SUMMARY

In this section, you learned about systems of social stratification. These systems are based on a variety of factors, including wealth, income, gender, race, education, occupation, sexual orientation, power, age, and more. A person is placed at a social location where several of these factors may apply at the same time. For instance a White female worker may make less money in the same field than a White male worker, but she may make more money than a Black male worker.

Systems of stratification differ across societies and some variables may impact lives in other cultures much differently than in our own. For instance, our society’s stratification system allows some degree of upward or downward mobility while other social systems do not, such as the caste system.

Just as there exists distinct socioeconomic classes within our society, you learned how global stratification is also present. Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory shows how the countries of the world are also stratified. Some countries are very poor and underdeveloped while others are very wealthy. The Modernization Theory assumes that underdeveloped countries can become more like our country by doing more of what we have done, while the Dependency Theory suggests that powerful, wealthy countries exploit underdeveloped countries for their own purposes.

Sociologists often concentrate on individuals, groups, and countries that are impoverished. You learned about the causes and consequences of poverty as it impacts individuals and whole countries or even regions of the world.

You learned that race is a social construct based on imbuing (usually) physical characteristics with social significance. Through this process meaningless differences impact whole populations. Another powerful social division is gender.

These social constructs, or beliefs, can lead to racial tensions, the gender pay gap, and other serious social consequences.

When cultures collide, there may be a variety of responses between them, including genocide, expulsion, segregation, slavery, pluralism, assimilation and amalgamation.  Historically, we have seen these problematic inter-group relations globally as well as here at home between Native Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and White Ethnic Americans.Other factors such as sex, gender, and sexual orientation are also socially constructed and may be quite challenging for the people who are often grouped into these categories, especially as these intersect and add up. For instance, a combination of two of these designations would be considered “double jeopardy” because singly, they already designate a subordinate membership.