Sociology chapter 7

Chapter 7
1. According to Karl Marx social class depends on a factor of a person’s relationship to the means of production. He distinguished two classes: owner of the means of production (bourgeoisie) and a worker who works on these factories, tools and land, proletariat. Marx believed that person’s life is shaped only with regard of what he owns and what he works on. Max Weber believed that social class is made up of three elements: property, power and prestige. According to Weber, property is the main source of power however, other components are interrelated too.
2. According to the functionalist view expressed by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, stratification is inevitable.
1. Society must make certain that its important positions are filled; to guarantee that the more important positions are filled by the more qualified people, society must offer them greater rewards.
2. Davis and Moore argued that society offers greater rewards for its more responsible, demanding, and accountable positions
3. On the surface the idea that some people get more than other people should produce widespread instability – after all, isn`t natural for those without to want to do whatever they can to take some away from those with? However, this does not often happen because the elites have a number of methods for maintaining stratification, ranging from ideology to develops and people accept the idea in their minds that a particular system od stratification is right or just, then they will go along with the status quo.
4. There are two different explanations as to the forces that led to the initial system of global stratification. Let’s focus on economic system. The initial system of global stratification was most certainly based on economic relationship. Even last Least Industrialized Nations won their political independence, they were still intimately linked together with the most Industrialized Nations in economic system.
5. Global stratification is managed in two ways. The first one is called neo-colonialism which gives to more developed countries economic control over developing or least developed countries. Rich countries sell goods on credit, especially weapons making least developed countries long-term debtors. Thus, developing countries become eternally dependent on more developed countries. Another way of dealing with stratification is multinational corporations that operate worldwide spreading the dominance of developed countries and exploiting the resources and cheap labour of developing countries. On the one hand they bring jobs and investments into these countries but on the other they support stratification and local national elite.