Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Researching and understanding social inequalities - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Strengths and weaknesses for questionnaire
        
        Weaknesses
        -Costly and takes a long time
        -Attrition rates high (drop out rates) which means less representative
        -Lacks validity as there is a lack of depth of why something happens
        
        Strengths
        -It's reliable
        -Generalisable
        Positivist validity
        -Large sample size = more representative
    - - Strengths + Weaknesses are for participant observation = where the researcher observes participants
        
        Strengths
        -Valid
        -Rapport (building relationship)
        -Verstehen (Empathy)
        
        Weaknesses
        -Researcher bias
        -Lack representative
        -Unreliable
- - - - Social class
        
        Davis and Moore - Davis and Moore think inequality has always been in human societies and so is functionally necessary. Social stratification ensures effective role allocation and performance.
        
        Parsons - Parsons was convinced that society works best when there is consensus and shared values.
        
        Saunders – Inequality ensures society runs smoothly as people encouraged to work hard for their lifestyle will achieve what they worked for
        
        Murray – Underclass and that benefits were for the unemployed or single-parent families. But claiming benefits created a dependency culture
      - Ethnicity
        
        Patterson - The host immigrant model says that immigrants would go through three stages before they completely assimilate into the host society and if they don't assimilate it is there fault for any discrimination they face
      - Gender
        
        Parsons - They argued that men were the instrumental leader while women were the expressive leader and that both were necessary for society
        
        Human Capital Theory - This suggests that the wage gap and other employment-based differences can be explained by the human capital different groups or individuals develop through the skills and knowledge they get through training and education
        
        Murdock - Studied gender roles in over 200 societies and found that women were located in the home because of their biological function of bearing children and because their physique meant that they were less able than men to perform strenuous tasks. The conclusion was that gender division of labour was evident therefore universal because they were functional.
      - Age
        
        Parsons - They argued that certain age groups have norms and values that could threaten social stability (the elderly and youths). He viewed teenage culture as a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, associating it with issues of transition and insecurity as young people sought to fulfil their social roles. Old age was considered as a time of isolation and loneliness. Receiving a pension created a dependency and with it came a drop in status.
        
        Eisenstadt - argued that differential age groups (youth, middle age, old age) enable individuals to learn and acquire new social roles and therefore contribute to social cohesion and solidarity
        
        Cumming and Henry - ("Growing Old") where the emphasis is on explaining how the process of growing old is functional for society. This theory involves the idea that the progressive withdrawal of the elderly from all aspects of social life reflects the onset of their ultimate disengagement from society: death. The ageing process, as it is socially expressed and enforced, represents a functional "coming to terms" with the biological fact of death - something that is functional to both the individual and society as a whole.
        
        Eskimos - Old Age - Due to the fact that Eskimos must work so hard to survive that they cannot support those who no longer contribute to the group. So instead of feeding and clothing them they are taken to sea and set adrift on a floating iceberg where they freeze or starve to death.
    - - Social class
        
        Marx – The bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat to maximise surplus profit. The workers become alienated and there is a loss of satisfaction for the workers
        
        Sklair - Capitalism has now become globalised in which transnational companies are now the global ruling class and exploit everyone including the government
        
        Althusser - The ideology transmitted by the bourgeoisie is that capitalism is good for society. Through ideological state apparatus such as education/ media/ religion, we are taught to accept inequality and ensure that the working class do not unite.
        
        Gramsci - Explained that a revolution has not happened due to hegemony and people are aware of exploitation (dual consciousness) but are too attached to the hegemony
      - Ethnicity
        
        Cox - That race is a human creation. Racism is developed by exploiters against the exploited. If racism is developed to justify exploitation it cannot be developed by those who are exploited. If capitalism had not developed, the world may never have experienced racial prejudice.
        
        Castles and Kosack - Reserve army of labour is needed in capitalist societies, those who work in low skilled jobs, the bourgeoisie knows that they can pay them the least for their work and that the proletariat can continue to be exploited as they don’t have power to speak up that it’s wrong
        
        Phizacklea and Miles - The idea of a ‘racialised class fraction’. The basic idea is that black people (migrant labour) are members of the working class but within this class they have been singled out as a racialised fraction. These fractions (or divisions) are significant since they increase the possibility that black people will choose to develop their own forms of political action
        
        Divided working class model - The arrival of immigrants led to the working class being divided into two groups, where the immigrant group was at the bottom and becoming the most disadvantaged group. This led to the divide and rule tactic where the immigrant class was blamed for housing shortages and unemployment and so diverting the white working-class attention away from the real cause of inequality (capitalism)
      - Gender
        
        Freeley - They reproduce the next generation of workers and socialise (or brainwash) them into norms and values that benefit capitalism by encouraging children to be obedient and hard-working. Boy's are brainwashed to believe they are the breadwinners and girls learn that their role is to be a housewife.
        
        Benston - Women’s domestic work is unpaid which benefits capitalism as only one wage has to be paid. Benston argues that a wife helps keep her husband in good running order by feeding and caring for him and this is essential to the smooth running of capitalism
        
        Ansley - Women soothe the stresses and frustrations of proletariat men after a hard day of work. She argues women act as a safety valve and argues women are the ‘takers of shit’ as husbands return home having been exploited at work and take their frustrations out on their wives
      - Age
        
        Reserve army of labour - The reserve army of labour could be applied to age groups at both end of the spectrum. Those under 14 provide cheap labour in the informal economy in jobs such as newspaper delivery. Equally those over 65 are increasingly seeking to extend their working lives with part-time work for financial and social reasons. Both groups can meet the needs of an economy which experiences boom and bust, as both can be easily hired and fired.
        
        Gramsci - They suggest that how the bourgeoisie maintains its authority is important. His work on political society (rule through force) and civil society (rule through consent) can be applied to inequality and age
        
        Peter Townsend - They argue that the (Capitalist) requirement to continually "renew" the workforce (the young can be made more productive than the old and hence become a source of greater profit) means that the elderly are denied access to the social resources on which status depends (income from work, for example
        
        Institutionalised dependency - (retirement and so forth) is seen to benefit the ruling class by removing relatively unproductive workers from the economy, thereby creating space for new, relatively more-productive, workers.