SOCA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Economic Inequality, Meritocracy, Social Inequality
Document Summary
Social inequality: inequality in the distribution of societal values (wealth, power and prestige). Includes gender, ethnic, racial etc. inequality and socio-economic (class/status) inequality. Socio-economic inequality is a relatively stable pattern (hierarchy) of socially sanctioned, economic inequality. Socio-economic inequality exists in nearly all known societies (hunting/gathering societies: gender and age inequality, but no economic inequality). Socio-economic inequality can be described and analyzed in two ways: distributional: the hierarchical arrangement of individuals based upon wealth, power and prestige (functionalism) Socio-economic status (ses) is an individual"s position in this hierarchy. Ses indicators: property, income, education, occupation, occupational prestige, political participation, political power, consumption patterns etc. Stratum is a category of people with similar amounts of wealth, power and prestige. Assumed value consensus, therefore exceptionality of conflict: relational: socio-economic inequality is a relationship between classes, groups who differ in their access to means of production. (marxist) Question: are there classes in canada? (yes, but it"s an open-class)
