SOCI exam
What are Weber's 3 historical power types
1) Charismatic: Power based on unique traits
2) Traditional: Long standing customs
3) Rational-legal: Following rulesand processes
What did Weber aim to study?
Why and when people obey
What 3 processes did Weber associate with the rise in capitalism
1) Rationalization: Legal and rational approach to authority
2) Secularization: Loss of relgion in authority
3) Disenchantment: Opposition of the traditional system
What did Marx focus on?
The economy, basis of power, and class relations
What are the two social classes defined by Marx
1) Ruling class
2) Working class
What does Marx define as surplus Labour?
Production beyond necessity
How does Marx say the two classes function?
The ruling class exploits the working class to grow their own capital
What is Marx's materialist concept?
Social, cultural, and political values are based on economic relations
What is Gramsci's idea of hegemony?
A system where the lower class is subject to the dominat ideology through cultural domination that makes the working class think they have consented to the rules of the ruling class
What is Gramsci's idea of cultural hegemony?
The ruling class have dominance over a diverse society and make the world view the culture of the ruling class as that of the entire nation
What is Gramsci's idea of counter hegemony?
Alternative ideologies created by mebers of a society, this is essential to challenging capitalism
how does gramsci define civil society?
Part of society not involved in business (ex. coffee shop, friend hangout, etc.)
How does Gramsci define a war of positions?
Ongoing battle between the working and ruling class
How does Gramsci define the sub altern?
Lower class
How does gramsci define organic intellectuals?
Representatives of excluded social groups that speak for their politics and experiences
What does Foucault focus on?
Replacement of physical punishment with punishing the soul. Questions which is worse
What does Foucault say the modern aim of punishment is?
Punish the soul and exercise control, not the body
What 5 forms of power does Foucault discuss?
1) Soverign: From the monarchs
2) Disiplinary: Society controlled through constant surviellence
3) Bio-power: Polices the body through defining what is normal through knowledge
4) Repressive: Violent force
5) Normalizing: Normalizing their own ideals, making people adopt the beliefs of the ruiling class (e.g. I want to be a worker)
What does Foucault define as the Gaze?
Constant view of society to regulate individual behavoir. Never knowing when you're actually being watched
How does Foucault define knowledge as power?
Based on your knowledge you get certain power. Ex. Doctor determine when you're sick.
Within the gaze, how does authority exercise power Foucault?
1) Division and branding - labelling
2) Coersive assignment - treatment based on labelling
Benthams panopticon does what?
Forces people to maintain good behavoir for constant fear of surviellence. Makes it unecessary to use force
What is a key tool of capitalist oppression?
The state
What does Marx believe the capitalist system is based on?
Exploitation
Define class?
Hiearchy based on power, wealth, income, etc.
What does Marx say about the stability of capitalism?
It is unstable due to its contridicting nature
What is Marx's Labout theory of Value?
All economic value is produced by labour
What does Marx define as the basis of class?
Labour as a commodity - something that is sold to ruling class
What does Marx define as the division of labour?
Giving more control to managers/employers
How does marx define exploitation of surplus?
There is a surplus because more is produced than what is needed to reproduce
Who owns the means of production to Marx?
Those with enough money to own private property
What are Marx's 4 ways of alienation? (prickly lamb wanders south)
1) Product
2) Labour
3) workers
4) Self
What did Weber explain in class?
Established more theories of social catagories as the world and economy grew in complexity
How does Weber define class?
Catagory of people sharing similar interests in the market
How does weber define a social class?
Group with similar experiences and sense of unity
What are the two Bourgeoise classes according to Weber?
1) Big
2) Petite
How does weber define the two working classes?
1) Skilled
2) Manual
How does Weber define status groups?
Groups based on honour, character, etc.
What does Weber think inequality in work causes?
Source of conflict based on resentment
What does Gerard Lenski argue?
Apperance of social harmony may be decpetive
What is Dahrendorf's argument of conflict vs consensus and consent versus resistence?
Reaction to class control is either
1) Consent or consensus
2) Restistence or conflict
What does Dahrendorf argue about conflict?
