Extra Blog : April

The Social Class Structure of the United States

Society is stratified into social classes. Social classes are hierarchical groupings of individuals that are usually based on wealth, educational attainment, occupation, income, or membership in a subculture or social network. 

Key Points:

• The three main social classes that people are aware about are the: Lower, Middle, & Upper Class
• There are variations that include an upper-middle class and a working class
• High-income earners are more substantially educated, have high-status occupations, and maintain powerful social networks
• The "American Dream'  to American society is a meritocratic and class is achievement -based. 
• To sum it up, one's association in a particular social class is based on educational and career accomplishments 

Terms:

• The American Dream - The belief that with hard work, courage, and determination, anyone can prosper and achieve success.
• Social Network - The web of a person's social family, and business contacts, who provide material and social resources and opportunities.
• Corporate Elite - a class of high-salaried stockholders, such as corporate CEO's, who do not necessarily inherit privilege but achieve high status through their career.

Example:  

• An example of someone who achieves the American Dream might be a person who is born to poor parents but is smart and hardworking and eventually goes on to receive scholarships for a college education and to become a successful businessperson. Modern sociologists argue that in the vast majority of cases, people do not achieve the American Dream - instead, people born to poor parents are likely to stay within the lower class, and vice versa.      

Models  of U.S. Social Classes:

• A team of sociologists recently posited that there are six social classes in America. 

1. The Upper Class : 3 % of the population, is divided into upper-upperclass (1% of the U.S. population, earning hundreds of millions to billions per year) and
2.  The lower-upper class (2%, earning millions per year).
3. The Middle Class : (40% of the population) is divided into upper-middle class (14% earning $76,000+ per year) and
4. The lower-middle class  (26% earning $46,000 to $75,000).
5. The working class (30%) earns $19,000 to $45,000 per year
6. The lower class (27% of the population) is divided into working poor (13% earning $9,000 to $18,000 per year) and underclass (14%, earning under $9,000 per year).

•  This model is only a tool for thinking about classes in America but does not fully account for variations in status based on non-economic factor, such as education and occupational prestige. This critique is somewhat mitigated by the fact that income is often closely aligned with other indicators of status.

United States Social Classes

Most social scientist agree that society is stratified by occupation, income, and educational attainment.

• The Upper class has vast accumulated wealth and significant control over corporations and political institutions, and their privilege is usually inherited; the corporate elite consists of high-salaried stockholders, such as corporate CEO's, who did not necessarily inherit privilege but have achieved a high status through their careers; the upper middle class consists of highly educated salaried professionals whose occupations are held in high esteem, such as lawyers, engineers, and professionals; the middle class (the most vaguely defined and largest social class) is generally thought to include people in mid-level managerial positions or relatively low status professional positions, such as high school teachers and small business owners; the working class generally refers to those without college degrees who do low level service work, such as working as a sales clerk or housekeeper, and includes most people whose incomes fall below the poverty line. 

Debates Over the Existence and Significance of U.S. Social Classes

• Many sociologists dispute the existence of class mobility and point to the ways in which social class is inherited. 
• Ex. A son or daughter of a wealthy individual may carry a higher status and different cultural connotations than a member of the nouveau rich or "new money".
• Being born into a particular social class may confer advantages or disadvantages that increase the likelihood that an adult will remain in the social calls into which they were born.
• There is inequality in America, with some people attaining higher status and higher standards of living than others.
• All social classes in America, except for the upper class, consist of tens of millions of people and the examples used are a generalization ; The social classes are so large and feature considerable internal diversity.

Source: Boundless. “The Class Structure in the U.S..” Boundless Sociology. Boundless, 19 Jan. 2015. Retrieved 04 May. 2015 from https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-textbook/stratification-inequality-and-social-class-in-the-u-s-9/the-class-structure-in-the-u-s-75/the-class-structure-in-the-u-s-442-10206/

Blog 19 : Independent Component 2

Independent Component 2
 

Literal

a) I, Natali Valle, confirm that I have completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

b) Two documentaries (Waiting for Superman & Ivory Tower) where two sources I used to:  1) understand documentary style and 2) extract information from. This assisted me in the completion of my independent component 2.

c) Updated log.

d) Mainly I watched different documentaries to understand different types of filming styles. I gathered all my interviews and made them into one long series of interviews. I started shooting a bit of B roll as well as began editing.

Interpretive

This independent was broken into three pieces. The first, watching documentaries to determine which style of documentary I wanted to capture. I am not familiar with film or filming so I believe it is an amateur construction of what a documentary should actually be. It has an abstract theme rather than the typical style of documentary shooting. The second part of my I.C. 2  is actually editing the interviews to construct it into a story line. The third is filming the "B" roll of the documentary. The "B" roll means it is the film used between shots of the main portion of the film.

Applied

This component assisted me with giving me the second answer to my E.Q.  I was able to talk to professionals as well as youth from under served communities to understand whether there was a diffference or defining factor in the lives of those who where high school students. high-school dropouts, college-students, college-drop outs, and college graduates.