Chapter 6

Question 1

Q: What is stratified societies?

Answer 1

A: Societies in which there is a permanent hierarchy that accords some members privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige.

Question 2

Q: What is class?

Answer 2

A: A ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, and/or access to power.

Question 3

Q: What is caste?

Answer 3

A: A ranked group within a socially stratified society that is closed, prohibiting individuals from moving from one caste into another.

Question 4

Q: What is race?

Answer 4

A: A broad human population category that allegedly corresponds to distinct, heritable sets of biological attributes and often conflates geographic ancestry and physical type.

Question 5

Q: What is ethnicity?

Answer 5

A: A social classification based on a common cultural heritage and selected cultural features, such as language, religion, or dress.

Question 6

Q: What is nationality?

Answer 6

A: A sense of identification with and loyalty to a nation-state; membership, defined by citizenship, in a geopolitical sovereign state.

Question 7

Q: What is clientage?

Answer 7

A: Institution linking individuals from upper and lower levels in a stratified society.

Question 8

Q: What is a patron?

Answer 8

A: The party of higher status in a clientage.

Question 9

Q: What is a client?

Answer 9

A: The party of lower status in a clientage.

Question 10

Q: What is varna?

Answer 10

A: Traditional social ranks that divide Indian society into four functional subdivisions: priests, nobility (rulers and warriors), commoners (farmers and merchants), and laborer’s or servants.

Question 11

Q: What is jåti?

Answer 11

A: A localized, named, endogamous group.

Question 12

Q: What is a phenotype?

Answer 12

A: Observable, measurable outward characteristics of an organism.

Question 13

Q: What is racialism?

Answer 13

A: Belief in the existence of biologically distinct races.

Question 14

Q: What is racism?

Answer 14

A: The systemic oppression of members of one or more socially defined “races” by members of another socially defined “race” that is justified within ruling society by the rulers’ faulty belief in their own biological superiority.

Question 15

Q: What are species?

Answer 15

A: A reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature.

Question 16

Q: What is cline?

Answer 16

A: The gradual intergradation of genetic variation from population to population.

Question 17

Q: What is social race?

Answer 17

A: An achieved status with a racial label in a system of stratification that is composed of open, class-like categories to which radical labels are assigned.

Question 18

Q: What is colourism?

Answer 18

A: A system of social identities negotiated, based on the situation, along a continuum of skin colours between white and black.

Question 19

Q: What are ethnic groups?

Answer 19

A: Social groups that are distinguished from one another on the basis of ethnicity.

Question 20

Q: What is objectification?

Answer 20

A: The intentional construction of a collective public identity; the process that produces what we commonly think of as ethnicity.

Question 21

Q: What is reification?

Answer 21

A: A form of negative racial or ethnic absolutism that encourages the violent elimination of targeted groups and is central to the practice of racism.

Question 22

Q: What is a nation-state?

Answer 22

A: An ideal political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide.

Question 23

Q: What is a nation?

Answer 23

A: A group of people believed to share the same history, culture, language, and even physical substance.

Question 24

Q: What is nationalism?

Answer 24

A: The attempt made by government officials to instill a sense of nationality into the citizens of a state.

Question 25

Q: What is transformist hegemony?

Answer 25

A: A nationalist program to define nationality in a way that preserves the cultural domination of the ruling group while including enough cultural features from subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty.

Question 26

Q: What is strategic essentialism?

Answer 26

A: The use of essentialist rhetoric as a conscious political strategy to create a temporary solidarity to facilitate a specific social action.