Unit III: Class, Race and Gender

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Unit III Class, Race and Gender

• Inequality as the backbone of social structure
  10/24

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Inequality and Functions or Dysfunctions

• Functionalists tend to view inequality as a
  central element of social control, rewards,
  incentives, and opportunities,
• as a thermostat.
• Conflict theorists tend to view inequality as a
  game of Monopoly and inherited privilege,
• as a vicious cycle or a cancer.

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Insight of functional theory

• Inequality represents a system of rewards,
  incentives and controls.
• To the degree that the inequality serves crucial
  social functions, reducing it might be killing
  the goose that lays the golden eggs.
• For example it could reward people for doing
  important work,
• or it might motivate people to gain training,
• or it might reflect differences in peoples
  abilities or priorities

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Insight of conflict theory

• Wealth and poverty can feed on themselves as a
  vicious cycle.
• To the extent that inequality becomes divisive,
  dysfunctional or cancerous, we need to limit it.
• Many societies in the past have failed because
  they had to devote more and more resources to
  coercion and social control,
• because they were divided by conflicts over
  inequality
• and poverty is wasteful and dangerous.

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The functional model of stratification

• The functional model was dominant in the
  mid-twentieth century.
• It argued that inequality is functionally
  necessary to motivate training and attract talent
  to important positions,
• and that therefore all societies are stratified,
• and reduction of stratification would make
  everyone worse off.

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Murrays functionalism

• Charles Murray argues
• A defense of income differences It is justified
  to pay the high IQ businessman more than the
  low-IQ ditch digger because that is the only way
  to make the economy grow and produce wealth in
  which the ditch digger can share. It is a matter
  of economic pragmatism and it is also right.
  After the experience of the 20th c. it is hard to
  imagine that anyone could disagree. (The Bell
  Curve pp 527-8)
• This is the view that was dominent in sociology
  in the 1950s but is not accepted today.

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Inequality as a thermostat

• A thermostat is designed to maintain heat
• Functionalists see inequality as functioning to
  maintain incentives and rewards

(lack of) heat
furnace
-

(lack of) incentives and rewards
Control structures generating inequality
-
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Formalization by Davis Moore

• Not all jobs are equally important.
• Not all people are equally able or motivated.
• Training takes time and money.
• Stratification is an unconsciously evolved device
  to motivate the most able people to acquire the
  training and to diligently fill the most
  important positions.
• Therefore, all societies must be stratified.

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Strengths of the functional model

• All developed societies are stratified.
• Increased pay is a strong motivator,
• Especially in a society where ones childrens
  life chances depend, importantly, on ones
  income.
• Some forms and ranges of inequality are widely
  believed to be functional.

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Weaknesses of the model

• It does not account for property income, and
  appears to be inconsistent with it.
• It does not account for ascriptive (race, gender)
  differences in income.
• Many functionally indispensable jobs (public
  health worker, teacher) are paid less than many
  jobs that appear more dispensable (advertising).
• It does not specify any level of inequality.
• It ignores dysfunctions.

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The point of Spaceship Earth

• We referred to a thought-experiment during the
  last week before the break,
• suggested by Feagins discussion of the analysis
  by Hawken.
• In each column, decide the range of inequality
  between elite and the lower ¼ that you think
  would be most functional,
• and cross out any range that you think would be
  nonviable and non-sustainable.
• This implies that inequality is not like kindness.

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Gans ironic functional theory

• Gans (p.363,368) argued that the poor clean
  toilets and give work to social workers, bookies
  and police.
• But Gans point is that you can always find
  functions of any condition.
• That does not show whether we would be better off
  if inequality was greater, or less than it is.

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The conflict model of stratification

• We have seen that the core of conflict theory is
  that possession of resources tends to increase
  access to further resources, as in Monopoly

Properties (wealth)
Rents (income)

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Reasons that an excess of inequality might be
dysfunctional

• Inequality plausibly feeds all social problems
• Academic failure,
• Crime, juvenile delinquency, drug use, gangs,
• Conflict and a police state
• Family breakdown,
• Anomie,
• ill health
• Could a free and well-functioning spaceship have
  an income ratio of more than 1,000 1 ? Conflict
  theorists say No

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Can the rules of Monopoly be changed?

• Different rules will lead to different outcomes.
  The usual rules accentuate positive feedback and
  produce absolute polarization in a few hours.
• What are some rule changes that would prevent or
  slow polarization?
• What are some rule changes that would speed it up?

