Social Stratification Flashcards
1
Q
Social Class and Social Cohesion
A
- Social Class: Category of people who share a similar socioeconomic position in society.
- Social Cohesion: Social integration; the solidarity and sense of connectedness among different social groups and social classes in society.
2
Q
Social Stratification
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- Social Stratification: Organization of society into a hierarchical system usually based on socioeconomic status and social class.
- SES depends on Ascribed Status (derived from clearly identifiable characteristics such as age, gender, skin color) and Achieved Status (acquired via direct individual efforts or merit, such as Educational Attainment).
3
Q
Class, Prestige, Power
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- Class: Upper Class (wealthy, reputable, influential, has high concentration of prestige and power); Middle Class (professional people and skilled workers), Lower Class (poor and have greatly reduced sociopolitical power). Socioeconomic Gradient describes proportional improvement in healthcare as one moves up in SES.
- Prestige: Amount of positive regard society has for a given person or idea (such as high prestige for physicians and some educational institutions).
- Power: Ability to affect others’ behavior through real or perceived rewards and punishments; based on the unequal distribution of valued resources.
- Power creates worldwide social inequalities between the Haves (bourgeoisie) and the Have-Nots (proletariat).
- In Conflict Theory, the Have-Nots can revolt and overthrow the bourgeoisie and the entire capitalist economy by developing Class Consciousness (organization of the working class around shared goals and recognition of a need for collective political action), laying groundwork for a socialist state.
- False Consciousness: Misperception of one’s actual position within society; members of proletariat either do not see just how bad conditions are, do not recognize commonalities between their own experiences and others, or otherwise are too clouded to assemble into revolutionaries. Major barrier to class consciousness.
4
Q
Strain Theory
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- Anomie: Lack of widely accepted social norms and breakdown of social bonds between individual and society.
- Strain Theory: Anomic conditions (Excessive Individualism, Social Inequality, and Isolation) can lead to deviance and can erode Social Solidarity (sense of community and social cohesion); anomic conditions have accelerated the decline of social inclusion and have further obstructed opportunities to acquire Social Capital.
- Social Trust: Comes from Social Norms of Reciprocity (I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine) and Social Networks.
5
Q
Social Capital
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- Social Capital: The investment people make in their society in return for economic or collective rewards; the greater the investment, the higher the level of Social Integration (movement of a new or minority population into a larger culture while maintaining their ethnic identities). Low Social Capital leads to greater social inequality.
- Social Networks: One of the main forms of Social Capital and can create two types of social inequality; Situational Inequality (socioeconomic advantage) and Positional Inequality (based on how connected one is with a network and ones centrality with a net network).
- Inequality in networks creates and reinforces Privilege (inequality in opportunity).
- Cultural Capital: Benefits one receives from knowledge, abilities, and skills.
- Communities are joined together through strong and weak ties.
- Strong Ties: Peer groups and kinship contacts which are quantitatively small but qualitatively powerful.
- Weak Ties: Social connections that are personally superficial but that are large in number and provide connections to a wide range of other individuals, such as social networking websites that focus on professional relationships.
- People without multiple week ties (such as the disadvantaged) may find accessing and contributing to social capital extremely difficult.
6
Q
Intersectionality
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• Intersectionality: The compounding of disadvantage seen in individuals who belong to more than one underserved group (racial and ethnic minorities, female-headed families, and the elderly); contributes to continued socioeconomic inequality.
7
Q
Social Mobility
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- Social Mobility: Ability to move up or down from one class to another; typically the result of an economic and occupational structure that allows one to acquire higher level employment opportunities given proper credentials and experience requirements.
- Intragenerational Mobility: Changes in social status that happen within a persons lifetime.
- Intergenerational Mobility: Changes in social status from parents to children.
- Vertical Mobility: Upward Mobility (positive change in person’s social status) results in higher position; Downward Mobility (negative change in person’s social status) results in their fall to a lower position. Directly correlated with education.
- Horizontal Mobility: Change in occupation or lifestyle that keeps that individual within the same social class (such as construction worker switching jobs to custodial services or mechanical maintenance).
8
Q
Meritocracy
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- Meritocracy: Social structure in which intellectual talent and achievement are means for a person to advance up the social ladder.
- Plutocracy: Rule by the upper classes.
- Merit plays a key role in many segments of society but merit does not always guarantee positive social mobility.
9
Q
Poverty
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- Poverty: Low socioeconomic status and lack of possessions or financial resources.
- Social Reproduction: Social inequality, especially poverty, can be reproduced or passed on from one generation to the next.
- Structural Poverty: Theory of poverty that posits that poverty arises due to holes in the structure of society rather than poverty due to the actions of the individual; same individuals do not necessarily occupy these holes from year to year, but the percentage of a society that falls under the poverty line stays relatively constant due to their existence.
