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| Question | Answer |
| Social Stratification | The structuring of inequalities between groups in society, in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards. While all societies involve some forms of stratification, only with the development of state-based systems did wide differences in wealth and power arise. The most distinctive form of stratification in modern societies is class divisions. |
| Structured Inequalities | Social inequalities that result from patterns in the social structure. |
| Slavery | A form of social stratification in which some people are literally owned by others as their property. |
| Caste | A social system in which ones social status is held for life |
| Class Systems | A system of social hierarchy that allows individuals movement between classes. The four chief bases of class are ownership of wealth, occupation, income, and education. |
| Class | Although it is one of the most frequently used concepts in sociology, there is no clear agreement about how the notion should be defined. Most sociologists use the term to refer to socioeconomic variations between groups of individuals that create variations in their material prosperity and power. |
| Income | Money received from paid wages and salaries or earned from investments |
| Wealth | Money and material possessions held by an individual or group |
| Means of Production | The means whereby the production of material goods is carried on in a society, including not just technology but the social relations between producers |
| Capitalists | People who own companies, land, or stocks (shares) and use these to generate economic returns. |
| Surplus Value | The value of a workers labor power, in Marxist theory, left over when an employer has repaid the cost of hiring the worker. |
| Status | The social honor or prestige a particular group is accorded by other members of a society. Status groups normally display distinct styles of life-patterns of behavior that the members of a group follow. Status privilege may be positive or negative. Pariah status groups are regarded with disdain or treated as outcasts by the majority of the population |
| Pariah Groups | Groups who suffer from negative status discrimination-they are looked down on by most other members of society. The jews, for example, have been a pariah group throughout much of European history |
| Contradictory Class Locations | Positions in the class structure, particularly routine white-collar and lower managerial jobs, that share characteristics with the class positions both above and below them. |
| Upper Class | A social class broadly composed of the more affluent members of society especially those who have inherited wealth, own businesses, or hold large number of stocks (shares) |
| Middle Class | A social class composed broadly of those working in white-collar and lower managerial occupations |
| Working Class | A social class broadly composed of people working in blue-collar, or manual, occupations. |
| Lower Class | A social class comprised of those who work part time or not at all and whose household income is typically lower than 17,000 a year |
| underclass | A class of individuals situated at the bottom of the class system, normally composed of people from ethnic minority backgrounds. |
| Social Mobility | Movement of individuals of groups between different social positions |
| Intergenerational Mobility | Movement up or down a social stratification hierarchy from one generation to another |
| Intragenerational Mobility | Movement up or down a social stratification hierarchy within the course of a personal career |
| Exchange mobility | The exchange of positions on the socioeconomic scale such that talented people move up the economic hierarchy while the less talented moved down |
| Structural Mobility | Mobility resulting from changes in the number and kinds of jobs available in a society |
| Absolute Poverty | The minimal requirements necessary to sustain a healthy existence |
| Relative Poverty | Poverty defined according to the living standards of the majority in any given situation |
| Poverty Line | An official government measure to define those living in poverty in the United States |
| Working Poor | People who work but whose earnings are not enough to lift them above the poverty line |
| Feminization of Poverty | An increase in the proportion of the poor who are female |
| Homeless | People who have no place to sleep and either stay in free shelters or sleep in public places not meant for habitations |
| Kuznets Curse | A formal showing that inequality increases during the early stages of capitalist development then declines, and eventually stabilizes at a relatively low level, advanced by the economist Simon Kuznets |
| Culture of Poverty | The thesis popularized by Oscar Lewis that poverty is not a result of individual inadequacies but instead the outcome of a larger social and cultural atmosphere into which successive generations of children are socialized. The culture of poverty refers to the values, beliefs, lifestyles, habits, and traditions that are common among people living under conditions of material deprivation. |
| Dependency Culture | A term popularized by Charles Murray to describe individuals who rely on state welfare provisions rather than entering the labor market. The dependency culture is seen as the outcome of the "paternalistic" welfare state that undermines individual ambition and peoples capacity for self-help. |
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