Chapter 8, Global Stratification

1. Chapter 8, Global Stratification Key Terms

2. social stratificationThe hierarchical arrangement of large social groups based on their control over basic resources. • life chancesMax Weber's term describing the extent to which persons within a particular layer of stratification have access to important scarce resources.

3. social mobility The movement of individuals or groups from one level in a stratification system to another. • intergenerational mobilityThe social movement experienced by family members from one generation to the next.

4. intragenerational mobilityThe social movement of individuals within their own lifetime. • slaveryAn extreme form of stratification in which some people are owned by others.

5. caste systemA system of social inequality in which people's status is permanently determined at birth based on their parents' ascribed characteristics. • class systemA type of stratification based on the ownership and control of resources and on the type of work people do.

6. social exclusionProcess by which certain individuals and groups are systematically barred from access to positions that would enable them to have an autonomous livelihood in keeping with the social standards and values of a given social context.

7. modernization theoryLinks global inequality to different levels of economic development and suggests that low-income economies can move to middle-and high income economies by achieving self-sustained economic growth.

8. dependency theoryGlobal poverty can at least partially be attributed to the fact that the low-income countries have been exploited by the high-income countries. • core nationsDominant capitalist centers characterized by high levels of industrialization and urbanization.

9. semiperipheral nationsMore developed than peripheral nations but less developed than core nations. • peripheral nationsNations that are dependent on core nations for capital, have little or no industrialization and have uneven patterns of urbanization.