SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Totalitarianism, Class Consciousness, Planned Obsolescence
Document Summary
Status: a recognized position in a social interaction. Women occupy an inferior status, more work with no pay, and tend to laugh more. In social situations, laughter is unevenly distributed, it is not spontaneous. A social hierarchy within every interaction signals dominance/superiority of gender, race, class. What we are laughing at direct humour at inferior races. Makes us feel superior, excludes outsiders, reinforces hierarchy. We help to create and recreate hierarchy (races, ethnic groups) in our everyday interactions unknowingly, even though we try to subvert/destroy them. Social stratification: the layering of unequal categories of people in society rich, poor, powerful and powerless, highly educated and less educated and so on. How and why these dimensions of inequality vary over time and place. The micro level, everyday interactions that reinforce or subvert social hierarchies. Some jobs are more important than others because they are more important and require more training and sacrifice. Therefore stratification is necessary, performs a useful function.
