CHAPTER 5
LECTURE OUTLINE
I.
Defining and Reconstructing Reality
• Social interaction refers to the way people respond to one another.
• Social structure refers to the way in which a society is organized into predictable
relationships.
• Ability to define social reality reflects a group’s power within society. Example:
Thomas’s definition of the situation.
II.
Elements of Social Structure
A.
B.
Statuses
• Refers to any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group
or society. A number of statuses can be held at the same time. Example:
President, son, and fruit picker.
1.
Ascribed and Achieved Status
• Ascribed status is generally assigned at birth without regard to a
person’s talents. Example: Race, gender, and age.
• Achieved status comes to us largely through our own efforts. Example:
Lawyer, pianist, convict, and social worker.
2.
Master Status
• Dominates other statuses and thereby determines a person’s general
position within society. Example: Arthur Ashe who died of AIDS.
Social Roles
1.
What Are Social Roles?
• A set of expectations for people who occupy a given social position or
status. Roles are a significant component of social structure. Example:
Police are expected to protect us and apprehend criminals.
2.
Role Conflict
• Occurs when incompatible expectations arise from two or more social
positions held by the same person. Example: newly promoted worker
who carries on a relationship with his former workgroup.
• Individuals moving into occupations that are not common among people
with their ascribed status. Example: Women in policing.
3.
Role Strain
• Difficulty arises when the same social position imposes conflicting
demands and expectations. Example: Navajo police officers.
C.
Groups
• Any number of people with similar norms, values, and expectations who interact
with one another. Example: Sports team or working group.
1.
Primary and Secondary Groups
• Charles Horton Cooley coined the term primary group to refer to a
small group characterized by intimate, face-to-face association and
cooperation.
• Primary groups include family members and those instrumental in a
person’s day-to-day life.
• The term secondary group refers to a formal, impersonal group in which
there is little social intimacy. See Table 3-1.
2.
In-Groups and Out-Groups
• An in-group is any group to which people feel they belong. Regarded as
anyone viewed as “we” or “us.”
• An out-group is any group to which people feel they do not belong.
• Conflict between in-groups and out-groups can be violent. Example:
Columbine High School in 1999.
3.
Reference Groups
• Any group that an individual uses as a standard for evaluating his or
herself and his or her own behavior.
• Two basic purposes: 1) serves a normative function by setting and
enforcing standards of conduct and belief, and 2) performs a comparison
function by serving as a standard against which people can measure
themselves and others.
D.
Social Networks
• A network is a series of social relationships that link people either directly or
indirectly to still more people. Example: Networking for employment.
E.
Virtual Worlds
• Influence of the Internet on social networks. Replacement of face-to-face
contact with text messaging, and Internet sites, especially among younger
generations. Example: Facebook, MySpace
• Virtual worlds allow for creations of online alternate personalities and virtual
experiences through the use of avatars and ineractive online virtual worlds.
Example: Second Life
F.
Social Institutions
• Organized patterns of beliefs and behavior centered on meeting basic social
needs such as replacing personnel (the family) and preserving order (the
government).
III.
IV.
Social Structure in Global Perspective
A.
Durkheim’s Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
• Mechanical solidarity exists in societies with a minimal division of labor. It
emphasizes group solidarity.
• Organic solidarity exists in societies with a complex division of labor. It
emphasizes mutual interdependence.
B.
Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
• The Gemeinschaft community is typical of rural life. Social interactions are
intimate and familiar.
• The Gesellschaft is an ideal type characteristic of modern life. Most people are
strangers and feel little in common with each other. See Table 5-1.
C.
Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach
• Lenski views human societies as undergoing change according to dominant
patterns (sociocultural evolution).
• Technology is critical to the way society is organized.
1.
Preindustrial Societies
• Hunting-and-gathering societies rely on available foods; technology is
minimal.
• Horticultural societies plant seeds and grow crops.
• Agrarian societies increase crop yields, and technological innovations
are more dramatic (the plow).
2.
Industrial Societies
• Society depends on mechanization to produce its goods and services.
Reliant on new inventions and the need for specialized knowledge.
3.
Postindustrial and Postmodern Societies
• A postindustrial society is technologically advanced. Its economic
system is primarily engaged in processing and controlling information.