It is built into the capitalist system but can result in positive change
What did Daherndorf believe about the class system?
Post-industrial systems created a complicated class system (over 2)
What did Wright try to uphold?
The 2 class system just with increased complexity
What does Wright define as the three elements of class?
1) Economic control and ownership of the surplus
2) Command of means of production
3) Control of labour
How does Wright define class?
On a sliding scale based on how much control is present. Still onlt believes in the two class sytsem
What class rise is recent?
Rise of the middle class
When are you less vulnerable to exploitation?
When you have more power
What is the fear of falling?
Fear of falling out of the middle class
Why did neo-liberalism rise?
After the economic crash following the golden age.
What are classes built on?
Expliotation
How does neo-liberalism try to make their views be seen as?
Common sense
What is classical liberalism?
A ideology that believes in free market, chill government, autonomy, and political freedom. Against social welfare, taxes, and state involvement
How does neo-liberalism view competition?
defining characteristic of human relations
What does Hayek Believe?
Neo-liberalism. little to no taxes, social services, market tregularions, etc.
How does neo-liberalism and Hayek view unions?
Bad things that distort the market and harm the economy
What ideology believes in a fair, tickle down economy?
neo-liberalism
How does Hayek view inequality?
a result of different skills, effort, and intelligence. Any efforts to stop this are harmful to society
What is Smiths idea of the invisible hand?
The idea that a good functioning market is free from state interference
Where does Smith believe bankrupsy comes from?
Inefficency and individual problems. Those filing shall fix the problem or disappear.
Smith believes it is whos fault when workers cannot find a job?
The workers. They are valuing themselves too high
How does Smith define economic liberty?
Freedom from outside sources
What is rational choice theory?
Assumes that humans are all rational decision makers
What idea does rational choice theory rely on?
Behavoirism. People will avoid punishment and seek reward
Who came up with rational choice theory?
Honans
What does Honans say makes indviduals make rational choices?
Low costs and high rewards
In rational choice theory (Honans), what do all interactions involve?
Some form of risk calculating
What is Margert Thatcher's view on society?
There is no such thing as society, only indviduals striving for freedom and famillies. We are our best selves when we can contribute our wants within the market
In neo-liberalism what is unencumbered markets?
Faith in unregulated markets to do what is best
In neo-liberalism what is deregulation?
Best markets aren't limited by outside forces
What does neo-liberalism believe taxes do to the market?
causes it to shrink and take money from investors
What does neo-liberalism say about free trade?
There should be no outside regulation on trade
T/F neo-liberalism focuses on transfering wealth from the top to the bottom (trickle down)
False. It is transfered from the bottom/middle to the top
What does Piketty aim to do?
measure in equalty through statistical equations
How does Piketty define income?
Flow of money (measured annually often)
How does Piketty define wealth?
Economic resources that are accumulated or inherited. E.g. equity, bonds, investment returns, etc.
What does Piketty define as Beta?
Measurement of inequality between wealth and annual income
Is accummulated wealth higher than annual income?
Yes by 4-6x
What is a place where piketty determines inequality?
Income tax
What is the golden age?
Time after WW2 and the great depression, where social welfare and industrial deomcracy greatly increased resulting in improved living conditions
What is the gilded age?
A time following the golden age (1970s) where stagflation resulted in high inflation and job loss. This caused a large shift towards neo-liberalism. Exacerbated by election of Margerat Thatcher and Ronald Regan
What is the Marsh report?
A report that highly influenced Canada to become a welfare state during the golden ages through social welfare advocacy. This was based on the 3 principals of
1) Full employment
2) Basic social minimum (social insurance)
3) Seperation of child and parent needs through family allowance
What was the Beveridge report?
A report calling for social healthcare that isolated many politicians and became influential for Canadian politics
What paved the way for justifying neo-liberalism?
Economic should of stagflation (high unemployment and high inflation, 20%)
What is the Gini Coefficent?
A measurement of inequality in a distribution
What does a gini coefficent score of 0 mean?
Perfect income equality, everyone has the same income
What does a gini coefficent score of 1 mean?
