by DK
HEALTH
It was Talcott Parsons’ identification of the “Sick Role” in 1951 that opened up the study of health for sociology. He introduced the idea that being ill is a role with four social expectations: being exempt from normal duties; not being responsible for being ill; wanting to get better; and seeking help and co-operating in trying to get better.
RACIAL TENSION
One sign of racial tension in the US is the number of young black men who have died as a result of police action. According to the Washington Post newspaper, 963 people were killed by the police in the US in 2016, 41% of these were black or Latino, though they make up only 31% of the US population. Of those who were unarmed, 33% were black men, though they are only 6% of the US population.
SURVEILLANCE
We are used to living in a world surrounded by cameras that trace and track what we do. French philosopher Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish (1975) was one of the first to spot this trend. He wrote about how surveillance “tricks” people into good behaviour by making them think they are being watched when there is little chance that they are.
MEDICALIZATION
One trend in health is what sociologists call “medicalization”, where everyday problems that were once thought of as troubling but normal now come under the control of the medical professions. British sociologist Susie Scott in her 2007 book Shyness and Society describes how conditions such as shyness are now seen, not as a personality trait, but as something that requires medication.
BROKEN WINDOWS THEORY
In 1982, US researchers James Wilson and George Kelling came up with Broken Windows Theory, which states that if the police let minor crimes go unpunished (such as breaking windows) then this will lead to more serious crimes. Also called zero-tolerance policing, the theory informed police strategy in 1980s New York, when the police targeted graffiti on subway trains.
Many sociologists have studied the reasons for the inequalities in our world, and why some countries are much wealthier and more successful than others. The answers may lie in the global economy and the way multi-national businesses operate. Globalization of trade and industry has boosted opportunities for work worldwide, but does not benefit all nations equally in terms of money and status.
Super-RICH!
WEALTH and STATUS
The POVERTY trap
Who’s to BLAME?
WHERE did RACISM come from?
Why haven’t developing countries DEVELOPED yet?
Is GLOBALIZATION a GOOD thing?
GLOCALIZATION
What’s our IMPACT on the PLANET?
being rich is not what it used to be. there are more millionaires around the globe than there have ever been. however, there is also a new type of wealth which is described as “super-rich”, with a fortune measured in billions rather than millions. how did these people become so incredibly rich?
World’s richest people
In 2016, there were estimated to be 4,458,000 millionaires in the US. Being a millionaire in today’s world is much more common than it used to be. The charity Oxfam in a report on inequality published in 2014, found that the wealth of the one per cent of the population who are the richest in the world amounts to $100 trillion.
If we look at some of the most wealthy individuals, according to Forbes magazine, we find people such as, Amancio Ortega, the Spanish owner of clothes shop Zara, with a personal net worth of $67 billion, or Warren Buffett, the US financier, whose net worth comes in at just over $60 billion, alongside Jim Walton of Wal-Mart, the US supermarket chain, who has a net worth of $33.6 billion.
It can be difficult to grasp what that sort of wealth actually means since the numbers are so huge. It might help to think about the weekly prize in the UK national lottery, which is approximately £14 million (£14,000,000). Now imagine that the richest people in the UK – the Reuben brothers with a net worth of £13.1 billion (£13,100,000,000) – won it. This would be the equivalent of someone with £13,100 winning £14.
Excessive wealth The lifestyles of the super-rich are leaving the rest of us further and further behind. Inequality is increasing around the world meaning that a larger amount of wealth is held by fewer and fewer people.
Becoming super-rich
How does this super-wealth come about? French economist Thomas Piketty wrote in 2014 that this super-wealth is not earned, in the way that you might imagine an entrepreneur building up a business from scratch, rather it is frequently inherited. Jim Walton and his family in the US are an example of that trend, inheriting their wealth from previous generations.
An exception would be the various tech giants who can become super-wealthy overnight. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has a net worth of $44.6 billion. So unless you are born into or marry someone from a rich family or are a tech genius then entering the world of the super-wealthy is challenging to say the least.
Wealth brings wealth
British sociologist Andrew Sayer in his 2014 book Why We Can’t Afford the Rich has also taken an interest in this super-wealth. He makes the point that a great deal of this money is also earned through financial deals such as the selling of stocks and shares. It is, he suggests, time to stop using misleading verbs such as “earned” when discussing the wealth of the super-rich because their existing fortunes get bigger just by accruing interest, and without the rich having to do any actual work.
