SOC101: Introduction to Sociology
Week 9_Part 2
Selim Reza, PhD
Associate Professor of Sociology
Department of Political Science and Sociology
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Cultural capital and social mobility
• French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1988) has examined the importance of family background to social
status, but his emphasis is on the cultural advantages that parents can provide to their children.
• For social status, the most important factor is the transmission of “cultural capital,” or the cultural advantages
that being from a “good home” confers.
• Wealthier families: Afford to send their children to better schools, an economic advantage that benefits the
children’s social status as adults. Parents from the upper and middle classes: Mostly highly educated
themselves and tend to be more involved in their children’s education—reading to them, helping with
homework, purchasing books and learning materials, and encouraging their progress.
• Working-class parents: Concerned about their children’s education, but they lack the economic or cultural
capital to make a difference.
Class differences
• There are no sharply defined boundaries among the classes, and no real
agreement among sociologists about where the boundaries should fall.
Poverty
• In defining poverty, a distinction is usually made
between absolute and relative poverty.
• Absolute poverty means that a person or family simply
cannot get enough to eat. People living in absolute
poverty are undernourished and, in situations of
famine, may even starve to death. Absolute poverty is
common in the poorer developing countries.
• In industrial countries, by contrast, relative poverty is
essentially a measure of inequality. It means being poor
as compared with the standards of living of the
majority. It is reasonable to call a person poor in the
United States if he or she lacks the basic resources
needed to maintain a decent standard of housing and
healthy living conditions.
• Working poor—In USA, people who work at least 27
weeks a year but whose earnings are not high enough
to lift them above the poverty line.
Global inequality
• Globalization—the increased economic, political, and social interconnectedness of the world
• More global billionaires than ever before?
• Even as globalization has created a growing number of billionaires, it has also resulted in growing inequality.
• The top 1 percent possesses more of the world’s wealth than the remaining 99 percent (Credit Suisse, 2016).
• The United States, by itself, accounts for fully a third of the world’s wealth; yet within the United States,
vast inequality also exists: The richest 1 percent of U.S. households accounts for 42 percent of all the wealth
in the country (Saez and Zucman, 2016)
Case study
• Globalization has produced opportunities for unthinkable wealth
but also widespread poverty and suffering.
• Consider Mossammat Rebecca Khatun, a young woman who
sewed clothing in the Rana Plaza industrial building in
Bangladesh, often laboring 13 hours a day, six days a week, for
weekly earnings unlikely to exceed $11.
• Rebecca, and thousands like her, made clothing for major
European and U.S. brands and retailers. When Rana Plaza
collapsed on April 24, 2013, 1,137 people died and thousands
were injured.
• Rebecca was one of the lucky ones: She survived, buried alive for
two days before rescuers reached her. But she lost her right foot
and her entire left leg, and she still suffers from constant pain.
Rebecca’s mother, who worked in the same building, was not so
fortunate: Her body was never found (Parveen, 2014).
• Billions of workers such as Rebecca are being drawn into the
global labor force, many working in oppressive and unsafe
conditions that would be unacceptable, if not unimaginable,
under U.S. labor laws. And these are the fortunate ones.
• Those outside the global economy are frequently even worse off.
Dependency theory
• Dependency theorists like Gunder Frank (1969), Harrison
(1988), Emmanuel Wallerstein (1972) argue that
development and underdevelopment are the aspects of
the same system, the world capitalist system.
• Understanding economic underdevelopment
Andre Gunder Frank
• A dependency theory is one which states that less
developed countries are poor because they allow
themselves to be exploited by the developed countries
through international trade and investment.
• Theories predicated on the notion that resources flow from
a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a
"core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense
of the former. It is a central contention of dependency
theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones
enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the
world system.
World Systems Theory
• According to this theory, the world system comprises four overlapping
elements (Chase-Dunn, 1989):
1. a world market for goods and labor;
2. the division of the population into different economic classes, particularly
capitalists and workers;
3. an international system of formal and informal political relations among the
most powerful countries, whose competition helps shape the world economy;
and
4. the division of the world into three unequal economic zones, with the
wealthier zones exploiting the poorer ones.
Solutions in the dependency theory?
Criticisms of dependency theory
• Dependency theory has been criticised by free-market economists.
• Corruption: State-owned companies have higher rates of corruption than
privately owned companies.
• Lack of competition: By subsidising in-country industries and preventing
outside imports, these companies may have less incentive to improve their
products, to try to become more efficient in their processes, to please
customers, or to research new innovations
• Sustainability: Industries reliant on government support may not be
sustainable for very long, particularly in poorer countries and countries
which largely depend on foreign aid from more developed countries
Common criticisms of both theories
• Both modernisation and dependency theory make the mistake of
treating LDCs as homogeneous (i.e. as having the same
characteristics.
• Both theories also make the mistake of treating capitalist
societies as homogeneous and consequently fail to acknowledge
that there are different types of capitalism and cultural reactions
to it
Common criticisms of both theories
• Finally, Foster-Carter (1976) accuses both theories of presenting the
relationship between LDCs and the West in terms of conflict or ‘them
versus us’.
• For example, modernisation theory sees LDCs as ‘backward’ societies that
‘need’ our help to develop, whilst dependency theory sees ‘us’ as
exploiting ‘them’ for cheap labour and raw materials. Foster-Carter (1976)
argues that this disguises the similarities that exist between LDCs and the
West.
Any questions?