Social Inequalities

Social Inequalities

            Sociology introduces the concept that society is who contributes to the evolution of an individual. As an individual now with this in mind, I am better able to understand the environment of my society. The situations and topics that the authors have discussed throughout the quarter have helped give insight into how society can be broken down into classes, cultures, situations, genders, and etcetera; interestingly these subsections of society are the primary base for the creation of social inequalities. I feel that my place in society has been influenced by these inequalities throughout the course of my life.

            Since the start of civilization, the idea of social inequality was evident, however it was not until the sixties that people referred to it which such a name. Karl Marx was one of the first people to hypothesize social inequalities, he created the concept of social hierarchy; he believed that in modern society there would only be two classes, which would be determined by those who own the means of production (bourgeoisie) and the workers of the bourgeoisie (proletariats). Basically he believed that “in bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality” (Marx 24). Steve Lukes discusses this radical view about power in which he talks about how power can be three dimensional, he explains it as such “A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises over him by influencing, shaping, or determining his very wants” (Lukes 27). Lukes is referring to the fact that people in power, the bourgeois, have influenced the workers into believing that they are happy and the bourgeois are looking for their best interests. The only way that the proletariats would be able to stop this maltreatment would be to establish class-consciousness, which would ensure that the workers become aware of just how constricted their life was by the bourgeois.  Marx foresaw that as the bourgeois establish more money and therefore more domination over the workers that they would begin to feel a sense of oppression amongst the masses and revolt against the bourgeois. Now it is important to note that Democracy and Power are contradicting and so this revolution would then create communism, a sort of utopia in which no single power was needed. Marx hypothesized this idea that “communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation” (Marx 25). This idea is the abolition of private property, which rids the idea, that property, is characterized, based on class, meaning that communism will ensure that the laborer exists for the sake of themselves instead of for the sake of the bourgeoisies need to produce more of their property. Private property has a negative connotation in the respect that property of the bourgeois is something social because they have power over the worker not on the actual product being made.

            Marx explicitly identifies class as the primary force for determining social inequalities, however since Marx’s theory emerged, numerous others contributed their own take on other significant factors that build upon the idea of social inequality. Gender is commonly illustrated as a powerful affect in social inequalities. Nancy Chodorow, for example, illustrates the idea that gender division of affective labor is the same as exploitation in capitalism under the owners of the mean of production. As a result from having been raised by a women, a boy tends to undergo a different series of identifications through the course of his life, instead of establishing a personal identification with his mother like the girl does, he instead has a positional identification with his mother. Personal identification is when a child identifies themselves with someone through unconditional love and positive emotional feedback, positional identification on the other hand would refer to when a child must look into the world outside of his family in order to find the necessary particulars that help identify themselves with their gender. A boy undergoes positional identification due to the fact there is an absence of a father figure, he undergoes this identification by watching his mother and “repress[ing] those qualities he takes to be feminine inside of himself, and rejects and devalues woman and whatever he considers to be feminine in the social world.” (Chodorow 181). This identification process of the boy is henceforth done looking at feminine qualities negatively, which creates a feeling of superiority as a male for the boy, which can be proved by Chodorow’s observation that “a boy’s Oedipus complex is directly tied to issues of masculinity and the devaluation of women is its “normal” outcome” (Chodorow 182).

            Building upon this idea of how gender relates to social inequalities, there comes Michael Kimmel in his book Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, which is where sports is used as a symbol of what is considered manly, this would correlate to the idea of positional identity in which a boy finds sports as an outside source for defining masculinity. From personal experience I can testify that as a woman this idea of looked inferiorly upon by men is still evident in today’s society. Growing up in a household that was male dominated, contributed to my likening for watching and playing sports.  Growing up and even now as an adult, I have always gotten better along with boys than girls, particularly because I identified myself with more traits that were considered masculine as Kimmel exemplified by using sports. My closer identification with masculine qualities was insignificant in the personal sense but in society, I was looked upon as being not overtly feminine. I never considered the extent to how differently my male friends saw me from other females; I was always curious to know, however, why I was able to more effortlessly establish friendships with males rather than with females. My friends one day unexpectedly commented on how they felt I was one of the  “guys” in their group which was why they did not share the similar boundaries they had with other females. It never dawned on me until we discussed gender inequality in sociology that my friends had unconsciously been sexist, because they were only able to see me as an equal to them by equating me to a male. In other words, the only way my male friends could treat me with the same amount of respect and admiration as they did with each other was to classify me as a male as well and so this unconscious superiority complex Chodorow discusses when a male begins to masculinize himself is illustrated in this case.

            Unlike in a bar when there are sports, race becomes nonexistent but gender does not, in neighborhoods there is a clear association between race and class. My childhood was primarily spent in South Central, Los Angeles, which was exceedingly poverty stricken and primarily composed of African American and Hispanic citizens. I particularly note the majority of race in my hometown because as a general whole they are minorities in the United States. This is essential because “research has shown that race and ethnicity in terms of stratification often determine a person’s socioeconomic status” (House & Williams, 2000). This is primarily due to social reproduction of inequalities, if generations of families have been in poverty it is quite likely that they will stay in poverty and seeing as racial antagonisms were quite evident in the past, for that reason there still tends to be this correlation with minorities being inferior in terms of money, education, etc. to those in the majorities. Seeing as poverty is also related to crime, it becomes clear that there also becomes attached a generalization that minorities are more prone to criminal activity. MacLeod comments on this in his book Ain’t No Making It, “when Clarendon Heights residents are asked for their address at a bank, store, or office, their reply often is met with a quickly glance of curiosity, pity superiority, suspicion or fear” (MacLeod 6).  It is important to note that although this does not always mean to be the case for every person of that particular race, it is a generalization that becomes inferred through the social constructed concept that minorities tend to lack educational backgrounds which as stated before becomes attached with criminal activity. People tend to get insulted when topics like this are discussed but if I was to compare the place in which I lived in Los Angeles versus where I live now which is primarily composed of Caucasians, there is a drastic difference in the crime rate of the two cities. Where I live currently has a substantially smaller crime rate than South Central, Los Angeles. I could even go farther and make the comparison of where I live now versus where I go to school, La Jolla, California versus Hesperia, California (where I live now) and clearly see how overly implicit the difference is when education is taken into account as well and note that in this particular city Asians and Caucasians are the majority and are considered upper middle class based on the standard of living being substantially higher here than in Los Angeles or Hesperia, California. MacLeod makes the connection that reveals the idea of the place in which you live or attend school is an identifier of your ethnicity; based on my personal experience I can attest there to be some truth in this statement.

            Sociology was primarily created with the purpose of wanting to help establish awareness amongst society. Mills identified a specific term known as sociological imagination in which refers to “the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society,” this concept helps people establish where they may be placed in society based on their experiences throughout their life.  There was this realization in the middle of the quarter in which I saw my view on society was previously limited, I saw society as one whole mass jumbled together and because of this I was unable to distinguish that there was such a thing as differences amongst the masses. This realization brought light on the concept of inequalities, which as a female, minority and lower class citizen I was able to see myself in society with a different perspective. There is this new awareness of the profundity of society as well as not only being able to more clearly identify myself with such inequalities in an labeling type of way but also as something that has contributed to my self characterization as an individual.

Works Cited

Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of

         Gender. Berkeley: U of California, 1978. Print.

Kimmel, Michael S. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York: Harper, 2008. Print.

Lukes, Steven. Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan, 1974. Print.

MacLeod, Jay. Ain't No Makin' It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987. Print.

Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and E. J. Hobsbawm. The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition. London: Verso, 1998. Print.

Thorne, Barrie. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993. Print.