Date post: | 20-Dec-2014 |
Category: |
Technology |
Upload: | mhyca-macalinao |
View: | 449 times |
Download: | 4 times |
social inequality
social inequality
social inequality exists when we see people
having unequal access to valued
resources, goods, and services in a society
social inequality
social inequality is significant force in
our lives, it influences our chances of going
to college, graduating from it, getting a
good job, or living a healthy and long life
social inequality
social inequality may appear between rich
and poor, between dominant and
minority groups, between the sexes
and between the old and the young
social stratification
it is a division of society into
categories with some getting more
rewards than others: wealth, power,
prestige or whatever is highly valued by
the society
bases of stratificationwealth: karl marx divided industrial society into two major and one minor classes: the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie
marx differentiated them on the basis of two criteria: whether or not they own the “means of production” – tools, factories, offices and stores – and whether or not they hire others to work for them
bases of stratificationpower: the ability to get people to do things they otherwise would not do – is associated with wealth
most sociologists agree that people with more wealth tend to have more power
bases of stratificationprestige: sociologists call this kind of stratification a status system
prestige is subjective, depending for its existence on how a person is perceived by others
occupation seems to be the most important source of presitge
what is class?classes are groupings across society
involving inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, income,
prestige, working conditions, and lifestyles and culture
class is a category of people who own or do not own the means of
production, or have about the same amount of income, power and
prestige
identifying classessociologists have devised three
different methods for identifying what our class is:
1. reputational method: asks what do others think of us?
2. subjective method: asks what do we think of ourselves?
3. objective method: asks what do we do, what do we have and
how do we live?
identifying classessociologists have devised three
different methods for identifying what our class is:
1. reputational method: asks what do others think of us?
2. subjective method: asks what do we think of ourselves?
3. objective method: asks what do we do, what do we have
and how do we live?
class profiles1. upper class: “people who have
really made it”, they include the old rich, the celebrity rich, the anonymous
rich, and the run-of-the-mill rich
2. upper-middle class: “people who are doing very well”, they are professional
people, they have very large homes, often vacation in europe, and belong
to semi exclusive clubs
class profiles3. middle-middle class: “people who have achieved the middle-class dream”, although having a lot more than the necessities, they
don’t have many luxuries, they are suburbanites living in a three-bedroom
house with a family tv room, each summer they head for the mountain or the beach
4. lower-middle class: “people who have comfortable life”, these folks pay their bills
on time and even manage to salt something away for a rainy day, they own a six-room,
single-family house in a not-too-fashionable suburb
class profiles5. upper-lower class: “people who are just
getting along”, often the husband is a factory worker, the wife a waitress or store clerk,
they rent a small house or large apartment, they own a more-than-ten-year-old car, a tv
set, and a clothes washer, but not a dishwasher
6. middle-lower class: “people who are having a real hard time”, these men and women are
the working poor, proud that they are working and not on the public dole, they are likely to live in a walkup in an old apartment building, the husband could be a custodian,
the wife a cleaning lady
class profiles7. lower-lower class: “people
who are poor”, most of these families are on welfare, they live in
the poorest section of the inner city, cockroaches come out at
night in the tiny kitchens of their one-bedroom apartments
correlates of classlife chances: we can see the impact of class on life chances in the titanic tragedy; in 1912, on the night when the ship sank into the atlantic ocean, social class was a major determinant of who survived and who died; among females on board, 3 percent of the first-class passengers drowned, compared with 16 percent of the second-class and 45 percent of the third-class passengers
correlates of classlifestyles: tastes, preferences, and ways of living
social mobilitythe movement of one occupational status to another
vertical mobility: moving up or down the status ladderhorizontal mobility: movement from one job to another within the same category
raceas a biological concept, race refers to a large category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics – caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid
defined sociologically, race is a group of people who are perceived by a given society as biologically different from others
ethnic groupsa collection of people who share a distinctive cultural heritage and a consciousness of their common bond