Social Structures, 1900 to Present

Question 1

~BRIC

Answer 1

● Brazil, Russia, India and China
● Whose soceioeconomic development does not yet match that of the West but which have been rapidly modernizing and gaining global clout

Question 2

~White-collar class

Answer 2

● Status depended on education, skills, and earned wealth

Question 3

~Middle class

Answer 3

● Large and stable class

Question 4

~Infrastructure

Answer 4

● The growing availability and affordability of transportational and energy infrastructures, along with the mobility that came with mass transit and hte automobile

Question 5

~Social welfare systems

Answer 5

● Either as a way to cope with the economic pain of the interwar years and the Great Depression (British dole and FDR new Deal)
● Or because of the new possibilites opened up by post-WWII prosperity
● In capitalist societies, they required a willingness to palce a safety net under hte workings of the free market or even to blend capitalism with some elements of socialism as in Scandinavia’s third way

Question 6

~Postindustrial economies

Answer 6

● Emphasize consumerism and service industries rather than manufacturing
● Place a premium on computerization and cutting-edge technologies

Question 7

~Computerization

Answer 7

● Associated with many innovations and opportunities
● Also caused stress as well as opportunity, with many jobs being made obsolete by new machines or being lost to cheaper labor overseas

Question 8

~Economic gap

Answer 8

● Even the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by a growing divide between the wealthiest members of Western societies and the less well-off, with increased burdens falling on a noticeably shrinking middle class
● Caused by the financial collapse of 2007 has only worsened these trends

Question 9

~Communist Europe

Answer 9

● A communist elite/new class enjoyed enormous privileges
● Social welfare system provided what cynics referred to as equality of poverty or at best equality of adquacy
● Industrial manufacturing was strong, but the production of consumer goods was weak, and high-tech innovation outside the military sphere was nearly nonexistent

Question 10

~New class

Answer 10

● A communist elite comprising about 10% of a given society

● Denounced by the Yugoslav intellectual Milovan Djilas as a corrupt and self-important new class

Question 11

~Developing world

Answer 11

● Social devisions between the elite classes and the rest of the society tended to remain very wide, with a very smal lmiddle class separating the very wealthy from very poor masses
● Social and economic modernization were generally directed from above

Question 12

~North-south splite

Answer 12

● Economic prosperity, the availability of food and clean water, and access to cutting-edge technology, medical care, and social stability tend to be concentrated int he developed world, with many parts of hte developing world lagging behind and still impoverished

Question 13

~Social activism

Answer 13

● Part of modern social life since the days of the American and French revolutions
● Leading role in national liberation movements worldwide and in the struggle for racial equality in places as diverse as South Africa (anti-apartheid movement) and the US (civil rights movement versus Jim Crow laws)
● Clashed with existing social and political orders
● Advanced the cause of women’s liberation and gay rights

Question 14

~1968 Protests

Answer 14

● Rocked city streets and college campuses from Paris and Prague to Mexico City and New York
● Gave voice to those who opposed nuclear weapons, Cold War conflicts like Vietnam, and damage to the environment

Question 15

~Tiananmen Square protests

Answer 15

● In China in 1989

● Unseccessful protest that defied dictatorial regimes

Question 16

~Solidarity strikes and people’s power movements

Answer 16

● Against Poland’s communist governemnt during the 1980s and the related people’s power movemnets that borught down communism in Eastern Europe more widely in 1988 and 1989

Question 17

Segregationist schemes

Answer 17

● Existed in many places to restrict the rights of unfavored ethnic groups or to keep them apart from those groups favored by the authorities
● In no colony did the imperial power allow natives to mix freely with whites

Question 18

~Pale of Settlement

Answer 18

● Prior to the revolutions of 1917, Jews in Russia were not allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement, a special zone in western Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, without a permit

Question 19

~Jim Crow laws

Answer 19

● In the US, it enforced by lunching and other forms of legal and semi-legal violence
● Perpetuated anti-black segregation in a variety of ways, especially in the south, until protests and demonstrations by civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. helped to bring about passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968

Question 20

~Indigenous American

Answer 20

● Struggled against secondary status and racial prejudice, whether in the US and Canada or throughout Latin America
● Being forced onto reservations, many people were taken from their families as children, either to be adopted by white families or to be educated in residential schools, where abuse was rampant and native traditions discouraged

Question 21

~Apartheid

Answer 21

● One of hte most deeply entrenched forms of segregation was the South African system
● Instituted in 1948 by white Afrikaners and rigidly enforced until the 1990s
● Earn South Africa decades of world disapproval and provoked determined opposition on the part of groups like the African National Congress

Question 22

~African National Congress

Answer 22

● Led most famously by Nelson Mandela

● jailed for his activism between 1964 and 1990

Question 23

~Roma/Gypsies

Answer 23

● Throughout Eastern Europe

● It continued to be treated as distinctly second-class

Question 24

~Migration

Answer 24

● Remained as much a global reality in this era as during the 1800s and so have xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment
● Continued to be motivated by work opportunities (including migrant and illegal labor), but warfare has done its share to prompt it as well, creating refugees and displaced persons by the millions
● Intensified after WWII by refugees

