Finals Flashcards
(25 cards)
“A Theory of Stratification” by David and Moore
Argument: positions rewarded when skills are (A) valuable for society and/or (B) scarce
Inequality: known as stratification in sociology; categorized as social hierarchy
Functionalism: things exist in society because they are functional and/or good for society
Issues: theory assumes that people compete as individuals, not groups; societies maximize rather than limit competition
“Unequal Childhoods” by Annette Lareau
Concerted Cultivation: monitored and intervening form of parenting; marked by a parent’s attempts to foster their child’s talents by incorporating organized activities in their children’s lives
Accomplishment of Natural Growth: given boundaries for behavior and then allowed to grow
Class Differences in Childhood Socialization: parents educate children based on their own life and work experience; class culture in social context since children are being taught by their parents as best as possible
*Return to 3 debates of socialization (see unitary vs modular section)
“Living the Drama” by David J. Harding
Aimed to demyth cultural perception of life in the slums by comparing two poor neighborhoods and one working class one –> Discussed differences of approach between the working class and the poor in educational path / focus, violent situations, friendships, and parenting
Cultural homogeneity: model supposition (no models) vs. dilution (too many models) vs. simultaneity (combining models)
Social relationships affected by the type of environment you live in and the values of that community (eg. dangerous neighborhoods have friendships based on fighting)
“State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal” by Theda Skocpol and Kenneth Finegold
comparison of NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act) and AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act); both signed into law in 1933 within months of each other and given parallel broad grants of executive order; goals to have reasonable wages and profit for sectors (aka regulate codes of fair competition)
NIRA: weak administratively (disunited, decentralized, incoherence, contradictory); fairness more by industry being regulated than actual government; oligarchy present
AAA: placed under federal government via USDA (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) (organizes, resolved major internal contradiction, launched ambitious new plans); President Roosevelt believed in production controls of major staple crops as a way to raise farm prices AS OPPOSED TO farmers focusing on market programs with fixed prices and port-dumping surpluses
“Theory of Class, Status, and Poverty” by Max Weber
Theory of social bases of group formation of class, status, and/or party Power: structure of every legal order (political community) determines the distribution of power → three types of power based on class, status, and party Class: shared life chances because of economic interests; possession of goods and opportunities based on income; represented under conditions for commodity or labor market; class consciousness and collective action not guaranteed since people’s interests may differ Status: distribution of honor in a society; communal emphasis rather than individual; has characteristics of social honor and prestige, monopoly of inclusion, and lifestyle Party: organization for vehicle striving for power; socializing process driven by interest goals; can emphasize class or status groups or both
“Manifesto of the Communist Party” and other works by Karl Marx
Historical force that generates its opposites, combine to make a transformative new concept (historical contradictions solved within history) → thesis vs antithesis begets synthesis
Classes: active agent in history; large groups of people that can affect the continuation or overthrow of an existing mode of production
Species Being: a being that can identify with one of its own kind → proletariats seek to end “alienation” and “estrangement”
Mode of Production: forces of production; social relations of production → Forces of Production: more productivity, more trade, more financing; success of feudalism leads to capitalism
Each Type of Economy has its own particular mode of production with two elements (forces or means of production, and the relations of production) → mode of production (type of economy) = means of production (anything used to create) + relations of production (beliefs)
Feudalism vs Capitalism [Marx]
three factors used differently (land, capital, and labor); results in fundamentally different social models of interaction and production
Feudalism: groups of individuals tied to land and “master rights”; lots of guilds, with opposing aristocracy
Capitalism: industrialism assists in new social communications; large scale production exacerbates powerfulness and powerlessness of humankind (efficiency vs exploitation of natural division of labor); as the social power of humankind grows, the power of the individual human being declines; needs profit (huge factor on division of labor)
bou have power to influence change but pro will see that change through
Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie
Pro: working class; lives wage to wage
Bou: constantly revolutionizes means of production to maintain power
Marx did not account for powerful nation states that regulate and control capitalism (eg. government laws)
Why do classes become revolutionary? [Marx]
PERMANENT REVOLUTION: strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances, and despite the political dominance of opposing sections of society.
