Across the Global South, the realities of urban informality are changing, with implications for how we understand this phenomenon across economic, spatial, and political domains. Recent accounts have ...attempted to recognise the diversity of informality across contexts and dimensions, as well as its everyday lived realities. Reviewing key debates in the sector, and drawing upon the new empirical studies in the papers presented here, we argue for a shift away from seeing urban informality narrowly as a setting, sector, or outcome. We suggest that reconsidering informality as a site of critical analysis offers a new perspective that draws on and extends political economy approaches, and helps us to understand processes of stratification and disadvantage. We seek to highlight the significance of the informal-formal continuum at the same time as challenging this dichotomy, and to explore emerging theoretical and empirical developments, including changing attitudes to informality; the increasing salience of agency; and informality as strategy both for elite and subaltern groups.
Limitations of human capital theory Marginson, Simon
Studies in higher education (Dorchester-on-Thames),
02/2019, Letnik:
44, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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Human capital theory assumes that education determines the marginal productivity of labour and this determines earnings. Since the 1960s, it has dominated the economics, and policy and public ...understanding, of relations between education and work. It has become widely assumed that intellectual formation constitutes a mode of economic capital, higher education is preparation for work, and primarily education (not social background) determines graduate outcomes. However, human capital theory fails the test of realism, due to weaknesses of method: use of a single theoretical lens and closed system modelling, inappropriate application of mathematical tools, and multi-variate analysis of interdependent variables. Human capital theory imposes a single linear pathway on the complex passage between heterogeneous education and work. It cannot explain how education augments productivity, or why salaries have become more unequal, or the role of status. These limitations are discussed with reference to research on social stratification, work, earnings and education.
Although social stratification persists in the US, differentially influencing the well-being of ethnically defined groups, ethnicity concepts and their implications for health disparities remain ...under-examined. Ethnicity is a complex social construct that influences personal identity and group social relations. Ethnic identity, ethnic classification systems, the groupings that compose each system and the implications of assignment to one or another ethnic category are place-, time- and context-specific. In the US, racial stratification uniquely shapes expressions of and understandings about ethnicity. Ethnicity is typically invoked via the term, ‘race/ethnicity’; however, it is unclear whether this heralds a shift away from racialization or merely extends flawed racial taxonomies to populations whose cultural and phenotypic diversity challenge traditional racial classification. We propose that ethnicity be conceptualized as a two-dimensional, context-specific, social construct with an attributional dimension that describes group characteristics (e.g., culture, nativity) and a relational dimension that indexes a group’s location within a social hierarchy (e.g., minority vs. majority status). This new conceptualization extends prior definitions in ways that facilitate research on ethnicization, social stratification and health inequities. While federal ethnic and racial categories are useful for administrative purposes such as monitoring the inclusion of minorities in research, and traditional ethnicity concepts (e.g., culture) are useful for developing culturally appropriate interventions, our relational dimension of ethnicity is useful for studying the relationships between societal factors and health inequities. We offer this new conceptualization of ethnicity and outline next steps for employing socially meaningful measures of ethnicity in empirical research. As ethnicity is both increasingly complex and increasingly central to social life, improving its conceptualization and measurement is crucial for advancing research on ethnic health inequities.
Schools are heralded by some as unique sites for promoting racial equity. Central to this characterization is the presumption that teachers embrace racial equity and teaching about this topic. In ...contrast, others have documented the ongoing role of teachers in perpetuating racial inequality in schools. In this article, we employ data from two national data sets to investigate teachers’ explicit and implicit racial bias, comparing them to adults with similar characteristics. We find that both teachers and nonteachers hold pro-White explicit and implicit racial biases. Furthermore, differences between teachers and nonteachers were negligible or insignificant. The findings suggest that if schools are to effectively promote racial equity, teachers should be provided with training to either shift or mitigate the effects of their own racial biases.
Occupational sorting, the process of individuals actively selecting into and being selected for different occupations, has significant implications for social stratification and inequality. The ...psychometric view of occupational differentials in ability emphasizes the importance of intelligence for occupational sorting, as it acts as a necessary condition to enter and remain in certain professions due to their high cognitive demand. The resulting cognitive stratification of the occupational hierarchy leads to strong associations between occupational mean IQ and sociological measures of occupational status and pay. Past research has been criticized for lack of representativeness and small sample sizes. In this study, we both confirm the psychometric view in a large representative sample and extend it to a set of nine non-cognitive traits. We show that the psychometric view holds (on a weaker level) for multiple non-cognitive traits, and using small-area estimation, we provide precise mean estimates and rankings of intelligence and non-cognitive traits for 360 occupations, including rare professions. Keywords: Social Stratification, Occupation, Non-Cognitive Traits.
•The importance of intelligence for occupational sorting was studied and compared to personality and non-cognitive traits.•Estimates of cognition and non-cognitive traits for 360 occupations were constructed using small area estimation.•The central role of intelligence for occupational stratification, was confirmed.•Similar, but weaker effect were found for non-cognitive traits.
This study examined the interactive effect of ethnicity and e-government use on trust in government and of ethnicity and trust in government on e-government use by means of social inequality ...approaches outlined in Internet sociology studies. The data for the study was obtained from the 2017 Israel Social Survey. It was found that Arabs from small localities with varying levels of trust in government are less likely to use e-government than Israeli Jews with the same levels of trust. Yet they are more likely than Israeli Jews to have some degree of trust in government. Arabs from large localities differ from Israeli Jews in terms of e-government use only when they have some degree of trust in government. However, they do not differ from Israeli Jews regarding the trust itself. The results provide support for the social stratification approach and a justification for treating disadvantaged minorities according to the size of their residential localities.
This article advances the concept of racialized legal status (RLS) as an overlooked dimension of social stratification with implications for racial/ethnic health disparities. We define RLS as a ...social position based on an ostensibly race-neutral legal classification that disproportionately impacts racial/ethnic minorities. To illustrate the implications of RLS for health and health disparities in the United States, we spotlight existing research on two cases: criminal status and immigration status. We offer a conceptual framework that outlines how RLS shapes disparities through (1) primary effects on those who hold a legal status and (2) spillover effects on racial/ethnic in-group members, regardless of these individuals' own legal status. Primary effects of RLS operate by marking an individual for material and symbolic exclusion. Spillover effects result from the vicarious experiences of those with social proximity to marked individuals, as well as the discredited meanings that RLS constructs around racial/ethnic group members. We conclude by suggesting multiple avenues for future research that considers RLS as a mechanism of social inequality with fundamental effects on health.
•Racialized legal status (RLS) is a social position with fundamental health effects.•RLS stems from neutral laws exerting disparate impact on racial/ethnic minorities.•Reviews impact of two RLSs—criminal and immigration statuses—on health disparities.•Identifies individual- and group-level pathways through which RLS impacts health.•Suggests future research on how RLS shapes racial/ethnic health disparities.
HIERARCHIES OF CATEGORICAL DISADVANTAGE MAROTO, MICHELLE; PETTINICCHIO, DAVID; PATTERSON, ANDREW C.
Gender & society,
02/2019, Letnik:
33, Številka:
1
Book Review, Journal Article
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Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many ...often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure.
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