Question 25

~Decolonization

Answer 25

● Countries that dismantled their empires allowed former colonial subjects to live and work in the metropole or home country
● Migration was encouraged after
● Indians, Pakistanis and Caribbean islanders traveled in large numbers to Britain, Indonesians migrated to the Netherlands, and Algerians and Moroccans came to France
● Migration of Filipinos and Puerto Ricans to the US can be considered part of this phenomenon as well

Question 26

~Guest workers

Answer 26

● Admission of them to Western Europe along with increase in legal and illegal immigraion of Latin Americans to the US and Canada
● There were 15 million of these by the 1980s, many of them Turks living in Germany

Question 27

~Anti-immigration sentiments

Answer 27

● Involve varying degrees of prejudice and discrimination
● Involve race riots or the formation of skinhead movements or nativist political parties (such as those founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jorg Haider in Austria) which call for an end to immigration

Question 28

~Gender equality

Answer 28

● Progress came most quickly in the Western world, although other regions moved forward as well, if slowly and partially

Question 29

~Women’s suffrage movements

Answer 29

● In Europe and North America that had arisen during the late 1800s continued their agitation during the early 1900s
● Successes during and after WWI when large numbers of women took jobs as farmhands and factory workers, especially in munitions plants
● Served as nurses and uniformed auxiliaries, and their contributions to their countries’ war efforts earned them much respect

Question 30

~Women’s right to vote

Answer 30

● In many Western nations between 1917 and 1920, with Spain, France, and Italy standing out at noteworthy exceptions
● Due to raising status in WWI

Question 31

~1917 Constitution (Mexico)

Answer 31

● Granted women the right to vote and much of Latin America did the same int he 1920s and 1930s

Question 32

~Women suffrage in Middle East

Answer 32

● Turkey gave women the vote in 1934 but this was a rarity in the Middle East

Question 33

~Women suffrage in Asia

Answer 33

● Japan established universal suffrage in 1945
● India and China did so in 1947
- Although the Chinese Republic was late in giving women the vote, it did outlaw foot binding in 1912

Question 34

~Women after WWI

Answer 34

● Except in the USSR, where rapid industrialization required as large a workforce as possible, the rate of female ecployment decreased in Europe and North America during the 1920s
● As men returned from WWI, and especially in the 1930s, when during the mass employment caused by the Great Depression, it was considered wrong for women to have jobs if men were out of work

Question 35

~Interwar dictatorship in treatment of women

Answer 35

● In the USSR, Marxist ideology called for gender equality and while the Soviets observed this ideal imperfectly (especially under Stalin), women made up a large part of the workforce
● Italian fascism, German Nazism, and Japanese traditaionalism were explicitly hostile to the notion of gender equality
- Women were expected to be principally mothers and homemakers
● Non-western parts of the world that afforded educational or workplace opportunities to women during the interwar years were rare, although they include Turkey, Iran, and certain parts of Latin America

Question 36

~Women treatment in WWII

Answer 36

● Brought women into the workplace in even greater number than WWI had
● Image of Rosie the Riveter became a potent symbol of the orle of women in US wartime production
● In USSR, women made up nearly 40% of the national workforce
- Women served in military and (rarely) saw active duty in combat mainly as pilots and snipers
● Large numbers of women served as war nruses and military personnel (although not as combat troops

Question 37

~Women in postwar years

Answer 37

● Assumed an increasingly larger role in the workplace and in public life
● In 1940s and 1950s, a woman’s main roles were still considered homemaker and childbearer

Question 38

~Simone de Beauvoir

Answer 38

● French philosopher who analyzed the place of women in modern society
● (1949) that investigated the deep-seated cultural and biological reasons for male domination fo women

Question 39

~Feminist movement

Answer 39

● Began in Western world during the 1960s and 1970s

● Began to press for women’s liberation

Question 40

~Women’s liberation

Answer 40

● Meant not just legal equality and the right to vote, but the elimination fo the cultural stereotype of women as the weaker sex and the social barriers that still blocked the way toward full equality

Question 41

~Gloria Steinem

Answer 41

● A founding figure in the National Organization for Women (NOW)
● Organized a major event, the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 although it failed in its goal of passing an Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution

Question 42

~Betty Friednan

Answer 42

● (1963)

● Joined as part of the feminist movement’s intellectual foundation

Question 43

~Reproductive rights

Answer 43

● Progven crucial
● Postwar development of reliable contraception, especailly birth-control iplls, gave women unrprecedented control over preganancy and sexuality
● Gradual legalization of abortion, albeit controversial, did the same

Question 44

~Clitoridectomy

Answer 44

● Female circumcision

● Practiced in certain parts of Africa

Question 45

~Gay and lesbian rights movements

Answer 45

● In the US the contemporary gay rights movement is considered to have begun with the Stonewall riots in 1969, in New York’s Greenwich Village
● Despite Gay Pride paragdes and protests since the 1970s, and despite growing awareness of gay and lesbian relationships, wider acceptance has been a longer time in coming, with same-sex marriage becoming legal only in the 2000s in over a dozen countries as of this date, and also in parts of hte US and Mexico

Question 46

~What was the social transformations in Western Europe, the US and Canada as well as in Australia and New Zealand?