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Is it possible to limit inequality?

• It is a presumption of the sociological
  imagination that people create society, just as
  society creates people.
• Different societies restrict different kinds of
  inequality in many ways, some direct (taxation,
  regulation),some indirect (unions, markets), some
  mixed (insurance arrangements.)

individuals
Social structures

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Can one combine functional and conflict theories?

• There are many possible combinations,
• focusing on different kinds of inequalities and
  different processes.
• But a great deal of ones analysis depends on
  whether one believes that the most important and
  the most powerful processes are
• A) the thermostats (functionalists)
• B) the Vicious cycles (conflict theorists)

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Myrdal model revisted

• For example, we have seen that Myrdal pictured
  the dynamic of race relations as a
  self-reinforcing structure of inequality and
  racism restrained by the normative system of the
  American Creed

violates

Racial inequality
American Creed
Racism

- generates reforms
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How much inequality is there?

• There are many kinds of inequality, and income
  inequality is not the largest.
• Like most social inequalities, income is
  distributed very differently from variables such
  as height, strength, speed or ability, which are
  distributed normally.
• There are several hundred billionaires in the US,
  each with property incomes more than 10,000 times
  as large as the poverty line.

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Poverty line and minimum wage

• The federal poverty line is calculated as a
  measure of subsistence by taking the cost of
  the amount of food required to avoid
  malnutrition, and multiplying by 3 (because
  people spend about 1/3 of their income on food).
• A 4-person family with one earner who makes the
  minimum wage, will usually fall below the poverty
  line.

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Calculation of the poverty line

• 14,000 for everyone for everything per yr.
• 3,666 per person for everything per year.
• 1,222 per person for food per year.
• 3.35 per person for food per day.
• 1.12 per meal.
• 6/hr.x40hrs./wk. x50wk/yr. 12,000 gross

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Who is poor? The old vs. the young. Why?
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How and why has inequality increased?

• Each of these shifts involve tens of millions of
  people, and they are complex.
• Some of the social forces and social policies
  driving them are highly indirect e.g. changes in
  the world economy, GATT, unionization, etc.
• But the main trends in the poverty rate of the
  old and the young are driven by policy.
• As a country, we decided to lower the poverty
  rate of the elderly, and we did so.
• We reduced efforts to lower the poverty rate of
  the young, especially welfare.
• Charles Murrays analyses were central to this
  choice.

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Rise and fall of the functional model of
stratification.

• Today, most sociologists believe that the
  dynamics of inequality are more a matter of
  power, influence and organization than of
  functional needs.
• What is the optimal level of income inequality?
• Sociologists disagree (social science cannot
  say),
• but most believe a lot less than the 110,000
  that exists in the US today,
• which has a lot of dysfunctional consequences.

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The forced division of labor revisited

• Durkhiems analysis of organic solidarity
  requires that there be an open and fair
  competition for higher positions.
• Durkheim believed that inherited inequalities
  create a forced division of labor.
• Durkheimian functionalism can generate liberal or
  radical positions depending whether reforms or
  even structural changes are viewed as necessary
  to generate organic solidarity.

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Why equality of opportunity implies inequality

• Opportunity is usually understood as the
  opportunity to make something of ones life I.e.
  to become unequal.
• (There is no equality of opportunity if everyone
  gets the same result no matter what they do.)
• Therefore equality of opportunity implies
  inequality.

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Paradoxes of equality of opportunity

• One of the reasons that the high proportion of
  children growing up in poverty is troubling to
  most people is that it appears to conflict with
  equality of opportunity.
• Most Americans defend that ideal ,
• but it has a paradoxical relation to inequality
• Equality of opportunity implies inequality
• Inequality implies inequality of opportunity.

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Why inequality implies inequality of opportunity

• However, if parents have grossly unequal
  resources, they give their children unequal
  opportunities.
• By any conception of equality of opportunity, it
  is hard to believe that it exists between those
  growing up malnourished and those growing up in
  affluence.
• Thus inequality produces inequality of
  opportunity.
• And this extends to school, health, legal
  defense, and all other areas of social life.

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Possible resolutions of the paradox

• From Durkheim to current theory, there are many
  different kinds of resolution of the paradoxes.
• Most people believe that inequalities are
  permissible, but only if they are not too large.
• And most people believe that access to health
  care and education should be buffered against
  market inequalities.