SOC 3470 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Social Inequality, World-Systems Theory, Pragmatism

• School: University of Virginia
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3470
• Professor: Blumberg Rae

Document Summary

Symbols allow people to create and share vasts amounts of information. People depend much more on new cultural information rather than genetic information in their adaptive efforts. For the evolution of human societies as a whole, technological advance can be equated with sustained progress only in the limited sense of growth in the store of cultural information. Importance revealed in the growing challenge to all forms of authority. Technological process has raised the upper limit of freedom in human societies. People have more freedom in the upper class of industrial societies than those in agrarian or less advanced societies. Elites vs average members of society from h&g to is. Decrease and then increase for average members of society. Fairness of a society in its treatment of its members. Social inequality becomes more pronounced as societies advanced technologically. Moving forward from h&g, there is less fairness and less justice on average. However, there seems to be a reversal with industrialization.