SOC263H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Social Inequality, Racial Democracy, Race Matters
Document Summary
Social construction: the process through which meaning is attributed to social rather than biological or genetic factors. It is closely connected with the idea of reification. Quandaries of race: the problem of reification: should we abandon race, racialization: to categorize or differentiate on the basis of race. For weber, ethnicity is social constructed because beliefs about group differences serve to exclude individuals from certain associations while including them in others. Ethnicity is constructed around several dimensions, including difference in language, customs, religion, ancestry and physical characteristics. (labeling people as members of an ethnic group) Weber believes that labeling is not used as identifying, but rather excludes people from the rights and privileges that other people enjoy: ethnic boundaries. We have boundaries, see how every ethnic group"s works and pass ethnic boundaries. Explaining racial and ethnic inequality i: theories of racial formation:
