social Stratification

every society is marked by inequality, with some people having significantly more money, schooling, health, and power than others. Defined as a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. Based on four principles: 1) Is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences. 2) Carries over from generation to generation. 3) Is universal but variable. 4) Involves not just inequality but beliefs as well.

A Higher Standard of Living

explains,a century ago, most US workers were in factories or on farms in blue-collar occupations. Today most workers are in white-collar occupations. Most white-collar workers do not think of themselves as the working proletariat. The typical worker today is much better off than a century ago, and example of structural social mobility.

Mikhail Gorbachev

head of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. His liberalization effort improved relations with the West, but he lost power after his reforms led to the collapse of Communist governments in eastern Europe. He came to power with his economic reform program known as Perestroika (restructuring). Found that even though the Soviet system had significantly reduced economic inequality, overall living standards lagged far behind those of other industrial nations. Tried to generate economic growth by reducing the centralized control of the economy, which had proved to be inefficient. People throughout Eastern Europe blamed their poverty and lack of basic freedoms on the repressive ruling class of Communist party officials. This caused the toppling of socialist governments causing the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, with its largest republic remaking itself as the Russian Federation.

Four Factors Based on The Difference Class Makes

health, values and attitudes, politics, family and gender.

White-Collar Occupations

higher-prestige jobs that involve mostly mental activity.

William Julius Wilson

holds that society is primarily responsible for poverty. Points to the loss of jobs in our inner cities as the primary cause of poverty, claiming that there is simply not enough work to support families. Views any lack of trying on the part of the poor as a result of little opportunity rather than as a cause of poverty. Sees Oscar Lewis' view as "blaming the victim."

Societal Factors of Homelessness

homelessness is a result of low wages and a lack of affordable housing. Supporters of this position point out that 37% of the homeless consist of families, since 2007 these numbers have been steadily rising.

The Upper Class

in a society stratified by social class, a group of people who have high income and prestige and who own vast amounts of property and other forms of wealth, such as owners of large corporations, top financiers, rich celebrities and politicians, and members of prestigious families.

Industrial Societies

industrialization pushes inequality downward. Prompted by the need to develop people's talents, meritocracy takes hold and weakens the power of traditional elites. Industrial productivity also raises the living standards of the historically poor majority. Specialized work demands schooling for all, driving down illiteracy. A literate population demands a greater voice in political decision making, reducing social inequality and lessening men's domination over women.

Health

is closely related to social standing. Children born into poor families are twice as likely to die from disease, neglect, accidents, or violence during their first year of life as children born into privileged families. People with above-average incomes are almost twice as likely as low-income people to describe their health as excellent. Richer people live on average 5 years longer than the poor because they eat more nutritious food, live in safer environments, and have better health care.

Blue-Collar Occupations

lower-prestige jobs that involve mostly manual labor.

Explaining Stratification: Structural-Functional Theory

macro-level analysis. According to this theory, social stratification plays a vital part in the operation of society. Social stratification is universal because of its vital and functional consequences. This argument was presented by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945). Stratification is a system of unequal rewards that benefits society as a whole. According to this theory, social position reflects personal talents and abilities in a competitive economy. Believes that unequal rewards are fair. Unequal rewards boost economic production by encouraging people to work harder and try new ideas. Linking greater rewards to more important work is widely accepted. In a caste system, people are rewarded for performing the duties of their position at birth. In a class system, unequal rewards attract the ablest people to the most important jobs and encourage effort.

Personal Traits of the Homeless

most homeless people have a substance abuse problem/mental disorder.

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.

Greater Legal Protections

over the past century, new laws made the workplace safer, and unemployment insurance, disability protection, and social security now provide workers with greater financial security.

Lower-Upper Class

people who have become wealthy because of their own abilities, the working rich. Reap almost all the same benefits as old money does, except they are not allowed entry into the same clubs and associations as old money families.

Proletarians

people who sell their labor for wages. Peasants. Their wealth is family.

Working Poor

people who work but whose earnings are not enough to lift them above the poverty line.

Explaining Poverty: Blame Society

poverty is caused by the lack of available jobs which thus causes a lack of trying by the poor to better themselves. Trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Endogamous

refers to a population in which individuals breed only with other members of that population or social class.

Upper-Middle Class

social class consisting of mostly highly educated professionals and managers who have considerable financial stability; they constitute about 14 percent of the U.S. population.

Structural Social Mobility

social mobility in so-called classless societies. A shift in the social position of large numbers of people due more to changes in society itself than to individual efforts. In the twentieth century, there was as much upward social mobility in the Soviet Union as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Rapidly expanding industry and government drew many poor rural peasants into factories and offices. This trend illustrates what sociologist call _________.

Caste System

social stratification based on ascription, or birth. Is closed because birth alone determines a person's entire future, with little or no social mobility based on individual effort. People live out their lives in the rigid categories into which they were born, without the possibility for change for the better or worse.

