DISS Quiz

• Herbert Gans' sociological understanding of poverty:

  • Gans examined Robert Merton's concepts of "Manifest", "Latent", and "Dysfunctions"
  • Manifest: intended function of social policies, processes, or actions to affect benefits
  • Latent: not consciously intended but produces benefits
  • Dysfunction: a harmful unintended outcome
  • Gans focused on the latent functions of poverty, outlining the observed consequences to other socio-economic interest groups or population aggregates
• Gans emphasized that he does not justify or promote poverty, but rather highlighted poverty's latent functions as a sociologist
• Functions of poverty:

  1. Poverty ensures society's "dirty work" is done, like garbage collection

  2. The poor working at low wages subsidize activities benefiting the upper class

  3. Poverty unintentionally creates jobs that serve or "service" the poor

  4. The poor buy goods others do not want, prolonging the economic usefulness of such goods

  5. The poor can be identified and punished as alleged or real deviants to uphold conventional norms

  6. The poor can be identified as a group participating more in uninhibited behaviors like alcoholism
• Gans argues that politicians and policymakers often use poverty as a tool for gaining and maintaining political power, invoking poverty to garner support from lower-income voters or justify policies
• Poverty can be used to define and reinforce social boundaries, creating a distinction between the haves and have-nots
• Poverty can serve as a scapegoat for larger societal issues, deflecting attention away from systemic problems
• Structural-Functionalism is a theoretical framework that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability
• Structural-Functionalism emphasizes the formal ordering of parts and their functional interrelations as contributing to the maintenance needs of a structured social system
• Structural-Functionalism analyzes how each of the social institutions contributes important functions for society
• Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a proponent of Structural-Functionalism, stating that 'society is made up of a bunch of moving parts that move together as one'
• Manifest functions are things intentionally put in place to keep society moving forward, while latent functions are unintended consequences from manifest functions
• Social facts have persuasive effects over individuals but can't be influenced by individuals, examples include birth rate and religion
• Social structures are the consequences of any social pattern for the operation of society as a whole, including family, mass media, education, government, and religion
• Social dysfunction refers to a lack of consensus among people in a given society about what is helpful or harmful to society, such as differences in affiliations and backgrounds
• Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) theorized the AGIL schema to maintain the equilibrium of the social system
• The AGIL schema/model includes:

  • Adaptation: acquiring and mobilizing sufficient resources for the system to survive
  • Goal Attainment: setting and implementing goals
  • Integration: maintaining solidarity or coordination among the sub-units of the system
  • Latency: creating, preserving, and transmitting the system's distinctive culture and values
• Conflict theory (Marxism) explores the reasons for conflict, focusing on inequality, stratification, exploitation, and oppression
• Karl Marx (1818-1883) theorized communism and capitalism, historical materialism, and the class struggle of workers under capitalism
• Capitalism is an economic system with bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the proletariat, where capitalists exploit the workers
• Bourgeoisie are the capitalists who own the means of production, while the proletariat must sell their labor to access those means
• Means of production are tools, machineries, raw materials, and factories needed for production to take place
• Subsistence wage is the wage paid by capitalists to proletariats, just enough for survival and to have a family, ensuring a constant labor force
• Alienation in society is the breakdown of natural interconnections between people and other aspects of their lives
• Proletariat revolution is the action workers should take to end capitalism, rising up to overthrow the system
• Class consciousness is workers becoming aware of their oppression under capitalism and organizing to address their problems
• Communism advocates for a classless system where all property and wealth are communally owned, aiming for a society that allows full human potential