Power and stratification notes

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  • Created by: loupardoe
  • Created on: 01-10-18 13:53

theory and inequality

social theories

  • theories attempt to explain how society works or why people act and think as they do
  • attempt to identify themes and patterns in social life and organise our thinking

consensus approaches to inequality

  • see society as a hierarchy- system of layers
  • differences in wealth and income can be explained by differences in the abilities of people or the value that their work has to the whole community
  • the people who find themselves at the top of society are there because they are of more value to society than those who are poorer and in the lower bands of society
  • new right- view the poor as being responsible for their own low position; the poor are less moral, less committed to their own welfare and lazy
  • structural differences in society are overlooked
  • feminists point out that gender differences in terms of access to power and wealth mean that women experience inequality
  • the logic of consensus approaches implies that women are somehow less worthy than men
  • consensus approaches can be used to justify ethnic inequality

conflict approaches to social inequality

  • society is made up of competing groups
  • marxists view inequality in terms of social class or the ownership of the means of production
  • feminists view inequality in terms of gender relationships
  • recognise the significance of social structures in creating disadvantages for specific groups of people
  • highlight the social mechanisms that create inequalities
  • can be criticised for reducing considerations of inequality to a single dimension
  • in reality inequality is far more complex and some inequalities aggregate
  • tend to be deterministic
  • in reality it is not that simple

interactionist approaches

  • there are a range of different types of inequality and some people are more likely to experience inequality than others because of certain social characteristics
  • complex view of inequality
  • makes it difficult to apply when designing research to test the theory
  • tend to deny that structural inequalities exist because they see society as being formed of complex interactions where people create meaning for themselves
  • this is unrealistic- hard evidence from statistical research suggests there are clear differences between various social groups in terms of their life chances, lifestyles and life experiences

specific inequalities

  • in the 1970s and later there was concern about social inequality
  • groups who had been marginalised began to demand equal rights for themselves
  • influenced the sociology of inequality- theorists chose a specific inequality and developed theories based on a study of that particular issue

using theories to criticise theories

  • not all theories attempt to explain all forms of inequality
  • feminists focus on gender, marxists focus on class, postmodernists make very little attempt to account for inequality as whole, belieivng that inequality is a personal perception
  • not all theories believe inequality to be a bad thing
  • functionalists draw no moral judgements on whether it is acceptable to have poverty or not
  • feminists are enraged by inequality and believe it is important that women become conscious of their oppression and this belief affects how they conduct their research

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