Consequences Of Social Inequality Research Articles

Operationalizing distribution as a key concept for public sphere theory. A call for ethnographic sensibility of different social worlds

AbstractThis article takes issue with public sphere theories’ lack of focus on the consequences of social inequality. Citizens divide the work of following politics between them, and we need a cohesive conceptualization of such divisions, through and beyond today’s intrusive media and with attention to social inequalities. Instead of ideals of fully informed individual citizens, I propose we take the empirical fact of distribution of citizens’ public connection as a starting point and anchor our theoretical ideals in the social world with an “ethnographic sensibility.” Doing so facilitates an operationalized concept of distribution of citizens’ public connection into four elements: issues, arenas, and communicative modes, which citizens variously rely on over time. With such an operationalization, we can assess when and for whom the distribution of public connection goes too far and disfavors certain citizens. This helps bring public sphere theory beyond the conundrum of our societies’ paradoxically uninformed citizens.

Expelled from Eden: How human beings turned planet Earth into a hostile place.

The focus of this article is the mind-body problem in mainstream modern psychology examined from a decolonial perspective. The construction of the idea of the separation of mind and body is a seminal point of division of labor in the history of modern capitalism. This division perpetuated by the mind-body dualism idea was necessary to justify the enslavement of some and employment to others. Colonization processes have had profound importance on the mind, feelings, behaviors, and political settings. Throughout its history, the subject treated in EuroAmerican psychology has sought to deal with the mind-body problem as an individual, a separate entity, not as part of the psyche as a whole. A new perspective where the mind and body play an intertwined role is necessary considering subjectivity in a cultural-historical approach. The subjective level is defined by the unification between symbolical and emotional cultural processes. The body (emotions) operates in conjunction with the culture and, when amalgamated, constitutes what we entitle as subjectivity. An ontology defines the assumptions that lie under a cosmovision and sustains a way of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting with oneself, others, and the whole living world. It is what defines the real. The trajectory of this paper is an invitation to shed light from a decolonial perspective on social inequality concerning the present crises of humanity. The consequences of social inequality expressed today indicate the difficulties created by the dichotomy of mind and body.

The social stratification of time use patterns.

Time use is both a cause of social inequality and a consequence of social inequality. However, how social class stratifies time use patterns is seldom studied. In this paper, I describe the time use patterns in the years 1983 and 2015 by social class, andgender in the British context. Using sequence analysis methods, I show how the diversity of time use patterns in British society is socially stratified. I find that 13 clusters capture the heterogeneity of time use patterns and that these clusters are associated with social class, gender, and day of the week. These clusters capture patterns of paid and unpaid work schedules, as well as leisure patterns. The results show that men have experienced a reduction of the standard Monday to Friday 8-hr working day, while women have experienced a general increase in this type of schedule. On the other hand, patterns of domestic working days have reduced for women and increased for men. Important differences exist in paid and unpaid work patterns between social classes. Working-class women have experienced an important increase in shift work on weekends. They are also much more likely to be doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to upper-class and middle-class women. Working-class men are more likely to experience non-working days and leisure days on both weekdays and weekends and are more likely to be doing shift work. They are also more often doing unpaid work on weekdays compared to men in upper-class households. Patterns of childcare indicate that all families have increased their childcare time. Men in upper-class households in particular have experienced an important growth in childcare time between 1983 and 2015. I conclude by discussing how time use can further our understanding of social stratification.

Examining the functions of women’s violence: Accommodation, resistance, and enforcement of gender inequality

The present study contributes to the literature on the consequences of social inequality through a qualitative examination of the social functions and meanings of violence in the lives of 20 marginalized women. All of the women in the sample were at some point court involved and were victims, as well as perpetrators, of violence. Findings indicate a need to expand the extant theory to address enforcement (i.e., strengthening) of status level, social inequities (e.g., gendered power disparities), adding to the accommodation/resistance paradigm. Consistent with scholarship conceptualizing violence as contextual and gender as a socio-structural variable, results support the need to better understand the ways in which contexts of gendered inequality – and inequality in general – may promote processes through which survivors of violence accommodate, resist, and enforce oppression. Implications for research and practice related to social inequality are discussed.