Perfect income inequality, One person holds all income and everyone else has none
What is thr primary focus/treaching of Piketty?
To prevent inequality, we must start with prevention at the top of the income scale
When did we see the least inequality?
The golden age, social welfare, rapid economic growth
What does the movement towards work equality come from?
Social mobilization and Strong political demand for equal rights
What era is the rise of inequality (modernish)?
Neoliberalism
Economic inequality
Uneven distribution of wealth, income, and political power
Piketty believes what about income and equality?
Montetary distance comes with social consequences beyond money
What are the three outcomes to inequality?
1) Uneven political power/access
2) Uneven wealth distribution
3) Ineven relationships/status
What relationship do determinates of inequality (race, secx, etc.) have with inequality
Symbiotic where one reinforces the other
Describe the role of management
Direct control, technological control, and bureacratic control to regulate all aspects of work
How does management gain compliance?
Consent that is always about control
Define scientific management and who invented it
Taylor
Where work process and flow is studoed and reorganized as a divison of labour
What does the seperation of head from hand mean?
head = conception
Hand = Execution
Seperation of the workers from the managers
Algorithmic management?
Software that is used to hire, train, promote, manage, and control workers
Describe human relations theory
Employee productivity can be increased through positive social bonds in the workplace and acknowledgement of workers as unique people
4 methods employers use to discourage unionization
1) Treat employees as people
2) Promote positive group values
3) Ensure effective supervison
4) Establish effectove organizational conditions
Explain the Hawthorne Experiment
Illumination experiment
found that turning lights up and down increased productivity because workers felt like they were being watched
Productivity decreased when attention faded
What is Hawthrones Illumination experiment similar to?
The panopticon
What is collective bargaining?
A negotiation process between employer and group of employees
When was collective bargaining legitmized in canada?
1940s
What does collective bargaining do?
- Handles work conflict and inequality
- Acknowledges existence of inequality
What is the price of collective bargaining/challenging inequality at work?
accepting hierarchy of power, control, and compensation
What is private unionization?
Accepting private ownership of means of production
what is the SER and PER
Standard employment relation
Precarious employment relation
Who often see precarious labor as their only means of work?
Young, immigrant, and displaced workers
List some characteristics of precarious labour
- temporary
- Unstable
- Low paying
- ununionized
- Insecure
- Felxible
- Without benefial
- Contractual
What has lead to increased precarious work in the last century?
Rise of professional managerial class
Rise of globalization
Devistation of Canadian manufacturing working class
What does precarious work add risk to?
Life
wealth
Status
self worth
sense of belonging
What did Lewchuk do?
Measured and quantified precarity
What did Lewchuk find regarding precarious labor at the end of the 20th century?
General global agreement that markets were in transition
Decline in Secure full-time work
Increase in temporary and insecure jobs
What risk do precarious workers borne according to Lewchuk?
Labour market risks
What did Weil believe?
Supply chains and franchising having created gaps in the workplace
What did Standing believe?
A new class of workers, the precariat: those working precarious labour with few benefits or safeguards
What is the gig economy?
An economy where the dominant employment form is short-term contractual work involving self employment and free lancing
What is the modern gig economy born from
Digital platforms
What is the employment precarity index?
Examination of secuity charcateristics of employment relationships
Quantifies the qualitative
Assesses how secure gig economy employment is and how it effects well-being
What did Lewchuk find regarding the EPI
High numbers of those in SER but its because people are not properly identifying as PER
What does Lewchuk argue about defining and measuring precarious labour?
Permanency and precariousness are not binary catagories and a continuum is better
Who does the gig economy bring together?
Buyer and seller for short periods
What is the debate on the gig economy
are workers employees or contractors
What problems does the gig economy create?
Tension with the regular economy from competition regarding regulation, labour rights and consumer protection
What are Rentier (standing)?
buyers of goods from the gig economy
What are labour requesters (Standing)?
The middle man who recieves income without doing the labour
What are labour taskers (Standing)
Those who respond the the requesters and do the work, often not recongized as actual workers
What did women at work look like in early 20th century?
women worked before and after having children
In the early 20th century what was the reaction to women entering the labour market a lot?