Answer 46

● Movement was toward stable democratization, social equality and individual rights, economic prosperity, the creation of social welfare systems, the shift from industrial to postindustrial production and rapid scientific and technological development
● Although in some cases slow or nonexistnet before the end of WWII

Question 47

~What was the social transformations in Prosperous nations in Asia (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore?

Answer 47

● Made great strides toward economic and technological modernization, especially after WWII
● They urbanized, built social welfare systems, and developed postindustrial, high-tech economies
● however, they were slower to embrace democracy and to tolerate the individualism that had come to characterize Western societies in the 1800s and 1900s

Question 48

~What was the social transformations in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?

Answer 48

● Modernized economically
● Urbanized nad developed social welfare systems, and technological and scientific advancement was considerable
● Political systems were repressive, and not only were the economies overly centralized, they remained industrial rather than postindustrial and were cruder in terms of technological finesse
● Even after the collapse of communism, it has been difficult for this region to move toward democracy and prosperity

Question 49

~What was the social transformaions in developing nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America?

Answer 49

● Striving to create advanced economies, modern societies, and representative forms of government
● Some have made progress, attaining a high level of prosperity or a functioning democracy or both
● Others are mired in backwardness, poverty, civil strife and dictatorship

Question 50

~What was the social transformations in China?

Answer 50

● People’s Republic fo China has the geography, population and military capacity of a major power and whose economy has grown considerably since the 1980s
● China’s government is still authoritarian and social and economic progress remains uneven

Question 51

~What social trends that began in the West during the 1800s sped up significantly in 19002 by WWI?

Answer 51

● Elimination of legal distinctions between social classes
● Provision of equal political rights nad equal treatment before hte law for all adult citizens, including females and minorities
● Aristocratic social elites were replaced by a professional and meritocratic white-collar class
● large middle class
● Provide minimum standard of living among lower class

Question 52

~What are some developments in the period?

Answer 52

● Growing power of trade unions
● Creation of universal educational systems
● Infrastructure
● Urbanization and suburbanization
● Social welfare systems

Question 53

~What did the social welfare systems generally include?

Answer 53

● Unemployment insurance
● Pensions
● Health care (at least for the elderly and poor, if not hte netire population)

Question 54

~What happened after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the USSR?

Answer 54

● A wrenching social and economic transition to free-market capitalism followed
● In many places remains incomplete

Question 55

~What racial tensions have divdied many communities and nations throughout this era?

Answer 55

● Ethnic violence
● Persecution of minorities
● Segregation

Question 56

~What were examples of genocides nad mass killings?

Answer 56

● Armenian massacres of WWI
● Extermination of Jews and Roma during WWII
● Guatemalan murder of Mayan in the 1980s
● Rwandan genocid
● Yugoslav ethnic cleasings of the 1990s
● Arab killing of African Darfurians in Sudan during the early 2000s

Question 57

~What regions have long-term ethnic tensions and sporadic violence?

Answer 57

● Indo-Pakistani animosity in South Asia
● Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East
● Intertribal rivalries in Africa
● Greek-Turkish hostility on the island of Cyprus, divided since 1975

Question 58

~What does migration typically provid?

Answer 58

● A much-needed labor force, if not always a well-treated one
● Enriched the cultural diversity of host nations
● Sitr up anti-immigration sentiments especially when economic times are tight
- Involve varying degrees of prejudice and discriination

Question 59

~Why does wartime trigger anti-immigrant sentiment?

Answer 59

● If a country is home to a large immigrant population originally from a nation it is fighting
● Distrust of German-Americans and German-Canadians ran high during WWI
● Both Canada and US took the drastic step of rounding up Japanese-Canadians and -Americans without cause and confining them against their will to relocation centers
- Most famous center is Manzanar, near California’s Sierra Nevada

Question 60

~What were some gender discrimination that women who worked were subjected to?

Answer 60

● Sexual harassment
● Unequal wages
● Lack of access to positions of leadership (glass ceiling)

Question 61

~What were the achievements of the women’s movement throughout the Western world?

Answer 61

● Better and more varied career opportunities
● Higher pay
● Equal access to higher education
● Greater respect for women’s athletics
● Greater role in political life
●RIght to equality in marriage and divorce

Question 62

~How is equal treatment of women uneven in non-Western parts of the world?

Answer 62

● In many societies, women are still relegated to traditional and secondary roles
● Islamic fundamentalism, conservative Catholicism, machismo, and old-fashioned views of women as inferior (or of wives as servants or property) constrain women more commonly in these regions than int he West
● In sub-Saharan Africa, rates of HIV/AIDS infection among women are unusually high, owing to the reluctance of amny African men to engage in safe-sex practices
● Clitoridectomy is still practiced in certain parts of Arica