Weber's Analysis of Class, Race, Gender: Status Attainment and Mobility, Slides of Culture & Society

Download Weber's Analysis of Class, Race, Gender: Status Attainment and Mobility and more Slides Culture & Society in PDF only on Docsity!

American Society

Stratification

Stratification

• Major area in sociology in the U.S.

• How do we explain the nature and types of

social inequality

– interpersonal: deference or discrimination

– group: in-group/out-group behavior

– organizational: distribution of persons/rewards

over positions

– institutional: enduring race, class, and gender

inequality

Durkheim (cont.)

• Inequality was inevitable but nature was

variable

– achieved corresponded to talents and

inclinations: functional in modern industrial

society

– functional not because of efficiency (Herbert

Spencer and Adam Smith)

– served moral function: organic solidarity

Modern Division of Labor

• could maintain society

• reinforce individual commitment to

collective enterprise

• reaffirm sense of belonging to larger

community of society

• regulate behavior: occupational/industrial

groups establish and enforce

standards/ethics

Durkheim’s Functional Model of the Division of Labor and

Mechanical or Organic Solidarity

Division Of Labor Solidarity

Increasing Social Density

Durkheim (cont.)

• Potential conflict between achieved and

ascribed status

– ascribed: inherited; sustained simple,

undifferentiated society

– achieved: sustained modern differentiated

society

• Impossible to eliminate inheritance

– But need to minimize its effect—even

affirmative action, for moral/economic viability

Davis and Moore’s Functional Model of Stratification

Hierarchy of Rewards

Recruitment Of Best and Brightest

External Threat

Cold War (1956-1989)

Competition between U.S. and U.S.S.R.

– military

– industrial

– technological

– ideological

U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik

- inspired space race

- tons of money for eduction

- "rocket science"

Weber on Class and Status

• Weber viewed status (lifestyle) and class

(life chances) as distinct but related social

interests

– metro-sexuals honor a particular status

– which requires a minimal standard of living

(class-based requirement)

– but not all middle class people are or can be

metro-sexuals

Weber on Party (power)

• Weber viewed party as a third independent

or at least distinct social base for interest

group formation

– parties are actively in pursuit of power (ability

to achieve goals despite resistance)

– sometimes based on class interests

– sometimes based on status interests

– sometimes mixture of both

– sometimes neither: purely political

Occupational Mobility Tables

• Beginning with the Warner, Yankee City

Studies

• sociologists in U.S. have viewed statification

by ill-defined social classes

– middle class versus working class (Lynds in

Middletown)

– upper, middle, lower (and intermediate

categories) used by Warner et al

Featherman and Hauser

• Used manual/nonmanual occupations as

major categories

• created categories of upper and lower

manual and nonmanual, as opposed to farm

• used these categories to study occupational

mobility, father to son

Featherman and Hauser (cont.)

• the diagonal indicates the inheritance of

occupation: 57% of sons of upper non-

manual fathers find themselves in upper

non-manual

• these tend to be the largest numbers (only

10% of farmers' sons in upper non-manual)

• above the diagonal is downward mobility

• below the diagonal is upward mobility

• lots of upward mobility, increasing 1962-

Blau and Duncan's Occupational

Prestige Scores

• Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (1967)

– developed ratio (or, at least, interval) scale for

occupational prestige

– asked people to rate 45 occupations: excellent,

good, fair, poor; calculated % rated excellent or

good (Y)

– matched occupations with 1950 census and

computed percent of people in that occupation

with high school or more education (X1) and

percent in that occupation earning $3500 plus

(X2)