Welcome to the course website for Social Stratification and Mobility at the University of Warsaw taught Dr. Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow. On this website you can find out more of what the course is about, access an interactive version of the syllabus, readings, a sociological dictionary of some of the terms used in the course, assignments, hand-outs, selected lecture notes and browse links.
Posted in Welcome
To promote independent student research, the class project for the Fall 2011 UWarsaw class, “Social Stratification and Mobility” was the creation of webpages in the website: The Inequality Project.
The Inequality Project has six separate webpages, each a research project by a different student. This class had two Polish students, two French students, and two Spanish students. Research topics include: social mobility, education, gender, homosexuality, media and equality of opportunities.
The website is free for the world to enjoy.
Posted in Welcome
From The Onion: This is a joke, but it might as well be true:
PARIS—At a press conference Tuesday, the World Heritage Committee officially recognized the Gap Between Rich and Poor as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” describing the global wealth divide as the “most colossal and enduring of mankind’s creations.”
“Of all the epic structures the human race has devised, none is more staggering or imposing than the Gap Between Rich and Poor,” committee chairman Henri Jean-Baptiste said. “It is a tremendous, millennia-old expanse that fills us with both wonder and humility.”
“And thanks to careful maintenance through the ages, this massive relic survives intact, instilling in each new generation a sense of awe,” Jean- Baptiste added.
The vast chasm of wealth, which stretches across most of the inhabited world, attracts millions of stunned observers each year, many of whom have found its immensity too overwhelming even to contemplate. By far the largest man-made structure on Earth, it is readily visible from locations as far-flung as Eastern Europe, China, Africa, and Brazil, as well as all 50 U.S. states.
Posted in Poverty
According to a report provided by the U.S. Census:
The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.
A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.
At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.
“Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more,” said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. “More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy.”
Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available, Smeeding said. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don’t get needed training for future jobs, he said.
Posted in Poverty
In an exercise in class consciousness, U.S. News and World Report tells you whether you are middle class or not.
Assessing Your Middle-Class Status
Despite the so-called recovery, many families continue to struggle, with income and other living standards slipping below thresholds that typically represent middle-class quality of life. We’ve assembled a variety of metrics to help determine whether you’re getting ahead, holding steady, or slipping further than most.
Read more below:
Posted in Social Class
The New York Times has a nifty interactive jobless (unemployment) rate graph. It not only calculates the unemployment rate for one demographic category, but for multiple, intersecting ones, as well. It is ideal for illustrating how intersectionality matters.
For the first time in over 50 years, the U.S. government — one of only two countries in the world with an official poverty count (the other is the UK) — could adopt a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) measure of poverty:
The poverty rate among older Americans could be nearly twice as high as the traditional 10 percent level, according to a revision of a half-century-old formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations in the cost of living. The National Academy of Science‘s formula, which is gaining credibility with public officials including some in the Obama administration, would put the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6 percent, or 6.8 million people, compared with 9.7 percent, or 3.6 million people, under the existing measure. The original government formula, created in 1955, doesn’t take account of rising costs of medical care and other factors.”It’s a hidden problem,” said Robin Talbert, president of the AARP Foundation, which provides job training and support to low-income seniors and is backing legislation that would adopt the NAS formula. “There are still many millions of older people on the edge, who don’t have what they need to get by.”
If the academy’s formula is adopted, a more refined picture of American poverty could emerge that would capture everyday costs of necessities besides just food. The result could upend long-standing notions of those in greatest need and lead eventually to shifts in how billions of federal dollars for the poor are distributed for health, housing, nutrition and child-care benefits.
The overall official poverty rate would increase, from 12.5 percent to 15.3 percent, for a total of 45.7 million people, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. Data on all segments, not only the elderly, would be affected:
• The rate for children under 18 in poverty would decline slightly, to 17.9 percent.
• Single mothers and their children, who disproportionately receive food stamps, would see declines in the rates of poverty because noncash aid would be taken into account. Low-income people who are working could see increases in poverty rates, a reflection of transportation and child-care costs.
• Cities with higher costs of living, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco, would see higher poverty rates, while more rural areas in the Midwest and South might see declines.
• The rate for extreme poverty, defined as income falling below 50 percent of the poverty line, would decrease due to housing and other noncash benefits.
• Immigrant poverty rates would go up, due to transportation costs and lower participation in government aid programs.
Posted in Poverty
A New York Times poll says that both blacks and whites are more likely to see race relations in a positive light after Obama took office. The poll results are here. Current polls are compared with older ones.