- Absolute Poverty: Socioeconomic condition in which people do not have enough money or resources to maintain a quality of life that includes basic life necessities such as shelter, food, clothing, and water.
- Relative Poverty: People are poor in comparison to the larger population in which they live (such as teacher surviving off low salary while living in Manhattan compared to wealthier residents).
- Poverty Line: Derived from government‘s calculation of the minimum income requirements for families to minimum necessities of life; does not take into account cost of living in different communities.
- Social Exclusion: Arises from sense of powerlessness when poor individuals feel segregated and isolated from society; creates further obstacles to achieving self-help, independence, and self-respect. Racial and ethnic minorities often experience magnified feelings of alienation and powerless less when living in affluent communities.
10
Q
Spatial Inequality
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- Spatial Inequality: Social stratification across geographical territories; where one lives plays a major role in distribution of valuable resources.
- Space reinforces existing inequalities (especially poverty) and amplifies their effects, leading to population segregation and formation or expansion of ghettos or slums.
- Space can also result in spatially-varied social structures, built environments, and unequal regional development due to social relationships. Undesirable buildings (water refineries and chemical manufacturers) are more likely to be placed in poorer neighborhoods with low SES, as they tend to have less political and social influences and lack social resources to fight government and industry.
11
Q
Residential Segregation
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- The cultural diversity and anonymity of urban neighborhoods offer a person a greater range of opportunities that normally found in rural areas; people in urban environments are less likely to fall into their occupations and social positions because of family ties (due to greater availability of career choices and easier access to education), but people in rural environments are more likely to take up family business (my dad was a farmer and so was my grandfather so I will also become a farmer).
- Affluent neighborhoods tend to have more professionals, college graduates, higher-quality schools, and less crime. Low-income neighborhoods tend to have greater poverty and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, and violent/organized crimes.
- Suburbanization: Migration pattern of the middle classes to suburban communities due to overall greater concentration of poor individuals in urban centers, as the suburbs are generally cleaner and less crowded with better school systems.
- Disadvantaged groups and members of the lower class are less able to relocate to areas that might offer them better opportunities and thus remain in urban centers under poor living conditions.
- Urban Decay: Previously functional portion of a city deteriorates and becomes decrepit over time due to suburbanization.
- Urban Renewal: Spontaneous reversal of urban decay in which city land is reclaimed and renovated for public or private use, fueled by Gentrification (when upper and middle class populations purchase and renovate neighborhoods in deteriorating areas).
12
Q
Environmental Justice
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• Poor living conditions and dangerous environmental conditions can result in an increase in illness and disease. Poor and minority groups tend to reside closer to sites of environmental pollution (waste-producing plants and toxic waste dumps) because of cheaper housing markets; inadequate housing, heating, and sanitation, along with toxin exposure, can contribute to acute medical illnesses such as influenza, pneumonia, substance use disorders, tuberculosis, and whooping cough.
13
Q
Global Inequality
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- World System Theory: Argues that there are global level inequalities in the division of labor between core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral nations.
- Core Nations: Focus on higher skills and higher paying productions (such as US and other Western countries).
- Peripheral Nations: Exploited by core nations for their lower-skilled productions (China and other Asian countries).
- Semi-Peripheral Nations: Nations that work toward becoming core nations while having many characteristics of peripheral nations.
14
Q
Social Epidemiology
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- Social Epidemiology: Branch of epidemiology that studies the ways in which health and disease correlate to social advantages and disadvantages.  Low-income groups are significantly worse off than the middle or upper classes when it comes to health disparities and tend to be sicker than others as a result of social stratification; the wealthier tend to have better health and better access to healthcare due to high social capital and social trust.
- Incidence: The number of new cases of an illness per at-risk population in a given amount of time.
- Prevalence: The number of cases of an illness overall (whether new or chronic) per population in a given amount of time.
- Morbidity: The burden or degree of illness associated with a given disease.
- Mortality: The deaths caused by given disease.
15
Q
Inequities in Health
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- Health is negatively impacted by poor environmental factors (John Snow’s investigation of cholera outbreak from contaminated water pump) and socioeconomic factors. Best health outcomes generally seen in egalitarian societies.
- Welfare State: System of government that protects the health and well-being of its citizens. Class differences in health still exist with professional groups having longer life expectancies than working class people.
- Second Sickness: Exacerbation of health outcomes caused by social injustice.
- Race-Related and Ethnicity-Related Heath Discrepancies: Minorities have overall worse heath profile in terms of morbidity and mortality (with the exception of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders).
- Gender-Related Health Disparities: Males have higher mortality rates (from heart/lung diseases and diabetes, accidents and suicides/homicides, and lower tendency to seek medical attention); Females have higher morbidity rates (from acute conditions, such as infectious and parasitic diseases, and chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension).
