Causes of Inequality: Analytical Strategies

Table of Contents

The Topics

I. Introduction

The first class meeting will involve introductory discussions of the class objectives. 

• Analytical Task
  • No task for introductory meeting
• Common Readings
  • No readings for introductory meeting.  Students with limited relevant background might usefully peruse any standard textbook on stratification before the first class meeting.
• Recommended Readings
  • Peter M. Blau. "A Fable about Social Structure." Social Forces, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Mar., 1980), pp. 777-788.  On the importance of always considering the implications of numbers. [jstor: 2577184]
    {Alternatively, the formal presentation: Peter M. Blau. "A Macrosociological Theory of Social Structure." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jul., 1977), pp. 26-54. [jstor: 2777762]}
  • ...
• Related Readings
  • ...
  • ...

II. What do we mean by social inequality?

How can we conceive of and talk about social inequality in ways that are general enough to apply across the range of relevant phenomena, consistent enough to minimize conceptual ambiguities, and precise enough to be analytically effective?  Inequality is ubiquitous.  People are unequal in every conceivable way in endless circumstances, both immediate and enduring, by both objective criteria and subjective experience.  So, what counts as social inequality?  Can we characterize it in ways that let us confidently and impartially assess when there is more or less of it?

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  What is social inequality?  We often think that the meaning of social inequality is self-evident or easy.  Perhaps it is when we focus on extreme versions of the more obvious forms of social inequality, such as the rich compared to the poor.  But, equally, perhaps it is not when we consider  inequalities that are subler or more complex, such as those based on sexual preference or ethnic identity or between nations.  We want to begin by looking a little deeper into our conceptualization of social inequalities.
  • Choose two kinds of inequality.  For each kind of inequality, consider an example showing a high degree of inequality and another showing equality or a minimal amount of inequality.  Here we are simply trying to conceive a simple 2 x 2 table, showing two kinds of inequality and two levels of inequality for each kind.  This is the simplest design for doing social analyses, whether that analysis is empirical or theoretical.   (Note: It is fine to use standard, commonly discussed kinds of inequality, but being original and creative about kinds of inequality to consider is also good.)
  • Describe (briefly) how the relevant groups are unequal for each type.  For each of these two kinds of inequality, try to list the main ways that those affected  are unequal.  For now, do not worry about why such inequality exists.  For now we are concerned with what we mean by inequality, not what causes it.  Try to specify the crucial experiences, opportunities, or other circumstances that distinguish the beneficiaries of the inequality from those who are disadvantaged.  Consider also the relationships between the disadvantaged and advantaged, both direct and indirect.  (The idea of "indirect relationships" refers to ways that the advantaged or disadvantaged influence the circumstances or actions of those who are differently situated without direct interaction, e.g. by controlling government policies or creating a culture of fear.)  In short, for each of the two types of inequality, what induces us to call one example high inequality and another low?
  • A final question.  After working through the questions above, try to complete a definition sentence beginning "In general, social inequality exists when ... ."  The goal of this sentence is to provide a definition of social inequality general enough to embrace the range of social inequalities but also precise enough to distinguish social inequality from its absence.  The implicit strategy is compare what social inequality means for the two chosen examples, then to try to identify the common conditions that make them (and other forms) all merit being called "social inequality" (distinguished from the characteristics specific to certain types of inequality or concrete historical and cultural conditions).  To do this involves not only the empirical comparison, but the appropriate conceptual abstraction.
  • For the ambitious (to develop a deeper grasp)...
    • Here are some other issues that you might integrate into your initial assessment of inequalities
    • Vantage points.  Might some people (scholars, political actors, others) disagree that any of the components you identify should really be considered inequality?  If so, why?  (The goal here is to think through the reasons that people disagree about what should be called inequality?)
    • Try to figure out how we might measure the amount of inequality.  Of the ways that you have listed people being unequal, select which of these differences seem most important.  What might be reasonable ways to measure each identified facet of inequality?  For each kind of inequality you have selected an example where inequality is high and another where it is low.  Can you think of a measurement procedure that will allow one to look at any society or group and determine if some aspect of inequality is high, medium, or low?  Focus on realistic means that could be applied in research, that could be used for the same aspects of inequality when they apply to other kinds of inequality.  Do this only for the two or three facets of inequality in your examples that seem most decisive.
    • For each of the two types of inequality, if we put aside differences in the circumstances of advantaged and disadvantaged people, what important differences in social organization distinguish societies (or other social groupings such as communities or organizations) where that type of inequality is high from those where it is low?  The goal here is to consider if societies (or other levels of social organization containing inequality) that have high levels of some type of inequality consistently differ from societies that have low levels, in ways other than the difference in the level of this kind of inequality.
    • Most people responding to the prompts above will think about inequality between kinds of people.  Consider two other important concerns.  First, inequality may be between positions rather than people (this is a critical concern which we will address later).  Second, inequality may concern "units" other that people, such as families or organizations or nations.
• Common Readings
  • David B. Grusky and Manwai C. Ku.  "Gloom, Doom, and Inequality."  Pp. 2-28 in Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective, 3rd edition, edited by David B. Grusky, Manwai C. Ku and Szonja Szelényi. Boulder: Westview Press. [available online from Grusky]
  • Randall Collins.  "Lenski's Power Theory of Economic Inequality: A Central Neglected Question in Stratification Research." Sociological Theory, (2004) 22: 219-228.  [doi: 10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.00213.x]
  • William Julius Wilson. "The Declining Significance of Race." Society. 15:2 (1978): 56-62.  [doi: 10.1007/BF03181003]; also Wilson, Response to Reviews of Declining Significance ... .  Contemporary Sociology. 9:1 (1980): 21-24. [jstor: 2065555]
  • Paula England.  "The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled." Gender & Society 24:2 (Apr 2010): 149-166.  (see also England's response to critics, "Reassessing ...", under Recommended Readings) [doi: 10.1177/0891243210361475]
• Recommended Readings
  • David B. Grusky. "Social Stratification." Encyclopedia of Sociology. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2001. 2807-2821. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
  • Paula England. "Reassessing the Uneven Gender Revolution and its Slowdown." Gender & Society 25:1 (Feb 2011): 113-123. (Response to critics of "Gender Revolution ..." above) [doi: 10.1177/0891243210391461]
  • ...
• Related Readings
  • Archibald O. Haller. "Societal Stratification." Encyclopedia of Sociology. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2001. 2864-2874. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 
  • Pennock, J. Roland. "Equality and Inequality." In The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World, (2001) Oxford University Press. 
  • ...

III. What are common forms of social inequality?

What is the range of social inequalities that we should be addressing?  Pundits, scholars, and ordinary people usually focus on the couple forms of inequality they experience as most troubling.  Contemporary sociology's sometimes blinkered perspective is reflected in the many readers and texts on race, class, and gender.  The range of analytically relevant inequalities is considerably wider.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical Task:  This week's task is to identify major forms of  inequality in two societies.  The goal is to see the range of inequalities that exist in different societies.  The remainder of this task description just tries to show how to approach this systematically.
  • To start, choose two societies with which you have some familiarity.  It is fine to use this society or an another society in which you have lived as one example (but it is an interesting challenge to use two societies you have not experienced).  The two societies can be from two different parts of the world or from different points in time.  The main goal is to use two societies that differ significantly in their structure and culture, regardless whether those differences reflect location, culture, historical circumstance, or something else.
  • For each example (society), identify the significant, widely-present forms of social inequality that persist over time.  
    • "widely present" means not limited to certain locations nor small parts of the population; note that many instances of inequality that are limited to particular places or subgroups are, however, examples of some more generally defined kind of inequality, so moving to a higher level of generality or categorization identifies a widely present inequality of which they are specific examples
    • two or more instances of inequality with a similar system or structure but involving different populations should usually be considered to of the same kind (e.g., similar ethnic inequality processes or structures may apply to Hindi and Chinese minorities)
    • The aim here is not to see how long the list of inequalities might be, but we do want to see how diverse the forms of inequality can be, and to consider if important kinds of inequality are overlooked.
  • Try to describe briefly each form of inequality identified (for each society), by indicating:
    1. to what degree is the inequality more a continuous gradation (like years of age) or more a division into distinct categories (like employed vs. unemployed)
    2. what is unequal, that is what are the assets, opportunities, capacities, relationships, or whatever that define the inequality by their unequal distribution (this is not what explains the inequality, but simply what is unequal); this is self-evident for some kinds of inequality, but not for others.
    3. who is advantaged and who disadvantaged; in essence, this asks how are the advantaged people different from the disadvantaged people not only in the advantages that define the inequality, but in other ways as well (e.g. for ethnic inequalities, the groups are, in theory, defined by ethnic identity [although ethnicity is tricky]; distinguishing characteristics for some kinds of inequality might be more difficult to characterize, and could, in theory, not exist if placement is random)
    4. [optional – how do the disadvantaged and the advantaged perceive the inequality?; do they have similar or different conceptions of what is unequal, why they are disadvantaged or advantaged, whether it is fair, and the like?]
  • In short, for two societies, you are preparing a list of outstanding inequalities, that gives the primary characteristics of each kind of inequality.  You could make this either as two lists or as two simple tables.
  • Finally, having prepared a catalog of the primary forms of social inequality in the two societies, how would you compare the two societies with respect to their patterns of social inequality?  All we are looking for here are initial, outstanding differences and similarities (note that similarities are at least as important as differences).  To be clear, we are just looking for an initial impression – a comprehensive comparison would be a major project, obviously far beyond our scope.
    • If this aspect of the analysis seems baffling, overwhelming, or obscure initially, consider the following questions.  Does the overall amount of inequality seem greater in one society than the other or similar or does this seem impossible to guess?  Do the structures of the societies or their potential for change seem to be dominated by different or similar inequalities?  Does inequality overall seem more rigid in one society than the other?  Do major forms of inequality seem to overlap a lot, or are they distinctive and rather independent from each other?  Is inequality more continuous in one society and more categorical in the other? 
  • For the ambitious with time to go further:
    • How might we categorize the varied forms of inequality discerned in the two societies into groups defined by some notable similarities?  For example, if we have twelve types of inequality initially, could we usefully fit them into two or three categories that reflect their similarities (and differences)?  Here are some examples of criteria that might be used to categorize inequalities:
      • Consider the processes producing them
      • Consider who is advantaged and disadvantaged
      • Consider how one form affects the others
      • Consider their legitimacy claims
      • Consider their histories
      • Consider any other reasonable logic you can conceive for grouping them, remembering that a useful analytic taxonomy will usually rely on some aspect of causation
    • Do any of the forms of social inequality seem more important to the structure and organizational dynamics of a society than do others?  If so, why?
• Common Readings
  • Edna Bonacich – A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market  (1972)  [Grusky – Classic]
    { Original: "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market." American Sociological Review. Vol. 37, No. 5 (Oct., 1972), pp. 547-559}
  • G. William Domhoff – Who Rules America? Power and Politics  (orig. 1967) [Grusky – Contemporary] 
    { Alternative: Domhoff.  "Reflections, Corrections, and New Directions (1999)." & "State and Ruling Class in Corporate America (1974)." Crit Sociol 1999 25: 260-77 [doi: 10.1177/08969205990250021401, 10.1177/08969205990250021501] }
  • Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure Class  (orig. 1899) [Grusky - Classic]
    {Alternative: Same excerpts from Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class derived from public use source in HTML format.}
  • Glenn Firebaugh – The New Geography of Global Income Inequality (2003)  [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Glenn Firebaugh and Brian Goesling. ?Globalization and Global Inequalities.? Ch 28:549?564 in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, edited by George Ritzer (2007). [doi: 10.1002/9780470691939.ch28] }
  • Mary C. Waters – Black Identities  (1999) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Mary C. Waters. "Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in the United States," in Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective (eds F. Devine and M. C. Waters) (2003 paper) [doi: 10.1002/9780470753576.ch2]}
• Recommended Readings
  • Anthony Giddens.  "Elites in the British Class Structure." The Sociological Review, 20 (1972): 345?372.
  • Alejandro Portes and Robert D. Manning. "The Immigrant Enclave: Theory and Empirical Examples."
    {Alternative: Kenneth L. Wilson and Alejandro Portes. "Immigrant Enclaves: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Cubans in Miami." American Journal of Sociology Vol. 86, No. 2 (Sep., 1980) (pp. 295-319) [jstor: 2778666]}
    • But compare: Roger Waldinger. "The Ethnic Enclave Debate Revisited." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, (1993), 17: 444?452. [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.1993.tb00232.x]
  • John H. Goldthorpe and Keith Hope. "Occupational Grading and Occupational Prestige." Social Science Information October 1972 11: 17-73.  (especially pp. 19-33) [doi: 10.1177/053901847201100502]
  • John Mullahy, Stephanie Robert, and Barbara Wolfe. "Health, Income, and Inequality." Russell Sage Foundation Working Paper Series. 2003.
  • William Julius Wilson. "Jobless Poverty: A New Form of Social Dislocation, in the Inner-City Ghetto." (1999) [Grusky Contemporary]
    {Alternative: William Julius Wilson. "When Work Disappears." Political Science Quarterly , Vol. 111, No. 4 (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 567-595. [jstor: 2152085]}
  • 
    