• Postmodern societies are technologically sophisticated and preoccupied
with consumer goods and media images.
Understanding Organizations
A.
Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies
• A group designed for a special purpose and structured for maximum efficiency.
Example: The United States Postal Service, McDonald’s, or colleges.
• Formal organizations fulfill a variety of personal and social needs.
B.
Characteristics of a Bureaucracy
• A component of formal organization that uses rules and hierarchical ranking to
achieve efficiency.
• Max Weber viewed bureaucracy as being different from a family-run business.
He developed an ideal type of bureaucracy to serve as a standard for evaluation,
having these characteristics: division of labor, hierarchy of authority, written
rules and regulation, impersonality, and employment based on technical
qualifications.
C.
Bureaucracy and Organizational Culture
• Classical theory of formal organizations (scientific management approach)
suggests workers are motivated by economic rewards. Only physical constraints
limit worker productivity.
• Planning involves efficiency studies, not worker attitudes or satisfaction.
• Human relations approach emphasizes the role of people, communication, and
participation within a bureaucracy. Directed toward concerns of the workers.
Example: Hawthorne studies.
• Researchers today are studying new phenomena including the effects of women
and other minority group holding executive positions, effects of outsourcing,
the influence of the Internet and virtual reality on consumer preferences.
CHAPTER 6
LECTURE OUTLINE
I.
Social Control
• Refers to the techniques and strategies for preventing deviant human behavior in any
society.
• Family and peers socialize individuals to social norms. Example: Dress codes
• Government legislates and enforces social norms.
• Sanctions are penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm.
• Functionalists contend that people must respect social norms for society to function. By
contrast conflict theorists maintain that functioning of society benefits the powerful.
A.
Conformity and Obedience
• Stanley Milgram defined conformity as going along with peers who have no
special right to direct our behavior. Milgram defined obedience as compliance
with higher authorities in a hierarchal structure. Example: Military recruit.
• Obedience may result in behavior an individual may find unthinkable and would
likely not perform if acting on his or her own. Example: Milgram’s electric
shock experiment.
B.
Informal and Formal Social Control
• Informal social control is carried out casually by ordinary people through such
means as laughter, smiles, and ridicule. Example: Debate over spanking.
• Formal social control is carried out by authorized agents, such as police officers,
judges, school administrators, and employers. Example: Imprisonment.
C.
Law and Society
• Law is defined as governmental social control, which is directed at all members
of society.
• Some regulatory laws affect particular categories of people. Example: Fishing
regulations and corporate laws.
• Creation of law is a social process in response to perceived needs for formal
social control.
II.
What Is Deviance?
• Deviance is defined as behavior that violates the standard of conduct or expectations of
a group or society. Example: Criminals, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and the
mentally ill.
• Deviance involves violation of group norms.
• Deviance is not always negative. Example: Whistle blowers.
• Definitions of deviance are subject to social definitions within a society.
• Erving Goffman coined the term stigma, which refers to a label used to devalue
members of certain social groups. Example: Redheads or short people.
• People may be stigmatized for past behaviors. Example: Ex-cons.
III.
Explaining Deviance
• Early explanations centered on supernatural or genetic factors.
• In general, sociologists reject any emphasis on genetic roots of crime and deviance.
A.
B.
Functionalist Perspective
• Deviance is a common part of human existence.
1.
Durkheim’s Legacy
• Durkheim viewed social control mechanisms as necessary to define
acceptable behavior and contribute to social stability. Introduced the term
anomie to describe a feeling one experiences when losing direction in
society. Example: During periods of profound social change.
2.
Merton’s Theory of Deviance
• Adapted Durkheim’s notion of anomie to explain why people accept or
reject the goals of society.
• People adapt in certain ways by either conforming to or deviating from
cultural expectations.
• Merton’s anomie theory of deviance posits five basic forms of
adaptation. See Table 4-1.
• Merton’s theory has had relatively few applications.
Interactionist Perspective
• Reflected in the explanations of cultural transmission and routine activities
theory.
IV.
1.
Cultural Transmission
• Humans learn how to behave in social situations.
• Edwin Sutherland’s differential association describes the process through
which exposure through social interaction to attitudes favorable to
criminal acts leads to violation of rules.
