CHAPTER 8: STRATIFICATION, CLASS, AND INEQUALITY
INTRO
Q: Which income group lost the greatest percentage of its wealth during the Great Recession in 2008?
A: The Middle Class
*think of how the recession affected individuals by looking at social class as a determinant of one's experiences
*home ownership is the principal source of wealth for middle and lower class citizens
*middle class citizens bought and loaned more than their budget allowed, so when the housing market collapsed, the middle class was hardest hit
*A key concept of sociology is social stratification - by this, it means the inequalities among individuals and groups that are determined not so much by individual personality or small scale situations, but, more broadly, by attributes such as gender, age, religion, and military rank
*Our focus is on the stratification with regard to societal inequalities: wealth, income, education, and lifestyle
*Stratification can be viewed as structured inequalities - can be between different groups such as class, race, gender
*sociologists see these inequalities as built into the economic and political issues
SECTION 1: Systems of Stratification
first known basic stratification systems that existed in human society are slavery, caste, and class
Slavery is a cruel/extreme form in inequality where someone owns a person as property
Cast is associated with Indian culture of rebirth (failure to abide by rules and do things right results in inferior position in cast after rebirth)
Class systems- a term that is referred to as the variations between groups of individuals from the variations in their material prosperity and power
Specifically, class systems differ from slavery and casts because they are fluid and movement between them is possible
The 4 main bases of class are: wealth, occupation, income, and education
Income (a type of class)
Determines one's social position and has powerful...