  • 
    
• Related Readings
  • Shelley J. Correll. Stephen Benard, and In Paik – "Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?" American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 112, No. 5 (March 2007), pp. 1297-1339. [doi: 10.1086/511799]
  • Glenn Firebaugh.  "The Trend in Between-Nation Income Inequality." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26 (2000): 323-339 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.323]
  • ...

IV. What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate forms of inequality?

We often use the term inequality to refer only to forms of inequality we consider unjust or otherwise undesirable.  Yet, much inequality is commonly accepted as appropriate, fair, or desirable in societies.  The amount of legitimacy attributed to a form of inequality can be anywhere between extremely high (e.g. the authority of parents over infants) to extremely low (e.g., slavery in a modern society with well-developed civil rights).  The assessment of legitimacy  should always consider potential differences among differentially situated groups (e.g., those enjoying advantages in a system of inequality, those disadvantaged, and those relatively unaffected), and the degree of agreement or disagreement about legitimacy assessments.  Analytically, we want to ask what processes or conditions cause a form of inequality to be considered more or less legitimate.  When does the legitimacy status of inequality change or become contested?

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task: Using examples of two kinds of inequality, consider what circumstances appear to foster or to erode the acceptance of the inequality as legitimate.
  • First, select two kinds of inequality.  These can be from any place or time, but it might be simpler if they coexist in the same society.  They do not need to be inequalities considered socially "important." For each kind of inequality, select one example or circumstance with high "legitimacy" when those involved appear accepting or complacent and another example or circumstance with low "legitimacy" when those involved contest the inequality.  Thus you are considering four examples in all, two that are uncontested, high legitimacy and two that are contested, low legitimacy, based on the two types of inequality.  This is, once again, the simplest comparative design for social analysis, essentially a two by two table, with one direction being the two kinds of inequality and the other being the two levels of legitimacy.  (Whether an inequality is perceived as legitimate and whether it is contested are not the same, but we are simplifying for our current goals.)
  • Second, for each of the two kinds of inequality, describe what are the principal arguments or claims offered by the advantaged (or their representatives) to defend or explain the system of inequality in the examples you have chosen. 
    • Look for arguments that respond to three common claims in defense of  inequality, that it is (1) just, (2) necessary, and (3) beneficial to all.
    • Where possible, identify the general cultural beliefs or symbols from which the arguments seek to gain acceptance or weight, such as religious beliefs, science, or fear of outsiders.
    • Is it possible to distinguish between claims that seem to be historically or culturally contingent and those more fundamental to the particular kind of inequality?  [Explanatory note: If we compare organized religions we find that all have practices and rituals for marriage.  Many of the specific rituals are artifacts of the historical conditions in which they emerged, and would just as effectively if they were different.  Some aspects of these practices, such as significant property exchanges (e.g., bride price) may reflect functional needs of the prevailing economic and kinship system, although their concrete manifestation can vary.  Some even more general aspects, such as requirement of marriage to identify kinship relationships of children may reflect fundamental requirements for the functional order of any kinship system.  Claims about inequality can similarly be categorized from the historically arbitrary to those that seem unavoidable.]
  • Third, when describing the legitimacy claims, consider if the claims when the inequality is contested differ from when its acceptance is largely unproblematic. That is, for each of the two kinds of inequality, what seems to distinguish the examples where legitimacy claims succeed from those where they fail?
    • When the disadvantaged seem to accept legitimacy claims, which arguments appear to be convincing or acceptable to them?  Why do they accept these? 
    • When the disadvantaged question and contest the legitimacy of the inequality, what are the principal counter arguments they use?  Their counter arguments suggest how the legitimacy claims are failing.
  • In short, you are developing a description of the ways that people try to legitimate two kinds of inequalities, comparing examples where the legitimacy efforts succeed with examples where they do not.  The goal is not to explain the range of these claims or when they succeed, but to get a first level sense of what legitimacy claims are and why they are important.
  • Finally, in response to the preceding analysis you have developed of legitimacy claims regarding four examples of inequality (based on two types of inequality), try to state three general hypotheses about legitimacy claims, the role of legitimacy, or conflicts over legitimacy in systems of inequality.  Elaborate each of these hypotheses just enough that we can understand what they mean and what motivates them. 
    • These are hypotheses, which means they are not theories and not claims we can defend.  Rather, we can think of them as informed speculations about what might be true.  They are ideas worth researching or worth thinking about if trying to develop a theory about the legitimation of inequality.  Essentially, this is asking what ideas spring to mind as a result of doing the empirical comparisons in this task.
• Common Readings
  •  Thomas Luckmann. "Comments on Legitimation." Current Sociology June 1987 35: 109-117.  [doi:10.1177/001139287035002011] (the entire issue containing this article was on legitimation – click the link on the article page to the "Table of Contents" to see  what this includes) [doi: 10.1177/001139287035002011]
  • Talcott Parsons. "Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis: I. The Sociological Analysis of Power and Authority Structures." The Review of Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1942), pp. 61-76.
  • Martin E. Spencer. "Weber on Legitimate Norms and Authority." The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1970), pp. 123-134
  • Robert N. Bellah. "Legitimation Processes in Politics and Religion." Current Sociology June 1987 35: 89-99. [doi: 10.1177/001139287035002009]
  • Robert Max Jackson, Destined for Equality, pp. 146-157 on "Meritocratic Norms".  (Also see excerpts from Jackson in Interests section below.)
• Recommended Readings
  •  Background: Ch. 2 "Power, Authority and the State."  In Shaun Best, Introduction to Politics and Society.  Sage, 2002.  (A textbook introduction to legitimacy and authority work.) [doi: 10.4135/9781446220832]
  • Walter A. Weisskopf. "The Dialectics of Equality."  Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 409, Income Inequality (Sep., 1973), pp. 163-173 [doi: 10.1177/000271627340900118; jstor: 1041502]
  • Joan Acker; "Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations"; Gender & Society, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 441-464, Aug 2006 [doi: 10.1177/0891243206289499]
  • Lars Osberg and Timothy Smeeding. "'Fair' Inequality? Attitudes toward Pay Differentials: The United States in Comparative Perspective."  American Sociological Review  Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jun., 2006), pp. 450-473 [doi: 10.1177/000312240607100305]
  • Mérove Gijsberts. "The Legitimation of Income Inequality in State-Socialist and Market Societies." Acta Sociologica, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2002), pp. 269-285 [doi: 10.1177/000169930204500402] [jstor: 4194946]
  • David Miller. "Distributive Justice: What the People Think." Ethics, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Apr., 1992), pp. 555-593. [jstor: 2381840]
  • James Konow. "Is fairness in the eye of the beholder? An impartial spectator analysis of justice." Social Choice and Welfare, 33 (1): 101-127 Jun 2009 [doi: 10.1007/s00355-008-0348-2]
  • Steven Brint, Jerome Karabel. "American Education, Meritocratic Ideology, and the Legitimation of Inequality: The Community College and the Problem of American Exceptionalism." Higher Education, Vol. 18, No. 6 (1989), pp. 725-735  [doi: 10.1007/BF00155663; jstor: 3447109]
  • Rosamund E. Stock. "Explaining the Choice of Distribution Rule: The Role of Mental Representations."  Sociological Inquiry Volume 73, Issue 2:  177189, May 2003 [doi: 10.1111/1475-682X.00051]
• Related Readings
  • Jürgen Habermas. Legitimation Crisis.  Beacon Press. 1975.
  • James Konow. "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories." Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLI (December 2003) pp. 11881239  [doi: 10.1257/002205103771800013]
  • Sutphin, Suzanne Taylor; Simpson, Brent. "The role of self-evaluations in legitimizing social inequality." Social Science Research, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 609-621, Sep 2009 [doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.01.007]
  • Langer, Ellen J.; Blank, Arthur; Chanowitz, Benzion. "The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction."  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 36(6), Jun 1978, 635-642 [doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.36.6.635]
  • Robert Max Jackson. Down So Long (unpublished ms.).  Disputed Ideals: Ideologies of Domesticity and Feminist Rebellion

V. What is the critical distinction between positional inequality and status inequality?

To put it simply, positional inequality refers to inequalities between "positions" such as the different levels in an organizational hierarchy (e.g., president, divisional manager, supervisor, clerk).  These locations give their advantages and disadvantages to the people who circulate through them.  Status inequality refers to social advantages and disadvantages that adhere to categories of people without regard to the positions they hold (such as race).  Grasping the differences between these two "types" of inequality and the relationships between them is crucial for analytic clarity.  (This distinction has some similarity to the common contrast between achieved status and ascribed status, but it is analytically different.  Our distinction stresses the way inequality is socially organized while the achieved/ascribed concepts refer to the ways people acquire a characteristic.)

