SOCI4320 Social Stratification

Course Description

This course is entirely online and is offered through the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. It is designed to teach you how to look at the various levels of inequality around you critically, analytically, globally and within a historical perspective. I hope that our discussions will provide the beginning of a period of time full of inquiry and desire towards positive social change and justice. I am looking forward to a great semester together. I am sure we shall make the best of it.

Course Required for: Sociology Major and Minor elective, Child and Family Studies Major.

Course Credits: 3

Prerequisites: Introduction to Sociology, SOCI1301

Student Learning Outcomes

By the time you are through reading the material, investigating web sites and discussing the various issues, you should have learned how to look at the world critically. Thus, upon completion of this course you should have developed the ability:

  1. To recognize how sociologists define the concept of social stratification and the role ideology plays in supporting any system of social stratification.
  2. To analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, and global forces on the creation and perpetuation of social stratification.
  3. To define the differences between the two macro-sociological paradigms, structuralfunctionalist (Davis-Moore) and social-conflict (Karl Marx) on social stratification.
  4. To recognize the continuing importance of ascriptive factors – i.e. ancestry, race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. – in determining an individual's class (income or wealth) placement in the United States and globally.
  5. To define the distinction between absolute and relative definitions of poverty.
  6. To recognize the role of multiculturalism and diversity in the U.S. and globally.
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