Review Questions for Social Stratification
99 學年度第一學期
The study of social stratification is to answer the question: “who gets what? and
why?” Please identify what is that “what”?
Explain why the central questions to the field of stratification research reflect a
critical orientation to human stratification systems that is distinctively modern in is
underpinnings?
Explain why, according to Davis and Moore’s argument: “Social inequality is … an
unconsciously evolved device by which societies insure that the most important
positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons.” (emphasis added)
In what way Davis and Moore can claim that: “Functional importance is … a
necessary but not a sufficient cause of high rank being assigned to a position.”
What are the clues, according to Davis and Moore, that can help us to establish the
“functional importance” of a given position? What are Tumin’s criticisms against
them?
Why, according to Tumin, social stratification will increase the possibility of conflict?
According to Tumin, the existing of social stratification engenders social conflicts, but
why there were not more conflicts in “traditional” stratified society?
According to Marx, explain how “work” becomes a source of human alienation?
According to Marx, explain how exploitation works under capitalism?
According Marx, what are the factors that facilitate the "organization of proletarians
into a class"?
What are the main arguments behind Marx’s statement: “not only has the bourgeoisie
forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men
[and women] who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the
proletarians.”
According to Weber: “The degree in which ‘communal action’ and possibly ‘societal
action,’ emerges from the ‘mass action’ of the members of a class is linked to” what?
According to Weber, in what ways “status groups hinder the strict carrying through of
the sheer market principle”?
According to Weber, what is the relationship between status segregation, ethnic
segregation, and caste?
According to Weber, what are the causal components that determine the power and
life chances of individuals (or groups of individuals) in society? What are their
relationships?
According to Weber, what are the relationship between economic order and status
order? Or between classes and status groups?
According to Weber, what is the so called “market principle”? And why status groups
hinder its dominance in a society?
What, according to Weber, makes a social class?
According to Wright, what is the difference between “exploitation” and
“nonexploitative oppression”? And why does it matter?
How Wright solves the “middle classes” question?
Why the “appropriation principle” is so crucial to Wright’s conception of
“exploitation”? What was added to the concept of “exploitation” by insisting that it
“involves the appropriation of the fruits of labor of the exploited by those who control
the relevant productive resources”?