Chapter 7

Question 1

social inequality

Answer 1

-long-term existence of significant differences in access to goods and services among social groups
-is a function of many factors such as race, gender, class, and stratification

Question 2

class and who

Answer 2

-karl marx
-class is relational
-reflects the relationship of people to the means of production
-means of production are capital (the funds and properties necessary manufacturing and trading

Question 3

relationships to the means of production

Answer 3

-Bourgeoise: capitalists who own the means of production
-Proletariat: workers, working class
sub-classes
-petty bourgeoise: small-time owners with little capital
-Lumpenproletariat: small-time criminals, beggars, unemployed

Question 4

Marx’s historical context

Answer 4

-height of industrial Revolution
-prevalence of laissez-faire market practices
-struggle between capitalist interests and workers’ rights

Question 5

class as a social identity

Answer 5

-class has a corporate (or organic) identity as a real social group
-each class has a sense of common purpose rooted in class consciousness:
-the owner class always possesses class consciousness
-the workers has false consciousness (a belief that something is in one’s best interest when it is not)

Question 6

Max Weber elements of social inequality

Answer 6

-Wealth (includes factories, other property used to make money and properties that are highly respected)
-Prestige (is the degree of respect individuals, their socially valued possessions, and their master statuses are viewed by the majority of people)
-Power (the ability of individuals or groups to achieve their goals despite the opposition of others)

Question 7

Precarious employment

Answer 7

-precariat, precarious proletariat
-“flexible” labour contracts, temporary jobs, labour as casuals, part-timers
-have no secure occupational identity, no occupational narrative to their lives, do a lot of preparation work that does not count and goes unpaid
-this working class is expected to have an education greater than the labour they perform, most precariat’s don’t use their full educational qualifications

Question 8

using class to study social inequality in modern

Answer 8

Curtis, Grabb, and Guppy amended Marx’s class paradigm within Canadian context
-Dominant capitalist class: composed of those who own/control large-scale production
-Middle class: middle category of small business people, educated professional-technical or administrative personnel, credentialed salaried employees and wage earners
-working class (proletariat): people who lack resources or capacities apart from their own labour power

Question 9

class and sport

Answer 9

Sports that offer people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds opportunities to acheive financial rewards are called mobility sports ex: basketball

Question 10

1.Social stratification and 2.strata

Answer 10

1. describes society as though it is divided into a series of layers
   -stratum is a group to which people belong on the basis of their income, education, or income for the purpose of statistical analysis
2. used as units of analysis in stratified sampling, a research method in which equal samples are drawn from each stratum of the population

Question 11

Quintile

Answer 11

-a segment, or stratum, each representing 1 of five equal groups into which the population is divided
-1/5 th of the studied population
ex: income inequality can be measured by comparing the income of quintiles
-useful for comparative purposes across periods and regions

Question 12

ideology

Answer 12

-arguments and ideas pertaining to social inequality are shaped by ideology
-ideology: set of beliefs about society and the people in it usually forming the basis of an economic or political theory

Question 13

Dominant ideology

Answer 13

-the set of beliefs put forward by and generally supportive of the dominant culture and classes
ex: trickle-down theory

Question 14

Neoliberal ideology

Answer 14

-neoliberalism is a dominant ideology that views the individual as an independent player on the sociological scene
-reflects a belief in social mobility (the ability of individuals to move generally upwards from one class/stratum to another
-downplays concerns over social inequality
- may result in blaming the victim

Question 15

Counter-ideology

Answer 15

-offers a critique of a dominant ideology, challenges its justice and universal applicability
-seek to create significant social change

Question 16

Hegemony and who

Answer 16

-Antonio Gramsci was a critic of dominant ideology
-the prevalence of dominant ideology is due to hegemony
hegemony: a set of non-coercive methods of maintaining power used by the dominant class ex: media or education system
ex: the federal government placing blame for the attawapiskat housing crisis onto the community

Question 17

Food insecurity

Answer 17

-inadequate or unreliable access to food (amount, variety, quality, and generable desirability)