The political distinctiveness of gays and lesbians: explaining protest actions across sexual identities

ABSTRACTThis study explores the relationship between people’s sexual identities and their tendencies to join political protests. When analyzing American National Election surveys from 2012 (n = 3813), gays and lesbians were more than twice as likely to protest as heterosexuals. To explain the increased activism of gays and lesbians, this study applied Patrick Egan’s theories of political distinctiveness to the ANES data. After running a set of hierarchal logistic regressions, the link between sexualities and protesting became insignificant when issues of age, education levels, friendships circles, group memberships, and political ideologies were introduced into regressions. This suggests that gays and lesbians protested more often because they are younger, more educated, integrated into political networks, and are more likely to notice the negative consequences of social inequalities than heterosexuals.

SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN EDUCATION ANALYZED WITHIN VARIOUS THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

The expansion of education and the mass inclusion of generations in certain levels of education have not reduced inequality in education. There have still been numerous causes and forms of social inequality, with far-reaching consequences. The consequences of social inequalities in education are very complex and are manifested in the form of reproduction of social inequality, that is, the self-reproduction of social stratification and the reproduction of economic inequality. Scientists working in various fields deal with the clarification of the problems of social inequality in education and everyone can, from their own standpoint, attempt to discover the basic causes of these inequalities so as to overcome them. In paper we have shown four current theoretical approaches to the problem of social inequality in education: the functionalist theory, radical theory, theory of educational capital and theory of cultural deprivation. Every approach from its own standpoint tries to indicate the relationship between the educational system and social structure, as well as the possibility of overcoming certain social inequality. Based on the analysis of the basic tenets of various theoretical approaches to inequality in education conceptualized the initial hypotheses as the foundation for the functioning of the educational system in the future, based on the principles of meritocracy.

Persistence of social inequalities in modern welfare states: Explanation of a paradox.

Social-epidemiological explanations of health inequalities usually take the existence of social inequality as a given and ignore the fundamental questions of why social inequality exists in the first place and why it is so persistent. I review here theories of the explanation of social inequality to identify the processes and/or structures responsible for its persistence. This paper is a review of the relevant sociological literature. The sociological literature suggests that what persists over long periods of time is not a specific manifestation of social inequality but a 'meta-phenomenon': the fact that there are different social positions, that these social positions give access to different levels of resources in some graded way and that the distribution of individuals over social positions follows rules that create inequalities in the opportunities for achieving a more advantaged social position. The durability of social inequality in this generic form can then be understood from the persistence of the underlying mechanisms and processes - for example, humans are driven by self-interest, while most objects of their striving are in short supply, therefore a struggle for rewards is present in all societies; humans are unequally endowed, therefore some are more successful in this struggle for resources than others; and the inequalities resulting from these individual level actions are structurally fixated through the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, various societal institutions, and cultural factors. The sociological literature suggests that some mechanisms producing and perpetuating social inequality are more 'benign' than others. Health inequalities may be more than a consequence of social inequality and may play a more profound part by amplifying social inequalities.

The Conflict Paradigm in Sociology and the Study of Social Inequality: Paradox and Possibility

