Introduction to Sociology/Stratification/Jaehyeon Park

1. Summary

The articles says what is stratification that express unequal status that is decided by various social factors.  Based on Max weber’s idea, sociologists define SES in 3 ways that are

power, property, prestige. The origin of sociological inequality is transition that is hunter/gatherer to horticultural/pastoralist. Because of new division of labor, the surplus product is came up so some people accumulated some properties through these products.

Social inequality is persisting because of some reasons. The authorities protects inequality or system, culture teaches that we should accept inequality about our societies and people accept their social status that is from socialization. And the judicial systems protect inequality our unequal social system. These are source that persisting unequal stratifications.

From these stratifications, there are some perspectives like justify stratification or it is harmful our societies.

And many theories try to why world’s inequalities are becoming more serious.

2. Interesting things

I read book that name is “the age of greed”, the book said why world’s inequality is more becoming serious. So since I have read that book, I have been interested about social inequality. When I read this article, the content what I caught my eye was the persistence about social inequality. Interesting point was techniques can make persisting inequality easily for example, in past the property’s type is solid body but in present age, the property is intangible like credit card or beat coin, so we press button and we can inherit properties to our son.

Through this process, I thought about ‘gold spoon’ that is newly-coined in korea.

3.     Discussion

http://www.m-economynews.com/news/article_print.html?no=14103

In korea, social inequalities are serious so there are newly-coined words that are

‘gold spoon’ and ‘dirt spoon’. The ‘gold spoon’ is that people who have rich parents and‘dirt spoon’ is opposite. And I have a question about it. Even though our society’s inequalities become more serious, still many people say even though ‘dirt spoon’, if we effort more thanothers, we can evade ‘dirt spoon’. But the gap is becoming bigger, and the system don’t considerate ‘dirt spoon’ anymore. What do you think about this?