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  How do positional and status inequalities differ and how are those differences important?
  • Select two examples of positional inequalities and two examples of status inequalities. The examples may be two fundamentally different kinds of positional (or status) inequality or they may be two distinctive instances of the same kind of inequality appearing in different societies (e.g., racial inequality in a plantation economy and racial inequality in a market economy).  It will probably be easier to use four reasonably concrete examples (such as contemporary racial inequality in Britain).  Using more general categories (such as racial inequality in market economies) is a more ambitious strategy.
    • As usual, for each type of inequality, clearly describe who are the advantaged and the disadvantaged and how they are unequal.
  • Enumerate the characteristics that distinguish the two examples of positional inequality from the two examples of status inequality. To put it differently, in what ways are both examples of positional inequality different from both examples of status inequality?   Examples of things to consider include (but should not be limited to):
    • homogeneity of people sharing similar standing (i.e., level of [dis]advantage)
    • intergenerational rigidity (likelihood of having same standing as parents)
    • ways that people's standing may improve or decline over time
    • diffuseness of impact on people's lives (i.e., what proportion of people's time, activities, and relationships are highly influenced)
    • legal status and government role in regulating, preserving, or challenging the inequality
    • legitimation processes (content of the justifying ideology, who or what promotes the legitimacy)
    • historical roots of the inequality structure
  • For each difference you identify above between the positional and status inequalities, please
    • briefly describe how the positional and status inequalities seem to differ with respect to this characteristic, and,
    • if you can, suggest what might explain the difference (or, to put it differently, suggest why you would expect this difference to distinguish other examples of status and positional inequalities).
  • In short:  We are making an initial effort to identify general ways that systems of positional inequality differ from systems of status inequality.  The goal is to produce a list of plausible differences, and to get a first sense of what form these differences will take and why they appear.
    • note that we are again using a very basic "research design," comparing two examples of positional inequality with two examples of status inequality; this is the simplest possible design for trying to identify differences between two categories (as we must have at least two examples of each category to make the simplest control for other sources of variation among the phenomena being categorized, in this case instances of social inequality)
  • Finally: Based on the differences you enumerate and explore from your examples, what hypotheses do you have about general differences between positional and status inequalities?
• Common Readings
  • excerpts on positional vs status inequality from Robert Max Jackson, Destined for Equality 
  • Max Weber:
    •  Class, Status, Party [this is a new translation, "The distribution of power within the community: Classes, Stände, Parties," Journal of Classical Sociology (2010) 10: 137] [doi: 10.1177/1468795X10361546]
    •  Social Stratification and Class Structure [from Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. (Free Press, Glencoe, IL, 1947). pp. 424-429]; (Also appears as "Status Groups and Classes," Part 1, Ch IV, pp. 302-7 in Economy and Society.)
    • Open and Closed Relationships (section 10 only, located in pp. 139-143, part of "Fundamental Concepts of Sociology" [also from Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. ]) (Also appears as "Open and Closed Relationships" Part1, Ch 1, Sect 10, pp. 43-6 in Economy and Society.)
  • Karl Marx – Classes in Capitalism and Pre-Capitalism    [Grusky – Classic]
  • Charles Tilly, "Rethinking Inequality",  Polish Sociological Review  3(151)  (2005): 207-219
• Recommended Readings
  • excerpt on discrimination from Robert Max Jackson, Destined for Equality 
  • Symposium on Inequality, Contemporary Sociology 29 (2000):775-818. [jstor: i325498]
  • Barbara F. Reskin, "Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality: 2002 Presidential Address", American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21 [jstor: 3088900]
  • Max Weber, sections on Social Aspects Of The Division Of Labour (18) through Types of Communal Organization of Labour (26), pp. 228-266 of Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. (Free Press, Glencoe, IL, 1947)
• Related Readings
  • Guillermina Jasso. "Studying Status: An Integrated Framework." American Sociological Review, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 96-124 [jstor: 2657395]
  • Erik Wright ...
  • ...

VI. How do we understand "honor" status hierarchies, that lack apparent material bases?

Academia is one good example of a well-developed system (or systems) of honorific inequality.  High school peer groups are often good examples of short-lived patterns of reputational inequality.  The idea of celebrity is usually associated with unequal prestige.  The key to honorific inequalities is that people compete for recognition and deference, rather than material goods, power, or opportunities.  Purely honorific inequality structures are rare, as the pursuit of prestige is commonly intermingled with materialistic inequities. The study of honor and prestige systems (other than in the specialized form of occupational prestige) is underdeveloped in sociology.  Theoretical works recognize its significance, but most treat honorific inequality as both causally derivative and of marginal importance when compared to economic and political inequalities.  While prestige and honor are elusively intangible, we are likely to misunderstand any type of inequality if they are ignored.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  What do non-material inequalities of honor or prestige look like in practice and what is the logic of their processes?  
  • Select two (or more) examples of honorific inequality systems, where people "compete" directly for recognition, respect, and deference. Such systems often include income and power rewards.  But we are looking for forms of inequality where honorific status is central.  Here are several reasonable identifying characteristics to consider:
    • Does honor (or prestige or the like) motivate competition for desirable locations as much as does power or material rewards?
    • Is deference to others determined as much by their perceived prestige as by their structural position, wealth, authority, or the like?
    • In general, are honor or prestige acts at least as much a cause of material rewards as it is a result of them?
  • For each inequality system selected, try to develop an analytical assessment of the way it works by responding to these:
    • Identify and describe as well as you can what conveys or is experienced as honor; consider how it looks both from within and from outside; think about ways that the lives of those with more honor differ from the lives of those with less; also, think about how we know which people have more honor, or to put it differently, how we know to whom we should defer and who should defer to us.  (Think about titles, awards, forms of dress, access to activities, and so forth.)
    • Describe what people do to gain honor or to compete for honor.
    • What decides the distribution of honor overall within each system?  Consider what processes and which people decide who has more honor.  Is it controlled from the top or the bottom?  Are people aware who decides the outcomes?
    • What induces people to accept and conform to the expectations of the prestige system?  Why do they defer to those who possess more honor?  (Consider both the carrots and the sticks.)
  • Compare these systems of honor and prestige to the systems of positional and status inequality we have considered.  Try to identify two or more important differences and two or more important similarities, explaining as best you can why you think each of these differences and similarities exist. 
  • In short, the aim of this week's task is to compare two specific examples of honor inequality systems (and secondarily compare them to inequalities where honor is secondary) to get an initial sense of how honor inequality systems work.
• Common Readings
  • Pierre Bourdieu – Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction  (1973) [Grusky – Classic]
    {Alternative: Paul DiMaggio. "On Pierre Bourdieu."  American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 84, No. 6 (May, 1979), pp. 1460-1474. [jstor: 2777906]}
  • Rogers Brubaker, Rethinking Classical Theory: the Sociological Vision of Pierre Bourdieu, Theory and Society 14 (1985): 745-775 (stress 760-75) [jstor: 657374]
  • Alvin W. Gouldner – The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class  (1979) [Grusky – Contemporary] 
    
    {Alternative: Gouldner. "The New Class Project, I." & "The New Class Project, II." Theory and Society, Vol. 6, (1978)  No. 2 (Sep): 153-203 & No. 3 (Nov): 343-89. [jstor: 657008, 656758]}
  • David Brooks – Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000) [Grusky – Contemporary] [But also see the critical journalistic commentary "Boo-Boos in Paradise" by Sasha Issenberg, Philadelphia Magazine Apr 2004]
• Recommended Readings
  • Elliot B. Weininger. "Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu's class analysis." Pp. 82-118 in Erik Olin Wright (ed). Approaches to Class Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cambridge Books Online.    [10.1017/CBO9780511488900.005]  [doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511488900"]
  • Bernd Wegener, "Concepts and Measurement of Prestige," Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 18, (1992), pp. 253-280 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.001345]
  • Donald J. Treiman "A Standard Occupational Prestige Scale for Use with Historical Data." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 7, No. 2, (Autumn, 1976), pp. 283-304 [jstor: 202737]
  • John H. Goldthorpe and Keith Hope. "Occupational Grading and Occupational Prestige." Social Science Information 1972 11: 17-73 (see pp. 19-23, 26-33) [doi: 10.1177/053901847201100502]
• Related Readings
  • Francis Flynn, "How much should I give and how often? The effects of generosity and frequency of favor exchange on social status and productivity," Academy of Management Journal Oct 2003, Vol. 46 Issue 5, pp.539-553 [jstor: 30040648]
  • Thorstein Veblen – The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)  [Grusky - Classic] [also compare potlatch]
    {Alternative: Same excerpts from Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class derived from public use source in HTML format.}
  • Rebecca L. Sandefur, "Work and Honor in the Law: Prestige and the Division of Lawyers' Labor," American Sociological Review, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 382-403 [jstor: 3088885]

