SOCIAL STRUCTURE: The
organization of a group or society seen
in terms of structures of positions and
roles; a formal abstraction from the
ongoing social relations within
communities
ASCRIBED STATUS: a position that
someone is born into
ACHIEVED STATUS: a position that
someone chooses or achieves
ROLE: the rights and obligations
associated with a particular status
EGALITARIAN SOCIETIES:
societies in which no great differences
in wealth, power, or prestige divide
members from one another.
STRATIFIED SOCIETIES: societies
in which there is a permanent
hierarchy that accords some members
privileged access to wealth, power, and
prestige.
Mechanical Solidarity: characteristic
of kinship based societies; all members
basically alike (all hunter, farmers,
etc., with common ancestors), largely
self-sufficient, and see themselves in
each other.
Organic Solidarity: societies
characterized by mutually
interdependent subgroups, each of
which specializes in a different task
necessary for survival.
Class: a ranked group within a
hierarchically stratified society with
particular access to valued resources and
whose membership is defined primarily in
terms of wealth, occupation, or other
economic criteria.
Caste: a ranked group within a
hierarchically stratified society that is
closed, prohibiting individuals to move
from one caste to another.
Race: a group whose boundaries
allegedly correspond to distinct sets of
biological attributes
Racialism: belief in the existence of
biologically distinct races.
Racism: the systematic oppression of one
or more socially defined “races” by
another socially defined “race,” justified
in terms of supposedly inherent biological
superiority/inferiority.
Ethnicity: classification of groups in
terms of selected cultural features, e.g.,
language, religion, customs, history.
Gender: The cultural construction of
beliefs and behaviors considered
appropriate for each sex.
Sex/Gender System: Set of arrangements
by which the biological raw material of
human sex and procreation is shaped by
human, social intervention and satisfied
in a conventional manner.
Features of exchange in the Flats
1st, exchange is not immediate. People
don’t give each other things at the
same time.
2nd, exchange creates relationships
and relationships create exchange.
3rd, as in many non-western societies,
exchange in the Flats is embedded in a
kinship system
4th, exchange “pervades the whole
social-economic life of participants”
(39)
5th, exchange involves a high degree of
calculation and planning
PERSONAL KINDREDS
Relatives: genealogical links in a
cognatic/bilateral descent system
Kin: relatives or others who have
“kinship” links entailing particular sets of
rights and obligations
Essential kin: kin who “activate and
validate their jural rights by helping one
another, thereby creating reciprocal
obligations toward one another.”
Why fathers/husbands are “absent” in
the Flats
1st, the precariousness of paid work
2nd, women’s control over AFDC
resources. which travel through
women
3rd, the security of women’s kin
network
COOPERATIVE UNITS
 mutual aid among siblings of both sexes
 domestic cooperation of close adult
females
FUNCTIONS OF POVERTY
 low-wage labor
 jobs for welfare workers; policy
makers; police
 a source for the consumption of cheap
goods
 construction of an elite
 provide a indicator/measuring stick
for the rest of us
 provides stereotypes of the “Other”
that help us define ourselves
 philanthropy and charity
 value what we have