Class System

social stratification based on both birth and individual achievement. More open than caste systems, so people who gain schooling and skills may experience social mobility. As a result, class distinctions become blurred, and blood relatives may have different social standings.

Meritocracy

social stratification based on personal merit. Because industrial societies need to develop a broad range of abilities beyond farming, stratification is based not just on the accident of birth but also on merit, which includes a person's knowledge, abilities, and effort. In such a system social position would depend entirely on a person's performance, reflecting both ability and effort. Such a system would have ongoing social mobility, blurring social categories as individuals continuously move up or down in the system, depending on their last performance.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

societies whose mode of subsistence is gained from hunting animals, fishing, and gathering edible plants. Groups survival depends on sharing, thus no categories of people are better off than others. The Stratification is minor and based off of sized and hunting/birthing ability.

Ralf Dahrendorf's Take on Why No Marxist Revolution?

suggested four reasons. 1) Fragmentation of the Capitalist Class. 2) A higher standard of living. 3) more worker organizations. 4) greater legal protections.

Horticultural, Pastoral, and Agrarian Societies

technological advances create surplus. Small elite controls the surplus in horticultural and pastoral societies. Inequality becomes even greater in large scale agricultural societies.

Slavery

the condition of being owned by another person and being made to work without wages.

Status Consistency

the degree of uniformity in a person's social standing across various dimensions of social inequality. A caste system has little social mobility and therefore has a high status consistency.

Aleination

the experience of isolation and misery resulting from powerlessness.

First Estate

the first class of French/European society made up of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.

Davis-Moore Thesis

the functional analysis claiming that social stratification has beneficial consequences for the operation of society. According to the creators of this thesis, this explains the fact that some form of social stratification exist in every form of society. Noted that modern societies have hundreds of occupational positions of varying importance. The greater the functional importance of a position, the more rewards a society attaches to it. This strategy promotes productivity and efficiency because rewarding important work with income, prestige, power, or leisure encourages people to do these jobs and to work better, longer, and harder. In short, unequal rewards ( the foundation of social stratification ) benefits society as a whole. Claims that any society can be egalitarian, but only to the extent that people are willing to let anyone perform any job. Suggest the reason stratification exists; it does not state precisely what rewards a society should give to any occupational position or how unequal rewards should be. It merely points out that positions a society considers crucial must offer enough rewards to draw talented people away from less important work.

Aristocracy

the highest class in certain societies, especially those holding hereditary titles or offices.

Relative Poverty

the lack of resources of some people in relation to those who have more.

Surface Value

the objective meaning or worth a reward has to an employee. Profit.

Ancestry, Race, and Gender Inequality

the richest individuals receive their wealth from ancestors while the poor receive nothing or debt. Race has shown that white people have a higher overall occupational standing than African Americans and also receive more schooling. Gender causes women to receive far less wealth, income, and occupational prestige than men.

Second Estate

the second class of French/European society made up of nobility.

Occupational Prestige Inequality

the subjective evaluation people give to jobs as better or worse than others. We commonly evaluate each other by the work we do, giving greater respect to those who do what we consider to be more important work and less to others with more modest jobs. In any society, high-prestige occupations go to privileged categories of people. Many jobs of lower-prestige are filled by women and people of color.

Wealth

the total value of money and other assets, minus outstanding debts. This is distributed even more unequally than income.

Feminization of Poverty

the trend of women making up an increasing proportion of the poor. Poor families headed by single women has increased drastically. Thus causing women and children to be the majority of the poor in the US and the world.

Surplus Value

the value of a worker's labor power, in Marxist theory, left over when an employer has repaid the cost of hiring the worker.

Explaining Poverty: Blame the Poor

this view holds that the poor are mostly responsible for their own poverty. According to this view, society offers plenty of opportunities to anyone who is able and willing to take advantage of them, and the poor are people who cannot or will not work due to a lack of skills, schooling, or motivation.

Politics

to protect their wealth, well-off people take a more conservative approach to economic issues, favoring lower taxes. But on social matters such as abortion and gay rights, highly educated people are more liberal. People of lower social standing, by contrast, tend to be economic liberals, favoring government programs that benefit them, but typically hold more conservative views on social issues. People with higher-incomes tend to vote and join political organizations than people with low-incomes.

Social Classes in the US

upper-upper class 1%, upper class 3%, upper-middle class 15%, middle class 25%, working class 30%, lower class (working poor) 16%.

Intergenerational Social Mobility

upward or downward social mobility of children in relation to their parents. Latin for "between." Shows long-term changes in society that affect everyone.

Caste and Class Systems

when comparing societies in terms of inequality, sociologist distinguish between "closed systems," which allow little change in social position, and "open systems," which permit much more social mobility. Closed systems are called "caste systems" and open systems are called "class systems."

More Worker Organizations

workers today have the right to form labor unions and other organizations that make demands of management, backed by threats of work slowdowns and strikes. As a result, labor disputes are settled without threatening the capitalist system.