SOC 300 Study Guide - Final Guide: Talcott Parsons, Marxist Sociology, Social Inequality
15 Feb 2018
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FINAL EXAM:
42 questions** everything from after midterm
• Social Class and Inequality
1. What is social inequality?
• It is a product of social relations
• It is a product of class
• It is your access or lack of access to resources
• Refers to the difference between those who have access to resources as
opposed to those who do not have access to resources
• Your relationship to the means of production shapes one's access/lack of
access to resources.
• Definition from the textbook: relatively long lasting differences
amongst groups or individuals that have implications for individual
lives, especially for the rights or opportunities they exercise or the
rewards and privileges they enjoy.
• These inequalities are due to opportunities distributed differentially in
society on the basis of things such as class, age, gender, ethnicity
and race
2. What is absolute poverty?
• Specifically for people who are homeless
• Absolute poverty rate is 5% in the last 20 years
3. What is relative poverty?
• Over 40%
• Underemployed, people working part-time but really want full-time,
people on temporary or contract work finding themselves laid off
for periods of time
• Cannot collect unemployment insurance when they are laid off
• Female-headed households, people who are new immigrants, disabled,
students, seniors
• Anyone in relative poverty is everybody in the secondary labor market,
just below the poverty line.
• When you aren't working, you are starving to death*
4. What are structural functionalist explanations of social inequality?
• Looking at one's income
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• Talcott Parsons - structural functionalist
• He looked at people who were financially successful and said WOW
these people must have worked very hard!!!!
• If you are not financially successful, he said they haven't been working
hard enough
• He explained how social inequality is a product of the INDIVIDUAL
not social structures and structural functionalism is blaming YOU
for not working hard enough.
• Roles are the building blocks of institutions which are in turn the
building blocks of society
• Structural functionalism de-emphasizes the possibility that individual
choices are constrained by the forces of social structures. (textbook)
• Stratification approaches to the study of inequality tend to make
assumptions about social structures that are in line with structural
functionalist thought
• Stratification theory emphasizes that individuals can be ranked
hierarchically according to socially desirable characteristics such as
income, education, occupation, status or prestige
5. What are critical explanations of social inequality?
• Look at social locations
• How were people associated
• Social location is shaped by that interlocking - experiences
• These social structures shape social realities - access/lack of access to
resources
• Informed by Marxist sociology
• Assume that social relations especially class relations are fundamental
elements of the social structure (textbook)
• Inequality results largely from class structures and thus, explanations of
inequality are reduced to issues of economic subordination
• Yet, to understand inequality better, the structures of age, gender
ethnicity and race must also be considered.
6. What is the feminization of poverty?
• There is a lot of female impoverishment
• Women became oppressed by domestic labor
• Found themselves associated with childcare, elder care and domestic
labor
• Because it was unpaid, it was not recognized as work
• This work had no value
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• The feminization of poverty refers to the fact that women in many
industrialized western nations, as well as in developing countries
are more likely to be poor than men. (textbook)
• While reasons behind female impoverishment are complex, they have
much to do with traditional gender ideology, inequities in the labor
force, flaws in family law, and the way we respond to marriage
breakdown as a society.
• Many mothers continue to take time away from paid employment when
their children are young and/or balance family and paid work with
part-time or self employed work.
7. How is child poverty explained?
• Interwoven with the impoverishment of women and families is the
poverty of children
• Part of the reason for persistent child poverty is the increase in single-
parent families and the economic marginalization of immigrant
families.
• These children are poor because their parents are poor and their parents'
poverty often stems from unemployment, underemployment,
inadequate minimum-wage levels and reduced social-welfare
supports.
8. How is young adult poverty explained?
• Children are also at greater economic peril if their parents are young
• When the young form families, they are less likely to complete high
school and post-secondary education
• As a result, young poorly educated workers find themselves trapped in
part-time, dead-end, minimum wage jobs
• Lacking financial resources and economic security to launch an
independent adult life, many young adults choose between
prolonged dependency and struggling to survive on low income.
9. How is growing poverty in Canada explained?
• Low income patterns amongst Canadians have improved markedly
between 1980 and 2006.
• In the past decade, market incomes for senior families as well as single-
mother families have experienced significant gains.
• The gap between the rich and the poor in Canada has grown steadily
larger since at least the late 1970s.
• Programs have been implemented to assist elders in poverty and
children in poverty and families with disabilities, they have not
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Document Summary
It is your access or lack of access to resources. Refers to the difference between those who have access to resources as opposed to those who do not have access to resources. Your relationship to the means of production shapes one"s access/lack of access to resources. Definition from the textbook: relatively long lasting differences amongst groups or individuals that have implications for individual lives, especially for the rights or opportunities they exercise or the rewards and privileges they enjoy. These inequalities are due to opportunities distributed differentially in society on the basis of things such as class, age, gender, ethnicity and race. Underemployed, people working part-time but really want full-time, people on temporary or contract work finding themselves laid off for periods of time. Cannot collect unemployment insurance when they are laid off. Female-headed households, people who are new immigrants, disabled, students, seniors. Anyone in relative poverty is everybody in the secondary labor market, just below the poverty line.
