It was interesting to learn that social stratification has been a recently changing field of study. While it was once an area of study only interesting to those in sociology, certain public events, such as the housing crisis of 2008, have transformed it into a multidisciplinary and complicated body of literature. I think this is a great step towards better understanding social inequality and stratification overall. Sociology tends to be an elitist discipline that often values research within its own literature, but now it can no longer ignore the contributions of economists, psychologists, and political scientists when it comes to poverty and inequality. The preface to this book was very convincing in explaining why this anthology is important. I identified the main purposes of this book to be the following (pg. xx):
- Represent the complex diversity of the traditional research – this is incredibly useful for graduate students such as myself, because it means that this book will become a pillar in my future research.
- Give precedence to contemporary research while appreciating the classics – again, very useful since it’s been a while since I took theory…also, it serves as a reminder that research is not a linear process.
- Not really a purpose, but it is important to know that this anthology includes excerpts of the original sources. Grusky and Weisshaar explain that this is not always a perfect process and encourage the reader to consult to originals.
The first part of the reading is an introduction by Grusky and Weisshaar that covers the main questions we ask about inequality. It also covers basic concepts and vocabulary often found in the literature, which I found very useful since I had not been introduced to them before. For example: the difference between nomothetic phenomena and idiographic phenomena – which are the two main approaches to research questions about poverty and inequality. The former tends to generalize and explain types of objective phenomena, which makes me think of a more natural science approach.
The latter is a tendency to specify and explain unique, often cultural subjective phenomena. According to Grusky and Weisshaar, attempting to ideographically explain the dynamics of change in social issues has been a prominent failure in our field (pg. 1). This is disappointing honestly, since sociology attempts to explain human behavior, but it is simply too complex to ever predict with certainty. According to the authors, so many things were unpredictable and sometimes unexplained, such as the resilience to school segregation, the growing gap in income inequality, and the “stalling out” of long-standing gender inequality.
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On pg. 3, Table 1.1 lists the types of assets that are unequally distributed in a society. To understand social stratification, we must ask these questions: how do we determine what is valuable or desirable in a society (or who determines it?); how do we distribute these assets based on the allocation of jobs or occupations?; and what mobility mechanisms link individuals to these jobs or occupations? Other basic concepts, which were covered in class by Dr. Kunovich include the amount of inequality (how much is there and how much should there be), how rigid a system can be (social closure), what ascriptive processed does the system rest on (characteristics fixed at birth), and what is the degree of crystallization (how the rewards line up with occupations) (pg.2-3).
I noticed that the study of social stratification is complex and very structured, however, I could not stop thinking about a simple question that the authors present: why is poverty and inequality still around? As students of sociology, we take in so much information regarding social injustices and the continuous policies and institutions that perpetuate these issues, and sometimes we seem to just conform and accept these truths so nonchalantly; a very “it is what it is” mentality… I’m sure everyone at some point must ask themselves, how do we change this? Why is it still the same?! On pg. 1, the authors answer this question by stating that we “collectively decided not to undertake the well-known institutional reforms necessary to reduce them.” I am looking forward to some of the readings in this book that could possible explain this further.
The rest of this section continues to explain basic concepts of the field, along with historical changes of how we have approached the research. Everything seems straightforward and standard, but I did find an issue with the way that Grusky and Szelenyi explain the difference between the ‘benign narratives’ of the post-war sociological research and the new, ‘less benign’ research on inequality (pg. 23-25). The new research is described as unduly pessimistic and at times, exaggerated, when it comes to modern ideas of inequality. The authors continuously refer to this new research as “muckraking” and scandalous, and my only question is: why? There is no specification about this “new research” but it is obvious that the authors hate it.
How can they compare something when they pin them opposite as “benign” vs. “pessimistic”? These words seem very heavily opinionated, and the only thing that comes to my mind is the newer studies that focus on racial and ethnic perspectives, feminism and gender studies, research done by more minorities in the field, as opposed to usually white researchers. Is this the research they are referring to as “pessimistic” and “unnecessary”? I can’t wait to read them to know what they are talking about.
The next few readings focus on how inequality has changed over time, how it differs across countries, and highlights some possible reasons for current inequality in the United States. The article by Grusky and Weisshaar attempted to consolidate the history of inequality, which was an interesting read, but my only critique was that it was a bit Eurocentric. Although it covered contributions from the Asiatic mode, I would have liked to have seen examples of pre-Columbian America or even African empires that had very diverse and interesting modes of production and complex social stratifications. I know I am biased, but when it comes to historical accounts, Latin America does seem to be often left out of the timeline…
The article by Esping-Andersen and Myles explained the welfare estate and the redistribution of resources. I found the break down of the different regimes to be very convincing in the way that resources could be distributed in a society to reduce poverty. In the Liberal regime we find that there is favor for minimal public intervention, but poverty remains high, very much like in the US. The Social-Democratic regime made me think of Bernie Sanders because it really highlighted a lot of his platform policies.
I was blown away at the simplicity of tackling institutional solutions to solve poverty, and how simple some of the Nordic countries make it seem. For example, Denmark and Sweden having universal childcare and elderly care, which allows for a boost in female labor supply. However, I realized as I read this that part of me gets caught up in an optimistic view of how things should work, but the United States is just so different that things may not be so seamless when attempting to move towards a social-democratic state.
We are so much bigger and diverse, plus we have a unique in-flow of heterogenous immigrant groups and cultures. Although I am still optimistic that we can solve a lot of our poverty and inequality issues, it will not be as easy as some of the Nordic countries make it seem. The last type of regime is the Continental Europe, which include countries with more conservative origins, built around social insurance. They seem to be mostly a mixture of the last two regimes. The only critique I have about this article is that it did not have a clear purpose, or research question, and therefore no real conclusion. I found it to be very educational, but I am not sure if it was meant to teach which of the regimes is best? Or if was meant to predict how the regimes will change?
For the rest of the readings, there seemed to be a common theme: pretax real incomes have been largely stagnant for all but the top earners, and income inequality continues to grow. Reading about the CEO earnings would make anyone angry, and I think the solution proposed by Robert Frank was reasonable. Having the same tax-structure across the board would mean that all top earners would have a higher tax rate. However, that is easy for someone for me to say, I have been poor my whole life… Realistically speaking, I am not fully convinced that his solution is feasible now with the way our political structure protects corporations and defends capitalistic values.
