Review Sheet - Exam 3 Flashcards
Scapegoat Theory:
Scapegoat Theory holds that prejudice springs from frustration among people who are themselves disadvantaged. A scapegoat, then, is a person or category of people, typically with little power, whom people unfairly blame for their own troubles. Because they have little power and thus are usually “safe targets,” minorities often are used as scapegoats.
Authoritarian Personality Theory:
People who are raised by demanding parents. They usually have a low level of education. Blindly follow authority. People who show strong prejudice toward one minority are usually intolerant of all minorities. People with authoritarian personalities also view society as naturally competitive and hierarchical, with ‘’better’’ people (like themselves) inevitably dominating those who are weaker (all minorities).
Culture Theory:
It’s rooted in culture. Everyone has some level of prejudice because it’s embedded in our social institution. More evidence that prejudice is rooted in culture is the fact that minorities express the same attitudes as white people toward categories other than their own. Such patterns suggest that individuals hold prejudices because we live in a “culture of prejudice” that has taught us all to view certain categories of people as “better” or “worse” than others.
Conflict Theory:
Conflict theory suggest that powerful people use economic power to oppress other minorities. A fourth explanation proposes that prejudice is used as a tool by powerful people to oppress others. Anglos who look down on Latino immigrants in the Southwest, for example, can get away with paying the immigrants low wages for long hours of hard work. Minorities themselves encourage race consciousness to win greater power and privileges. Because of their historical disadvantage, minorities claim that they are victims entitled to special
consideration based on their race.
Is the American society a pluralistic society? (A racial and ethnic minorities are distinct) (Treated equally)
Legally, yes.
Socially, no.
Status Consistency:
Status consistency is the degree of uniformity in a person’s social standing across various dimensions of social inequality.
Social stratification:
defined as a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy.
Assimilation:
the process by which the minorities learn the majorities behavior.
Contrast Weber and Marx (inequality)?
- Both Marx and Weber agrees on that social stratification causes social conflict. It’s a societal problem.
- With Marx’s perspective, the working class will continue to get sicker if society is capitalist vs. proletarians and operated by the labor theory of value which requires that there are workers who can be exploited.
- As long as the production method looks the way it looks right now, that some are owners of capital and others are selling themselves to the capital, you can not get an egalitarian society and thus not equal health.
- The labor theory of value does not motivate better work conditions than the law requires. As long as the labor supply is sufficient, there’s no need to care about workers since they all are interchangeable. When the working day can not be extended because of legislation, the simple alternative is to intensify the working day and increase the productivity.
- Marx’s opinion is that the industrialization’s expression of upper-, middle- and working-class would be dissolved if everyone owned capital together.
- With Weber’s perspective and class definition, you can also see that the positions of power is central. The one’s exploiting the work force does not necessarily have to be the owner of the capital, it can also be the one’s who has power over capital.
- The first dimension, economic inequality—the issue so important to Marx—Weber called class position. Weber also involves STATUS, or social prestige, and POWER. Weber argues that the class society is not only a product of the capitalism.
- Science and technology are examples of other factors to be taken into account when a society is to be understood.
- Weber argues against Marx when it comes to the discussion about the exploitation of the worker, Weber argues that the goal is not always the labor theory of value, it might as well be the efficiency of the production itself.
- To deploit capitalism might reduce economic differences, he reasoned, but socialism would increase inequality by expanding government and concentrating power in the hands of a political elite.
Settlers:
the settlers were the Anglo-Saxon Europeans coming centuries ago which are not classified as immigrants.
Social-conflict analysis of gender (Marx):
capitalism creates a hegemonic masculinity. It creates a social, political, and institutional institutions in which creates violent masculinity. The women will continue to hit the glass ceiling in a capitalistic society.
Structural functional analysis of gender?
Society encourages gender conformity by instilling in men and women a fear that straying too far from accepted standards of masculinity or femininity will cause rejection by the opposite sex.
Intersection theory:
The key insight of intersection theory is that there are multiple systems of stratification based on race, class, and gender, and these systems do not operate independently of one another. On the contrary, these dimensions of inequality intersect and interact. Obviously, women are already treated unequally but women from hispanic background is treated even more unequally.
Tough Guise:
It will take a different kind of courage to break out of the role of tough guy posturing men are pressured into so that society can keep making progress. And, courage must be seen as the act of resisting taking on the tough-guy pose – and change will be difficult because violent masculinity is a cultural norm in America and tied to social, political and institutional institutions
Bogardus scale:
Refers to the social distance scale. Suggests that we have seven scales: co-workers, neighbors, friends, spouses, peers etc.