TWO STAGE THEORY: underdeveloped countries must first pass through a stage of bourgeois democracy before moving to a socialist stage.
Explosive and opportunity seeking individuals that revel because of their abuse and exploitation; most oppressed seek new mode of production, resulting in the revolution of the most oppressed versus the most powerful
“Not Under My Roof” by Amy Schalet
links how parents deal with sexuality and a nation’s cultural perception of it; comparative analysis between American and Dutch parents, their children, and the culture of sex
- Dramatization vs Normalization
- Adversarial and Independent Individualism
Relationship between political stance approach of the country and the approach of sex → Dutch put a premium on seeking out compromises, therefore parents strive to be open with their children; USA wants to win in war and all the important battles, as do their parents
“State Intervention and Well-being in Advanced Industrial Democracies” by Flavin et al.
Studied four different methods of state intervention
- government tax revenue as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP)
- government consumption of GDP,
- generosity of unemployment benefits
- country’s welfare expenditures as a percentage of GDP.
Correlated life satisfaction with the effects of government intervention
“American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper” by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
explaining why inequality has risen faster in America than in any other rich country and how a strategy started by conservative foundations and rich libertarians to limit and weaken government paid off spectacularly
three main prongs of the Republican attack
- “Denounce crony capitalism” while catering to narrow business interests
- “Feed political dysfunction and win by railing against it”
- “Undermine the capacity of government to perform its vital functions” and at the same time “decry a bungling and corrupt public sector.”
Possible Solutions: further limit the use of filibusters in the Senate; institute campaign finance reform; make it easier for people to vote; introduce regulatory reform to tackle today’s robber barons in finance, energy and health care → new, broad-based movement to restore America’s love for effective government
“Urban Elites and Mass Transportation” by Allen Whitt
proposed three models of political explanation
Pluralist: power distributed over multiple numerous groups with different interests; lots of conflict and changing alliances; political outcomes do not consistently favor a particular group over another; state acts as a broker to preserve some autonomy and balance competing interests
Elitist: centralized power in the elites and their interests; exclusivity and unity in political allegiances; political outcomes consistently favor the elites; state has little, if any, power and is typically the captive of the elites
Class-Dialectic: power and interests generally held by the dominant classes but can be subverted to lower castes; some latent class conflict but usually compromised; political outcomes typically favor the dominant classes; state serves interest of the dominant class in order to preserve the basis of class hegemony
“A Broken Public? America’s Response to the Great Recession” by Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza
Macro Polity Theory: two assumptions to be followed
aggregate that policy preferences among citizens are coherent and consistently influenced by the economy, therefore leading to preference-formation processes in the aggregate
voters and the public as a whole are rational, calculating expected utility and making forecasts using available information to gauge their degree of preference for government action (All this occurs at the aggregate level of preference formation, where such conditions as inattention, cognitive incapacity, or bias are again assumed to cancel out and leave intact the rationally responsive core of public opinion)
Identification of three candidates:
Government overreach scenario + stratification beliefs: if individuals think they can or should get ahead on their own, they may respond to negative macroeconomic conditions by intensifying their beliefs in an unregulated economy, resisting attempts to expand the scope of government responsibility and provision
Racism, bias, and motivated reasoning: exploration of symbolic racism and racial resentment in interdisciplinary literature
Partisanship: during times of economic downturn people favor government regulation and vice versa
Measuring Opportunity
Marx’s Theory of Class: relationship to the means of production
Weber’s Theory of Class: competing social bases for group formation
Measuring “exchange mobility” (“fairness”) [in “occupational status”]: mobility table (distribution table [distribution of son’s occupation by father’s occupation]); correlation of father’s / son’s occupation; correlation matrix; path diagram
“The American Occupational Structure” by Blau and Duncan
