Sociology 4035 Social Stratification

Required Readings:

Gilbert & Kahl, chapters 5 and 6

K. Newman, FALLING FROM GRACE, chapters 1, 2, 3

Study Questions

1. Parents' occupational experiences affect the values parents inculcate in their children. Explain and give examples.
2. Kohn's studies of the connections between social class, parenting styles and socialization identify important differences in socialization patterns. How did he label these patterns? Describe each one, giving examples, and explain their importance for the study of stratification.
3. Does class shape education and marriage choices? How? Why?
4. Compare and contrast middle class and working class marriage style. Are these styles relevant to understand the connections between social class and the reproduction, over time, of gender stratification? Why?
5. Marriage patterns within the working class are challenged by the widespread dissemination, thorugh the mass media, of middle class values about intimacy. Why are these values a source of conflict? What do these conflicts tell you about class differences in gender relations?
6. Define succession and mobility. Which one is more prevalent in the U.S. today? Why?
7. What are the major conclusions about U.S. that can be derived from tables 6-1 and 6-2 in your text?
8. Do men and women have similar mobility patterns? Why?
9. Define circulation or exchange mobility.
10. Define occupational or structural mobility.
11. Define Reproductive mobility.
12. Define immigration mobility.
13. Define intrageneretional downward mobility. Acordding to Newman, how widespread is that kind of downward mobility in the U.S.? Why? Discuss at least five structural determinants of this phenomenon such as occupational change, workers' displacement, the business cycle, the characteristics of post industrial society, deindustrialization, etc.
14. Discuss the main causes of managerial downward mobility and its main effects upon the managers, examining their coping patterns, survival strategies, and the ways in which the meritocratic ideology affects their interpretation of the causes of their plight and their assessment of their possibilities for regaining their lost social and economic status.
15. Discuss the main effects of managerial downward mobility upon the family. How are marriages and parent-child relations affected? How does this situation affect children's lives and expectations for the future? What are the pathologies of downward mobility?