Sociology Chapters 1-7

Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory that the interconnectedness of the world system began in the 1500s, when Europeans began their economic and political domination of the rest of the world. Because capitalism depends on generating the maximum profits for the minimum of expenditures, the world system continues to benefit rich countries (which acquire the profits) and harm the rest of the world (by minimizing local expenditures and therefore perpetuating poverty)

About 4 percent of the US population, this group has no income, no connection to the job market, little education, inadequate nutrition, and substandard housing or none at all. They have no possibility of social mobility and little chance of achieving the quality of life that most people would consider minimally acceptable

A general upward trend of the entire society, not the result of either intergenerational or intragenerational mobility. Basically means the entire society got wealthier

One’s socially defined position in a group; it is often characterized by certain expectations and rights

Your social connections, your taste in art, your ascribed and attained statuses, and more. Because there are so many components, sociologists today tend to prefer the concept of socioeconomic status to that of social class, to emphasize that people are ranked through the intermingling of many factors, economic, social, political, cultural, and community

Taken from the geological term for layers of rock or “strata”, the ranking of people into defined layers. Social stratification exists in all societies and is based on things like wealth, race and gender

The movement from one class to another, it can occur in two forms: intergenerational—that is, your parents are working class, but you became lower, or your parents are middle class, but you became upper class; and intragenerational—that is, you move from working ot lower, or from middle to upper, all within your lifetime

Popularized by Karl Marx, the term for the lower classes who were forced to become wage laborers or go hungry. Today, the term is often used to refer to the working class

The ability to extract compliance despite resistance or the ability to get others to do what you want them to do, regardless of their own desires

Estimated minimum income required to pay for food, shelter, and clothing. Anyone falling below this income is categorized as poor.

W. W. Rostrow’s theory focusing on the conditions necessary for a low-income country to develop economically. Arguing that a nation’s poverty is largely due to the cultural failings of its people, Rostrow believed poor countries could develop economically only if they give up their “backward” way of life and adopt modern Western economic institutions, technologies, and cultural values that emphasize savings and productive investment

Social system in which the greater the functional importance of the job, the more rewards it brings, in salary, perks, power, and prestige

Systematic differences in wealth and power among countries, often involving exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful countries

Worldwide networks of labor and production processes, consisting of all pivotal production activities that form a tightly interlocked “chain” from raw materials to finished product to retail outlet to consumer. The most profitable activities in the commodity chain (engineering, design, advertising) are likely to be done in core countries, while the least profitable activities (mining or growing the raw materials, factory production) are likely to be done in peripheral countries

Fixed and permanent system of mutual obligation in which peasants and serfs worked estates that belonged to a small group of feudal lords. The feudal lords housed and fed serfs, offered protection inside the castle walls, and decided on their religion and on whether they would be educated. Peasants were basically property.