Weberian, feminist and New Right explanations of inequality

Overview

Recall questions on Weber's class, status and party, market situation, Parkin's social closure, Weberian views of ethnic inequality, patriarchy and liberal, Marxist, radical and Black feminist explanations, Walby's structures of patriarchy, New Right views, Murray's underclass and dependency culture, and how theory shapes research methods.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Name the three dimensions of stratification Weber identified and explain what each refers to.

   Model answer

   Class is economic position in the market, status is the social honour or prestige a group is granted by others, and party refers to organised groups such as trade unions or political parties that pursue power; crucially, the three can vary independently of one another.

2. 2

   What does a Weberian mean by market situation, and which class groupings did Weber distinguish?

   Model answer

   Market situation is the bargaining power a person brings to the labour market through property, skills and qualifications, and it determines their life chances; Weber distinguished the propertied upper class, propertyless white-collar and professional workers, the petty bourgeoisie of small owners, and the manual working class.

3. 3

   What is social closure, and what are its two forms?

   Model answer

   Social closure, developed by Parkin from Weber, is the way a group protects its advantages by restricting access to them; exclusion operates downwards, as when a profession uses qualifications and licensing to keep others out, while usurpation operates upwards, as when an excluded group organises to claim a larger share.

4. 4

   How do Weberian sociologists explain ethnic inequality?

   Model answer

   They treat minority ethnic groups as negatively privileged status groups whose weak market situation and low social standing reinforce each other: Rex and Tomlinson argued that racism traps many minority ethnic workers in a marginalised underclass with worse jobs, housing and life chances than the white working class.

5. 5

   State one strength and one weakness of Weberian explanations set against Marxist ones.

   Model answer

   A strength is that they account for the growth and internal divisions of the middle class and recognise that status inequalities such as racism and ageism are not reducible to economics; a weakness, pressed by Marxists, is that treating class as individual market position obscures the fundamental division between those who own capital and those who do not.

6. 6

   Define patriarchy and state the central feminist claim about gender inequality.

   Model answer

   Patriarchy is a system of social relations in which men hold power and women are systematically subordinated; feminists argue this inequality is socially constructed and reproduced through socialisation and institutions, not a natural consequence of biological difference.

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