The Causes of Social Exclusion
Social exclusion refers to inequality in society, where individuals or
groups may be cut off in involvement with the wider society. Social
exclusion can take a number of forms. An individual or group may be
excluded due to their age cohert, gender, race, educational
background, neighbourhood, class and more. A class in social terms can
be defines as a large scale grouping of people who share common
economic resources which strongly influence the type of lifestyle they
are able to lead. (Gidden, 2001 p.282) There are mainly three types of
classes in society today, the upper class, the working class and the
underclass. The underclass population being structured at the bottom
of society.
In 1962, Mydral first described the underclass as being unemployed,
but twenty years later, a New York journalist named Ken Auletta (1982)
argued this view. Ken said that the underclass is a group of poor
people who were not included in society due to dependency on state
benefits, denial of work ethics, failed morality and rejection of
family norms. Muncie J (1999). People who are likely to commit street
crimes and be involved in urban riots also come into this group.
Observers may say that the underclass is a group of society whom are
not involved in production work or those that have been excluded from
the labour market systematically. The young and homeless may be
referred to as the underclass, though some may bring the black
population that are dependent on state welfare into this category. The
poorest groups and individuals in society have been marked out as
being dangerous classes and social outcasts. Illeg...
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Bibliography
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http://www.malcolmread.co.uk/JockYoung/crimeandsocial exclusion.htm
Sumner, William Graham. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883.
One social problem that has caught my attention is racial inequality. Racial inequality refers to the racial advantages and disadvantages among different races. These might be shown in the appropriation of riches, influence, and life openings stood with individuals in view of their race or ethnicity, both noteworthy and cutting edge. These can be viewed therefore of noteworthy abuse, imbalance of legacy, or general partiality, particularly against minority bunches. Race inequality is not a new issue, just an issue that has been swept under the rug. It was more of a problem during and after segregation, but is reportedly no longer exist.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
For example, the caste system in India where the “Dalits” or “outcastes” hold no power whatsoever because they were born that way. Nowadays, social stratification is maintained through education, the difference between level of education (degrees of high school, college, and university) can determine a person’s job, there income and thus, social status. Education can also affect individual’s mindset, their political standing, the abilities to do specific works. This helps establish a gap between those of middle class and those of working class. Poverty in America society is defined in two ways: Absolute Poverty and Relative Poverty. Absolute poverty is the inability to sustain oneself with necessary livelihood (food, water and shelter) while relative poverty is living under minimum accepted standard (poor housing condition, polluted water and food…). Both receive minimum amount of money and are consider lower classes of the
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And poof-he was gone" (Usual Suspects). Today's devil is not a physicla being, but a metaphorical one. That of inequality on a worldwide scale. Although people would like to think that social inequality has been all, but destroyed in modern society it is still featured heavily within our media. Social inequality is the process of society limiting or harming a group’s social status. Prejudice can be based on class, race, and gender. It exists in all levels of media and reality. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hunger Games show classism while The Little Mermaid and Antigone display sexism. Racism can be seen in The Hotel on The Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Black Like Me.
Social stratification is seen everywhere within the United States and around the world. As discussed in lecture, there are two types of stratification systems, and both are prominent in the United States. The first type is achievement based, which depends on a person’s wealth and accomplishments (Wadsworth). In the film, “People Like Us,” this system is presented. A teenage boy is embarrassed of his mother and his family’s social status, so he hides is social class from his friends. The second system is ascription-based stratification which has to do with what an individual is born with. The school that was interviewed and observed in “People Like Us,” prove that the family you are born into plays a huge role in popularity, and the group of friends you choose to surround yourself with. Another example in this film was the WASP label. The man they interviewed, explained that you are
Racial Discrimination is a practice where one is treated less favorable due to their race or characteristics associated with he/she race. Within the United States there are many causes of were race matter within society, and unfortunately still does. Although it may not be obvious people still judge others by what they are and what they look like. Racial discrimination is a bias practice that is done everyday. Within this study it was able to point out what exactly leads to those to enable in such thoughts and practices. To be able to do this researchers look upon ones personal life aspects such as point of view, behavior, and environment, which was able to predict how likely one, is to be racial discriminative towards others. Using race a systematic way of life, it is heard for older generation to get out the mentality of looking pass skin color. Although times have change within American society issues such as race will never change.
