Example Of Intergenerational Analysis

Do you think you can become more successful than your parents? Based on my parents and grandparents’ lack of education and opportunities I believe that I will indeed become more successful. I will apply sociological concepts such as inequality, power, authority, and class to explain my event, all tying into the conflict theory approach. I will explain how my example demonstrates intergenerational mobility and I will also apply a theoretical perspective to analyse the situation. Based on the opportunities I have, compared to the ones my parents had gives me an advantage to tower above them in the social hierarchy. My grandparents were very unfortunate due to the fact that in their village they didn’t have a traditional school. The teachers …show more content…
My grandparents’ determination to put their children through school benefited tremendously. Correspondingly, my parents became apart of the “proletariat” as stated by Marx. My parents secured a better education and an extensive social capital that their parents could not, eventually ascending in the income hierarchy. Relating to human capital investment, I will experience mobility due to the fact that I have put more time into my education and skills, thus opening more doors for future jobs as well as access to a broader social capital. A lot of evidence endorses the human capital relationship between schooling and income (Baer 1999). Hence, my example is connected to intergenerational …show more content…
Karl Marx’s conflict theory is the best sociological attitude to take when analyzing my specific event. The idea of inequality can be related to the situation because my parents did not have much education, ensuing low income and wealth. Natural talent and effort are important aspects when determining income however, education matters (Brym and Lie 2012). The idea of human capital gives an advantage to those that have a higher schooling, enabling authority and power over those that don’t. This is what arose in my parents’ village; those with education become more authoritative. In Marx’s argument relating to class, my parents were the proletariats once they came to Canada and settled down as immigrants. Evidence of class is present in the event because the struggle to compete with others for a higher social position was clear. Conflict theory highlights the pressure in existing social arrangements and the ability of the pressure to cause social change (Brym and Lie 2012). To conclude, conflict theory can be used to analyze my