Good morning
 Please remember to empty your mailboxes.
 I sent an e-mail with exam info and the study guide. It is also available on the
class website.
Remembrance Day bonus
 Exam period is
 Friday 7, 10:00 am – Wednesday 12 10:00pm.
 NB! NB! If you wait until Wednesday you have to expect delays. Or may even
miss it.
 Be prepared.
WebCT test center new procedure
 Talking in the test center will not be tolerated. Talking in the test center will be
disturbing to other students, and may be considered cheating.
The procedure regarding talking will be as
follows.
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WebCT
 1.A certain amount of communication between the invigilator, and others will
be required to run the test center, this should be done as quietly as possible,
and kept as short as possible.
 2.Any students found talking in the test center will be noted and their
instructor will be informed.
WebCT
 3.The first time a student is caught talking they will be told to be quiet, and will
be informed that their instructor will be notified. The instructor will then
determine whether they will accept the students submission or not.
 4.If a student is caught a second time they will be asked to leave, and the
note to the instructor will be updated to reflect this.
Exam update
 30 Multiple choice (30p)
 20 True-False (20p)
 5 Fill in the blanks (2 points)(10p)
 Two short answers(choice of two) (5p)
 One essay (choice of two) Miller (15p)
 One essay (Hedican)Choice of two (15p)
Today
 What did we do last time?
 (Miller chapter 10 “Social groups and social stratification)
Complexity at work
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Organizing principles (age, gender, class race/ethnicity, caste)
Social stratification (achieved and ascribed status, mobility)
Social control (conformity and resistance)
Conflict
Social Groups and Social Stratification, Miller ch.10
 What is social stratification?
 What principles, besides kinship and marriage, do people use to organize
societies?
Social stratification
 Hierarchical relationship between different groups – as if they were arranged in
layers or strata (Miller p.246).
Types of social stratification
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Gender
Age
Social class
Ethnicity/Race
Caste
Basic types of inequality
 Egalitarian - few differences in the rewards received by families or other kinds
of kin groups within a society.
 Ranked - limited number of high-ranking positions or titles.
 Stratified - major differences in access to rewards between families or kin
groups.
Social Stratification
Ascribed and achieved position
 Achieved status/position based on qualities of a person gained through birth
 Ascribed status/position based on qualities of a person gained through action.
Ascribed and achieved position
 Where do we put “gender” in this?
Expressions of stratification
 Verbal evaluation - what people say about other people in their society.
 Patterns of association - who interacts with whom, how, and in what context.
Expressions
 Symbolic indicators - activities and possessions indicative of class position.
 Differences in life chances - high-status people generally live longer and in
better health than people of low status.
Social stratification/criteria
 Wealth
 Legal status
 Birth
 Personal qualities
 Ideology
Class
 A person’s or group’s position in society defined primarily in economic terms
 (Marx versus Weber).
Class versus m. & o. solidarity
 Mechanical solidarity: little mutual need, small scale, lesser degree of
division of labour
 Organic solidarity: need, large scale, high degree of division of labour.
 (E. Durkheim)
Wealth as the basis of ranking
 Wealth is more measurable than other indications of class membership.
 Wealth is the single biggest indication of benefits citizens are receiving.
Wealth as the basis of ranking
 Extremely high wealth is correlated with ownership of productive resources.
 Wealth determines people’s access to political power.
Class
 Open-class societies are those with the easiest mobility.
 Degree of mobility is related to education or type of family organization that
prevails in a society.
 Where the extended family is the norm, mobility tends to be severely limited.
Stratified societies
 Marked inequalities in access to wealth, power and prestige.
 Inequality is based on unequal access to resources such as the land and tools
people need to make their living.
 Unequal access to rewards has a strong tendency to be heritable throughout
the generations.
Grouping by gender
 Separates men and women to varying degrees in different societies.
 In some societies, they may be together much of the time.
 In other societies they may spend much time apart, even to the extreme of
eating and sleeping separately.
Cultural construction of gender
 Sex is biologically determined.
 Gender is culturally determined.
 Different cultures have distinctive ideas about males and females.
 These ideas define manhood/masculinity and womanhood/femininity.
The sexual division of labour
 The patterned ways in which tasks are allocated to men and women.
 Division of labor on the basis of sex is found in all cultures, although the
specific tasks performed vary.
Multiple gender identities
 Many societies have more than two gender identities.
 A third or fourth gender of "man-woman" or 'woman-man" or "not woman - not
man“.
 Well documented among Native American peoples.
Components of gender stratification
 The social roles men and women perform.
 The cultural value attached to women's and men's contributions to their
families and other groups.
 Access to positions of power and influence.
Components of gender stratification
 Control over personal decision making.
 Female deference to males.
 General beliefs and ideas about the sexes.
Influences on gender stratification
 The greater the contributions women make to the welfare of a group, the
higher their status.
Influences on gender stratification
 Ownership of resources and the control women have over the distribution of
products of labor influences their status.
Influences on gender stratification
 Women have higher status in matrilineal and/or matrilocal societies. ?????
Gender and leadership
 Women have enjoyed political equality with men in a number of
societies:
 Iroquoian tribes of New York State - men held office at the pleasure of women,
who appointed them and could remove them.
 Igbo of Nigeria - women held positions that paralleled and balanced that of the
men.
Caste system
 A social class in which membership is determined by birth and fixed for life.
 Children automatically belong to their parents’ caste.
