Chapter 9

• Stratification


  A recognizable structural hierarchy of people wherein some members have more access to wealth, power, and prestige than others
• The history of the emergence of stratification is not necessarily inevitable
• There is a shift away from categories of inequality to a focus on process and power
• Intersectional framework


  Reveals how various identities (e.g., gender, gender expression, sexuality, and race) intersect with each other and orient different subjects to experience opportunities and constraints in society in unique ways
• Ascribed statuses


  Social positions people are assigned at birth
• Achieved statuses


  Social positions people may attain later in life, often as the result of their own (or other people's) effort
• Privilege


  The experience of advantage, status, power, and opportunities by specific individuals or groups of individuals in society
• Systemic inequality


  When institutions, norms, and practices privilege certain identifiable groups over others. Over generations, these privileges and disadvantages are compounded and naturalized, creating enduring inequalities between groups
• Categories of Inequality


  • Class
  • Caste
  • "Race"
  • Ethnicity
  • Nationality
  • Gender
  • Sex
  • Sexuality
  • Ability
  • Language
• Every one of these categories is a cultural invention designed to create boundaries around one imagined community or another
• None of these categories maps onto permanent biological subdivisions within the human species
• Naturalizing discourses


  Rhetoric used to support the legitimacy of these socially constructed categories
• Strategic essentialism


  The use of essentialist rhetoric as a conscious political strategy to create a temporary solidarity to facilitate a specific social action
• Class


  A ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, and/or access to power
• Marx defined classes in terms of their members' different relations to the means of production
• The stratification system of South Asia, most commonly India, is often used as the prototype of a caste system
• Caste concepts in India

  • Varna
  • Jāti
• The rigidity of the caste system is a distinctly modern phenomenon rooted in colonialism
• "Race"


  A socially constructed category of humans that has been naturalized in pseudo-scientific language that often conflates geographic ancestry and physical type
• Racialism


  Belief in the existence of biologically distinct races
• Racism


  The systemic oppression and discrimination of people based on their membership in racial or ethnic groups that are typically historically marginalized
• Racialization


  Process of assigning people or groups of people to categories of "race" that historically have been oppressed by colonial powers and continue to experience inequality
• The ability of human beings from anywhere in the world to reproduce successfully is one measure of our membership in a single species
• Human variation is as complex within a geographical population as it is between
• Despite the fact that "race" is not a biological category, it persists as a social category, which leads to exclusion
• Whiteness


  A socially constructed and context-specific process in which people who appear as white and are not racialized possess power and privilege in society. This power and privilege is normalized and their language, behaviour, and identity become the unmarked standard
• Hypodescent


  The "one drop of blood" rule, where children of a mixed union are always assigned to the subordinate group
• Racialized groups experience generations of systemic discrimination and oppression that lead to lower socioeconomic outcomes, lower education levels, poor access to housing, poor health, increased encounters with the justice system, and extensive intergenerational trauma
• Colourism


  A system of social identities negotiated situationally along a continuum of skin colours between white and Black
• Ethnicity


  A social classification based on common cultural characteristics, including language, religion, ancestry, traditions, shared homeland, or country of origin
• Racialization of ethnicity


  When members of the dominant ethnic group stress their cultural superiority and question the eligibility (and even the humanity) of subordinate groups who challenge them
• Nation


  A group of people believed to share the same history, culture, language, and territory, often using the symbolism of shared "blood"
• Nation-state


  A political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide (a recent invention)
• Nationality


  A sense of identification with and loyalty to a nation-state; membership, defined by citizenship, in a geopolitical sovereign state
• Nationalism


  The attempt made by government officials to instill a sense of nationality into the citizens of a state
• Nationhood is a distinctly Eurocentric notion, particularly in how it relates to statehood
• Transformist hegemony


  A nationalist program to define nationality in a way that preserves the cultural domination of the ruling group while including enough cultural features from subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty
• In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (the 3.8 billion poorest people)
• The chapter learning objectives are to: Understand the historical context in which inequality emerges, endures, and changes within an intersectional framework; Consider whether class is an achieved or ascribed inequality; Understand how caste became an increasingly rigid social category as a result of colonialism; Understand the complexity and ongoing impact of "race" as a social and political category; Consider how some groups can be considered ethnic or racialized; Discuss how issues of inequality relate to nationalism; Consider the global context of inequality