Introduction to Social Inequality Flashcards
What characteristics are social divisions/differential access based on?
Ethnicity
Gender
Age
Health
Familial wealth
What are patterns of social interaction?
These are the ways in which individuals interact with others in society.
What do patterns of social interaction tell us?
Despite what our personal feelings or choices many be, we have seen from analysing social interactions that people tend to interact and form relationships with those from the same/ similar social positions as themselves (as said in Bottero 2007), the ability to interact with people across the societal spectrum is constrained by social barriers, such as location.
What is the difference between social differences and social stratification?
Social differences are categories in which we sort people based on individual qualities or social roles, these are considered to be a horizontal form of categorisation, (though the groups are rarely completely equal)
Social stratification is a vertical/ hierarchical form of social categorisation/ ranking, this is not random and is maintained by institutionalised systems.
Give examples of instiutionalised systems which maintain the social hierarchy
Tax laws, educational system (e.g. private and Ivy League school requirements, legacy system), legal system
What are the different types of models of inequality?
Hierarchical
Triadic
Dichotomous
Describe the hierarchical model of inequality
This is a chain like ordered sequence of layer ranks, in which each is slightly better off than the previous group/rank.
This model was common in the century, people would mainly be ranked on their occupation, (e.g. farm worker at the bottom, then baker ect, then doctor, then priest, then landowner)
What is the difference between inequality and stratification?
(from Bottero, Stratification: Social Division and Inequality chapter 1) “Social stratification refers to the persistance of positions in a hierarchy of inequality, either over the life time of a birth cohort of individuals or, more particularly between generations.
What is differential association?
The process through which we make ontact and relationships throughout our life is affected by our hierarchical position.
What is the dichotimous model?
Us vs them (bougouiese and proleteriate)
What is a structural approach?
A way of thinking about stratification that sees social distance as the different locations of people within the external structure of stratification.
This method usually only focuses on one demension of stratification. (most commonly economic position)
What is a relational/interaction approach?
This way of thinking of stratification sees social distance as the closeness and distance of people social relations.
What is a triadic model?
Upper, Middle and Lower class
What are the issues with a structural approach?
Doesn’t account for how the multiple dimensions of stratification interact. (therefore only accounts for and explains part of people’s behaviour)
They have also been accused of placing too much emphasis on structural locations (this apporach argues that stratificatio is a mould which we pour our behaviour in to, where as relational suggests that our behaviour molds stratifcation?)
What does the relational approach suggest?
That structure isn’t something that determines people’s choices but that structure consists of the patterned choices people make.