Seen as moral decay and a breakdown of family value
How is the gender wage gap addressed?
State sanctioned pay equity programs and human rights comissions
Product of second wave feminism
Focused on collective bargaining
What is the double day?
Working your paid job then coming home to do domestic labour
How is domestic labour viewed?
Not recognized as legitimate labour becuase it does not produce mometary value
Not recongized work if its out of the labour market
What is feminized labour?
Growing proportion of women in the labout market and a shift towards traditionally female run jobs
Characteristics of feminized labour
- Poor working conditions
- Low pay
- Precarious work
What did labour union for women believe in the 1920s and 90s?
Womens issues risked weakening and dividing the work class and false alliances with feminist movements
What did Fudge and Forest argue?
collective bargaining in Canada systemically worked against women
- directed towards male bread-winners
- legal envoirnment encouraged smaller bargaining units for women-dominated fields
What did Creese Argue?
collective bargaining works for men
- there are male technical careers and female office careers
According to Guard and Bradbury why did male unions agree to equal gender pay?
To stop development of a cheap pool of female labour that can bring down their wages
What did Guard and Bradbury argue?
Male unionists opposed special considerations for women because it was divisive to the working class
Depite equal pay, what do women still strugglr with in the labour market?
attaining leadership
What are some specific issues with women and collective bargaining?
Parental leave
Work family balance
Sexual harassment and member on member disputes
What does the bread winner have to do with collective bargaining
- It is a title made for white men in manufacturing and extraction sectors
- Golden age allowed for this
What do traditional notions on class fail to acknowledge?
How social relations shape class relations
Who are low wage jobs populated by?
Racialized people
What is the Marx perspective on racial inequality
racial differences and exploitation is useful to owners of capital
- Divides the working class
- Racism justifies lower wages
How much less do Black workers make then white on average?
$6
What are some barriers faced by Black employees?
High unemployment
Widened racial gap
Who has the smallest share in of employment industries with fast growing wages?
Black women
Who has higher shares in industries with job losses?
Black men
What is color coded retirement?
Racialized populations have less retirement savings due to job loss, low wages, and precarious work
What is the praire movement?
Praire provinces had a sense of national grievence that they weren't being acknowledged
- lead to the creation of political parties on each side
What is the Quebec nationalist movement
National grievence over being conquered by the French
What does modern increasing inequalities come from?
Polarization in wealth and income, ex. Musk versus a homeless person
What is collective restistance
Restistence and compliance with inequalities, control, domination, survillence, etc.
What did Foucaut believe about collective resistence?
We abandon privacy for those who control us
We are forced to consent to control
What is resistence theory (Gramsci)?
Hegemonic practices legitimize inequalities and pwoer of the ruling class
- People suffer as a result of the rule but it is meant to seem natural
How does capitalism maintain social order (Gramsci, resistence theory)?
Hegemony from dominant class
What is Fordism?
A system of mass production using assembly lines to standardize goods and put less power in the workers
What did fordism follow?
A time where productive knowledge was vested in the worker, unions resisted assembly lines
What grew as the assembly lines grew?
Division of labour
What is the role of managers and workers in fordism?
M: Control, study, and organize the labour process
W: Do repetitive and specific tasks
In Fordism, when workers grew angry with the assembly line and higher wages weren't cutting it what did Management do?
Used persuation and forced workers to consent
- involves the state integrating into their lives
What is trancending Economism?
Moving beyond a narrow view of the economy and embracing other aspects of life such as social or cultural
- Political opinions are not determined by relations of production but popular forces shape the politics we live by
What is Gramsci;s Open Marxism?
Affirmation that the social world is constituted by human practices (Transcending economism)
What is a historic Bloc?
Indicates the way a class combines leadership of social forces in civil society with leadership of production
Gramsci on the transend of economism
It is fueled by need for subordinate groups to move beyond a defensive understanding of immediate needs
What is hegemony for the bourgious?
An achievement
What is needed to change hegemony?
War of positions
How does a war of positions work to change hegemony?
