SOC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Social Stratification, Social Inequality, Social Mobility

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1010
• Professor: Lovaglia Michael

Document Summary

High status - better health care, less likely to be arrested, less likely to be convicted with crime, more likely to qualify for probation. Hierarchy - graded or ranked group of people. Social stratification - system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. Stratify - to arrange layers as in a hierarchy. It is a characteristic of society, not just a function of individual differences. The differences between people aren"t that big. Power comes from individual position in hierarchy. Exists in every society, regardless of how rich/poor a country is. Some degree of inequality is fair, right, and just (even the poor) Social mobility - changes status up, down, or horizontal. Upward is not as easy as believed. Horizontal - stay in same rank but moving from one cultural group to another. Caste system - status based on ascription (no mobility) Old american caste (pre-civil rights era) rate of intermarriage between people of different social rank.