VII. How do people experience inequality and why do these experiences matter?

Research on inequalities commonly treats experience as a simple effect of inequality; interesting but secondary to theory and explanation.  Here we want to think of experience not only as a result, but also as a potential ingredient to the explanation of inequalities.  The experiences of inequalities can serve as strong motivating forces at all levels.  The experiences also encompass not only the outcomes of inequality, but all the processes that sustain or challenge it.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  How do lower-status and higher-status people experience inequalities and their locations within them?  With what consequences for the systems of inequality?
  • Select two systems of inequality: one in which you have (now or in the past) been in a relatively low-status location and another system in which you have been in a relatively high-status location.  The point here is to select systems in which you have observational knowledge about the experience of inequality.  If possible, use a form of positional inequality for one example and status inequality for the other, but it okay if that is too much of a stretch given your biography.  
    • As usual, briefly describe each system of inequality.  Who are included, what is unequally distributed, who are advantaged or disadvantaged, and the like.  If you are going to consider a subset of a larger system of inequality, be clear about what you are doing and why.
    • (OPTIONAL – To go further ... To seek a more complete means of assessing experience, double the examples, to consider two systems in which you have experienced low standing and two in which you have had higher standing, again representing both status inequality and positional inequality if possible.  This will give you much more traction for seeing generalization possibilities, but the time requirements may be more than you can manage.)
  • For each of these systems of inequality, try to characterize, briefly, how those in high-status locations have different experiences than those in low-status locations.  This is not easy to do well.  Among other things, note that it is rarely obvious which kinds of experiences matter more and it is difficult to reduce the varieties of experience into a few categories that are not arbitrary. 
  • Focus on typical or defining experiences.  While experience seems inherently individualistic because it is to such a degree private and internal, the goal here is to move beyond the individual.  Systems of social inequality are comprised of socially organized "structures," processes, and cultural understandings.  In the search of a social analysis of inequality, we are looking for common or shared experiences (understanding that these may be shared unequally, so that there are alternative experiences common to subgroups determined by other conditions, circumstance, or even random variation).  A good way to start is by thinking about typical experience.
  • To make this effort more systematic and comparable, while trying to assess differences in experience, here are dimensions you might consider:
    • How much and in what ways do people recognize the inequality and think about it? For example, people may 
      • grasp the outlines of social inequality between groups or positions
      • see themselves as being in unequal relationships, but not have a conception of this as part of a larger pattern of inequality (e.g., when women or men see themselves as superior or inferior to the other sex, but do not perceive there to be gender inequality)
      • people may not be able to conceptualize their experience of an inequality as being inequality, but think of it in different terms (e.g., believing it is not that "they" are inferior or that "we" discriminate against "them," "they" are just different)
    • in what way do people seem to perceive or talk about fairness with respect to an inequality?
      • what sense of fairness do they have in their own position?
      • and how do they think about the fairness of the existence of inequality (of this sort)?
    • how do the advantaged and disadvantaged have distinctive experiences about what other people who share their standing are like?
      • do the reference groups have different demographic compositions (e.g. sex, ethnicity, age, class) apart from the defining distinctions due to that inequality?
      • are their cultural differences in the ways people dress, ways of talking, leisure activities, religiosity, or the like?
    • how do people perceive those at their level as different from those at the other end of the inequality spectrum, and how do they interact differently with them?
      • In particular, what, if any, are the common patterns of deference when interacting with a previously unknown person at the other end of the inequality spectrum?  (Most importantly, presumably, within the institutional context embracing this form of inequality, but also, potentially, in external contexts.)
    • How do advantaged and disadvantaged people differ in general ways that they experience the possibilities and realities of life?
      • how do people experience ambition vs. resignation?; 
      • how do they differ in expectations for the future?
      • do they allocate blame for failures and credit for successes (of the individual) differently?
      • do they have different orientations toward behavioral tendencies such as violence, intimidation, manipulation, cooperation, and subservience?
      • are there significant differences in religiosity?
      • do they seem to feel different loyalties toward the institution surrounding the structure of inequality, toward those in a similar location in the inequality structure, toward those at a different level?
      • how do they differ in their trust in authority and government?
    • If you can, consider the implications of social mobility or changing social standing for these experiences of inequalities.  That is, do people differ in their experience of a location in a system of inequality depending on how they got there? 
      • Note that even people distinguished by locations in a system of status inequalities may experience some form of mobility.  First, they may experience a shift in the relative weight of the status inequality due to changes in other status investing characteristics; an example  could be different meaning of race for affluent blacks vs. poor blacks and affluent whites vs. poor whites, where the analytical class difference may be experience in terms of race.  Second, the standing of an entire status group or category may change over time; consider, for example, the changes that have been seen by middle-age blacks and whites in South Africa or women and men in many countries.
      • Note that someone whose status appears unchanged may experience it differently because the statuses of significant others do change
    • How do people differ in their experiences of being advantaged or disadvantaged in the referent form of inequality depending on their location in other important forms of inequality?  (For example, how does the experience of being Native American differ between the highly educated and the low educated?)
  • In short, the goal of this task is to contrast the experiences of being advantaged with those of being disadvantaged under two different kinds of inequality.  The goal is to examine these differences systematically, and to consider their causes and their consequences.
  • Finally, after completing work on the issues above, considering the patterns of similarities and dissimilarities you have discussed, can you devise any general hypotheses about the experience of inequalities?  That is, from the specific patterns of differences you observe in your cases, what general differences might you expect to find in other inequalities, in the experiences of inequality, and in the causes and effects of those experiences?
• Common Readings
  • Annette Lareau – Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (2003) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Annette Lareau. "Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families." American Sociological Review, Vol. 67, No. 5 (Oct., 2002), pp. 747-776. [jstor: 3088916]}
  • Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel-and-Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America (1999) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Original: "Nickel-and-Dimed." Harper's Magazine. (January 1999): 37-52.}
  • Sharon Hays – Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform (2003) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Sharon Hays. "Off the Rolls: The Ground-Level Results of Welfare Reform." Dissent  Fall 2003 50(4): 48-53.}
  • Arlie Russell Hochschild. "Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Nov., 1979), pp. 551-575 [jstor: 2778583]
  • Reynolds Farley. "The Waning of American Apartheid?" Contexts August 2011 10: 36-43.  [doi: 10.1177/1536504211418452]
  •  Douglas S. Massey. "Segregation and Stratification: A Biosocial Perspective." Du Bois Review (2004) 1: 7-25. [doi: 10.1017/S1742058X04040032]
• Recommended Readings
  • Michael Schwalbe, et al., "Generic Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality: An Interactionist Analysis," Social Forces, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Dec., 2000), pp. 419-452 [jstor: 2675505]
  • Alan B. Krueger – Inequality, Too Much of a Good Thing (2003) [Grusky - Contemporary]
    {Original: Alan B. Krueger. "Inequality, Too Much of a Good Thing." Princeton CEPS Working Paper No. 87 August 2002.}
  • Arlie Russell Hochschild. "The Time Bind." WorkingUSA. 1:2 (1997): 21-29.  [doi: 10.1111/j.1743-4580.1997.tb00019.x]
  • Jerry Jacobs & Kathleen Gerson – The Time Divide (2004) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson. "Understanding Changes in American Working Time: A Synthesis." In Fighting For Time (eds. Kalleberg, Arne L. & Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs) 2004.}
  • Douglas Hartmann. "An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many?" Social Problems  August 2009, Vol. 56, No. 3: 403-24  [doi: 10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.403]
  • Tak Wing Chan and John H. Goldthorpe – The Social Stratification of Theatre, Dance, and Cinema Attendance  (2005) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Original:  Tak Wing Chan, John H. Goldthorpe. "The Social Stratification of Theatre, Dance, and Cinema Attendance." Cultural Trends  Vol. 14, n. 3, 2005: 192-212. [doi: 10.1080/09548960500436774]}
  • Robin Leidner, "Serving Hamburgers and Selling Insurance: Gender, Work, and Identity in Interactive Service Jobs," Gender and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 154-177 [jstor: 189482]
  • Jeffrey Pfeffer and Nancy Langton, "The Effect of Wage Dispersion on Satisfaction, Productivity, and Working Collaboratively: Evidence from College and University Faculty," Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 382-407 [jstor: 2393373]
  • James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, "Whites' Beliefs about Blacks' Opportunity," American Sociological Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Aug., 1982), pp. 518-532 [jstor: 2095196]
  • Heli Vaaranen, "The Emotional Experience of Class: Interpreting Working-Class Kids' Street Racing in Helsinki," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 595, (Sep., 2004), pp. 91-107 [jstor: 4127612]
• Related Readings
  • Evans, Mariah D. R. and Jonathan Kelley. "Subjective Social Location: Data from 21 Nations." International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2004  16:3-38. [doi: 10.1093/ijpor/16.1.3]
  • Michael Hout and Joshua R. Goldstein. "How 4.5 Million Irish Immigrants Became 40 Million Irish Americans: Demographic and Subjective Aspects of the Ethnic Composition of White Americans."  American Sociological Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 64-82 [jstor: 2096133]

VIII. How should we conceive interests in the analysis of inequality?

Almost everyone analyzing any system of inequality refers to "interests" sooner or later, even authors who emphasize cultural or normative explanations.  Yet, interests usually receive casual, unsystematic treatment.  This casual reliance on interests builds on two simple assumptions: (1) a range of relevant potential actions and events will have differential consequences for people depending on their location in a system of inequality and (2) anticipation or past experiences of these consequences will influence peoples' actions.  From this starting point the considerations of interests take many routes, considering objective and subjective interests, individual versus collective interests, realistic compared to misconceived interests, consistent versus inconsistent interests, contradictory and ambiguous interests, and so on.  Simply put, every theory of inequality relies on a theory of interests (even if a negative theory).

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  Interests
  • Select two examples of inequality; if possible, use one example of positional inequality and one of status inequality.
    •  Characterize who are the advantaged and who are the disadvantaged in each example
    • As always, specify clearly what is unequal
    • If an example is not itself a system of inequality, but a subsystem, a site where the effects of a system of inequality are played out, or an intersection between systems of inequality, then be clear what the relevant system or systems of inequality might be
  • For each example, examine the interests that seem to be determined by the social organization of inequality, regardless how people recognize them.
    • List the most important ways that the "objective" interests of the advantaged are at odds with those of the disadvantaged; here the objective interests means the interests implied by the structure of inequality and their location within this structure, regardless of their recognition of the interests
    • Similarly, list the most important ways that the "objective" interests of advantaged people or groups converge with those of the disadvantaged.  Here we are concerned with interests related to conditions or practices that have a widespread influence, usually where both the advantaged and disadvantaged are exposed to common effects. For example, potentially a shared interest between officials of an autocratic government and the citizenry in maintaining public peace would be relevant, but parallel or similar interests in being healthy would not.  Similarly, the employers and workers in a corporation may have divided interests about the distribution of the company's income, but they have convergent interests in the corporation being successful.
    • For the above assessments, both the interests at odds and those that converge, consider whether the objective interests seem try to characterize the most important interests in terms of their clarity, consistency, extremity, and the like.  thinking about objective interests not as an individual experiences them, but as they are produced and sustained by the systems of inequality, how would you ?
  • Now, a really tough part.  As best you can, with these examples, consider how interests become recognized or conceived by people who are subject to the interest-producing circumstances of inequality.   
    