French sociologist Löic Waquant is another who has also tried to understand inequality. He highlights how government policies in many advanced technological countries have favoured the very rich – including cutting the tax they pay.
So, overall, being rich today means belonging to a very small group. Perhaps questions have to be asked about how useful it is to have a few very wealthy people in society while so many more struggle to make a living.
struggling to live
In the late 1990s journalist Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover in the US working for minimum wages to explore the lives of low-wage earners. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, she writes about how life for these workers is very insecure, people live from paycheck to paycheck and work all the hours they can find, usually at more than one job. This has severe effects on their health and family life.
Oxfam found that 8 individuals own the same as half of the world’s population.
See also: Are we all MIDDLE CLASS now? | How is work CHANGING? | HEALTH and equality | Wealth and STATUS | Who’s to BLAME?
social status can come from being successful and becoming wealthy. sometimes this success comes from hard work and talent, sometimes it comes from inherited wealth or from being famous for being famous. status matters though, and many of us try to copy what those with high status do or wear.
Gaining status
In our society, individuals such as sports stars, singers, and actors have wealth and status. Status refers to the standing and prestige in society that often stems from wealth and power but can also be gained by other means, such as by achievement. Other people such as prime ministers or presidents and writers have status for their achievements and influence, though they may not be especially wealthy. It is debatable whether today’s celebrity sports stars and performers produce anything that benefits society; some would say they provide entertainment and inspiration, others that they contribute very little. Consequently, status can come from success, it does not have to come from producing something that significantly helps society.
Conspicuous consumption
In the late 19th century, US sociologist Thorstein Veblen wrote about the new consumer society he saw developing around him. He noticed how people were beginning to use consumer goods to draw attention to themselves in order to show off that they were better and wealthier than others.
In Veblen’s book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, he outlined his idea of “conspicuous consumption”. This important theory explored how a new social class, the business class, who had earned their money by setting up factories during the
Industrial Revolution, spent their money as a way to display their status and how that in turn influenced other people below them in society.
In the 1800s the wealthy tended to demonstrate their status by spending long periods in the countryside, travelling to foreigns lands, or by not doing much at all. They were the “leisure class” who did not need to work. The new business class lived and worked in towns and did not have the same time to devote to leisure as the landed gentry. They needed another way to display their status, wealth, and power, and they achieved this by spending on lavish goods, in particular, clothing that was neither practical nor essential but served instead to symbolize their success.
Of critical importance to Veblen was the impact of this process on people lower down the social scale. He saw that people were influenced by the actions of the business class. People who were poorer and less successful than the business owners tried to copy what the business class bought, they hoped by buying the same consumer goods and mimicking their wealthier peers they could raise their own status, sort of like saying, “Look at me, I am the same as the best people in society!”
Service to others
Another sociologist who looked at this subject was the German, Max Weber. He agreed that money and power were important in building an individual’s status in society but he also observed that people who were not rich could achieve high social status. For example, religious leaders, such as ministers or priests, are not well paid but command the respect of their community because they perform a job that involves self-sacrifice and service to others.
Copy cats Those further down the social scale seek to copy the style adopted by the wealthy and successful in society, though they may not be able to afford to buy exactly the same item.
sliding status
Status can also work the other way around. There are groups of people in society who have money and power but do not have the social status to match. A consequence of the 2009 economic crash and subsequent recession was that the social status of bankers fell. Rather than being seen as the trustworthy custodians of people’s savings, they were criticized for being greedy and incompetent.
Luxury items that become more desirable as their price goes up are known as “Veblen goods”.
See also: Who’s to BLAME? | Wealth and development
nowhere in the world is free from poverty. Some societies have the means to improve conditions for the poor, others have not. but even in the wealthier nations, People are trapped in poverty because barriers such as age, gender, and scarcity of work prevent their upward mobility.
In the trap
The "poverty trap" is a frequently used term describing the situation of people who cannot, for whatever reason, escape from being poor. No matter how wealthy the world becomes, significant numbers of people live in hardship. Sociology recognizes two degrees of poverty: absolute and relative.
Absolute poverty
Where people struggle to obtain the basics of life such as food, clothing, and a roof over their head, we speak of them as being in "absolute poverty". This condition is more commonly associated with what are called low-income and middle-income nations (previously described as developing nations) or in societies that have collapsed, perhaps because of war or political, environmental, or economic crises. The World Bank defines absolute poverty as living on less than $1.90 per day. By that measure, statistics produced in 2013 show that 10.7 per cent of the world’s population can be included in the category.
