Social Class (Ch. 5)

Question 1

socioeconomic status

Answer 1

• occupation, education, income - hierarchal arrangement of individuals based on wealth, power, and prestige (so even if your profession is prestigious, it may not pay well, so you may not really have power)

Question 2

stratification

Answer 2

• insitutionalized inequality of distribution of scarce resources

Question 3

Weber

Answer 3

• stratification - added income/wealth (not everyone can have $), status (if everyone had high status, it wouldn’t exist), and power (not everyone can have power) to stratification

Question 4

Why don’t change theorists/Marxists like socioeconomic status and stratification?

Answer 4

• class and inequality are tied to struggle between opposing forces - class is determined only by relationship to production

Question 5

status symbols

Answer 5

• assumed to be signs of class - ie. cars, clothes, vacations

Question 6

status

Answer 6

• financed through debt

Question 7

middle class

Answer 7

• is the working class -> all our labour produces profit for elites, even though conditions over labour are different and our control over our workday may be different

Question 8

class consciousness

Answer 8

• understanding one has of their place in the class structure - working class have low class consciousness -> identify as middle class

Question 9

how working relates to capitalism

Answer 9

get good education -> get high-paying job -> buy luxurious status symbols to show that you’ve “made it” -> contributes to capitalism

Question 10

thinking dialectically about class

Answer 10

• class is relational yet hierarchal (middle class consumers depend on working class labour) - composed of objective (type of labour) and subjective (class consciousness) elements

Question 11

What do the Council on Foreign Relations, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and the Bilderberg Group all have in common?

Answer 11

• All essentially secretive unions that support the upper class - examples of corporations that make major decisons that affect our lives, yet we don’t relaly know what goes on/how those decisions are made

Question 12

Ruling class/corporate elites

Answer 12

• economic power -> social/political power to protect own class interest

Question 13

income

Answer 13

wages or salary

Question 14

wealth

Answer 14

• money minus debts - cash, property, boats, stocks, etc. - usually inherited

Question 15

Why do some people have a lot of wealth, yet a small income?

Answer 15

Because they’ve inherited their wealth (income doesn’t really matter) -> contradicts social value that “if you work hard, you can make it big!” -> that value is a distraction for the real way people make it into owning class -> being born into it

Question 16

who is the working class?

Answer 16

• 99% of Canadians -> earn a wage for their labour - survive by means of wage/income - “modern petite bourgeoisie”

Question 17

proletarianization

Answer 17

lower-status jobs end up getting paid more than higher status jobs

Question 18

how are waged workers fragmented?

Answer 18

• scarcity of work and declining wages - threat of job loss - lack of political/social influence - “common sense” beliefs (lucky to have job, lack of success is personal failure)

Question 19

inter-class conflict

Answer 19

• intentional unemployment creates scarcity and competiton for secure jobs and wages -> forced competition by capitalism - willingness to work longer hours for less money -> greater productivity at less cost to employer

Question 20

reserve army of labour

Answer 20

• group of people who are unemployed/underemployed - creates downword pressure on wages, used when labour demands are high to keep worker’s demands in check -> essential to workings of capitalism

Question 21

demonizing unions

Answer 21

creating negative public opinion to restrict union rights (ie. striking)

Question 22

racism and class

Answer 22

• migrant workers vs. Canadian citizens - unions vs. migrant workers - lower migrant workers’ pay -> all unemployed wages go down

Question 23

material resources (ie.__) shape __ and __ that signal __

Answer 23

income, cultural practices, behaviours, social class

Question 24

exclusivity between class

Answer 24

• shown in “People Like Us” - rich people can be exclusive/private (large hedges, etc.) - the poorer you are, the more visible you are (ie. homeless)