    • We want to avoid the temptation to think about this in terms of the reasons an individual might choose one way or another.  Instead, we want to examine how the characteristics of objective interests or the structure of the relevant inequality induces people to interpret their interests in one way or another.  We are seeking the social conditions or dynamics that direct the conception of interests.
    • Note to begin that people may conceive their interests as some subset of the objective interests previously identified, or they may rely on conceptions that ignore or even oppose the objective interests. 
    • What institutional and cultural processes or arrangements seem to influence the emergence of common interests based on the inequalities in your examples?    E.g., the aged or young adults may have a strong, self-conscious sense of common interests under some circumstances but at other times not recognize possible shared interests.; what determines when they do see their concerns as common interests?  Given the objective interests you have identified, think under what conditions you would expect people more likely to identify and pursue each of those objective interests as opposed to the conditions under which they would not do so.  Similarly, consider under what conditions people might be prone to misinterpret their interests entirely.  Or, under what conditions they are more likely to stress oppositional interests and under what conditions they will emphasize the interests they have in common with those with whom they are unequal? 
    • For each example, in what important ways and under what circumstances do people's conceived interests seem to diverge from their objective interests?   (A classic example occurs when members of a group, such as the working class, believe their interests are best served by a political party that is actually committed to policies that threaten their interests, such as those typically associated with Republicans.)  What seems to account for the disjunctions?  (Consider both the advantaged and the disadvantaged.)
  • For the inequalities you are using, when and where do individual interests seem to contradict collective interests?  What consequences does this have?    (E.g., it is generally in students' collective interest that professors grade all students the same way, but tall, pretty boys have individual interests in biased grading if professors favor tall, pretty boys.)
  • In short, the goal here is to develop some initial ideas about the ways that interests work.  We use two examples as the simplest design that allows us to begin generalizing about inequality, rather than describing the character of a single instance.  Using the chosen examples, we want to produce some initial ideas about the range of objective interests, both oppositional and shared, created by an inequality system.  Then we want to ask how people's conceptions of their interests arise out of those objective interests in interaction with impinging social conditions.  And, in particular we want to consider how and why conceived interests might diverge from or even become inconsistent with objective interests.
• Common Readings
  • Johan Heilbron; Interest: History of the Concept, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2004, Pages 7708-7712 [doi: 10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/00136-4]
  • Richard Swedberg; "Can There Be a Sociological Concept of Interest?"; Theory and Society, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 359-390, Aug 2005 [doi: 10.1007/s11186-005-1986-3]
  • Robert Max Jackson, The Formation of Craft labor Markets, excerpts on interest formation among workers and employers: 33-39, 72-77, 83-104, 182-185, 288-290, 300-301, 329-331.
  • Robert Max Jackson, Destined for Equality, excerpts on interests in general (264-68), women's vs. men's (175-79), men's changing (221-231), and those of the state & powerful men (44-46, 67-70, 231-6)
  • Raymond Boudon; "Action, Theories of Social"; International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2004, Pages 54-58 [doi: 10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01819-2]
• Recommended Readings
  • James Madison, The Federalist No. 10 ("The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection [continued]", 1787) & The Federalist No. 51 ("The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments", 1788)
  • Aage B. Sorensen; The "Structural Basis of Social Inequality" The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 5 (Mar., 1996), pp. 1333-1365 [jstor: 2782357]
  • Jack Barbalet. (2012). "Self-interest and the theory of action." The British Journal of Sociology, 63: 412429. [doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2012.01417.x]
  • Lisa Belkin. "The Opt-Out Revolution." New York Times,  October 26, 2003
    • Heather Boushey – Are Women Opting Out?   CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs 2005-36, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2005
  • J. A. W. Gunn; "'Interest Will Not Lie': A Seventeenth-Century Political Maxim"; Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1968), pp. 551-564 [jstor: 2708293]
  • Joseph Heath, "Methodological Individualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition)
  • Hardin, Russell, "The Free Rider Problem", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition)
  • Wikipedia, "Prisoner's dilemma"
• Related Readings
  • Franz Traxler; "Business Associations and Labor Unions in Comparison: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings on Social Class, Collective Action and Associational Organizability"; The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 673-691 [jstor: 591416]
  • Erik Olin Wright; "Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise"; The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Jan., 2000), pp. 957-1002 [jstor: 3003886]
  • Dennis Chong; "Values versus Interests in the Explanation of Social Conflict"; University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 144, No. 5 (May, 1996), pp. 2079-2134 [jstor: 3312649]
  • Catherine I. Bolzendahl, Daniel J. Myers; "Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974-1998"; Social Forces, Vol. 83, No. 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 759-789
  • Dennis Chong, Jack Citrin, Patricia Conley; "When Self-Interest Matters"; Political Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 541-570 [doi: 10.1111/0162-895X.00253]
  • Mustafa Emirbayer, Ann Mische; "What Is Agency?"; The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Jan., 1998), pp. 962-1023 [read quickly – to read slowly is to risk calcification of the intellect] [jstor: 2782934]
  • ...

IX. What determines the allocation of people (or other relevant unit) within a positional system of inequality?

This issue includes questions commonly addressed in the literatures on social mobility and status attainment (and on placement within organizations).  More or less independent of its occupants, a system of positional inequality has a static "structure" characterized by the direct relationships of authority and dependence between positions; the ranking of positions according to the rewards, authority, opportunities, and statuses attached to them; and the demographic profile defined by the number of positions of each type.  A positional inequality system also has a dynamic structure defined by the movement of people through it, both within careers and between generations.  These two components of structure – the static and the dynamic – are linked by the selection processes controlling access to positions.  We can usefully conceive positional inequality as the juxtaposition of two parallel systems that are often confused or conflated: first, the structure of relationships among the positions constituting the system of inequality (e.g., the enduring authority relationship between a managerial position and a line-worker position), and, second, the relations between the people who occupy these positions (e.g., the interactions between managers and workers).  The patterns of people's movement between positions both reflects and influences the relationships among positions, but it also shows the impact of impinging status inequalities. To understand the inequalities among people, we obviously need to understand what decides which people occupy which positions.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  We will explore how positional inequalities work. Recall that two general examples of positional inequalities would be the occupational structure of a modern society or the hierarchy of positions within a complex organization.  Note that, in this analytical context, income inequality is an effect of positional inequalities; income inequality is not itself a system of inequality (involving neither transferable positions nor status groups), although it functions as both an incentive and consequence of positional (and status) inequalities. Also note that positional inequalities are commonly constituted by relatively clear "local" hierarchies that only loosely translate into a societal wide hierarchy.  For example, complex organizations usually have well-defined positional hierarchies, but their finer distinctions are organization or industry specific.  As a result, people (both scholars and ordinary people) use common characteristics of positions – such as income, authority level, or organizational size – to translate "local" positional standings into a comparable metric.
  • Choose two dissimilar examples of positional inequalities.  Try to choose two that have different institutional settings, are not closely causally connected to each other, or operate by different logics.  They may coexist in one society or be drawn from different (in space or time) societies.
  • For each example, describe the overall structure of positions.  Among other things, an analytical description of a positional structure should consider the following:
    • Assess the differential characteristics attached to the positions (rewards, authority, visibility, etc.)
    • Summarize and characterize the relationships among positions.  
    • Consider the simple demographics of the system: how many positions exist at each level?; what is the turnover rate of personnel occupying the positions (the departure rates)?; how stable is the demographic profile (i.e., do the relative and absolute numbers remain the same over time)?
    • If possible to assess, how did the existing configuration of positions come into existence? 
  • For each example, try to describe the "normal" pathways of movement into and between positions
    • What are the typical initial entry points, the positions that take people who have not previously been in the system of positional inequality?  For example, in a large business or organization, many positions are typically filled by promotions from other positions; people are not usually hired from the outside for such positions.  Commonly, a  If these entry-point positions are themselves unequal, also consider
      
      • How are the entry points unequal ?
      • What determines who gets in which ones?
      • Who controls the allocation process of the initial positions (directly and indirectly)?
    • What is the pattern of movement among positions within the system?
      • To what degree does selectivity operate (the demographic constraint)?  (Among other things, this asks what proportion of people at any given level will ascend to a higher level.)
      • Consider if lateral movement among positions is relevant to hierarchical movement.
      • Is there significant downward movement as well as upward in the positional hierarchy?   If so, remember to examine downward as well as upward for all issues about movement among positions.
      • What appears to decide who moves up into more desirable positions (or down)? 
        • Is the determining process fairly consistent across positions or does it vary by how high or in what sector the position appears?
        • who has decision-making power?
        • how standardized or impartial are the processes governing mobility among positions? Note that impartiality can be the result of self-conscious efforts to eliminate bias and reliance on inappropriate criteria, but, alternatively, it also can be the result of an uncontrolled process that is inherently unbiased (as some would suggest for market mechanisms)?  Slave traders, for example, may be just as impartial toward the ethnic divisions among their chattel as the most progressive advocate of meritocratic assessments.
    • How is the position-allocation process ideologically conceived?; 
      • particularly consider ideological constructs that reinforce, obfuscate, legitimate, or challenge the allocation process.
      • how are "success" and "failure" conceived (as moral and practical categories)
      • are there competing ideological formulations of what causes success and failure?
  • Taking into account all the above, comparing the two examples, what can you say about the patterns of affiliation, alliance, deference, patronage, avoidance, opposition, and conflict that constitute the structure of relationships among people occupying different locations in a positional inequality?  While exploring this issue, pay careful attention to the distinction between the positions and the people occupying them.
  • In short, the goal of this task is to gain some insight into the ways that positional systems of inequality work.  Using two concrete examples is the simplest possible design for identifying some of the common characteristics of such systems.  A commonly unanticipated difficulty in analyzing such systems arises from their duality: a structure of relationships among the positions independent of the people who occupy them and the dynamics of relationships among the people who do occupy the positions.
• Common Readings
  • Hout, Michael and Thomas A. DiPrete. 2006. What Have We Learned? RC28s Contribution to Knowledge About Social Stratification.  Research on Social Stratification and Mobility 24: 1-20. [doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2005.10.001]
  • Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, with the collaboration of Andrea Tyree – The Process of Stratification   (1967) [Grusky - Classic]
  • Jay MacLeod – Ain't No Makin' It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood (1987, 95)  [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Jay MacLeod – Ain't No Makin' It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood.  3rd ed (2008) via Ebrary. Chs. 1, 5, 8, 11, 14.}
    • and book review by Deirdre Royster. Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Mar., 1996), pp. 151-153 [jstor: 2077161]
  • Ralph H. Turner – Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System (1960) [Grusky – Classic]
    {Original: Ralph H. Turner, "Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System," American Sociological Review 25 (December 1960). [jstor: 2089982]}
  • Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton – American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass   (1993) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Douglas S. Massey. "America's Apartheid and the Urban Underclass."  Social Service Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 471-487 [jstor: 30012253]}
  • Barbara F. Reskin – Labor Markets as Queues: A Structural Approach to Changing Occupational Sex Composition  (1991)  [Grusky - Contemporary] 
    {Alternative: Barbara F. Reskin. "Sex Segregation in the Workplace." Annu. Rev. Social. (1993) 19:241-70 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.19.080193.001325]}
• Recommended Readings
  • J. Schumpeter, "Social Classes in an Ethnically Homogeneous Environment." (1927) In Imperialism and Social Classes. (read from beginning through the first section of "Summary and Conclusions", ignore the last few pages) [a brilliant, albeit flawed, analysis of class]
  •  DiPrete, Thomas A. and Gregory M. Eirich. "Cumulative advantage as a mechanism for inequality: A review of theoretical and empirical developments."  Annual Review of Sociology,  32 (2006): 271-297 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.32.061604.123127]
  • Aaron M., Jennings, Jennifer L.  "Cumulative Knowledge about Cumulative Advantage". Swiss Journal of Sociology, 2009, Vol. 35 Issue 2, pp. 211-229
  • Maria Charles. "A World of Difference: International Trends in Women's Economic Status." Annual Review of Sociology.  Vol. 37 (2011): 355-371 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102548]
  • Peter B Doeringer & Michael J. Piore. "Unemployment and the Dual Labor Market." Public Interest.  38 (1975: Winter): 67-79.
  • Gary Solon. "Intergenerational Income Mobility." The American Economic Review. Vol. 82, No. 3 (Jun., 1992), pp. 393-408. [jstor: 2117312]
  • Rachel A. Rosenfeld "Job Mobility and Career Processes"; Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 18, (1992), pp. 39-61 [jstor: 2083445]
  • Robert P. Althauser; "Internal Labor Markets"; Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 15, (1989), pp. 143-161 [jstor: 2083222]
  • Douglas S. Massey. "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass." American Journal of Sociology 96(2) (Sep 1990): 329-357. [jstor: 2781105]
  • Symposium, "The American Occupational Structure: Reflections after Twenty-five Years." Contemporary Sociology 21 (1992): 596-668. [varied commentators try to makes sense of 25 years of social mobility research]
  • Treiman, Donald J., and Harry B. G. Ganzeboom. "The Fourth Generation of Comparative Stratification Research." In The International Handbook of Sociology, edited by Stella R. Quah and Arnaud Sales, 123-51. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2000. [doi: 10.4135/9781848608405.n6]
  • Adrian E. Raftery and Michael Hout. "Maximally Maintained Inequality: Expansion, Reform, and Opportunity in Irish Education,1921-75." Sociology of Education, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 41-62. [jstor: 2112784]
  • William H. Sewell, Archibald 0. Haller, and Alejandro Portes – The Educational and Early Occupational Attainment Process (1969) [Grusky – Classic]
    {Original: William H. Sewell, Archibald O. Haller, and Alejandro Portes, ?The Educational and Early Occupational Attainment Process,? American Sociological Review 34 (February 1969), pp. 82?92. [jstor: 2092789]}
  • Mark S. Granovetter. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6 (May, 1973), pp. 1360-1380. [jstor: 2776392]
  • Nan Lin – Social Networks and Status Attainment (1999)  [Grusky - Contemporary]
    {Original: Nan Lin, ?Social Networks and Status Attainment,? Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999), pp. 467?470, 485?487. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.467]}
  • Paul DiMaggio and Filiz Garip. "Network Effects and Social Inequality." Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 38 (2012): 93-118. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102545]
  • Ronald S. Burt – Structural Holes (1997)  [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Original: Ronald S. Burt, ?The Contingent Value of Social Capital,? Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (June 1997), pp. 339?343, 363?365. [jstor: 2393923]}
  • Dalton Conley – The Pecking Order, Which Siblings Succeed and Why? (2004)  [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternate: Dalton Conley and Rebecca Glauber. 2008. ?All in the family? Family composition, resources, and sibling similarity in socioeconomic status.? Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. 26:297-306. [doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2008.08.003]}
  • Robert Gibbons, Michael Waldman; "A Theory of Wage and Promotion Dynamics Inside Firms;" Quarterly Journal of Economics November 1999, Vol. 114, No. 4: 1321-1358. [doi: 10.1162/003355399556287]
• Related Readings
  • Ivan D. Chase.  "Vacancy Chains." Annual Review of Sociology. (1991) Vol. 17: 133-154. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.17.080191.001025]
  • Christopher Jencks. "Inequality in Retrospect." Harvard Educational Review. 43(1) (Spring 1973): 138-164.
  • Christopher Jencks, Lauri Perman and Lee Rainwater. "What Is a Good Job? A New Measure of Labor-Market Success." American Journal of Sociology.  Vol. 93, No. 6, May, 1988. [jstor: 2780816]
  • Emily Beller and Michael Hout. "Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective." The Future of Children. Vol 16 N 2 (Fall 2006): 19-36
  • Thomas J. Dohmen, Ben Kriechel and Gerard A. Pfann; "Monkey Bars and Ladders: The Importance of Lateral and Vertical Job Mobility in Internal Labor Market Careers"; Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Jun., 2004), pp. 193-228  [doi: 10.1007/s00148-004-0191-4f]
  • Joseph P. Ferrie; "History Lessons: The End of American Exceptionalism? Mobility in the United States since 1850"; The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer, 2005), pp. 199-215 [doi: 10.1257/089533005774357824]
  • ...

