CLASS, STATIFICATION AND INEQUALITY

Marx and (neo)Marxist on inequality

Focus on casual explanation (why?)

Historical materialism is not economism (explanation of

social phenomena exclusively by economic relations-cf. Brock)

Structural theories do not necessarily neglect culture e.g. Marx

on ideology as mean of social control.

The dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant class
Gramschi: Hegemonic ideology is an ideology dominant to

the near-exclusion of competing ideologies

Hall: Material conditions (capitalist) set the limits of possible

discourses under particular socio-historic conditions

Knezevic: They also set the limits of probable discourses

(cf.Gramschi)
Social constructionism (Berger and Luckman 1996): people act in
accordance to their construction of reality, not reality itself.
Power relations explain social construction of reality.
-Oligarchy-ruled by the elite

Foucalt on power as a mechanism of producing inequality

Exclusively processual explanation (how?)

o How does power influence inequality
No definition of power, but compatible with Weberian definition
Power is a dividing practicedivision produce inequality
o Dividing into smaller group
o Hierarchy = inequality
o You can divide people into group (occupation)- not
considered inequality
Exercise of power creates knowledge and knowledge induces
effects of power
o Cultural theory of inequality
o Inequality exist in society b/c the way ppl talk about

society-it assumed inequality

Power is diffuse (not structured?) it permeates social life.
Forms of power:
o Sovereign: power of the state, negative, punitive

 Eg. (Government, police, army, Judicial)

o Disciplinary: increasingly diffuse, includes self-regulation
(morals), more difficult to identify and resist (panopticon-)
Eg. (Teachers, Social workers)
o Governmentality: Processes through which governments
try to produce the citizens best suited to fulfill their
policies. Normalized (accept as normal) Citizens accept to
Be governed
Govern others
Govern selves
Other theories of inequality

Agential approach to inequality: meritocratic and

microsociological/processual/interactionist explanations

(including Foucault and Collins)

Essentialist theories (biologic and cultural): inequalities are
based on different and unalterable essential characteristics of
groups
o Unequal groups emerge from biological difference (MvsF)
o Cultural- Whites good in education, blacks good at sports

not good at school

Contingency (historicist, situational, Foucault: genealogic)

theories.
Contribution: origins of inequality and mechanisms of its
maintenance need not be the same

Critical theory (Brock critical approach) has no unified

theory, some of it is atheoretical

Interactionist theory of social inequality

Microsociological, but the idea of intersectionality is applicable

at the meso- and micro- levels of sociological analysis

Lorde: race, age, class, gender and other axes of difference are
mutually constructing (mutually constituting). Womanism
(African American feminism) is simplistic and homogenizing

because of its heteronomativity.

Collins: multiple axes of inequality are present in and constituted
by rituals of everyday interaction (cf. symbolic interactionism)

Intersectionality

Knezevic (following Weber): relationships (incl. relative

importance) of various axes of achieving and ascribed
inequality are sociohistorically specific and dynamic (cf.

Thomas: equal attention...)

Achieved status: assumed voluntarily (chosen), arguably on basis

of effort and merit. Assumed social mobility

Ascribed status (neither achieved nor chosen): assigned at birth
or assumed involuntarily later in life. Assumes no or limited
social mobility/exclusion. Tilly: durable inequalities across

societies.
Self-ascription.
Asymmetrical power of ascription and self-ascription based on

hierarchical social relations

Ongoing debate about the achieved and/or assigned nature for
various social statuses.