• Frequency and duration are instrumental to the process of differential
association.
• Critics charge Sutherland’s theory fails to explain first-time impulsive
deviance.
2.
Social Disorganization Theory
• Contends that increased crime reflects weakened communal bonds and a
breakdown of social institutions in an area. Changes in ties to groups
outside the neighborhood may also be involved.
C.
Labeling Theory
• Seeks to explain why certain people are viewed as deviant, while others
engaging in the same behavior are not. Example: Saints and Roughnecks.
• Also called the societal-reaction approach. Regulatory agents play a significant
role in creating the deviant identity by designating certain people as deviant.
Example: Racial profiling.
• Labeling does not fully explain why some people accept a label and others do
not.
D.
Conflict Theory
• People with power protect their own interests and define deviance to suit their
own needs.
• Richard Quinney suggests the criminal justice system serves the interests of the
powerful. Lawmaking is an attempt by the powerful to coerce others into their
own morality. Example: Victimless crimes.
• Conflict theory suggests criminal suspects are treated differently on the basis of
race, ethnicity, or social class.
E.
Feminist Perspective
• Society tends to treat women in a stereotypical fashion. Cultural views and
attitudes toward women influence how they are perceived and labeled. Example:
Marital rape.
Crime
• Crime is a violation of criminal law for which some governmental authority applies
formal penalties.
• Nearly 1.4 million violent crimes were reported in the U.S. in 2005.
A.
B.
Types of Crime
1.
Victimless Crimes
• A term used by sociologists to describe the willing exchange among
adults of widely desired, but illegal, goods and services.
• Decriminalization is favored by some to increase the resources for
dealing with street crimes.
• Opponents of decriminalization argue there are victims in so-called
victimless crimes.
2.
Professional Crime
• Professional criminal is a person who pursues crime as a day-today occupation. Example: Burglary or safecracking.
• They devote their entire working time to planning and executing
crimes.
3.
Organized Crime
• The work of a group that regulates relations between various criminal
enterprises involved in illegal activities, including smuggling and sale of
drugs, prostitution, and gambling.
• Organized crime is a secret activity that evades law enforcement. It takes
over legitimate business, gains influence over labor unions, corrupts
public officials, intimidates witnesses, and taxes merchants for protection
services.
• The global nature of organized crime can be found in the acts of
transnational organized crime affiliates.
4.
White-Collar and Technology-Based Crime
• Illegal acts committed in the course of business activities by affluent
people and persons of respectable status. Example: Embezzling or
computer crime.
• Corporate crime is any criminal act by a corporation that is punishable
by the government. Example: Environmental pollution, tax fraud, stock
fraud, production of unsafe products, bribery and corruption, and public
health violations.
• Convictions for such illegal acts does not generally harm a person’s
reputation, status, or career aspirations as much as conviction for a street
crime.
5.
Transnational Crime
• Crime that occurs across multiple national borders.
• Common forms of transnational crime include bankruptcy and insurance
fraud, terrorism, and illegal drug trade.
Crime Statistics
1.
Understanding Crime Statistics
• There has been a significant decline in violent crime nationwide. Some
suggest a booming economy, community oriented policing, gun control
laws and an increase in the prison population have explained the decline
in crime rates.
• Female crime rates have increased by 7 percent in a recent ten-year
period.
• Measuring of crime rates is conducted several ways. Sociologists rely
primarily on the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
to collect data on crime.
• The NCVS was initiated in 1972 to ask people about their crime
victimization.
CHAPTER 7
LECTURE OUTLINE
Introduction
• Social inequality describes a condition in which members of a society have different amounts
of wealth, prestige, or power.
• Stratification is a structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal
economic rewards and power in a society.
• Income refers to salaries and wages.
• Wealth is an inclusive term encompassing all of a person’s material assets, including land,
stocks, and other types of property.
I.
Understanding Stratification
A.
Systems of Stratification
• Ascribed status is a social position assigned to a person without regard for that
person’s unique characteristics or talents.
• Achieved status is a social position attained by a person largely through his or
her own effort.
1.
Slavery
• Legalized system in which enslaved individuals are owned by other
people.
• Slaves in Ancient Greece were captives of war. In the U.S., slavery was
an ascribed status.
2.
