Ch. 7 views of inequality PDF

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CH 07 OUTLINE Views of Inequality! • Stratification is systematic inequalities between groups of people that arise as intended or unintended consequences of social processes and relationships.! • In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that private property prevents social equality, and that this inequality ultimately leads to social conflict.! • The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Ferguson and John Millar agreed with Rousseau that private property creates inequality, but they argued that this is good because it means that some people prosper and create assets (a form of wealth that can be stored for the future). The ability to create assets provides an incentive to work hard and be productive, which in turn leads to higher degrees of social organization and efficiency and ultimately to an improved society and civilization. The irony, however, is that this ability to create and store surpluses is what creates inequality.! • Thomas Malthus also viewed inequality favorably, but only as a means for controlling population growth. He thought that a more equal distribution of resources would increase the world’s population to unsustainable levels and ultimately bring about mass starvation and conflict.! • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s master–slave dialectic posited that most social relationships in the world were based on a master–slave model in which the master becomes as dependent on the slave as the slave is on the master. Hegel also believed that over time society would have more and more free people and the master–slave model would die out as the primary social relationship.!

Standards of Equality! • Ontological equality is the notion that everyone is created equal in the eyes of God.! • A society of commerce in which the maximization of profit is the primary business incentive—like modern capitalist society—is a bourgeois society.! • Equality of opportunity is the idea that inequality of condition is acceptable so long as everyone has the same opportunities for advancement and is judged by the same standards. This standard of equality is most closely associated with modern capitalist society and a cornerstone of arguments made by civil rights activists in the United States in the 1960s.! • Equality of condition is the idea that everyone should have an equal starting point from which to pursue his or her goals. Belief in this standard of equality has led to policies, such as affirmative action, that try to compensate social actors for differences in their conditions or starting points.!

• Equality of outcome is the notion that everyone in a society should end up with the same rewards regardless of his or her starting point, opportunities, or contributions. This standard of equality is most closely associated with Communist ideology, and critics argue that without greater incentives to work hard and be productive, people will slack off and social progress will be stymied in what is termed as the free rider problem.!

Forms of Stratification! • The estate system is a politically based system of stratification characterized by limited social mobility that is best exemplified in the social organization of feudal Europe and the pre–Civil War American South.! • The caste system is a system of stratification based on hereditary notions of religious and theological purity and generally offers no prospects for social mobility. The varna system in India is the most common example today of a caste system.! • The class system is an economically based system of stratification characterized by somewhat loose social mobility and categories based on roles in the production process rather than individual characteristics.! • Karl Marx felt that society was divided strictly into two classes— the proletariat, or working class, and the bourgeoisie, or employing class. Erik Olin Wright developed the concept of contradictory class locations, which is the idea that people can occupy locations in the class structure that fall between the two "pure" classes defined by Marx.! • Max Weber’s concept of class is based on grouping people according to the value of their property or labor in the commercial marketplace.! • The status hierarchy system is a system of stratification based on social prestige. This prestige can be linked to different things—occupation, lifestyle, membership in certain organizations—but sociologists have most often studied occupational status.! • The elite–mass dichotomy system is a system of stratification that has a governing elite—a few leaders who broadly hold the power of society. Vilfredo Pareto thought that the masses were better off in such a system, called a meritocracy, where the most skilled and talented people would reach the governing elite. C. Wright Mills viewed this system as dangerous and detrimental as it consolidates power in the hands of the few who will act according to their interests as opposed to the interests of the masses.!

How Is America Stratified Today?! • order.! •

Socioeconomic status refers to an individual’s position in a stratified social

Income is the money received by a person for work or via investments,

and wealth is the family or person’s net worth or entire asset value.! • In the United States, the upper class is associated with income, wealth, power, and prestige, but definitions related to specific levels of income or net worth can vary.! • There is little consensus about how to define the middle class, yet almost 90 percent of Americans define themselves as being in the middle class. A further complication is how to separate the middle class from the working class.! • The middle class has historically been composed of white-collar workers, and the working class, of manual laborers. However, in the post–World War II economic boom, the working class essentially merged with the middle class. Higher wages gave manual laborers access to markers of middle-class achievement such as home ownership, providing their children with a college education, and an ample retirements savings.! • The income gap between high-income and low-income individuals has increased dramatically over the last 30 years; several competing theories exist as to why this has happened.! • Poverty has an official, government definition, but there are fewer official categories such as the working poor and the nonworking poor (sometimes called the underclass). These unofficial categories do not represent stable, homogenous groups because people at this end of the socioeconomic spectrum tend to shift in and out of poverty over the course of their lives.!

Global Inequality! • Taking a broad view of history, global inequality has increased dramatically in the past 500 years. However, by some measures there has been a noticeable decrease in income inequality in the past 20 to 30 years. One key to these conclusions is whether you look at inequality within different countries or between countries.! • Many scholars have examined the question of why Europe developed first and why many former colonies have struggled to improve social and economic conditions for their populations. Theories range from geographic differences to the importance of social institutions to the types of relationships different colonial powers had with their colonies.!

Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility! • Social mobility, the movement between different positions within a system of social stratification in any given society, can be either horizontal or vertical and can take place on the individual or group level.! • Structural mobility is mobility that is inevitable from changes in the economy such as the expansion of high-tech jobs in the past 20 years. Exchange mobility occurs when people essentially trade positions—the number of overall jobs

stays the same, with some people moving up into better jobs and others moving down into worse ones.! • A mobility table is a way to examine the process of individual mobility by comparing changes in occupational status between generations.! • A status-attainment model also looks at changes in occupational status between generations, but it includes factors such as educational attainment, income, and the prestige of a person’s first job.! • The estate tax in the United States is related to the issue of stratification because it goes to the heart of questions about how to promote business growth, how wealth should be distributed, how to encourage meritocracy, and how to build a more equitable society.!...