Reforms that prepare subordinate groups for self-governance by creating a counter hegemonic values
What does hegemony signify?
Confirmation of consent
Point of social movements?
Address a social or political grievence from civil society
What are the three components of a social movement?
1) creating indentity and community
- living outside of the hegemony
2) Servicing/advocating
3) Politics that challenge the hegemony
Movement versus formal organization
Movement: Fluid, democratic, non-hierarchial and community-based
Formal: Professional guidence, focused, set way to approach issues
Who is collective bargaining for?
Workers who pay union dues
What is business unionism?
Coverage and representation because of the dues workers pay with set guidlines for how you can organize, strike, dispute problems, bargain, etc.
What is social unionism?
Unions that represent the class that support unionized workers working in a coalition of similar social movements
What did jane McAlevey believe?
Social activist who challenged unions to act more like mobilizing operations. Used a grass roots model she called natural leaders (those respected at work)
What is Jane McAlevey's organic leader?
Those who are respected at work. Important to convince them to join the union as they are more sensitive to needs of workers
Globalization (Held)?
Widening deepending and speeding up of world-wide interconnectedness
Globalism (Robertson)?
compression of the world and intensifyinf of consciousness as a whole
Gloablization (Steger)?
Intensigvation and stretching of world-wide economic relations with large flow of capital mediated by new technology
What does globalism effects ?
Social, work, Political lives and inequalities
Why did modern globalization become popular?
Internet making people feel connected
Older example of globalization?
Slave trade, English explores/colonizers, fur trade
What is the main source of globalization?
Seeking new markets and cheaper/less regulated sources of labour
What expands as a capital does?
Inequalities
What does globalization add to the measn of production?
Another layer where you control or sell your labor to the means of production. Where you live determines your work options
What is division of labour?
Labour being broken into trades to increase producitivity
What is a competitive advantage in the division of labour?
The region you live in may have different, climate, skills, etc.
How is divison of labour put into place?
Scientific management
What did Durkheim do to the division of labour?
Turned an economic issue into a social issue
What is organiz solidarity (Durkhiem)?
We are interdependent on others in some way
We have our own trade but purchase from others
What is the supply chain?
Network of labour and production proces where the different steps of the job are broken up and outsourced
- Goal is a finished commodity
How do most companies function in the supply chain?
Various sized firms and ownership structures rather than directly owned hierarchies
Why does outsourcing usually happen?
When standard activities can be purchased cheaper elsewhere or for specialized functions
What is a global value chain (GVC)
international production sharing
How do global value chains (GVC) function?
Production is coordinated and controlled by a corporation that is functionally and geographically fragmented (all over the world)
What does the global value chain (GVC) make trade about?
No longer about international trade of finished goods rather trade in immediate goods associated with geographic fragmentation
How does GVC-Global Value chain structure exploitation?
Standardized and low skilled work is likely performed in developing counties with low wage, by women
What does the lead firm control (In GVC)
Controls management with headquarters often in wealthy northern countries
What has the rise of globalization caused with the GVC?
Allowed companies to shift their productiion to cheaper, less regulatd work zones
What is corporate social responsibility?
A debate on whether lead firms are responsible for human rights and labour abuse down the supply chain
ex. over 1000 Bengla Desh workers killed in a Joe Fresh supply chain
What happens when employers have a large pool of workers to choose from?
less of a reason to protect workers rights
What do fragmented production processes create?
A disconnect between geography of public regulatory structures and location of production
What is the race to the bottom?
Governments continue lowering labour standards and wages to be more desirable in the job market - when they raise their standards they often lose investments
What is a market of virtue?
Companies creating codes of conduct and social responsibility programs where firms must issue reports on labor related practices
What is the political dimensions on corporate social responsbility?
All gov is expected to operate along the same lines but there is little capacity to regulate globally so it occurs at national and provincial levels
Who has arisen to regulate and monitor markets through fair trade, supply chain transparency, etc.
Politics and NGOs
What does the rise of private sector regulation correlate with?
Trend of private governance Which produces concerns on compliance and effectiveness