Test 2 Flashcards
Explanation of Poverty: “Public Issues”
Victim thesis.
Structural disadvantages.
Ascribed status.
Left wing collectivism
Explanation of Poverty: “Personal Troubles”
Personal culpability thesis.
Deserving vs undeserving poor.
Achieved status.
Right wing individualism.
What are some causes of poverty?
Skills and abilities Wages Cost of living Addictions Education Health - Mental health Privilege Poor money management Race and ethnicity Criminal justice system Divorce Crisis
Social Inequality
the unequal distribution of valued resources, rewards and positions in a society
Social Stratification
Institutionalized system of social inequality. Divisions and relationships of social inequality have solidified into a system that determines who gets what, when, and why.
Market Basket Measure (MBM)
The disposable income a family would need to be able to purchase a basket of good that includes food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other basic needs. The dollar value of the MBM varies by family size and composition, as well as community size and location.
Low Income Cut-Off (LICO)
Income level below which a family would devote at least 20 percentage points more of their income to food, clothing, and shelter than an average family would. Varies by family size and community size.
What is Low-Income Measure (LIM)?
1/2 of the median family income. A person whose income is below that level is said to be in low income, LIM is adjusted for family size.
How does poverty affect us all?
spend more money than we need to due to the consequences of poverty: health, low-paid employment, crime rates, physical/mental health, unemployment
Why should we reduce poverty?
High rate of crime impairs economic progress, and poverty produces crime & social problems that effect people across the socioeconomic ladder
What is the poverty line?
Calc. of multiplying the cost of a very minimal diet x3 (1/3 of income spent on food)
Social patterns of poverty?
- majority of poor americans = white
- highest rate of poverty in African Americans & latinos
- women more likely to be in poverty
Impacts of Poverty: Food Securtiy
- 4 million people in Canada experience food insecurity.
- 1 in 8 Canadian households struggles to put food on the table.
- 8 out of 10 provinces saw an increase in food bank usage in 2016.
- Food bank usage across Canada is 3% higher than in 2015 and 28% higher than it was in 2008.
Impacts of Poverty: Health
- men in the wealthiest 20% of neighbourhoods in Canada live on average more than four years longer than men in the poorest 20% of neighbourhoods.
- Food insecure households were 80% more likely to report having diabetes, 60% more likely to report high blood pressure, and 70% more likely to report food allergies.
-1 in 10 Canadians cannot afford to fill their medical prescriptions. Canada is the only industrialized country with a universal healthcare system but without a national pharmacare policy.
Impacts of Poverty: Housing
- 3 million Canadian households are precariously housed (living in unaffordable, below standards, and/or overcrowded housing conditions).
- Three-quarters of Yukon’s population live in Whitehorse - average price of housing increased 80% over six years.
- number of homeless individuals living with a disability or mental illness as high as 45%
- Youth aged 16-24 20% of the homeless population
- spending $10 on housing and support for high-need chronically homeless individuals resulted in almost $22 of savings related to health care, social supports, housing, and the justice system.
Impacts of Poverty: Housing
- 3 million Canadian households are precariously housed (living in unaffordable, below standards, and/or overcrowded housing conditions).
- Three-quarters of Yukon’s population live in Whitehorse where the average price of housing increased 80% over six years.
- Estimates place the number of homeless individuals living with a disability or mental illness as high as 45% of the overall homeless population.
- Youth aged 16-24 make up about 20% of the homeless population
- According to new research, spending $10 on housing and support for high-need chronically homeless individuals resulted in almost $22 of savings related to health care, social supports, housing, and the justice system.
Explanations of poverty: Individualistic
personal troubles personal culpability thesis deserving vs undeserving poor achieved status right wing individualism
Explanations of poverty: Structural
public issues structural disadvantages ascribed status victim thesis left-wing collectivism
Poverty Demographics in Canada
More likely to be in poverty if: disabled (mentally or physically), single mother, Indigenous, senior, child
How does Economic Performance explain the lack of working poor?
the expectation is: economic growth = low unemployment = low poverty
- economic growth, unemployment, & manufacturing employment do not affect poverty
- as economy rises, employment goes up
Unified Theory
Strong labour institution ensures higher wages including for the lower paid.
Unionization reduces the likelihood that employed are poor
Sectors of The Economy
Primary: extraction and production of raw materials
Secondary: convert raw materials to finished goods
Tertiary: service provision
Quaternary: production of ideas
Dependence Theory
- Global stratification allows rich nations to exploit poor nations
- Poor nations never got the chance for economic growth because they colonized by European nations.
