Chapter 8: Inequality

American Individual Success Model

American individual success model: The cultural model shared by many Americans whereby success and failure are believed to be the result of individual qualities and efforts, and inequalities are assumed to be based on merit and personal shortcomings.

Social Stratification

Social stratification: The hierarchical ranking of people on the basis of social difference—specifically, with regard to their access to desirable resources, their life chances, and their social influence.

Karl Marx maintained that class was the basis of stratification in modern capitalist society

Max Weber distinguished among three different types of strata—class, status, and power.

Other theories of stratification might consider gender or race to be the basis of stratification

Social Stratification (continued)

Life chances: The opportunities for sharing in material or cultural goods during one’s lifetime. Life chances are affected not only by personal merit and accomplishment but also by race, gender, and socioeconomic status.Social Structure: The enduring, orderly, and patterned relationships among elements of society that share and, at times, regulate social behavior

The enduring theoretical debate is that between social structure and human agency.

Caste

Caste: The most rigid form of stratification. In a caste system, individuals are born into their social position and have few, if any, opportunities for upward or downward mobility.

Prestige and Exploitation

Prestige: The esteem, honor, or deference assigned to one’s social position.

Exploitation: The manipulation of one person or group by another for the latter’s own benefit and profit. Marx argued that exploitation is inherent to modern capitalism.

Race, Class, and Gender

The class structure is composed of positions in the system of economic production.In the racial structure, people are distinguished according to their skin color.A gender structure exists to the extent that people are distinguished according to whether they have a set of characteristics that lead them to be classified as either male or female and are expected to behave in ways deemed appropriate to their gender.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx claimed that social classes and the conflicts between them are the most important determinants of stratification.

Argued that exploitation is inherent to modern capitalism. The wages of workers, he said, are always lower than the value of their contribution to the finished product, thereby benefiting the capitalists at the expense of the workers.

Max Weber

Max Weber argued that other sources of stratification, such as prestige (status) and political power (party) can be equally important.

Weber claimed that exploitation had existed in various forms in all types of economic systems (modes of production)—including ancient slavery and feudalism.

Figure 8.1

Social Mobility

Social mobility: The ability of individuals or groups to change their social position or status, either for better or for worse, within a social hierarchy.

Societal myths such as the “American dream” imply that society is open and meritocratic, and that social mobility for the better is simply the result of hard work; however, long-standing inequalities suggest that this is not the case.

Social Mobility (continued)

It is more difficult to gain entry to the positions and to escape from the bottom than to move up or down a few positions in the middle.Elite: A social group that occupies a position of prestige and power in society and is dominant as a result.Underclass: A segment of society that is composed of people who are underemployed or unemployed and may be dependent upon welfare benefits from the state. It is because of their dependency that members of the underclass are often negatively stigmatized.

American Beliefs and Attitudes

The “dominant ideology,” according to surveys is that…

• Opportunity for economic advancement is widespread in America today

• Individuals are personally responsible for their circumstances

• The overall system of inequality is therefore equitable and fair

Figure 8.2 Wealth Gap

Inequality

Global Inequality

Culture and InequalityConsumer society: A society whose inhabitants think of themselves more as consumers and than as producers. America is often described as a consumer society.Middle America: the “one big middle class” that many Americans identify themselves as part of.Privatization: The process by which people make the transition from identifying as part of a class or occupational group to thinking of themselves as individuals—specifically, as individual consumers.

Study Questions

What is the American individualistic success model, and how does it color Americans’ perception of inequality?How do Karl Marx’s theories of social stratification differ from those of Max Weber?Is class still the fundamental source of stratification, as suggested by Marx? What other dimensions of stratification have attracted the attention of sociologists in recent years?

Study Questions (continued)

Do Americans tend to believe that more social mobility exists that is actually the case, and has there been much change in rates of social mobility in recent decades?

What impact has the “cultural turn” had on the ways in which social stratification is perceived?

What is globalization? Are global inequalities increasing or decreasing?