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POVERTY: Social Class + Social Stratification
WEEK 5
Intro to Sociology
Conformity/ Deviance
Conformity: The process of changing/adjusting one's beliefs, attitudes, actions, and/or perceptions to match those of a group
Deviance: Behavior that violates norms and arouses negative social interaction.
Black Sheep Effect: Suggests people
evaluate ingroup deviants more
harshly than intergroup.
Structural Explanations:
Why do people do deviant things?
- Deviance varies according to cultural norms (of a given time/place)
-People are deviant because they're labeled as deviant
- Defining social norms involves social power (what labels protect power as is?)
MEASURING
POVERTY
IN THE
USA
MEASURING POVERTY
SUMMARY
FUNCTIONALISM
Stratification is necessary to induce people with special intelligence, knowledge, and skills to enter the most important occupations. For these reasons, it is necessary and inevitable.
CONFLICT THEORY
- Individualistic/ Personal Trouble_:
- "Many politicians and much of the public blame the poor for being poor, and they oppose federal spending to help the poor..."
- "Poverty results from the the fact that poor people lack the motivation to work and have certain beliefs and values that contribute to their poverty"
vs Structural/Public Issue:
- "Poverty results from problems in society that lead to a lack of opportunity and a lack of jobs."
Stratification results from lack of opportunity and from discrimination and prejudice against the poor, women, and people of color. It is neither necessary nor inevitable.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
SUMMARY
Stratification affects people's beliefs, lifestyles, daily interaction, and conceptions of themselves.
(pp.46-52)
TERMS
The Color of Poverty
The Feminization of Poverty
Bootstrap Mentality/
The Myth of the Middle Class
Strikingly higher poverty rates of people of color
Women are more likely than men to live in poverty; 25 vs 21 million
Less than 1/2 of Americans say they could afford a $1,000 emergency with their savings
INDIVIDUALISTIC
STRUCTURAL
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
- The Culture of Poverty Theory
- "The poor generally have beliefs and values that differ from those of the non-poor and that doom them to continued poverty. For example, they are said to be impulsive and to live for the present rather than the future." (p.53)
(VS)
- "American poverty is largely the result of failings at the economic and political levels, rather than at the individual level...In contrast to the [individualistic] perspective, the basic problem lies in a shortage of viable opportunities for all Americans." (p.53)
Crash
Course
Social Stratification:
What is Stratification?
A society's categorization of its people into groups based on socio-economic factors like wealth, income, education, family background, and more.
It results in a hierarchical system with different levels of privilege bestowed to different people.
How do functionalists, conflict theorists, and symbolic interactionists explain social stratification (and thus poverty)?
A little sociological imagination...
PSSSST...
2025 Super Bowl
John Oliver on homelessness:
John Oliver -Homelessness
Watch the video and fill out at least one example for each question --
Sociological Imagination
1. Keeping homelessness out of sight is not the same thing as solving it.
2. Homelessness is the result of system failures -- not personal failures
3. Solutions to homelessness must include a change in public perception.
4. Housing people is cheaper than
incarcerating them.
CONSEQUENCES
of poverty
- Studies of childhood poverty show:
- More likely to be poor as adults
- More likely to drop out of HS
- More likely to become teen parents
- More likely to have employment problems.
- What did a recent longitudinal study on children born between 1968+1975 show?
- Only 1% of children who never grow up poor end up being poor as young adults, while 32% of poor children become poor as young adults (Ratcliffe & McKernan, 2010). (p.58)
- Poverty can change the way the brain develops in young children. The major reason for this effect is stress.
- The poor experience barriers and problems regarding: health, illness, and medical care; education; housing and homelessness; crime and victimization.
CONSEQUENCES
of poverty
GLOBAL
POVERTY
GLOBAL POVERTY
- $1,700.00
- Measuring global poverty:
- Degree of wealth or poverty
- Level of industrialization and economic development
- GDP (gross domestic product) per capita (total value of a nation's goods and services//population) -->
- "Wealthy, middle-income, and poor)
- World Bank's official global poverty line
- under $1.25/day; $456/yr; $1,825/family of 4
- Lives of the World's Poor
- Life expectancy (20-24 yrs lower)
- Child Mortality (135 per 1,000 die before 5)
- Sanitation/Clean Water (40mil flatworms)
- Malnutrition (800 mil malnourished)
- Adult literacy (69% over 15 can't write
a simple sentence. )
Modernization Theory
"Wealthy nations become wealthy early thanks to developing 'correct' beliefs, values, and practices for trade, industrialization, and economic growth."
Dependency Theory
"Global stratification occurs because wealthy nations exploit poor nations resources and bodies. European nations conquered and colonized other nations."
Major
Theories
IN BRIEF
What policies and paradigm shifts need to happen to reduce poverty in the U.S? Globally?
bell hooks -
conflict theorist
CLASS
MATTERS-bell hooks
- When we approach a text, why is it important to know the context of the author and the time/place they wrote in?
- Feminist theorist, educator, and social critic who used the lower case spelling of her name to 'decenter herself' and focus attention on her work
- Grew up (and died in 2021) in a segregated town in Kentucky -- influenced her writing
- Wrote Where We Stand: Class Matters in 2000 about how class and race are always intertwined to propose new ways to think about, study, and combat oppression
Connections
between text + class
Annotations
"Caring and sharing have come to be seen
as traits of the idealistic weak."
"It is impossible to talk meaningfully about ending racism without talking about class."
"The time to talk about class, to know where we stand, is now-- before it is too late, before we are all trapped in place and unable to change our class or our nation's fate."
"The closest most folks can come to talking about class in
this nation is to talk about money. For so long everyone has
wanted to hold on to the belief that the United States is a
class-free society—that anyone who works hard enough can
make it to the top. Few people stop to think that in a class-free
society there would be no top."
[In Greenwich Village], "To look young and black is to not belong. Affluence, they believe, is always white."
"..convinced that the good life can exist
only when there is material affluence."
Intersection-ality
Why did bell hooks coin the phrase 'white supremacist capitalist patriarchy' over 'racism'?
Current Debates
Intersectionality:
A sociological framework that examines how people's multiple social and political identities can lead to unique experiences of discrimination and privilege.
Different components of our identities -- class, race, gender, but also sexuality, ethnicity, religion, ability -- intersect and overlap to create complex experiences of oppression.