1. How do property, power, and prestige affect your personal social class? According to Marx’s conflict perspective in what social class do you belong and why?
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Under the mainstream views of most sociologists as originally discussed by Weber, the property, power, and prestige that one has are what determines their social standing within society. Property (or wealth) is one significant point within someone's social class since it is the control of the property which allows them to gain benefits for themselves. Secondly is the concept that Weber described as …show more content…
Within modern society, however, the ideas within the works of Alger regarding how hard work can improve one's class standing within society is relatively flawed in terms of its assumptions. This is because hard work alone is by no means an automatic way for one to elevate themselves in terms of their social class since hard work does not necessarily result in comparable amounts of improvements in one's class standings as the two are not automatically correlated. For example, as a young worker, I am (like many others) engaged in menial jobs which often require more labor than that of pro athletes like Tom Brady. However, despite the fact that I may be working harder or longer than such an athlete, they still enjoy better social standing as their wealth, power, and prestige are greater. In addition to the lack of automatic correlation, another aspect that also is considered is the fact that there are other inherent factors which hinder the Horatio Alger myth. For example, a female might be able to be work very hard and outperform her male counterparts in terms of economic productivity, but due to sexism, she would receive a much lower amount of compensation. This would result in her ultimately being hindered by an inherent nature which she posses (her gender) that would limit her work ethic's ability to raise her social class. Granted in many cases the notion that hard work can increase one's social standing is true by the virtue that it allows one to accomplish tasks which due increase their standing. Such examples could be a hard working single mom who works two menial jobs in order to have a middle-class family rather than living in poverty as the hard work (shown as by having multiple jobs) would result in more income (which would help raise the consistent standing by
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Under the mainstream views of most sociologists as originally discussed by Weber, the property, power, and prestige that one has are what determines their social standing within society. Property (or wealth) is one significant point within someone's social class since it is the control of the property which allows them to gain benefits for themselves. Secondly is the concept that Weber described as …show more content…
Within modern society, however, the ideas within the works of Alger regarding how hard work can improve one's class standing within society is relatively flawed in terms of its assumptions. This is because hard work alone is by no means an automatic way for one to elevate themselves in terms of their social class since hard work does not necessarily result in comparable amounts of improvements in one's class standings as the two are not automatically correlated. For example, as a young worker, I am (like many others) engaged in menial jobs which often require more labor than that of pro athletes like Tom Brady. However, despite the fact that I may be working harder or longer than such an athlete, they still enjoy better social standing as their wealth, power, and prestige are greater. In addition to the lack of automatic correlation, another aspect that also is considered is the fact that there are other inherent factors which hinder the Horatio Alger myth. For example, a female might be able to be work very hard and outperform her male counterparts in terms of economic productivity, but due to sexism, she would receive a much lower amount of compensation. This would result in her ultimately being hindered by an inherent nature which she posses (her gender) that would limit her work ethic's ability to raise her social class. Granted in many cases the notion that hard work can increase one's social standing is true by the virtue that it allows one to accomplish tasks which due increase their standing. Such examples could be a hard working single mom who works two menial jobs in order to have a middle-class family rather than living in poverty as the hard work (shown as by having multiple jobs) would result in more income (which would help raise the consistent standing by