Change in Lecture This will be an extension of the culture lecture and I will omit the lecture over market and exchanges Groups for the group projects are posted on elearning Culture cont d Statistical Models of stratification Why are societies unequal It s pointing at the differences not necessarily a bad thing Where are these differences y fish BX E y output fish endowment x input B incentive productivity E error or luck Ascription vs Achievement Achievement there s a payoff to hard work effort hard work Ascription something you can t control SES of parents where you re born physical disability demographics In Downton Abbey there s not a lot of mobility When you re born into the families with titles you don t have to work Some societies have bigger B than others Mobility Tables Probability of moving across classes start on x destination on y if 1 0 all the way down if you re born poor will die poor if you re born rich die rich Inequality and Income distribution bell curves distance between rich and poor US has very spread out Sweden has less distance how does distribution affect incentives to work Quality of life in Sweden is pretty good people are able to enjoy leisure Example Compensation at Wal Mart Ratio CEO Worker 1 1850 Costco 1 10 Argument in Defense of Large Pay Tied to the market they value their executives Argument Against Large Pay turnover is less happy worker model Up until 1975 productivity and wages reflection of hard work went hand in hand then wages have been completely flat but productivity keeps rising Average worker not gaining anything from the surge of productivity Gini Coefficient shows inequality between rich and poor OECD countries all bunched up most pretty low US is pretty high starting to rise China is rising Mexico and Brazil have always been pretty high Religion and Economic Systems The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber sociologist argued that there s compatibility between protestantism and capitalism values of individualism and hard work Confucianism values are trust loyalty reciprocal obligations points to the importance of social capital Guanxi in China who you know is how well you do Education formal education plays a key role in society schools individuals learn basic hard skills to function in society Languages math reading science also supplement family s role in socializing the young Also learn soft skills communication etc Informal setting parents family peers Culture in the Workplace Four dimensions hofstede Power Distance How a society deals with the fact that people are unequal in physical and intellectual capacities Low willingness to downplay inequality Denmark Uncertainty Avoidance measures extent to which a culture socializes its members into accepting ambiguous situations and tolerating uncertainty High strong need for rules and regulations relationship between the individual and his fellows within a Individualism vs Collectivism culture Masculinity vs Femininity relationship between gender and work roles High more feminized men Sweden take on more traditionally female roles and vice versa Japan is very high not very gender equal Cultural Change Not a constant always changing Examples Women in US in work culture Japan has moved towards greater individualism in the workplace Sweden didn t always have gender equality Be careful of ethnocentric behavior Behavior that places your culture as more superior to others