Relative poverty
The other category is "relative poverty". People have the basics of life: they have shelter, clothes, and food but they live at standards considerably lower than would be expected in their society. This means that what counts as poverty differs from society to society. For example, in high-income nations (which used to be called developed countries) relative poverty could mean that a person has some consumer goods, such as a television or a mobile phone, and still be seen as living in poverty.
A change of attitude?
There is much debate on how to tackle poverty and how to free people from the poverty trap. One view, first popularized by US sociologist Charles Murray in the 1980s, focuses on the attitude of poor people. According to Murray, the poor supposedly like being on welfare benefits and have no inclination to work. So, the theory goes, to stop poverty we need to get poor people to change their thinking and stop being workshy. US politician Paul Ryan echoed this view in 2012 when he said that the "safety net" of benefits in the United States was becoming a "hammock", in which people were happy to spend their time idling and doing nothing to escape their poverty.
Caught in a net Some countries have a benefits "safety net" to stop people falling too far into poverty. This net has been variously described as a "hammock" for idling in, or a trap that is impossible to escape.
No way out
However, many commentators believe the reasons for poverty lie in the way in which society is structured. What this means is that no matter what somebody does and how hard they try, it simply may not be possible for them to escape poverty. For example, they could face barriers to getting a job because of age, ethnicity, or gender. Or it could be that the overall economy is performing so poorly that jobs are not available. One recent trend in the workplace has been an increase in unstable, low-paid work that does not bring in enough income to raise someone's overall standard of living. Sociologists continue to research the options for ending the vicious circle of poverty.
finnish experiment
In 2017, a two-year trial project began in Finland to try to raise people out of poverty. Two thousand unemployed people randomly selected by the government receive a monthly income of €560 instead of state benefits. Anything they earn on top of this they can keep without losing the basic income (whereas benefit would be cut) so even low-paid jobs make a difference.
Out of a global population of more than 7 billion, an estimated 3 billion people live at some level of poverty.
See also: Who’s to BLAME? | Why haven’t DEVELOPING countries developed yet?
Whose fault is it if someone is poor? Does the fault lie with the person themselves or is it society that is to blame? this is an important issue for sociologists. it challenges ideas about people’s choices and society’s responsibilities. it can make us think about how much control we actually have over our lives.
Structure and agency
If someone is poor should the blame for their situation rest with them or with society? This is a big issue in sociology and asks us to think about what sociologists call “structure” and “agency”. Structure, or more accurately social structures, are the aspects of life that are beyond the control of an individual, such as the class into which people are born, their gender, their sexuality, and their ethnicity. Agency (taking action) refers to the decisions that people make concerning their life, what they choose to do.
From an agency perspective the decisions, abilities, and the effort that someone puts into life is what shapes his or her circumstances. Sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore from the US, took that point of view in the 1940s. They were interested in why certain people reached particular positions in society. For them, the answer was clear: people’s position in life was the result of their abilities (intelligence, hard work, and other skills) and the choices that they made. The benefits of society (high wages and social status) are therefore distributed to those who deserve them most.
Equal opportunities?
The majority of sociologists, however, see social structures, which are beyond the individual’s control, as responsible for where people end up in life. They would say that the idea of agency assumes that everyone has access to the same opportunities and resources, and therefore any difference in outcome is down to the choices individuals make. However, that is far from the case. People have radically different access to opportunities and resources. The differences in opportunity depend on where someone is located in the structure of society. When society is analysed cert
ain patterns appear again and again: individuals from minority or disadvantaged groups are blocked and frustrated in their attempts to get on in life.
Useful connections
Studies have shown that some individuals have access to much better opportunites as a result of their father’s social position. This means that a person born into a rich family has a very good chance of also becoming rich. It is also rare for a middle-class person, even if they do not do well at school, to slide down the class scale to become working class.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu identified one of the factors to blame for this unequal situation in society. In his work, he stressed the importance of what he called “social capital”, or the valuable contacts that people have who could help them get a good job. People from middle-class backgrounds are more likely to possess the social capital that will help them and their family do well in life. For example, the parents of a middle-class student who is not doing well at school may have a friend who runs a business, and who will help their son or daughter get a job. Further down the social scale that kind of useful social capital is less likely to be found.