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| popularized by Karl Marx, term for the upper-class capitalists who owned the means of production. In Marx’s time, they owned factories instead of farms. Today the term is also used to refer to upper-class managers who wield a lot of power |
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| fixed and permanent, assigned to it at birth, without any chance of getting out |
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| a group of people sharing the same social position in society. Class is based on income, power, and prestige |
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| system of stratification based on economic position in which people are ranked based on achieved status. The most open form (i.e., permitting the most social mobility) of stratification |
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| a political-economic system under which powerful countries established, for their own profit, rule over weaker peoples or countries and exploited them for their resources and cheap labor |
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Oscar Lewis’s theory that poverty is not a result of individual inadequacies, but of larger social and cultural factors. Poor children are socialized into believing that they have nothing to strive for, that there is no point in working to improve their conditions. As adults, they are resigned to a life of poverty, and they socialize their
children the same way. Therefore poverty is transmitted from one generation to another |
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| theory that focuses on the unequal relationship between wealthy countries and poor countries, arguing that poverty is the result of exploitation |
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| sociological term for the confluence of factors that has made women a disproportionate number of the poor. (Worldwide, of all impoverished people over the age of 18, 61% are women and 39% are men) |
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| system of stratification common in medieval Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, in Japan, and a few other regions, where there were a few merchants and “free men,” but most of the population consisted of peasants and serfs, who worked the estates belonging to feudal lords (1 to 3% of the population). Feudalism was also a fixed and permanent system: If you were born a lord or a serf, you stayed there your whole life |
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| : worldwide networks of labor and production processes, consisting of ll pivotal production activities that form a tightly interlocked “chain” from raw materials to finished product to retail outlet to consumer. The most profitable activities in the commodity chain (engineering, design, advertising) are likely to be done in core countries, while the least profitable activities (mining or growing the raw materials, factory production) are likely to be done in peripheral countries |
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| systematic differences in wealth and power among countries, often involving exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful countries |
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| social system in which the greater the functional importance of the job, the more rewards it brings, in salary, perks, power, and prestige |
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W. W. Rostrow’s theory focusing on the conditions necessary for a lowincome country to develop economically. Arguing that a nation’s poverty is largely due to the cultural failings of its people, Rostrow believed poor countries could develop
economically only if they give up their “backward” way of life and adopt modern
Western economic institutions, technologies, and cultural values that emphasize savings
and productive investment |
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estimated minimum income required to pay for food, shelter, and clothing.
Anyone falling below this income is categorized as poor |
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| the ability to get others to do what you want them to do, regardless of their own desires |
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popularized by Karl Marx, the term for the lower classes who were forced to
become wage laborers or go hungry. Today, the term is often used to refer to the
working class |
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the movement from one class to another, it can occur in two forms:
intergenerational—that is, your parents are working class, but you become lower, or your
parents are middle class, but you become upper class; and intragenerational—that is, you
move from working to lower, or from middle to upper, all within your lifetime |
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| taken from the geological term for layers of rock or “strata,” the ranking of people into defined layers. Social stratification exists in all societies and is based on things like wealth, race, and gender |
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your social connections, your taste in art, your ascribed and
achieved statuses, and more. Because there are so many components, sociologists today
tend to prefer the concept of socioeconomic status to that of social class, to emphasize
that people are ranked through the intermingling of many factors, economic, social,
political, cultural, and community |
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| socioeconomic status (SES) |
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one’s socially defined position in a group; it is often characterized by certain
expectations and rights |
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| when people experience social mobility because the entire society got wealthier |
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| about four percent of the U.S. population, this group has no income, no connection to the job market, little education, inadequate nutrition, and substandard housing or none at all. They have no possibility of social mobility and little chance of achieving the quality of life that most people would consider minimally acceptable |
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Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory that the interconnectedness of the world system began in the 1500s, when Europeans began their economic and political
domination of the rest of the world. Because capitalism depends on generating the
maximum profits for the minimum expenditures, the world system continues to benefit
rich countries (which acquire the profits) and harm the rest of the world (by minimizing
local expenditures and therefore perpetuating poverty) |
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| Author of the culture of poverty thesis which attributes poverty to social and cultural factors rather than individual failings |
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One of the founders of sociology and the first sociologist to define his entire social theory around social class, coining such key terms as bourgeoisie, proletariat, and means of production. He also developed the early theory that social stratification was
maintained by elites for their own benefit |
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| Creator of world system theory and the term world economy |
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| One of the founders of sociology; built upon Marx’s theory of social class by describing three dimensions of one’s social class: class position, status, and power |
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