X. What are the bases of actions that secure dominance over time?

From those enjoying the most privileged positions to those suffering the most disadvantages, people may believe that the system of inequality that divides them reflects the elusively differential favor of the gods, the cruel fate of nature's uneven treatment, or unavoidable results of people's differential efforts and capacities.  In truth, systems of inequality require work to keep them going, particularly the efforts of those in superior positions to preserve the shape of the system and their positions within it.  We cannot hope to grasp the logic of a system of inequality until we understand what this work is and how it gets done.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  Assess how and why advantaged people (or their agents) act in ways that (1) preserve their advantages and (2) preserve the system of inequality that gives them advantages.
  • Select two examples of inequality to assess the actions of advantaged people.  The first example should concern gender inequality – this may be an instance of gender inequality (e.g., gender inequality in an organization, or in an occupation, or in a sport) or it may be gender inequality more generally (although this may prove more difficult).  The second example should be a different kind of inequality, preferably an example of positional inequality or alternatively an example of a quite different form of status inequality.
  • For each example of inequality, the goal is to identify and explain the kinds of actions by advantaged people that (1) seem to occur consistently and (2) seem to reinforce their advantages.  To approach this problem systematically, try to answer the following about each example of inequality:
    • How do the advantaged people treat disadvantaged people in direct interactions; the relevant comparisons are with the ways the advantaged relate to each other and the ways the disadvantaged relate to each other?
    • How do advantaged people have different kinds of relationships with other advantaged people than than they have with disadvantaged people (this is similar to the previous, but concerns the more general problem of relationships rather than interactions)?
    • In what ways might common actions or behavioral patterns of those in the advantaged "class" – actions that use or reflect their advantaged circumstances – reinforce the privileges of advantaged people, even though the actions are not aimed at disadvantaged people or at sustaining inequality?  (For example, the advantaged might buy all unused land for golf courses and expansive estates, leaving poor farmers no way to expand their acreage for crops.)
    • How do advantaged people respond if one of them is challenged by a disadvantaged person. 
      • "Challenges" can take many forms.  A member of a subordinate group may simply refuse to show "proper" deference, as when a lower caste person does not step aside, a black woman does not go to her place in the rear of a bus, or a member of the secretarial pool addresses managers by their first name just as they do her.  Someone with lower standing may adopt the dress or mannerisms of those with higher standing, or attempt to move into their neighborhoods or schools.  More directly, someone with lower standing may reject and defy efforts to exercise authority by those "above" them.  And so forth ....
      • Consider not only the actions of the person who is directly challenged, but potential actions by others in the advantaged class.
    • How do advantaged people exercise power in government, over laws, or in the economy in ways that benefit those with advantages? 
    • How do advantaged people respond if there is a collective challenge to the system of inequality in which they have advantages?
  • Looking over the range of actions you identify as relevant above, can they usefully be categorized?  For example, one might divide them into those that mainly benefit an individual's status and those that mainly help sustain the system of inequality.  The goal here is to consider if there is an analytically useful way to reduce the range of relevant actions and behavior patterns into a small number of general types.
  • What within the system of inequality seems to organize and ensure the actions that sustain it?  For example, in the simplest conceivable system of inequality, we might find the only mechanism is the interests of those in dominance – they individually act on those interests in  a manner unmediated by ideology, norms, relationships with others in the dominant group, laws, organizational processes, or anything else.  More complex systems involve mechanisms that induce these actions, giving individuals motivation, direction, and support.  Looking at the range of actions identified as relevant, what stand out as the mechanisms that make such actions consistent and effective?
  • What seem to be important limitations on the actions that secure dominance?  How are these actions constrained by laws, norms, ideology, resources, or the like?  What conditions or potentials for the future might cause the actions to lose enthusiasm or effectiveness?
  • In short, this task concerns the ways that inequality systems induce advantaged groups to act in ways that sustain the inequality (and their standing within that inequality).  Once again, using two examples is the simplest design to allow initial speculations about the general functioning of inequality.  The questions above aim to help one to think systematically about the range of possible actions and their sources.
  • When analyzing the actions of the advantaged (and disadvantaged) as described above, keeping several considerations in mind may help:
    • The shorthand references here to "the actions of advantaged people" do not imply that all advantaged people act the same way or that the actions that sustain inequality are produced in the same way and at the same rate by all the advantaged.  Such actions may be nearly universal, they may be typical but with a high degree of variation across people and circumstances, or they may be the special actions of a minority who are the key representatives of the group interests.
    • The analytical focus should be on the processes and circumstances that induce enough actions of sufficient effectiveness by enough advantaged people to protect the inequality system.  An individualistic focus on the motives or beliefs of people will probably go astray.
    • Note initially that the relevant actions of the advantaged may differ from those of the disadvantaged in varied ways other than reflecting divergent interests.  For example, (1) the opportunities to act may differ (e.g. differential access to higher education), (2)  analogous actions may have different effects, and (3) even with equivalent opportunities and effects, they may choose to act differently (e.g. because they have different beliefs or respond to different interests).  
• Common Readings
  • C. Wright Mills – The Power Elite (1956)  [Grusky – Classic]
    {Alternative: C. Wright Mills. "The Structure of Power in American Society." The British Journal of Sociology , Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1958), pp. 29-41. [jstor: 587620]}
  • Melvin Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro – Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality  (1997) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. "Race and wealth." The Review of Black Political Economy Spring 1989, Volume 17, Issue 4, pp 5-25 [doi: 10.1007/BF02910814] and Thomas Shapiro, et al. "The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide." IASP Research & Policy Brief Feb 2013.}
  • Gaetano Mosca – The Ruling Class (excerpt) (1897)
  • Michael Schwalbe; "The Elements of Inequality"; Contemporary Sociology, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 775-781, Nov 2000 [jstor: 2654084]
  • Barbara F. Reskin; "Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality"; American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21 [jstor: 3088900]
  • Cecilia Ridgeway. Ch. 1, " The Puzzle of Persistence", in Framed by Gender, How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World, (2011) Oxford Univ. Press. [doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755776.003.0001]
  • On Tilly's Durable Inequality (1999) argument:
    • Erik Olin Wright; "Metatheoretical Foundations of Charles Tilly's Durable Inequality;" Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 458-474  [For our immediate purposes, read this mainly to understand what Tilly was doing in Durable Inequality. The  following two short pieces by Tilly convey his point of view.] [jstor: 2696613]
    • Charles Tilly;  "Changing Forms of Inequality"; Sociological Theory, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Mar., 2003), pp. 31-36  [jstor: 3108606]
    • Charles Tilly; "Relational Studies of Inequality"; Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 6 (Nov., 2000), pp. 782-785 [jstor: 2654085]
  • Jerome Karabel.  "Status-Group Struggle, Organizational Interests, and the Limits of Institutional Autonomy: The Transformation of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1918-1940." Theory and Society, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 1-40 [jstor: 657163]
• Recommended Readings
  • Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination." The American Economic Review, 94(4): 991-1013.  [doi: 10.1257/0002828042002561]
  • Ralph H. Turner – Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System  [Grusky – Classic]
    {Original: Ralph H. Turner, ?Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System,? American Sociological Review 25 (December 1960). [jstor: 2089982]}
  • David L. Swartz. "Social Closure in American Elite Higher Education." Theory and Society Vol. 37, No. 4 (Aug., 2008), pp. 409-419.  [doi: 10.1007/s11186-008-9064-2]
  • Nicholas Petryszak; "The Dynamics of Acquiescence in South Africa"; African Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 301 (Oct., 1976), pp. 444-462 [jstor: 721264]
  • Claude Steele – Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement  [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Claude Steele. (1997). "A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance." American Psychologist, 52, 613?629. [doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.52.6.613]}
    • But compare: Sackett, Paul R.; Hardison, Chaitra M.; Cullen, Michael J. "On Interpreting Stereotype Threat as Accounting for African American-White Differences on Cognitive Tests." American Psychologist, Vol 59(1), Jan 2004, 7-13. [doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.7]
  • Joe R. Feagin. "The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places." American Sociological Review Vol. 56, No. 1 (Feb., 1991) (pp. 101-116) [jstor: 2095676]  & "Toward an Integrated Theory of Systemic Racism." Pp. 203-223 in Krysan, Maria and Lewis, Amanda E. The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity 2004.
• Related Readings
  • Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelenyi, and Eleanor Townsley. "The Theory of Post-Communist Managerialism." New Left Review March-April 1997.
  • Kim A. Weeden – Occupational Closure and Earnings Inequality    176