Posted in Race and Ethnicity
A new article on symbolic interactionism and power is out in the November 2008 issue of Sociological Focus:
Abstract:
How well do theories of elites’ sources of social power match the reality as perceived by the elites themselves? Using data from interviews with 312 elites from a large midwestern American city, and employing an inductive coding method situated in grounded theory we use the constructivist approach in listening to elites’ definitions of their sources of social power. Integrating Weber’s notion of charisma and the interactionist literature on power, we hypothesize that interpersonal attributes can be crucial in micro-level power negotiations. Our analyses reveal that along with mentioning economic and political resources, institutional and organizational position, and connectedness in influence networks—themes common in elite theory—elites also identify the interpersonal attributes of personality and respect as sources of social power in their own right. Projection of positive personal attributes assists in the exercise of power; exposing traits with negative connotations can be a detriment. Elites display personal attributes while employing impression management, thus developing a social identity used to manipulate interpersonal relations. We conclude by offering a series of sensitizing principles to guide an understanding of how interpersonal sources of social power are used in elite power negotiations.
Yamokoski, Alexis and Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow. 2008. “How Do Elites Define Influence? Personality and Respect as Sources of Social Power.” Sociological Focus 41(4): 319-336.
Posted in Elites, Symbolic Interactionism
Sociology argues that social group membership influences just about everything people think and do. Membership in social groups is usually akin to location in social structure. Membership in economic groups is of particular importance, as it is said to influence a wide range of social outcomes. Defining social groups—and the qualifications for membership – is a major preoccupation among sociologists. In everyday use, and even among sociologists, the word “class” is used non-sociologically, meaning “a kind of category:” “A set, collection, group or configuration containing members regarded as having certain attributes or traits in common: a kind of category” – American Heritage Dictionary 4th ed. (2000). Similarly, the term “status” is used in many ways, including a “position relative to that of others,” “a state of affairs” (also Amer. Heritage Dictionary). [see Lecture Notes on social class on this point]
Most sociological definitions of social class say that class is social grouping that has something to do with/is related to economic resources/assets (see esp. Marx and Weber). With regard to class and social stratification, the question is whether the divisions and boundaries in a scale of economic assets comprises a distinct class. We must seperate social class from social stratification. Economic divisions does not constitute class divisions. Let’s se how this works by discussing what is meant by “economic.” If it is simply income or occupation, or market capacity, then no, class is not economic division, though class certainly has a relationship to these assets. Class is therefore more than strata. It is relationships between/with other classes that makes class a real entity.
Classes in the Weberian sense are relational in that “resources shape strategies for acquiring income.” In class societies, these strategies are inherently conflictual. Classes share material interests – how people realize their interests depends on their wealth and market capacities. However, each class has a conflict of interest with other classes because each class seeks to keep what they have and add more to what they have. Because resources/assets are finite and are distributed unequally within capitalist society each class is in a struggle with other classes to realize their material interests. This is referred to as “distributional conflict.” It is the relational aspect of class that puts the “social” in “social class.”
Where does this conflict take place? In the workplace between managers and office workers; between professional associations; between political organizations/political parties; in the neighborhood, keeping lower class housing away from upper class (high rents and credit checks, though sub prime lending offered the illusion of mobility, these houses are still not within upper class neighborhoods).
What form does this conflict take? Social closure (Parkin, Weber), exclusion, pay differentials legitimized within bureaucracies, access to professional organizations, educational institutions, government policy of economic redistribution policy.
What is the consequence of this conflict? Rigidifying the stratification structure, differential life chances. Class conflict is struggle over wages, working conditions, social welfare, and living conditions, and freedom from authority.
If class is primarily one’s relationship to the economic sphere and spheres of production, what to do with the non-economically active? A paper from Marshall et al (1996) empirically demonstrates that these non-economically active groups do not constitute a social class:
Social Class and Underclass in Britain and the USA
Author(s): Gordon Marshall, Stephen Roberts and Carole Burgoyne
Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 22-44
Abstract
It is commonly argued that the research programme of class analysis is undermined by its apparent neglect of large numbers of economically-inactive adults who do not form part of the analysis, but are affected by class processes, and form distinctive elements within any class structure. This paper disputes the claim that welfare dependents, the retired, and domestic housekeepers show distinctive patterns of socio-political class formation. Nor are the class-related attributes of the supposed underclass so distinct that they require separate treatment in a class analysis. Evidence which supports the orthodox strategy of sampling economically-active men and women is taken from national sample surveys of adults in Britain and the USA.
For class measurement, see here.
Posted in Social Class
