SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Achieved Status, Social Inequality, Blue-Collar Worker
Document Summary
Social class and inequality: poverty and income inequality in the u. s. As human societies evolved, so did our money. Agricultural revolution => industrial revolution => information revolution. Improvements in irrigation and farming technology led to a sedentary lifestyle: barter system => money. Manifest function mass production of agriculture: no longer starving, first surplus of goods. Latent functions specialized roles: land ownership, laborers needed, creating a class system. Creation of a significant labor force : reserve army of labor (marx) pool of job seekers whose numbers outpace the available positions and thus contribute to keeping wages low and conditions of work tenuous. Increased emphasis on scientific management (taylor) effort to reduce physical movement of workers, thereby reducing time wasted: led to further de-skilling of the workforce. Travel, communication, and globalization have created a new revolution. Automation replacement of human labor by machines in the production process. Outsourcing use of low-cost labor in foreign countries.