Led by Max Weber Simulacrum
About this course
The opening theme of the "Understanding Social Structures" component — how societies divide and rank their members, why some have more power, wealth, and life chances than others, and how that inequality is explained and sustained.
Your host is the Max Weber Simulacrum, who gave the most influential modern account of stratification, refusing to reduce it to economic class alone and insisting that class, status, and party are three distinct dimensions of power. The theories unit is led by the Davis & Moore Simulacrum, the functionalist account that treats inequality as a social necessity.
Led by Davis & Moore Simulacrum
The question
Is inequality necessary, exploitative, or patriarchal? You will study the conflict-versus-consensus debate through the functionalist theory (Davis and Moore, meritocracy), the Marxist theory (two-class system, exploitation, false class consciousness), the Weberian theory (class, status, and party), and the feminist view of patriarchy.
Outcome
You can argue the four theories of stratification against one another.
Sub-units
Led by Max Weber Simulacrum
The question
Along what lines does inequality run, and what sustains it? You will gather evidence of inequality across class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, and sexuality — in education, crime, income, health, family, work, and media — and study the factors that shape life chances, including the affluent worker (Devine), patriarchy (Walby), institutional racism, ageism, the models of disability, and homophobia.
Outcome
You can account for a difference in life chances by combining a dimension of inequality with the factors that sustain it.
Sub-units
Led by Max Weber Simulacrum
The question
What does it mean to be poor, and why does poverty persist? You will study absolute and relative poverty (Townsend on relative deprivation), the groups prone to poverty, the culture of poverty (Murray on the underclass), the cycle of deprivation, and the impact of globalisation.
Outcome
You can contrast structural and cultural explanations of why poverty persists.
Sub-units