Survey of 20k men, age range of 20 to 64 years old in the civilian labor force; either white or black → measured and ranked occupations by prestige and status
Viewed men and sons who held the same jobs since young adulthood
Strong correlation between occupational status and education → father’s education does not correlate as much as the son’s
Great Gatsby Curve
overall level of income inequality reduces intergenerational mobility → high levels of taxation and government spending reduce inequality and enhance opportunity OTHERWISE the more a parent is, the more their mental bandwidth or occupation is focused on survival and does not allow for clear thinking or future possibilities
Pierre Bourdeaux
Habitus: composed of attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those inhabiting one’s social world; through daily living within a certain class (and race) environment, one unconsciously internalizes beliefs and values until they become instinctive
Cultural Capital: knowledge and skills that are passed from one generation to the next; can be acquired throughout life → we all have cultural capital but society values some over others
Reproduction of Inequality: objective structure → habitus → reproduction of objective structure
Elite Theory, Pluralist Theory, Marxist Class Theory
Elite Theory: stress on material power; privileged and the successful are to inherit governing powers because of an obvious superiority shown through their success; unified purpose / goals because of similar backgrounds / attitudes / social class / exclusivity; stable, concentrated power with few checks and balances (interests of power elite became interests of state)
Pluralist Theory: stress on immaterial power; all participants share an equal status whether it be in possession, power, or rights; appeals to the masses and the under privileged because it evens the scale from distant class orders to a unity; decentralized power and more democratic; state acts as broker between groups; resources distributed amongst groups
Marxist Class Theory: power serves the capitalist class; any situation was needed for the creation of capitalism; develops argument by focusing on outcomes through comparative historical examples → non functionable and has political fatalism
Institutional Theories of Power
power is not a “zero sum” (size of the pie vs. division of pie); political institutions make a difference → when will state strength be used for public versus private purposes? + difficulty of distinguishing state strength from state survival; problems of democracy and equity in fragile states (can lead to violence or ethnic cleansing bc of majority vote)
Types of Consciousness
Class: personal beliefs regarding one’s own social class or economic rank in society; structure of their class, and their class interest False: distorted understanding of one’s class identity and interest
“Study on Parenting Values” by Melvin Kohn
Working class (less autonomous) parents valued obedience Middle class (more autonomous) parents valued independence
Found a correlation to a parent’s work context → role of bureaucracy and unions promoted independence since middle class workers were protected and had the capacity to fight their bosses
“God’s Transcendence” and “Grace vs Works” by Martin Luther
Believed that human dynamism and appreciation about etc came about due to irrational, unstoppable, “evil” things → understanding of what is “sacred” as unified, institutionalized, etc creates a single large transcendent deity that “allows” bad things to happen
Doctrine 1: deeper order where your suffering comes as a result of reincarnation (trying to attain a pure form of life)
Doctrine 2: theory that a good god is in constant conflict with a bad god (very heretical)
Doctrine 3: god is so transcendent that we are completely incapable of understanding him (churches and priests as insult to God)
“Institutes of Christian Religion” by John Calvin
believed that a truly transcendent God had predestined everything that would ever happen, including who would be saved and who is damned
concept of deus absconditus: God who abandoned the world; creation, motion, abandon:
The Elects: those chosen were called “elect” and their “chosenness” would show in every way possible; incentive to act as an elect would, resulting in intensified self examination and self discipline because everything mattered and exemplified the greater glory of God → resulted in demystification of the world,
anxiety, loneliness, etc
World Images: created by ideas that have determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamism of interests → your interests are what drive your actions but world images can adjust your path ever so slightly
American voluntarism / individualism
voluntarism as a distinctive individuals emphasis on unique choices that can create groups → characterized by autonomy, choice, and honest communication
- What makes you different lets you join the group via contribution
- Need unique interests to join with others
- Conformity and difference
- Aversion to “politics”