XI. What induces reducing or overcoming inequalities?

Inequality systems do not only have causes that bring them into existence and causes that preserve them, they also have causes that potentially reduce or eliminate them.   Systems of inequality may decline because they are pushed out of the way by new systems of inequality, because they simply become increasingly ineffective or irrelevant, because the disadvantaged are increasingly able to overcome their circumstances as individuals, or because the system is dramatically overturned by collective actions from below or intrusion from invaders.  How and why these processes dilute, undermine, or eliminate inequalities is theoretically underdeveloped.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  Declining inequalities
  • Select as example of social inequality, positional or status, that showed significant reductions in the degree of inequality over time. 
    • For the selected example of inequality, if it is not a system of inequality but a component, result, or instance of a system of inequality, the analysis should include careful consideration of  the system itself. 
    • (Note that inequality may decline in a component as a result of overall decline in the system, decline in a component may induce greater inequality in the system, or decline in a component may take place independently of and without noticeable impact of the enveloping system.
  • In what ways did those involved in the example of inequality being considered actively promote or resist its decline?  
    • In our simplest examples, "those involved" reduces to the advantaged group versus the disadvantaged.  In real life, seems can be much more complex.  Each system of inequality may have multiple types of involvement, distinguished by subtle or ambiguous differences of interests, relationships and activities.  And, systems of inequality overlap and interact.  We want to be sensitive to this potential complexity, but willing to reduce it conceptually as far as possible to produce a manageable model.
    • Note that people may actively promote or resist a change in inequality for motives that are not focused on the issue of the inequality's persistence.
    • The goal here is to characterize the types of people whose actions tended to reinforce the inequality and those whose actions tended to erode it.  Recall that members of advantaged groups may join the challengers (against their putative interests) and members of the disadvantaged may join the supporters.
  • Were any other coexisting systems of inequality declining or becoming more extreme during the same period? If so, is it possible to identify causal processes that might connect the simultaneous changes?  
  • Were there direct clashes over the competing interests of those advantaged and those disadvantaged by system of inequality that was declining? If so, what were there causes and their consequences?
  • Were there any independent changes in the circumstances of the advantaged people that plausibly diminished their will or ability to sustain the pattern of inequality?
  • Were actors who were not direct participants in the systems of inequality (i.e. not acting as members of the advantaged or disadvantaged) significant for promoting or obstructing the movement toward change?  The state is an obvious contender here, but so are others whose interests or symbolic commitments seem to be at stake.
  • Are there other processes, actors, circumstances, or causal dynamics neglected by the above questions that seem important to analyzing the changes in inequality in the examples being considered?
  • In short, the goal this week is to explore the conditions and processes that work against the persistence of inequalities under appropriate structural and historical circumstances.
• Common Readings
  • Karl Marx's theories of capitalism and societal transformation, often simplified as the theory of historical materialism, is a benchmark of all later theories aiming to explain changing systems of inequality.  The ideas are developed throughout his work.  Here are a couple non-scholarly, but reasonable, introductions.
    • Wikipedia article on Historical Materialism
    • Study guide on historical materialism from a socialist advocacy group
  • T. H. Marshall.  "Citizenship and Social Class." (1949) Excerpt.  
  • Robert Max Jackson; "Opposing Forces: How, Why, and When Will Gender Inequality Disappear?";   in Declining Significance of Gender (eds. Francine D. Blau, Mary C. Brinton, David B. Grusky) 2006.  (But compare Ridgeway in previous topic.)
  • A. de Toqueville, "Relations of Masters and Servants." (From Democracy in America, v. 2, 1840)
  • William Julius Wilson. "The Declining Significance of Race." Society. 15:2 (1978): 56-62.  [doi: 10.1007/BF03181003] (This summarizes the arguments in Wilson's book of the same name.  The book merits reading in full.)
  • See reviews of James C. Scott's book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance in AJS and Contemporary Soc.
    • Also, James C. Scott. "Prestige as the Public Discourse of Domination." Cultural Critique, No. 12, (Spring,
      1989), pp. 145-166.  [jstor: 2781794]
• Recommended Readings
  • Jens Beckert; "The Longue Durée of Inheritance Law. Discourses and Institutional Development in France, Germany, and the United States since 1800"; Archives Europeennes de Sociologie/European Journal of Sociology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 79-120, 2007 [This contains the central argument of the book that is discussed in the symposium listed next.]
    • Anne Alstott, Marion Fourcade, and Philippe Steiner;  "Review Symposium on Jens Beckert Inherited Wealth. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008";  Socio-Economic Review  7(1) (2009): 145-159  [doi: 10.1017/S0003975607000306"]
  • Erik Olin Wright. "The Shadow of Exploitation in Weber's Class Analysis." American Sociological Review.
    Vol. 67, No. 6, (Dec., 2002) : 832-53. [jstor: 3088972]
  • Marco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas. "Historical Studies of Social Mobility and Stratification." Annual Review of Sociology. 2010. 36:42951. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.10263] 
  • Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou – The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants   (1993) [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Original: Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou, ?The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants,? The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (November, 1993), pp. 74?96. [jstor: 1047678]}
  • Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2000. "Gender Differences in Pay." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(4): 75-99. [doi: 10.1257/jep.14.4.75]
  • Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. "The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as They Can?"  Academy of Management Perspectives. Feb 2007, 21(1): 7-23. [doi: 10.5465/AMP.2007.24286161"]
  • Martina Morris and Bruce Western. "Inequality in Earnings: Trends and Implications."  [Grusky - Contemporary]
    {Alternative: Martina Morris and Bruce Western, ?Inequality in Earnings at the Close of the Twentieth Century,? Annual Review of Sociology (1999) 25: 623?657. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.623]}
  • Paula England; "Toward Gender Equality: Progress and Bottlenecks";  in Declining Significance of Gender; eds. Francine D. Blau, Mary C. Brinton, David B. Grusky; 2006.
  •  Cecilia L. Ridgeway; "Gender as an Organizing Force in Social Relations: Implications for the Future of Inequality"; in Declining Significance of Gender; eds. Francine D. Blau, Mary C. Brinton, David B. Grusky; 2006.
• Related Readings
  • ...
  • ...

XII. What are the theoretical and empirical relationships between different forms of inequality?

Multiple systems of inequality coexist in societies, with crosscutting categories and with individuals simultaneously located in each.  An older tradition in sociology suggested that the degree of overlap between different forms of inequality was one condition influencing the likelihood of class formation.  A more recent interest has been the "intersection" between race, gender, and class as experienced by individuals, with the central (largely atheoretical) premise that the implications of one's status in one system depends on one's statuses in the others.  Our concern here is more at the level of inequality's organization, asking in what ways different systems of inequality interact with each other.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  Interdependence of inequalities
  • Select one society and historical moment (or one period, such as the second half of the 20^th century). Within this historical context, select two examples of systems of positional inequality and two examples of systems of status inequality, chosen such that a significant number of individuals will have a location within each of the four systems considered.  .
  • Assess in what ways and to what degree an individual's status in one instance of inequality relates to others. To be systematic, consider
    • How standing in one form of positional inequality relates to standing in the other example of positional inequality
    • How standing in one instance of status inequality relates to standing in the other form of status inequality
    • How standing in the systems of positional inequality relate to standing in the systems of status inequality
  • Assess how the organization and functioning of these systems of inequality influence or overlap each other. Among other things, this might include considering
    • How the "locations" in the two examples of positional inequality are related. Are any locations defined simultaneously in both systems? Are there enduring relationships between locations in the two systems that continue regardless who are in those locations? Are there sustained patterns of movement between the two systems?
    • What relationships exist among the the symbolic representations and ideological legitimation schemes associated with the forms of inequality being examined?  Are they simply independent?; are they separate but drawing on some common ideas?; are they partially or wholly merged into one scheme that serves all at once?
    • In what ways is persistence of one system of inequality dependent on its relationship with another? For example, how might the elimination of any one system of inequality affect the others.?
    • What links exist between the laws and governmental mechanisms that support these systems of inequality?
    • Can we identify inconsistencies or sources of friction between these systems of inequality?
    • How do historical developments and changes in these systems relate to each other? 
• Common Readings
  • Jerry A. Jacobs. "Gender Inequality and Higher Education." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 22, (1996), pp. 153-185.  Also see reviews of Jacobs's 1989 Revolving Doors: Sex Segregation and Women's Careers by Patricia Roos, Christine Williams, & James Baron. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.153"] [jstor: 2780519]
  • Barbara F. Reskin – Labor Markets as Queues: A Structural Approach to Changing Occupational Sex Composition  (1991)  [Grusky - Contemporary] 
    {Alternative: Barbara F. Reskin. "Sex Segregation in the Workplace." Annu. Rev. Social. (1993) 19:241-70 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.so.19.080193.001325]}
  • Bruce Western – Incarceration, Unemployment, and Inequality   [Grusky – Contemporary]
    {Original: Bruce Western, ?Incarceration, Unemployment, and Inequality,? IRP Focus 21 (Spring 2001), pp. 32?36.  For more depth, see Western's 2006 book, Punishment and Inequality in America.}
  • Douglas S. Massey, Jonathan Rothwell, and Thurston Domina. "The Changing Bases of Segregation in the United States." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science  November 2009 626: 74-90, [doi: 10.1177/0002716209343558]
  • Claude S. Fischer. "Showing that Neighborhoods Matter." City & Community, 12 (2013): 7?12. [doi: 10.1111/cico.12005]
• Recommended Readings
  • Peter M. Blau. "A Fable about Social Structure." Social Forces, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Mar., 1980), pp. 777-788.  On the importance of always considering the implications of numbers. [jstor: 2577184]
    {Alternatively, the formal presentation: Peter M. Blau. "A Macrosociological Theory of Social Structure." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jul., 1977), pp. 26-54. [jstor: 2777762]}
  • Jerry A. Jacobs. "Long-Term Trends in Occupational Segregation by Sex." American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 95, No. 1 (Jul., 1989): 160-173. [jstor: 2780409]
  • Erik Olin Wright; "Race, Class, and Income Inequality"; The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 83, No. 6 (May, 1978), pp. 1368-1397 [jstor: 2778109]
  • Margaret L. Andersen; "Thinking about Women: A Quarter Century's View"; Gender & Society, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 437-455, Aug 2005 [doi: 10.1177/0891243205276756]
  • Michael Hout. "Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 38 (2012): 379-400 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102503]
• Related Readings
  • Jacobs, Jerry A. "The Sex Typing Of Aspirations And Occupations: Instability During The Careers Of Young Women." Social Science Quarterly  68.1 (1987): 122-137.
  • William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby. "I Will Follow Him: Family Ties, Gender-Role Beliefs, and Reluctance to Relocate for a Better Job."  American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 5 (Mar., 1992), pp. 1241-1267, [jstor: 2781415]

XIII. What causes inequality?

Perhaps the most fundamental question about inequalities, and sometimes seeming the most illusive to answer, is the misleadingly simple question, what causes inequality?  While no general, all embracing answer is possible (at this time), progress in understanding inequality demands that we continually try to improve our analyses of the causes.  Any effort to do this must consider different forms of causation that are possible. 

