class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # SOC 2208 Discussion Section ## Week 2 ### Xuewen Yan ### 2020-01-31 --- # Housekeeping 1. **Corrections** on reading reflection requirement: + Cover **all** required readings for a whole week + Answer **all** the questions (topic, main argument, convincing or not, your question) for each reading--in paragraph form or not. * **No** skipping (Two late submissions allowed from Week 3) * Late submissions for Weeks 1 and 2: make up until the end of this Sunday. 2. Check **Student Center** to make sure you're in the right section (203 or 208). 4. Absences: I allow **two** section absences--excused or unexcused, and you **don't** have to tell me about them. If you need **more** absences, email me. 4. Slides available after section on my Rpubs page: http://rpubs.com/xwueyan ---  --- # Class discussion: Definition? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality --- # Class discussion: Definition? Gradational inequality: - People or positions differ in where they fall on a continuous gradient of a valued good (from high to low) Social class: - Distinct and identifiable groups - *Not necessarily hierarchical (optional content) --- # Class discussion: Definition? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality 2. **Marx: class** --- # Class discussion: Definition? Marx: class - 3 criteria: production-based, relational, exploitative - 2 antagonistic classes: Proletariat versus the bourgeoisie (capitalists) --- # Class discussion: Definition? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality 2. Marx: class 3. **Weber: class** --- # Class discussion: Definition? Weber: class - Economic position in the labor market - Weber's 3P's of stratification: + Market Position, economic (class) + Prestige or honor, cultural (status group) + Political power (parties) --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality 2. Marx: class 3. Weber: class 4. **Status group** --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? Weber: Status group - Social honor or prestige - Common lifestyle, consumption practices --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality 2. Marx: class 3. Weber: class 4. Status group 5. **Social closure** --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? Weber: Social closure - Process by which a group maximizes its advantages by restricting access to privileges and resources (“rights”, in Weber’s terminology) --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? 1. Gradational inequality vs class based inequality 2. Marx: class 3. Weber: class 4. Status group 5. Social closure 4. **Exploitation** --- # Class discussion: Definition? Author? Marx and neo-Marxian (Wright): Exploitation - The welfare of the advantaged group is caused by, or causally dependent on the appropriation of the fruit of labor of the disadvantaged group --- # Section activity Kahoot quiz - Go to kahoot.it (http://kahoot.it/) on your phones or computers. - Put in the game PIN - Input a nickname. This will be displayed on the screen! --- # Class discussion: explain each sentence in everyday language. Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker [...] They distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labour by turning it into a torment, they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process [...], they transform his life into working-time, and his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital. But all methods of the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation, and every extension of accumulation becomes, conversely, a means for the development of these methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low,must grow worse. – Marx, *Das Kapital* 1867