INTRODUCTIONConflict theory is one of the major paradigms used by sociologists to make sense of the social world. All sociology that takes as its object of study the processes by which social groups compete with each other for scarce resources such as power, wealth, and status, or the inequalities that result from these competitions, falls within the conflict paradigm (Collins 1990).Conflict sociology constitutes a substantial portion of all contemporary sociological research. An examination of the six 2013 issues of American Sociological Review, the American Sociological Association's flagship journal, reveals that approximately 75% of the articles published in this journal fall within the conflict paradigm (31 out of 42, by my count), and many other sociology journals continue to document the dynamics and consequences of social inequality. Marx's writings on the relations of production in capitalism, and his thesis that historical change is a product of the conflict between economic classes gave conflict theory its initial form. However, sociologists have since extended the basic structure of Marx's theory to many other groups in competition in addition to those defined by the relations of production. For example, Weber's classic treatment of status stratification and structures of domination extended Marx's basic model of group competition over resources to include dimensions of social esteem and power. Contemporary conflict sociology continues this tradition by studying the dynamics of a variety of group inequalities such as race, gender, sexual orientation categories, as well as inter-organizational competition (Collins 1975).There is much at stake in social inequalities. Conflict theory impels us to recognize that every dimension of social structure can be conceptualized in terms of winners and losers, and social conflict often causes disastrous and tragic consequences for the losers in the social struggle. People are tortured, mutilated, and incinerated as a consequence of social conflict; they are also shunned, humiliated, exploited, and otherwise systematically shortchanged by the social structures they take part in. Social conflict induces the worst behavior of human beings toward each other. This harm is a necessary consequence of the maintenance of stratified social structure, as social interest groups seek to protect and extend their own privileges while minimizing those of their competitors, and the potential for great harm is exacerbated in industrial societies with access to weapons of mass destruction.This is the essential insight of conflict sociology: social conflict and inequality are fundamental to social structure. Yet at the same time, efforts to combat social inequalities by conflict sociologists and policy makers have largely been limited to ex post facto attempts at writing equality into social structure; the liberal welfare state is the archetypal example. This produces a paradox, in which social conflict and inequality are understood to be a necessary consequence of social structure, and yet efforts are made to write equality into social structure, both in the form of actual resource transfers, and in the kinds of policy recommendations offered by conflict sociologists. The irony of this position is brought into high relief when attempts to alter social structure to reduce inequalities are met with stiff resistance by those who benefit from those inequalities: Attempts at ex post facto resource distribution - managing social conflicts and their resultant inequalities after the inequality has already manifested - ultimately reproduce the conditions that create the inequality in the first place by reproducing the conflict of interest between those who benefit from social structure and those who are disproportionately shortchanged by it. Ex post facto resource redistribution can potentially mitigate some of the inequalities that arise from social conflict, but it fails to address fundamental questions concerning how and why inequalities are built into social structure. …

Representações Sociais de Família no Contexto do Acolhimento Institucional

The aim of this study was to identify the social representations of professionals who compose the network of support and assistance to children and adolescents in shelter institutions. The participants were five subjects members of a multidisciplinary team. For data collection was used the semi-structured interview. Data were analyzed from the proposal of thematic-categorical content analysis which allowed the construction of three categories: family concept; professional practices and the state’s role in assisting families. The analysis revealed the existence of two social representations; a family characterized by conflict and blamed for the problems of children and adolescents; and an ideal and harmonious family. These representations are reference for the actions of professionals who aim to guide families based on the idea of family restructuring, reconciliation and harmonization, neglecting the sociohistorical determinations and consequences of social inequality in the analysis and intervention with family groups. Keywords: social representations; family; children; adolescents; institutional sheltering.

Naar een analytische stratificatiesociologie

One of Sociology’s main questions focuses on the causes and consequences of social inequalities. We argue that Sociology does not adequately address this question, due to two interrelated problems. First, scholars have neglected the distinction between stratification in the economic domain (class) and stratification in the cultural domain (status). Second, the dominant variable-based approach in stratification research mainly results in statistical instead of theoretical explanations. Hence, research does not adequately demonstrate whether and how class inequalities and status inequalities underlie 1) economic inequalities, 2) intergenerational reproduction of social stratification, and 3) various repertoires of thinking, feeling, and acting. In order to solve these problems, we develop an analytical-sociological approach to the study of social stratification. We illustrate the added value of this mechanism-based approach by critically reflecting on the findings of extant studies on social stratification, and we discuss how it informs future research.

