Exam 11: Class and Inequality

Which of the following individuals is among four key theorists of class and inequality who wrote in the nineteenth century and is likely the most widely read theorist of class?

Countries such as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are among those that have explicitly worked to narrow stratification through high taxation of wealth and which of the following efforts?

Class is a topic that is not commonly discussed among most people in the United States, and yet it is a system of stratification that continues to affect peoples' daily lives. How often and in what context do you talk about class issues with family and friends? In what class position would you classify yourself and your family? How do you know what category to use to identify your class position? Does your class position differ from that of your parents or grandparents? Why or why not? Does your class position differ from that of your friends? Why or why not? What types of efforts do you make to increase your social mobility, and do you think the efforts will indeed help you increase your class position at some point in your lifetime? Given what you know about your own class position, why do you think that class is not commonly talked about in U.S. society? What other types of social stratification are more commonly discussed in public and how might they be drawing attention away from class issues?

Anthropologists such as Setha Low have demonstrated that class is largely invisible in the United States due to which of the following actions carried out by portions of the population?

Contemporary economic relations in many societies today tend to be organized around the exchange of money for services rather than around patterns of reciprocity. However, patterns of reciprocity still exist today even within highly stratified societies. What are three examples of patterns of reciprocity that are likely to occur in highly stratified societies today, and what purpose do they serve within or between social groups? How does gift giving relate to patterns of reciprocity and what may be some underlying motivations in gift giving that are related to group survival or benefit? Given the longevity of reciprocity as a social pattern within human evolutionary experience, do you think it will continue to be present within and among social groups in the future? Why or why not?

Which of the following is a system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society's resources?

Archaeological evidence suggests that hierarchy, violence, and aggression:

Since the mid-1970s, class inequality in the United States has:

Which of the following is defined as a closed system of social stratification in which members are organized into hierarchically ranked groups with unequal access to rewards and privileges based on ascribed status?

Which of the following statements is true?

Patterns of reciprocity:

Which of the following statements is true?

Anthropologist Gregory Mantsios contends that the media play a significant role in hiding class stratification in the United States by largely ________ class.

Theorist Pierre Bourdieu found that which of the following systems did not provide opportunities for social class mobility, but instead helped reproduce the social class relations that already existed?

Which of the following reveal the way power is distributed in a society?

Theorist Karl Marx argued that societies in the emerging capitalist economy of nineteenth-century Europe consisted of two distinct classes of people: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labor in return for wages. What were these two distinct classes called? What other resources or factors distinguished these two classes, according to Marx? Does the two-class system espoused by Marx still hold relevancy in examining class systems in societies across the world today? Why or why not? Are there other classes that have developed since the time period during which Marx wrote? What is one example of a way in which Marx's theory could be applied to understanding societies living in a global economy today? Do you find Marx's theory helpful in understanding class and social inequality today? Why or why not?

Given the poverty rates reported in the 2009 U.S. Census Bureau report, it is important to recognize that most of the nation's poor are:

A marginalized group outside of India's primary castes who are typically assigned the most spiritually polluting work and are deemed "untouchable" by the general population are the:

Proponents of poverty as a structural problem trace its roots to dysfunctional aspects of the:

According to Karl Marx, the bourgeoisie consisted of a capitalist class of individuals who owned the means of: