Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter you should be able to understand the following:

2 Systems of stratification include slavery, castes, and social class.

3 Karl Marx saw that differences in access to the means of production created social, economic, and political inequality and distinct classes of owners and laborers.

4 Max Weber identified three analytically distinct components of stratification: class, status, and power.

5 Functionalists argue that stratification is necessary so that people will be motivated to fill society's important positions; conflict theorists see stratification as a major source of societal tension and conflict.

6 One consequence of social class in the United States is that both wealth and income are distributed unevenly.

7 The category of the "poor" defies any simple definition and counters common stereotypes about "poor people." The long-term poor who lack training and skills form an underclass.

8 One's life chances-opportunities for obtaining material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences-are related to one's social class. Occupying a higher social position improves a person's life chances.

9 Social mobility is more likely to be found in an open system that emphasizes achieved status than in a closed system that focuses on ascribed characteristics. Race, gender, and family background are important factors in mobility.

10 Formerly colonized nations are kept in a subservient position, subject to foreign domination, through the process of neocolonialism.

11 Drawing on the conflict perspective, the world systems analysis of sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein views the global economic system as divided between nations that control wealth (core nations) and those from which capital is taken (periphery nations).

12 According to dependency theory, even as developing countries make economic advances, they remain weak and subservient to core nations and corporations within an increasingly intertwined global economy.

13 Multinational corporations bring jobs and industry to developing nations, but they also tend to exploit the workers there in order to maximize profits.

14 According to modernization theory, development in peripheral countries will be assisted by the innovations transferred from the industrialized world.

15 Social mobility is more limited in developing nations than in the core nations.

16 Many governments are struggling with how much of their tax dollars to spend on welfare programs. The trend in the United States is to put welfare recipients to work.