Castes
• Hereditary system of rank usually religiously dictated. Example:
Hinduism in India.
• Recently, the government of India, and industrialization, have affected
the caste system.
B.
3.
Estates
• The estate system is also known as feudalism.
• In the estate system, peasants work land leased to them by nobles in
exchange for military protection or other services.
4.
Social Classes
• A social ranking based primarily on economic position in which
achieved status can affect or influence social mobility.
• One can move from one stratum to another.
• Income inequality is a basic characteristic of a class system. Example:
Daniel Rossides’s five-class model.
Perspectives on Stratification
• Karl Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social,
economic, and political inequality.
1.
Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation
• Differential access to scarce resources shapes the relationship between
groups. Controlling the primary mode of economic production is key.
• Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are
largely in private hands.
• Bourgeoisie is comprised of those in the capitalist class who control
most production.
• Proletariat is the working class group commonly exploited by the
capitalist class.
• Marx termed an attitude held by members of a class that does not
accurately reflect its objective position as false consciousness.
• Marx failed to anticipate the emergence of labor unions and did not
foresee individuals striving for improvement.
2.
Max Weber’s View of Stratification
• Identified three distinct components of stratification: class, status,
and
power.
• Weber argued that the actions of individuals and groups could not be
understood solely in economic terms.
• Individuals gain status through membership in a desirable group (status
group).
• Power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others.
• Each of us has not one rank in society, but three, in which each rank
influences the other two. Example: John F. Kennedy.
3.
Interactionist View
• Interactionists want to understand how social class influences a person’s
lifestyle.
• Thorstein Veblen’s concepts of conspicuous consumption and
conspicuous leisure can still be applied to the behavior of wealthy people
today.
C.
II.
Is Stratification Universal?
• Inequality exists in all societies.
1.
Functionalist View
• Society must distribute its members among a variety of social positions
(Davis and Moore). Positions are filled with people with the
appropriate talents and abilities.
• Money and rewards are based on the scarcity of qualified personnel.
• Stratification motivates people to fill critical positions.
• Functionalists fail to explain the wide disparity between rich and poor.
2.
Conflict View
• Contemporary conflict views include conflicts based on gender, race,
age, and other dimensions. Example: Ralf Dahrendorf’s work on
authority.
• Dominant ideology describes a set of cultural beliefs and practices that
helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests.
• Stratification is a major source of societal tension and conflict.
3.
Lenski’s Viewpoint
• Economic systems change as the level of technology becomes more
complex.
• The emergence of surplus resources expands the inequality in status,
influence, and power. Allows for a well-defined rigid social class system.
Stratification by Social Class
A.
Measuring Social Class
1.
Objective Method
• Researchers assign individuals to social classes on the basis of criteria
such as occupation, education, income, and residence.
• Prestige rankings of occupations are commonly used for class position.
• Esteem refers to the reputation a person has earned within an occupation.
• A person may have esteem but lack high levels of prestige.
See Table 5-2.
2.
Multiple Measures
• Criteria such as value of homes, sources of income, assets, years in
present occupation, neighborhoods, and dual careers have been added
to income and education as determinants of class under the
objective
method.
CHAPTER 8
LECTURE OUTLINE
I.
The Social Construction of Gender
• Gender roles are socially constructed so that male-female differences are either created
or exaggerated. Example: In a heterosexual couple, the man should be taller than the
woman.
A.
Gender-Role Socialization
• Boys must be masculine and girls must be feminine
• Homophobia contributes significantly to rigid gender-role socialization.
Example: Deviation leads to presumption of being gay.
• Parents play a critical role in guiding children into gender roles.
B.
Women’s and Men’s Gender Roles
• Girls identify in part with families, neighborhoods, and media for their
development of a feminine self-image.
• Women are often portrayed in television and books as helpless, passive and
incompetent.
• Women are expected to marry and to want to become mothers.
• Men’s gender roles are socially constructed much like those of women.
• Anti-feminine, no openness or vulnerability
• Prove one’s masculinity at work and sports.
• Aggressive and sexual control elements.
• Self-reliant.
C.
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
• Margaret Mead points to importance of cultural conditioning. Examples: Sex in
New Guinea. Peggy Reeves Sanday’s findings of male-female partnerships in
Sumatra.