Have you ever wanted a nice house or ability to do something you can’t do or couldn’t do before? According to studies and actions, race, power, and privilege prove to be a big part of people’s relationships with each other and their institutions about others. These can explain the reason why segregation exists among people and how it affects us all. It also may affect institutions, or organizations for a purpose. Power and privilege does shape the relationships people have with each other as well as institutions because segregation is increasing, segregation hurts social mobility, and it creates stereotypes among people.
All societies have social stratification to some degree, stratification is split into three different types of system. Class is the system that is most common in most modern societies. Social class is individuals grouped in terms of their occupation, income and wealth. This type of system is based on economic factors only and tends to be ‘open’, meaning social mobility is possible and people are free to move between classes with no legal barriers. This could be because the individual has achieved this, for example, Lord Sugar has achieved his social class through
Social class can be defined in a variety of ways. As Alexander Hamilton once said, “all communities divide themselves into the few and the many”. To elaborate on Hamilton’s words, social class is what divides society into different rankings based on several factors. Amongst these factors are income, wealth, occupation, personal prestige, association, socialization, power, class consciousness and social mobility. As a result, these are the factors that define us as human beings in regards to society. A person’s well being is overall, heavily dependent upon this system of stratification in that it helps decide who gets what and the quality of the things that a person is receiving. This concept is defined as life chances developed by sociologist
It also involves not being able to participate in economic, social, political or cultural activities available to the majority of people in a society. Social exclusion affects the standard of living of individuals as well as social cohesion and equity (www.poverty.ac.uk 2013).
The class system ranks people by their economic position (Larkin, 2015). In America, we use the class system. There are many things that influence what class you are in. These include family, job, education, race, and gender. While family does play a role in which class you are in, it is not the most significant influence. The most significant things are education and job. If someone was born into a lower class, they have a greater change of moving to a higher position in a society and in some of the other social stratification systems. This system allows for the greatest amount of social mobility (Larkin, 2015). A person can move up in this system, as well as down. Someone might move down in the class system because they lost their job and no longer make the same amount of money they did before. There are negatives to this stratification system as well. The class system can be marked by unequal access to goods, services, and life options for its
Throughout United States history, power of the upper class has been maintained by assigning “different” people a lower, less desirable, place in society, predisposing them to social inequalities. Social stratification creates a system of social classes in which people born into a specific class have different “life chances” (Macionis 28). These classes are somewhat maintained by the fact that people tend to “take care of their own,” meaning that members of the upper class generally favor other members of the upper class and offer opportunities for advancement in society to those they feel most similar to (Doran). People from lower socioeconomic classes generally experience less life opportunity, have increased poverty and therefore have increased health issues, increased crime, decreased education, and decreased job opportunities (Macionis 38-39) These people are also often politically alienated, and therefore also lack the appropriate government influences to change their current status (Macionis 39).
Kerbo, H. R. (2012). Social stratification and inequality: class conflict in historical, comparative, and global perspective (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Through out this course we have learned how the lives that we live and the person we are is impacted by a number of dimensions. These dimensions include the economy, discrimination, lack of resources and the availability to good education. These dimensions hold a lot of weight in our lives and most of them we have no control over. For some people unfortunately, they innately inherit certain disadvantages ranging from where their family comes to the color of their skin or even the neighborhood they were born into. Those factors are uncontrollable and yet still deeply effect the quality of their life. Not only do these factors have an impact on us as children they have a presence over us all the way into adulthood.