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  We want to investigate what causes inequalities. Causation is a difficult, often elusive, concept.  What we mean by the causes of inequalities can take different forms.  We can ask why it comes into existence.  This question about origins may concern the specific historical circumstances or sequence of events in which an inequality emerges.  Or we might interpret original causes in terms of the social conditions necessary for such inequality to emerge or, somewhat differently, the social conditions that make it unavoidable.  We might instead ask what causes (or allows) an inequality to persist over time, potentially distinct from the reasons for its origin, the conditions and processes that sustain it.  Or, we might focus on the variations in the severity of some inequality, seeking the key to understanding it in the conditions that cause it to be great in some places and slight in others.  In either case, we may stress the mechanisms, the recurring actions and social processes that produce the inequality, or we may stress the conditions that allow or require it.  Given this expanse of possibilities, we must narrow our question, to make it reasonable.
  • Choose two kinds of inequality, each of which varies considerably in its intensity.  For each kind choose one example that has low inequality and another that has high inequality.  These four examples, two with low inequality to compare with two having high inequality, will be the basis of the analysis.  These may come from the same historical and cultural setting or from different ones.
    • For each kind of inequality, if it is not a system of inequality but a component, result, or instance of a system of inequality, the analysis should stress the system. 
    • For example, if we start with two unequal occupations, we would say that they are in most cases not a system of inequality but a part of one.  So, we could shift our attention to the system of occupational inequality.  Or, if we begin with the inequality between women and men within the financial industry, we could move to the general inequality between the sexes.
    • In general, an example of inequality that is a component, result, or instance of a system of inequality may have particularistic causes that seem sufficient to account for its contours or variations.  However, we expect its existence is derivative of the relevant system of inequality and that it and other similar instances that are derivative of the same system of inequality are all subject to the causal processes that generate and sustain that system of inequality.  Thus, an effort to identify and make sense of the causal processes cannot look at the component or instance alone.
  • Describe each kind of inequality and the difference between the higher and lower inequality instances.
    • As always, describe who are distinguished by the inequality, and what it is that is unequal.
    • Specify why we consider the inequality in one instance to be significantly higher than in the other.  This is a measurement issue on the surface, but commonly has deeper implications about what the inequality means.
  • Comparing the instances of high inequality with those of low inequality, construct a series of hypotheses about about the possible causes of high inequality (compared to low inequality).  In some cases these hypotheses may apply to both kinds of inequality similarly while in others they are quite different – try to be clear about this.  For each hypothesis, explain the reasoning behind your speculation.  In attempting to generate hypotheses representing a systematic analysis, among other things to think about, you might consider:
    • the origins of each example of inequality (e.g., do the high and low inequality instances arise from distinctive conditions that relate to their subsequent intensity)
    • the history of changes in levels of inequality if applicable and known (e.g., does knowledge of their varying intensities over time suggest anything about why or how they differ in the instances you compare?0
    • political and legal contexts
    • ideological and cultural contexts
    • relationships to other forms of inequality
    • direct relationships between those advantaged and those disadvantaged by the inequality
    • how individuals' statuses are decided
    • ... Each of the foregoing refer to important aspects of an inequality system that imply the existence of some causal process.  Looking back over the previous topics we have examined should give more facets of inequality calling for a similar causal analysis.
  • Moving beyond hypotheses, see which of these more general questions you can begin to answer. 
    • Consider to what degree the origins, the persistence, or the severity of the inequality is explained by the outcomes of self-interested actions of individuals and organizations.
    • Consider to what degree the origins, the persistence, or the severity of the inequality is explained by its functional and structural relationships to important social arrangements or "needs."
    • Consider to what degree the origins, the persistence, or the severity of the inequality is explained by some competitive processes.
    • Try to be self-conscious about the comparisons being made, implicit or explicit, and what alternatives might be possible.
    • Try not to forget that inequality induces processes, conditions, and structures that limit resistance's effectiveness and part of its explanation lies in the ways this obstruction or resistance works.
  • In short, our analytical goal is to generate ideas about what produces inequality, by first looking at what seems to explain variations in the degree of severity of two types of inequality.
• Common Readings
  • Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore. "Some Principles of Stratification." American Sociological Review, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Apr., 1945), pp. 242-249; also read:
    • Kingsley Davis. "Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis: Reply." American Sociological Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Aug., 1953), pp. 394-397 [jstor: 2085643]
    • Arthur L. Stinchcombe. "Some Empirical Consequences of the Davis-Moore Theory of Stratification." American Sociological Review, Vol. 28, No. 5 (Oct., 1963), pp. 805-808 (original – jstor: 2089919; reprint – doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511570759.003) [doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511570759.003]
  • Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan. (1967) "The Process of Stratification." [Grusky – Classic]
  • Roger V. Gould; "The Origins of Status Hierarchies: A Formal Theory and Empirical Test";  The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 107, No. 5 (Mar., 2002), pp. 1143-1178 [jstor: 3081318]
  • Peter M. Blau; "The Hierarchy of Authority in Organizations"; The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Jan., 1968), pp. 453-467 [jstor: 2775943]
  • Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.  Manifesto of the Communist Party.  Not the analytical power of Capital, but the most widely read statement.  Look at Chapter 1 (pp. 15-21), Bourgeois and Proletarians, and the questions and answers in pp. 37-54.
  • Douglas S. Massey. "How Stratification Works." Ch 1 of Categorically Unequal (2007).  (Also might look at conclusion, "America Unequal," Ch 7.)
• Recommended Readings
  • Karl Marx. "Marx on Social Classes and Class Conflict."  Relevant excerpts from Marx's work. 
  • Ernest Mandel. "Marx, Karl Heinrich (1818-1883)". The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economic, Second Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, [1987] 2008. (Knowledgeable summary and defense of Marx's ideas.) [doi: 10.1057/9780230226203.1051]
  • Robert C. Hauhart. "The Davis-Moore Theory of Stratification: The Life Course of a Socially Constructed Classic." The American Sociologist, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 5-24. [jstor: 27700363]
  • W. Graham Astley; "Organizational Size and Bureaucratic Structure"; Organization Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 201-228, 1985 [doi: 10.1177/017084068500600301]
  • Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. "The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective."  The American Economic Review, 96(2) (2006): 200-205. [doi: 10.1257/000282806777212116]
  • Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski.  ?Discrimination in a Low Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.? American Sociological Review 74(October): 777-799 [doi: 10.1177/000312240907400505]
  • Paula England. "The Failure of Human Capital Theory to Explain Occupational Sex Segregation." The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), pp. 358-370 [jstor: 145585] and "Wage Appreciation and Depreciation: A Test of Neoclassical Economic Explanations of Occupational Sex Segregation." Social Forces (1984) 62 (3): 726-749.
    [doi: 10.1093/sf/62.3.726]
  • Jos C. N. Raadschelders; "Size and Organizational Differentiation in Historical Perspective"; Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 419-441 [jstor: 1181603]
  • Devah Pager and Diana Karafin. "Bayesian Bigot? Statistical Discrimination, Stereotypes, and Employer Decision Making." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 621 (January 2009): 70-93. [doi: 10.1177/0002716208324628]
  • Kathryn M. Neckerman and Florencia Torche. "Inequality: Causes and Consequences"  Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2007. 33: 335-57. [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131755]
  • Guillermina Jasso.  "A New Model of Wage Determination and Wage Inequality." Rationality and Society 2009 21(1): 113-168. [doi: 10.1177/1043463108099350]
• Related Readings
  • Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998."  The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 118, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-39 [doi: 10.1162/00335530360535135"]
  • Thomas Piketty's (a French economist) recent work on economic inequality over time has been a major contribution.  Much of it is available from his personal website (and more recent work). Particularly recommended are:
    • Thomas Piketty. "On the Long-Run Evolution of Inheritance: France 1820?2050." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011) 126(3): 1071-1131. [doi: 10.1093/qje/qjr020]
    • Atkinson, Anthony B., Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez.  2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History." Journal of Economic Literature, 49(1): 3-71. [doi: 10.1257/jel.49.1.3]
    • Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700-2010." A slide presentation.  Paris School of Economics. March 2013.
    • Thomas Piketty. "Self-ful?lling beliefs about social status." Journal of Public Economics, 70, 1, (1998): 115-132. [doi: 10.1016/S0047-2727%2898%2900063-2]
  • Murray Milner, Jr. "Theories of Inequality: An Overview and a Strategy for Synthesis. " Social Forces, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jun., 1987), pp. 1053-1089 [jstor: 2579023]
  • ...

XIV. What makes some forms of inequality more important than others to the organization of social structure and the patterns of human action?

Some have argued that class dominates in particular societies or all societies.  Others have suggested that gender inequality is the most fundamental inequality.  Putting aside grand claims, most would agree that some kinds of inequality have greater influence over the organization of a society (or other social entity) and the history of that organization.  How we can systematically assess the relative importance of different kinds of inequality and what decides their differential importance are not clear.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical task:  To be added
  • Select four kinds of inequality that are widespread within a society or some other boundaried social context (such as an organization or social category).  
  • Try to rank these examples of in equality in terms of their relative importance.
    • Note that different criteria for "importance" can result in different rankings.  One goal is to identify what criteria for importance make sense for the chosen examples. 
    • Note that the importance of an inequality may vary by time period, by type of people, by location in another system of inequality, and other differentiating conditions.
    • Thus, a careful assessment will commonly result in a series of rankings for the relative importance of the inequality example, with the rankings distinguished by the criteria for importance used and by the circumstances that mediate the evaluations for any specific criterion.
    • To be systematic, one will usually want to rewrite the analysis of relative importance organized around the conditioning criteria
  • Having assessed the relative importance of the inequality examples, try to explore what caused the rankings.  In the foregoing, we are focusing on description and measurement.  Here the concern is causality.  Above we are trying to establish why and when we might call one kind of inequality more important than another, a conceptual and empirical exercise.  Here we are asking what it is about the content, configuration and history of the inequalities that results in one having more importance than the other.
    • One path to answering this question might be to consider known empirical examples where the relative importance of the types of inequality being considered have a different ranking importance.
    • Another path to answering might be to imagine what it would take to lower the importance of the higher ranked inequality or raise the importance of the lower ranked one.
• Common Readings
  •   To be added
• Recommended Readings
  • ...
  • ...
• Related Readings
  • ...
  • ...