• Their findings emphasize that culture and socialization determine gender-role
differentiation rather than innate or biological influences.
• Australian sociologist R. W. Connell coined the term multiple masculinities to
describe the variety of gender roles that men play in addition to the traditional
dominant role.
II.
Sociological Perspectives on Gender
A.
The Functionalist View
• Gender differentiation contributes to stability. Family requires specialized roles.
• Instrumentality refers to emphasis on tasks, focus on more distant goals, and a
concern for the external relationship between one’s family and other social
institutions. Example: Males become anchored in the occupational world outside
the home
• Expressiveness denotes concern for maintenance of harmony and the internal
emotional affairs of the family. Example: Women become anchored in the home
as wives.
B.
The Conflict Response
• Relationship between men and women has traditionally been one of unequal
power.
• Gender differences reflect the subjugation of one group (women) by another
group (men). Example: Marx’s bourgeoisie and proletariat.
C.
The Feminist Perspective
• Women’s subjugation is part of the overall exploitation and injustice inherent in
capitalist societies.
• Radical feminists view oppression of women as inevitable in all male-dominated
societies.
• Women have been excluded by academic thought. Example: Jane Addams and
Ida Wells-Barnett.
• Gender stratification may be functional for men.
• Many women are assigned more than one subordinate status—if they are
minority or poor, most notably. This is reflected in the matrix of domination
described by some contemporary feminists
D.
The Interactionist Approach
• Microlevel focus compared to functionalists and conflict theory.
• Cross-sex conversations, other social conventions and behaviors are controlled
more by men.
III.
Women: The Oppressed Majority
• Women remain noticeably underrepresented in political structures. Example: In 2006,
8 women governors
A.
Sexism and Sex Discrimination
• Sexism is the ideology that one sex is superior to the other.
• Institutional discrimination contributes to sexism. All major institutions are
biased in their treatment of women. Example: Government, armed forces, large
corporations, media, and universities.
B.
Sexual Harassment
• Behavior in which work benefits are contingent upon sexual favors, or when
touching, lewd comments, or pornographic materials create a hostile
environment.
• Viewed as a continuing source of prejudice and discrimination against women.
C.
The Status of Women Worldwide
• Women rarely hold more than 1 to 2 percent of top executive positions.
• Women work in occupations with lower status and pay than men.
• Widows have little support from extended family networks.
• Cutting of female genitals.
• Cheap labor in developing nations is exploited by multinational corporations.
IV.
Women in the Workforce of the United States
A.
E.
Labor Force Participation
• In 2006, 57 percent of adult women held jobs outside the home.
• Fifty-seven percent of new mothers return to work within one year of giving
birth.
• Vast majority of women enter sex-typed occupations.
• Underrepresentation of women in occupations historically defined as ‘men’s
jobs’ restricts earnings, prestige, opportunity
• The glass ceiling prevents women from reaching their full potential.
• Women are more likely to be poor.
Social Consequences of Women’s Employment
• Sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes the double burden of housework and
childcare following work outside the home as the “second shift.”
• Women spend 15 fewer hours per week in leisure activities compared to men.
• Feminists have advocated for support in childcare, and in family leave policies.
CHAPTER 9
LECTURE OUTLINE
I.
The Privileges of the Dominant
• White privilege is the opposite of racial discrimination.
• Peggy McIntosh discovered “Whiteness” opened doors of opportunity.
• McIntosh contends being White is taken for granted.
II.
The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity
• Racial categories are formed, inhibited, transformed and destroyed through the
sociohistorical process of racial formation. In this process, those with power define
groups of people according to a racist social structure.
• Social construction is the process by which people come to define a group as a race
based on physical, historical, cultural and economic factors.
• 2.6 percent of people in the United States report they are of two or more races. Half of
the multiracial people are under the age of 18.
• William I. Thomas suggested that personality could be molded by the definition of a
situation.
• Stereotypes are unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not
recognize individual differences within the group.
A.
Race
• Social differentiation based on physical traits. Example: Black, White, and
Asian.
B.
Ethnicity
• Ethnic groups are set apart from others based on national origin or distinctive
cultural patterns. Example: Jewish Americans or Norwegian Americans.