Reaching Conversation Through Play: A Qualitative Change of Activity

IntroductionNonclassical psychology, based on Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical conceptuali­zation, differs from other approaches by proposing that through the help of a sig­nificant other and by acting upon culture's instruments, the mind is developed. By highlighting culture's role on building higher human mental processes, becoming a human being is a likelihood but not a certainty of Homo sapiens sapiens. This likeli­hood is derived from the social division of labor (Leontiev, 1978a; Oliveira, 1993, Rego, 1995; Vygotsky, 1989).As Zinchenko et al. (2013) exposed, Vygotsky's theory proposed new concepts and paradigms of psychology, enabling progress in our way of perceiving and ac­ting on maladaptive functioning (Quintino-Aires, 2012). Maladaptive functioning is not caused by the lack of abilities to acquire culture but rather by the lack of practical opportunities to self-develop, which, in turn, are a consequence of social inequalities (Bourdieu, 1974; Marx, 1844; 1985; Quintino-Aires, J., 2006).Vygotsky's cultural-historical approach studies the human conscience, which is defined as an unfinished process and not a product of a phylogenetic evolution (Vygotsky, 1925/1999). This approach is characterized as a co-construction, which initially stems from biological necessities and motives and evolves through action and reaction into a culturally specific context.According to Leontiev (1978a), if culture demands the individual to act upon cultural tools, human conscience will evolve in the following way: from the stage of an elementary sensory psyche (sensorial consciousness), to the stage of the percep­tive psyche (perceptive consciousness), passing through the stage of animal intellect (elementary mental processes), until reaching human consciousness (higher mental processes).Human consciousness is neither a ready-made cultural product nor a spon­taneous development in the individual at birth. Transitioning between the dif­ferent stages of conscience and activity is not a natural or spontaneous process. The process results from the effect of human activity on culture that has its own objective laws in labor and social relations. Despite this objectivity surrounding the construction of human consciousness, subjectivity exists in the way humans acquire new necessities, means, motives and modus operandis; i.e.,, that is, human consciousness is as mutable as cultural instruments in a given historical time and context (Bock, 2001).This idea is supported by Jomskaya (2005), who contended that personality and human consciousness problems can be assessed using neuropsychological analysis because the mind, which is not an abstract entity, and has concrete and objective brain connections.Becoming a person and accessing psychological needs produce results from the construction of internalized systems, which are transferred from social rela­tionships to personality. Because human consciousness emerges as an external and effortful process, psychotherapists can facilitate this function (Quintino-Aires, J., 2006).Despite differentiating us from animals, human consciousness is a develop­mental stage that not everyone attains; it is not a necessary and predictable human feature because it is primarily a historical co-construction that is culturally medi­ated, allowing subjectivity (Vygotsky, 1925/1999; Quintino-Aires, 2012).The present article describes the development of a child's consciousness through play from a psychotherapeutic perspective. In this approach, play as well as con­science are not understood as an innate and spontaneous process. On the contrary, play is a construction, similar to every other human possibility, which means that it becomes a likelihood in the individual's ontological development through culture. Culture, in its turn, is immersed in a historical context and provides certain instru­ments to which the individual will have different possibilities to interact, access and integrate, depending on the historical context. …

Friendship as a Reason for Equality

One arguably unwelcome consequence of social inequality is that it impedes friendships between persons of unequal status. The central aim of this essay is to identify the circumstances in which friendship gives people reason to reduce status inequality in society. I start by assessing the impact of inequality of status on friendship by focusing on its adverse effect on the friends’ similarity. Next I discuss the claim that if people of upper status would ‘uplift’ modest‐status people to their rank for the purpose of making them apt for friendship, this would reduce inequality in society. Assisted by J.S. Mill’s arguments for equality between the sexes, I then identify the circumstances in which people of upper status have reason to seek to equalize people of modest status so as to make them apt for friendship with them. Having shown that friendship does not generally give reason to introduce equality of status I close by arguing for the opposite view: equality gives reason to encourage friendship as a replacement for less egalitarian forms of relationship.

THE LAST LAST WAVE

Hurricane Katrina was a horrible tragedy. Rather than reprising the obvious pitfalls of governmental response or the dire consequences of social inequalities, however, I pose a series of questions. In particular, I seek to highlight the blind spots and silences that the media frenzy generated. These range from the fate of the Native Americans and the complexity of New Orleans' racial history to the explanatory adequacy of the dominant narrative and the unreflective premise of the reconstruction effort. The precarious state of nature and civilization demands a way to think and act beyond short-term palliatives.

Social Inequality and the Politics of Production: Identifying Potential Supporters of Economic Democracy

Race, class, and gender are the major bases of social inequality in contemporary America. In this study I investigate the consequences of social inequality on “socialist” ideology. Through a descriptive group analysis I identify who is most supportive of economic democracy. National survey data are employed to measure public opinion toward nationalization and workplace democracy. Such “politics of production” seek to redistribute control of the means of production, representing a fundamental challenge to class relations. Incorporating analysis of variance, I test for group differences in attitudes. Class position is operationalized by Wright's (Wright, Erik Olin, 1978, Class, Crisis and the State. London: Verso) contradictory class locations model. Race is found to be the most important basis of attitudes toward economic democracy. Class location and gender are critical in shaping Latino attitudes, but are largely irrelevant for African Americans. Despite class and gender effects, the analysis highlights the relative conservativism of whites. The mobilization potential of social movements advocating economic democracy is discussed. Given my findings and recent historical developments, the implications for workplace democracy are considered.