World System Theory: Core Nations
High income Industrialized Control global markets Have skilled labour force Need labour and resources from other nations
World System Theory: Semiperiphery Nations
Middle income Industrializing Mostly capitalist Attempting to become a core nation A little bit of core a little bit of periphery
World System Theory: Periphery Nations
Low income
Lesser skilled labour force
Export labour and natural resources
Need investment from other countries
Unified Theory: Efficient/Flexible
Economic growth
Laissez faire
Lacks protection for workers
Lower unemployment or high turnover
Unified Theory: Egalitarian
Slower economic growth Regulated Strong labour institutions Higher wages Higher unemployment
Demographic Characteristics associated with poverty
Working poor and low wage workers are disproportionately:
- Female
- Less educated
- With children
- Households with a lack of multiple earners
Welfare Generosity
Provides protection for the working poor by:
- Reducing risk
- Distributing resources
Supports all working families by providing public services:
- Childcare
- Health care
- Unemployment insurance
Welfare generosity has no affect on job seeking.
Decreases the effects of poverty by:
- Reducing risk and providing protection
- Distributing resources
Race
- Not biologically identifiable.
- Radicalized (social construction of race) through a social process that marks them for unequal treatment based on perceived physiological differences.
Ethnicity
- Shared practices, values, and beliefs, language, religion, traditions.
- Shared culture
Minority/subordinated groups
People who receive unequal treatment because of physical or cultural characteristics.
Stereotypes
Oversimplified, mistaken generalizations & ideas about groups of people.
Prejudice
Negative attitudes, beliefs, & judgements about categories of people & individuals within those categories.
Discrimination
Actions towards a group of people.
Racism: Individual
- Individual’s racist assumptions, beliefs or behaviours.
- Form of racial discrimination that stems from conscious and unconscious, personal prejudice.
Racism: Systemic
- Policies and practices entrenched in institutions that excludes or promotes designated groups.
- No individual intent is necessary.
Racism: Institutional
Racial discrimination that derives from individuals carrying out the dictates of others who are prejudiced of a prejudiced society.
Racism: Structural
Inequalities rooted in the system-wide operation of a society that excludes substantial numbers of members of particular groups from significant participation in major social institutions.
Social Constructionism
- Society is created by humans and human interaction.
- Repeated actions becomes a pattern
Social Constructionism
- Society is created by humans and human interaction.
- Repeated actions becomes a pattern
Narratives
The stories we repeatedly tell.
Examples: The refrain in a song.
- Shape the meaning we make.
- Shape the way we understand and interpret our world.
- Shape our Values, Beliefs, and Norms.
Symbolic Interactionism
Act toward things based on the meanings that things have, meanings derived from social interaction. These meanings are dependent on, and modified by, an interpretive process of the people who interact with one another.
Narratives of Canadian national identity
- these narratives erase Indigenous people from:
- The landscape.
- Narratives of settling.
- Progressing and thriving on these lands.
Politics of resentment
“Anxiety over and disruption to ‘how we do things’ call for a re-affirmation and re-narration of cultural and social identities. This re-narration of formerly established, especially white, communities finds its expression through the disavowal of the other” (95)
Us vs Them
Disavowal of the merits & existence of the other
Narratives of Canadian national identity
“The tales of heroism and progress link settlers to a particular topographical site, the tales further legitimizing their emotional, moral and cultural occupation. Romantic and heroic tales of the many challenges met and faced by homesteaders renders white settlers as innocent and removed from the effects of colonization experienced by aboriginal others, the creation of aboriginal stereotypes notwithstanding” (93)
These narratives erase Indigenous people from:
the landscape
narratives of settling
progressing and thriving on these lands
But Indigenous people live and are not erased
Challenges the narrative that forms the White identity
“Anxiety and ambivalence rise in the conflicting desires to be the good, non-racist citizen/subject while maintaining one’s way of living as entitled and superior. The inability to resolve the contradictory and destabilizing stories that have to be told – about racial stereotypes and putative white innocence – are also grist for resentment” (95)
Resistance, Backlash, & Whitelash
“the politics of resentment found in the refusal of anti-oppressive and anti-racist teaching is produced by and simultaneously produces the on-going effects of white supremacy in schools and the dominant society.” (89)
The refusal of anti-oppressive & anti-racist teaching = resistance
“this resistance as resentment is… deep emotional attachment to a particular identity formation on the part of white settler community.” (91)
White resentment in settler society
“I investigate how spaces for doing anti-racist/anti-colonial work are resisted through public discourses found in schools and communities across a settler-colonial nation like Canada” (88)
As a matter of (social) science:
Fieldsite = (Saskatchewan prairie) classrooms and local communities
I am asking us to consider the generalizability of Schick’s insights
Narratives of power
Canada’s history of colonial violence, slavery, and racism has been trivialized through the circulation of narratives that paint:
Canadian citizens as respectable, peaceful, and multicultural
Immigrants, Black people, and Indigenous people as uncivilized & primitive
White racial knowledge is asserted
White people are not ignorant of racial knowledge
- Oh I don’t see race
Rather we knowingly participate and use and reinforce structures of privilege
- Socialized to know who we are, where we belong
- ” To be white is to belong and to feel entitled to access the social and material discourses accruing though race>” (98)
