Exam 9: Social Stratification

All known societies have a system of ranking individuals and groups along a continuum of superiority/inferiority.

Biological determinism is inconsistent with the approach called "blaming the victim."

Social stratification refers to ranking people in a vertical hierarchy that differentiates them as superior or inferior.

Ethnicity is socially defined on the basis of a presumed common genetic heritage resulting in distinguishing physical characteristics.

The macro structures of inequality include family origins.

Describe the patterned social inequality found in India and South Africa.

________ refers to the process of categorizing persons based on personal attributes (e.g., age, height, or occupation).

________ is the social patterning of difference and domination through distinctions between women and men.

Order theorists suggest that discord results from inequalities in the division of labor because groups compete for scarce resources and because those without power resent those with power.

A sex-gender system is a form of stratification system that assigns women's and men's roles unequally.

People are _______ located in a class position based on income, occupation, and/or education.

Institutional discrimination is the form inequality takes when the customary ways of doing things, prevailing attitudes and expectations, and accepted structural arrangements work to the disadvantage of the poor.

________ refer to behavior determined by an individual's biological sex.

People experience race, class, gender, and sexuality the same regardless of social location in structures of inequality.

Compare the concepts of race and ethnicity.

In the United States, few people seriously question the unequal distribution of rewards because the norms and values of society dictate that such inequalities are just.

Social class refers to the relative economic rank of individuals in the stratification system.

The unofficial caste system in South Africa includes the Untouchables.

Most people in the United States see poverty as the outcome of biological and cultural factors.

________ theories suggest that the poor are in their condition because of biological inferiority or cultural inferiority.