SOCA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Structural Functionalism, Proletariat, Symbolic Interactionism
Document Summary
Social inequality: inequality in the distribution of societal values (wealth, power, and prestige), caused by any ascribed and archived characteristics. Socio-economic inequality is a relatively stable pattern (hierarchy) of socially sanctioned, economic inequality. Inequality exists in all known societies, socio-economic inequality exists in nearly all known societies (hunting and gathering societies; gender and age inequality, but no economic inequality). Socio-economic inequality can be described and analyzed in two ways: distributional: the hierarchical arrangement of individuals based upon wealth, power & prestige. Scio-economic status (ses): is an individual"s position in this hierarchy. Ses indicators: property, income, education, occupation, occupational prestige, political participation, political power, consumption patterns etc. Stratum is a category of people with similar amount of wealth, power & prestige. Assumed value consensus, therefore exceptionality of conflict: relational: socio-economic inequality is a relationship between classes, groups who differ in their access to means of production.
