Chapter 9

Question 1

What is ascribed statuses?

Answer 1

Social positions people are assigned at birth.

Question 2

What is stratification?

Answer 2

is a recognizable structural hierarchy of people wherein some members have more access to wealth, power, and prestige than others.

Question 3

What are achieved statuses?

Answer 3

Social positions people may attain later in life, often as the result of their own (or other people’s) effort.

Question 3

What is privilege?

Answer 3

The experience of advantage, status, power, and opportunities by specific individuals or groups of individuals in society.

Question 4

What is systematic inequality?

Answer 4

When institutions, norms, and practices privilege certain identifiable groups over others. Over generations, these privileges and disadvantages are compounded and naturalized, creating enduring inequalities between groups.

Question 5

What is strategic essentialism?

Answer 5

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

Question 6

How did Marx define classes?

Answer 6

He defined them in terms of their members’ different relations to the means of production

Question 7

What is a class?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

How is class seen in North America v Europe?

Answer 8

North America- Fluid
Europe- Rigid

Question 9

What is a caste?

Answer 9

a ranked group within a socially stratified society that is closed, prohibiting individuals from moving from one caste into another
Often endogamous, occupational, and linked to religious worldviews
Observe purity and pollution rules and food taboos
The stratification system of South Asia, most commonly India, is often used as the prototype of a caste system.

Question 10

What is a varna?

Answer 10

a caste that refers to the widespread notion that Indian society is divided into four functional subdivisions:
Priests
Warriors
Farmers
Merchants

Question 11

What is a Jati?

Answer 11

a caste that refers to localized, named, endogamous groups

Question 12

What did Srinivas observe?

Answer 12

Lower castes can gain upward mobility through Sanskritization

Question 13

What is race?

Answer 13

A socially constructed category of humans that has been naturalized in pseudo-scientific language that often conflates geographic ancestry and physical type.

Question 14

What is racialism?

Answer 14

The belief in the distinction of biologically distinct races

Question 15

What is racism?

Answer 15

The systemic oppression and discrimination of people based on their membership in racial or ethnic groups that are typically historically marginalized.

Question 16

What is racialization?

Answer 16

Process of assigning people or groups of people to categories of “race” that historically have been oppressed by colonial powers and continue to experience inequality

Question 17

What is a cline?

Answer 17

The pattern of gradually shifting geographic frequency of a phenotypic trait (such as skin colour) across human populations

Question 18

What is whiteness?

Answer 18

A socially constructed and context-specific process in which people who appear as white and are not racialized possess power and privilege in society. This power and privilege is normalized and their language, behaviour, and identity become the unmarked standard.

Question 19

What is blackness?

Answer 19

hypodescent, or the “one drop of blood” rule, where children of a mixed union are always assigned to the subordinate group.
The purpose of this criteria was to expand and secure an unpaid or cheap labour source through the enslavement of Africans and the subsequent legal and political institutions such as segregation laws in both Canada and the United States.

Question 20

What is indigeneity?

Answer 20

has been measured by blood quantum or levels of purity (full, half, quarter, etc.).
The purpose of this criteria was to dilute, assimilate, and even eliminate Indigenous people through genocide to secure European control of land and resources.
Indian Act and Status

Question 21

What do racialized groups experience?

Answer 21

generations of systemic discrimination and oppression that lead to lower socioeconomic outcomes, lower education levels, poor access to housing, poor health, increased encounters with the justice system, and extensive intergenerational trauma (e.g., Residential Schools)
It is important to understand that privilege is also experienced across generations. This includes the transfer of wealth and property (economic capital) as well as the transfer of knowledge, social connections, institutional literacy, and political power (social and cultural capital).

Question 22

What is sistema de castas?

Answer 22

A system developed by colonial rulers in Latin America (Oaxaca, Mexico) to classify all people of mixed racial heritage
People could move in and out of these categories depending on class, gender, and language

Question 23

What is ethnicity?

Answer 23

A social classification based on common cultural characteristics, including language, religion, ancestry, traditions, shared homeland, or country of origin.
Ethnicity develops as insiders try to come terms with how they define their identity (self-ascription) and how outsiders attempt to define other groups (other-ascription)
E.g., Serbian ethnicity in Post-war Sarajevo
While it is certain that identities associated with ethnicity predate colonialism and the nation-state, today ethnicity is most commonly used to describe groups who have a minority status in a nation-state.

Question 24

What is racialization of ethnicity?

Answer 24

occurs when members of the dominant ethnic group stress their cultural superiority and question the eligibility (and even the humanity) of subordinate groups who challenge them.
The racialization of ethnicity, particularly when rooted in notions of blood and biology, is dangerous and has led to some of the world’s most horrific examples of ethnic cleansing (forced out-migration of a minority from a nation-state) and genocide

Question 25

What is a nation?

Answer 25

A group of people believed to share the same history, culture, language, and territory, often using the symbolism of shared “blood.”

Question 26

What is a Nation-state?

Answer 26

A political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide (a recent invention)

Question 27

What is nationality?

Answer 27

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

Question 28

What is nationalism?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

What is a transformist hegemony?

Answer 29

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
E.g., Quebec