• Stratification along racial lines is more resistant to change than stratification
along ethnic lines.
III.
Immigration and New Ethnic Groups
• 43 million Americans claim German ancestry, 30 million Irish ancestry, 16 million
Italian ancestry, and 9 million Polish ancestry.
• Western Europe dominated immigration into the U.S. in the 1920s.
• U.S. refused Jewish refugees in 1939 sending them into the hands of Nazi’s.
• Since the 1960s policies in the U.S. have encouraged Latin American and Asian
immigration.
• Immigrants with skills may cause a dysfunction in the nations they leave.
• Immigrants tend to send money (remittances) back to their home nations.
• Conflict theorists suggest immigration debate is phrased in economic terms.
IV.
Explaining Inequality by Race and Ethnicity
A.
The Functionalist View
• Manning Nash identified three functions for racially prejudiced beliefs: 1) a
moral justification for maintaining inequality, 2) discourage subordinate
minorities from questioning their lowly status, and 3) major social change such
as equality would bring greater poverty to minorities.
• Racial prejudice may also be seen as dysfunctional for a society. Example:
Arnold Rose’s four dysfunctions.
B.
The Conflict Response
• Exploitation theory suggests racial subordination keeps minorities in lowpaying jobs, thereby supplying the capitalist ruling class with a pool of cheap
labor. Example: Clash over keeping Chinese immigrant labor out of the United
States during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
C.
The Interactionist Approach
• Contact hypothesis states that interracial contact between people of equal status
in cooperative circumstances, will cause them to become less prejudiced and to
abandon previous stereotypes.
• Establishment of interracial coalitions to establish equal roles for all members.
V.
Patterns of Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice is a negative attitude toward an entire category of people.
• Prejudice tends to perpetuate false definitions of individuals and groups.
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to assume one’s own culture and way of life are superior
to all others.
• Racism is a form of widespread prejudice that fosters a belief that one race is supreme
over all others. Example: Hate crimes
• The Internet may be allowing race-hate groups to expand their traditional base.
A.
Discriminatory Behavior
• Denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups based on
some type of arbitrary bias. Example: Hiring practices based on race.
• Glass ceiling – refers to an invisible barrier that blocks the promotion of a
qualified individual because of gender, race, or ethnicity.
B.
Institutional Discrimination
• Refers to the denial of opportunities and equal rights for individuals and groups
that results from the normal operations of society.
• Affects some minorities more than others.
• Includes speaking of English only, admission practices commonly used by law
and medical schools, restrictive employment-leave policies.
• Passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is considered an attempt to eradicate
discrimination. Extended to include ethnic minorities in 1987.
• Affirmative action programs are aimed at recruiting minority members for jobs,
promotions, and educational opportunities. Some argue that advancing one’s
group over another, merely shifts the discrimination to another group.
C.
Measuring Discrimination
• Measuring discrimination is a complicated task.
• Studies have compared income differences among various racial and ethnic
groups.
• Discrimination has a negative impact on the American economy.
CHAPTER 10
Wealth and Income
• Income in the United States is distributed unequally.
• Richest 20 percent earned $91,705 or more in 2002. The poorest 20 percent
earned $19,178 or less.
• Tax policies favor the rich.
• 38 percent of people in the U.S. believe the government should take steps to
reduce income disparity between the rich and the poor.
• Wealth is unevenly divided between rich and poor. Richest 20 percent
hold 84.5 percent of the nation’s wealth.
C.
D.
III.
Poverty
• One out of every nine people in the U.S. lives below the poverty line. Example:
36.6 million in 2006.
1.
Studying Poverty
• Absolute poverty refers to a minimum level of subsistence that no
family should be expected to live below.
• Poverty line serves as an official indicator of which people are poor.
• In 2005, a family of four with a combined income of $19,806 or less fell
below the poverty line.
• Relative poverty is a floating standard of deprivation by which people
are judged to be disadvantaged when compared to the nation as a whole.
• People making more money in the 1990s may be no better off than the
poor in the 1930s and are seen as deserving special assistance.
2.
Who Are the Poor?
• A sizable number live in urban slums, but the majority live
outside these
poverty areas.
• Since World War II an increasing number of poor people have been
women.
• By 2003, 53 percent of the poor were female householders.