Castes
 Brahmins (priests and scholars)
 Kshatriyas (nobles and warriors)
 Vaishas (merchants and artisans)
 Shudras (farmers, craftspeople and laborers)
 Untouchables
Race
 Belief that behavioural differences are biologically caused
 Boas showed that culture and not biology explained behaviour
 Race is not a biological reality
– There is no way to divide human populations into races according to
biological traits
 However, racial discrimination persists
Ethnicity
 Ethnicity entails identification with a given ethnic group (feeling part of a
group), but it also involves the maintenance of a distinction from other groups.
Ethnicity
 Ethnicity is about organization, classification, social practice and boundary
making.
Ethnicity
 An ethnic group has to be understood as an organizational type : as categories
in which membership is based on self-ascription and ascription by others (F.
Barth 1969).
Why do talk and think about ethnicity?
 Ethnicity in relation to individual-collectivity and culture is significant.
 Ethnicity in relation to culture-nationalism and state are in the current agenda.
Nation
 Nation is a political entity with territorial boundaries and a government
recognized by its neighbours and by the international community. (UN
definition)
Nation
 A nation is a group of people who share a language, culture, territorial base,
political organization, and history (Clay 1990, definition in Miller pg. 269).
Nation
 Nation is also used to refer to a society that has lost its political autonomy but
retains its culture and traditional lines of authority.
Nation state
 The terms nation and nation-state now refer to an autonomous, centrally
organized political entity.
 Ethnic groups are not necessarily so formally politically organized.
“Imagined communitites”
 The term "imagined communities," coined by Benedict Anderson, has been
used to describe nationalities, since most of their member populations feel a
bond with each other in the absence of any "real" acquaintance.
Emergence of Imagined communities
 Economic, political and cultural change
 The growth of capitalism
 The growth of centralized administrations
 Development of mass communication, literacy, education and standardization
of the vernacular languages.
“I am Canadian”
 Hey,
 I am not a lumber jack or a fur trader,
 and I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled,
 and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzie from Canada although I am certain
they're really really nice, uh
 I have a Prime Minster not a president.
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I speak English and French, not American, and I pronounce it about, not a
boot.
I can proudly sew my country's flag on my back pack,
I believe in peace keeping not policing, diversity not assimilation,
and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
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A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch.
And it is pronounced zed, not zee, zed.
Canada is the second largest landmass,
the first nation of hockey,
and the best part of North America, my name is Joe, and I am Canadian.
Thank You.
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Assimilation
 Assimilation occurs when a minority group adopts the patterns and norms of a
more powerful culture, as when a migrant ethnic group conforms itself to its
host culture.
Assimilation
 Assimilation is not uniform: it may be forced or relatively benign depending on
historical particularities.
Multiculturalism
 Multiculturalism is "the view of cultural diversity in a country as something
good and desirable."
 This is opposed to assimilationism, which expects subordinate groups to take
on the culture of the dominant group while abandoning their own.
Power of global capitalism (transnational corporations at work):
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Walmart is bigger than Greece,
Philip Morris is larger than Chile,
Chrysler and Nestle are the same size as Pakistan and Hungary.
The 6 largest corporations have revenues greater than the 30 countries
containing half the world’s population.
NAFTA, GATT, WTO
Connection?
 Capitalism •¨ dissolving of national borders and erosion of the nation-state?
 States are changing their functions but they are not eroded.
 Some would argue that "Ethnic violence is a response to the local elites who
are too weak to stop the depredations of global finance capital“ ???
Civil Society
 Diverse interest groups that operate outside the government to organize
aspects of life
– institutions that support the state, e.g. the church, schools
– institutions that oppose the state, e.g. trade unions, environmental groups
The KEY Questions
 What is the range of cross-cultural variation of social groups?
 What is social stratification, and what are its effects on people
 What is civil society?
Common-interest Associations
 Linked with rapid social change and urbanization.
 Increasingly assumed roles formerly played by kinship or age groups.
 Membership may range from voluntary to legally compulsory.
Types of Social Groups
 Friendship
 Clubs and fraternities
 Counterculture groups
 Work groups
 Cooperatives
 Activist groups
Clubs and Fraternities
 Define membership on shared identity
– e.g. United Empire Loyalists in Canada
 Can serve economic and political roles
 Men’s clubs featuring male-male bonding activities are common
– often involve objectification and mistreatment of women
Counterculture Groups
 Feature in industrialized societies
 Members desire to be identified with a special group
– youth gangs
• initialization rituals
• a leader
• special clothing
– motorcycle gangs
– body modification groups
Work Groups
 Organized to perform particular task
 Prominent in horticultural and agricultural communities
 Often made up of
youth groups
Cooperatives
 Surpluses are shared among the members
 One person, one vote
 Farmer cooperatives
– e.g. in western India
 Craft cooperatives
– e.g. in Panama
Activist Groups
 Formed with the goal of protesting certain conditions such as political
repression or human rights violations
– e.g. CO-MADRES
 Also formed because of concerns about personal problems
– e.g. AA
Social Stratification
Race
Ethnicity
 Ethnicity entails identification with a given ethnic group (feeling part of a
group), but it also involves the maintenance of a distinction from other groups.
Ethnicity
 Ethnicity is about organization, classification, social practice and boundary
making.
Ethnicity
 An ethnic group has to be understood as an organizational type : as categories
in which membership is based on self-ascription and ascription by others (F.
Barth).
Civil Society
 Diverse interest groups that operate outside the government to organize
aspects of life
– institutions that support the state, e.g. the church, schools
– institutions that oppose the state, e.g. trade unions, environmental groups
The KEY Questions Revisited
 What is the range of cross-cultural variation of social groups?
 What is social stratification, and what are its effects on people
 What is civil society?