SOC100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter SP CH 9, RS CH 20,: Symbolic Interactionism, Emotional Labor, Whitehall Study
SP: Chapter 9: Classes and Workplaces
●Introduction: How Work, Class, and Inequality are Related
○Social classes: sets of people with different life changes
■Exists largely because of economic inequality
○Class:
■Marx: a set of people who share the same relationship to the means of
production;
■Weber: a set of people with a common economic situation, based on income,
property, and authority (among other things)
○The majority of people will stay in the social class into which they were born for their
entire lives
■Class socialization: the process of teaching, learning, and passing on patterns of
fashion and consumption
○Class conflict: results from diverging economic interests
■Ex: wealthy business owners typically want to pay their workers the lowest
possible wages and spend very little to maintain their working conditions , while
the employees will want to secure the highest possible pay and best possible
working conditions
●Two main approaches to Class Conflict
○Marx and Class Conflict:
■Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism civilizations based on farming large rice
paddies depend on irrigation systems. This means that so-called “oriental
despots,” who control the irrigation system and the water flowing through, are
able to control society
■By contrast, in capitalist industrial societies, the dominant people are capitalists
who control factories (source of jobs) and banks (source of credit)
■Capitalist (bourgeoisie): owns and controls the means of production, including
factories, banks, and labor
■Workers (proletariat): subordinate class in capitalist society, who work for wages
from the bourgeoisie
■Petty bourgeoisie: middle/lower-middle class today (shopkeepers, small farmers,
artisans, self-employed professionals, etc)
●Some may own property (making them bourgeoisie) and may hire people
to work for them, but not wealthy enough to live on investments alone
■Peasants (sometimes counted as petty bourgeoisie) own some property and
work the property with the help of family members and hired workers. They are
also borth workers and owners, but hold no particular power in society
■Saw lumpenproletariat (underclass) as dangerous and disreputable people with
no social consciousness or political engagement (ex: criminals, addicts, beggars,
etc)
■The relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat is paradoxical, they
need each other but are permanently opposed to each other
■What defines the bourgeoisie is not their wealth or power, but their exploitation of
the proletariat
■Exploitation vs alienation of proletariat
●Exploited: the worker is paid less than the price of the finished product,
such that the capitalist is able to take the surplus value and make a profit
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●Alienated: labor process deprives workers of the ownership of their own
products and distances them from the productive process, themselves,
and others
■Exploitation by bourgeoisie involves:
●Inverse interdependence principle: economic well-being of capitalist
requires economic deprivation and exploitation of workers
●Exclusion principle: capitalists must keep pressure on workers by
excluding them from access to benefits and productive resources
●Appropriation principle: capitalists take advantage of workers by buying
their labor for a fraction of its real value
■Argues the proletariat will inevitably fight back, using unions, co-ops, legislation,
etc. to improve their wages, working conditions and job security. The capitalists
will fight back as well with the threat of unemployment, etc.
●Reserve army of labor: people who, because they are impoverished and
often unemployed, form an easily disposable workforce at the mercy of
employers
■For the elimination or capitalism, people must develop class consciousness:
social class’s awareness of the common interests, which typically generates a
commitment to work together to attain collective goals
●False consciousness, a state reinforced by a society’s dominant ideology
and perpetuated by capitalists to keep workers in line, hinder the
formation of class consciousness
○False consciousness: willingness to believe in ideologies that
support the ruling class but are false and disadvantageous to
working-class interests
○Weber and Class Conflict
■Focused on the distribution of power among the classes, rather than its
significance in the exploitation of one class by another
■Weber defined class in terms of distribution, Marx, in terms of production
■Linked class to market situation, rather than relation to means of production
■Economic class was defined by economic power in relation to a given market
●Ex: price one could command for one’s labor in the labor market
■Viewed classes as mainly power groups, and power could be attained in various
ways.
■Distinguished economic class from two other sources of power:
●Parties: associations and organizations that give people non-economic
power and influence
●Status groups: people who share a social position in society, with a
common degree of prestige, esteem, and honor
○Practice exclusion to maintain the boundaries between their
groups and others
●Are related to social class, but they are clearly different from class, like
social class, they provide members with access to power, but do so in
different ways
○Marx proposed people could exercise power only by controlling
the means of production, Marx proposed that people could gain
power by entering influential parties and high-status groups
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■Post-industrial society economic system based more ones services and
information rather than manufactured goods or primary production
●Marx’s portrayal is too simple in this society
○Not necessary to own a business to control means of production,
but necessary to manage the organization and/or serve on its
board of directors
○Globalization of work: jobs can always be shipped overseas if
the workers demand higher wages or more job security
●Ways of looking at classes and workplaces
○Functionalism
■Believe that poverty and inequality are universal because they serve important
purposes in society
●Under capitalism, inequality comes to be defined as a graded ladder of
people with different occupational roles and income levels, aka, a
stratification system
●Poverty and inequality motivate effort, striving, and productive
competition
■Assumes that people generally agree on the social value of an occupation
●Inequality is good for society because it encourages excellence and
productivity
■Different kinds of societies have different kinds of class structure and require
different kinds of investments
●Ex: in a traditional agrarian society, the majority of people are
uneducated peasants
■Modernization transforms the class structure
●Industrialization causes socio economic development, including more
education and literacy and the rise of a large middle class
○Makes upward mobility possible suddenly and on a large scale
■With investments in skill and effort are consistent with compensation, as with
doctors and donut servers, the functionalist theory of inequality works well
■Believes that everyone needs work because it gives people a way to acquire the
material necessities of life for themselves and their families
○Conflict theory (Marx and Weber)
■Look for power inequalities and exploitation
■Class: relationship focused on the means of production (Marx) orpower and the
market (Weber)
■Combination of work, class, and status situations shapes class consciousness
■Social classes have no easy-to-spot distinguishing features, so class
differentiation requires a lot of cultural inventiveness and in turn, class
mobilization requires a lot of dedication
■Classic studies: Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital
●Work, while demanding ever higher levels of education and expertise,
was becoming ever more mindless, bureaucratic, and alienating
●Work was being “degraded” as capitalists sought to increase their control
over the labor process by separating exclusion from design, or “hand-
work” from “head-work”
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SOC100H1 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Introduction: how work, class, and inequality are related. Social classes: sets of people with different life changes. Marx: a set of people who share the same relationship to the means of production; Weber: a set of people with a common economic situation, based on income, property, and authority (among other things) The majority of people will stay in the social class into which they were born for their entire lives. Class socialization: the process of teaching, learning, and passing on patterns of fashion and consumption. Class conflict: results from diverging economic interests. Karl wittfogel"s oriental despotism civilizations based on farming large rice paddies depend on irrigation systems. This means that so-called oriental despots, who control the irrigation system and the water flowing through, are able to control society. By contrast, in capitalist industrial societies, the dominant people are capitalists who control factories (source of jobs) and banks (source of credit)