• The overall analysis of the poor changes continuously. Some move
above the poverty line and others slip below it. African Americans and
Latinos are more likely to be persistently poor than Whites.
• African Americans and Hispanics are less likely to leave welfare rolls.
3.
Explaining Poverty
• Using the functionalist analysis, Herbert Gans suggests that the presence
of poor people serves a number of social, economic, and political
functions.
Life Chances
• Max Weber saw class as related to life chances.
• Class position affects many things, including the impact of natural disasters and
access to Internet technology.
Social Mobility
• Refers to movement of individuals or groups from one position of a society’s
stratification system to another.
A.
Open versus Closed Stratification Systems
• Open systems encourage competition and imply that a person’s position is
influenced by achieved status.
• Closed systems such as slavery or caste systems allow little or no possibility of
moving up. Social placement is based on ascribed status.
IV.
B.
Types of Social Mobility
• Horizontal mobility refers to a person moving from one social position to
another of the same rank.
• Vertical mobility is the movement from one social position to another of
different rank. Mobility be both upward and downward.
• Intergenerational mobility involves changes in social position relative to one’s
parents. Example: Film star whose parents were factory workers.
• Intragenerational mobility involves social changes within one’s adult life.
Example: Teacher’s aide becoming a superintendent.
C.
Social Mobility in the United States
1.
Occupational Mobility
• More common among males than females. Sixty to 70 percent of sons
are employed in higher-ranked occupations than their fathers.
• Most mobility covers a very short distance.
2.
The Impact of Education
• Education has a greater impact than family background.
• Three-fourths of college-educated men achieved some upward
mobility.
• B.A./B.S. degrees serve less as a guarantee of upward mobility than in
the past.
3.
The Impact of Race
• Black children are less likely to attain the same status as parents with
good jobs, than white children in the same situation are.
• Black children are less likely to receive financial support from parents.
• Downward mobility is significantly higher for blacks than for whites.
4.
The Impact of Gender
• Women are more likely to withdraw from the labor force if their job
skills exceed the jobs offered them.
• Women find it harder to secure financing to start self-employment
ventures than men do.
• Women are unlikely to move into their father’s positions.
The Global Divide
• The gap between the standard of living of the people of poor nations compared to rich
nations has been growing since the Industrial Revolution. The main causes of the
domination of the world marketplace by a few nations are the legacy of colonialism, the
advent of multinational corporations, and modernization.
A.
The Legacy of Colonialism
• The political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a people for an
extended period of time. Example: British Empire over America.
• By the 1980s, colonialism had largely disappeared.
• Neocolonialism is the subservient status of continuing dependence on more
industrialized nations.
• Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems analysis describes the domination of
global corporations over countries with marginal economic status.
• Core nations control and exploit developing nations.
• Periphery nations are those exploited by the world system. Example: Asia,
Africa, and Latin America.
• The division between core and periphery nations is remarkably stable.
• Dependency theory suggests that, as subservient countries make economic
advances, they remain weak compared to the core nations. The vast share of
their resources is redistributed to core nations.
• Globalization is the integration of government policies, cultures, social
movements, and financial markets through trade and the exchange of ideas.
• Emergence of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
B.
Globalization
• Globalization is the worldwide integration of government policies, cultures,
social movements, and financial markets.
• Because of globalization, international organizations like the World Bank have
become major players in the world economy.
C.
Multinational Corporations
• Refers to commercial organizations that are headquartered in one country, but
do business throughout the world.
• The revenues of some corporations are greater than the value of goods and
services produced in entire nations.
D.
1.
Functionalist View
• Multinational corporations provide a combination of skilled technology
and management.
• They facilitate the exchange of ideas and technology around the world,
making the world more interdependent.
2.
Conflict View
• Multinational corporations exploit local workers to maximize profits.
Example: Starbucks.
• Upper and middle classes benefit the most in developing nations.
• Economic and cultural dependency is increased.
Modernization
• Modernization refers to the far-reaching process through which developing
nations move from traditional or less developed institutions to those characteristic
of more developed societies.
• Many sociologists are quick to note that terms such as modernization and
development contain an ethnocentric bias.
• Modernization theory is the idea that modernization and development will
gradually improve the lives of people in developing nations.