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Essay / Beyond JD Vance's Story 'Hillbilly Elegy' I didn't know it existed. In his story, Vance not only focuses on his own family crisis, with his mother's addiction, poverty and domestic violence, but he also moves to the population level to highlight the social problems within his community and between mountain people and foreigners. . The author wrote comprehensively while using data and applying sociological perspectives to support his arguments. I admit that without this sociology course, I would never have read this book. Still, I'm glad I did it. To write my sociological essay on this book, I will use class stratification to illustrate my arguments. The reason for this is simply the obvious class issue present in Vance's community. But what is class stratification? A dictionary-based definition would be the hierarchical or vertical division of society according to rank, caste, or class, which would be a bit too general. Yet, in sociology, class stratification has a more explicit definition that relies on divisions within our society based on access to important resources. For example, in Hillbilly Elegy we have on one side the people of Appalachia, the lower classes living in a deprived neighborhood with meager resources and on the other side the upper classes already living in rich neighborhoods with more resources. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayKarl Marx, the father of communism, was a philosopher and sociologist who introduced a major theoretical perspective in sociology known as social conflict theory. This theory focuses on how inequality contributes to social differences and preserves these power differences. Conflict theory's analytical view of class stratification is that it perpetuates inequality and injustice. Conflict theorists attempt to raise awareness of inequalities, for example that a rich society can have so many poor members by drawing on the work of Karl Marx. Since Marx's time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-yielding businesses, factories, and land while the proletariat consisted of workers who performed manual labor to produce goods. Unfortunately, today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that strained labor relations between employers and employees persist. A perfect illustration of this inequality is shown in the difficult lives of Scots-Irish families who were coal miners and metal workers who desperately tried to make their way to prosperous living conditions by migrating north for better opportunities. work. Moreover, unlike functionalists who believe that the different strata are necessary to maintain social order and that class mobility is possible for everyone if one works enough. But how hard do you have to work before you achieve upward mobility? If we're honest, the chances of that happening are slim. Conflict theorists argue that class stratification is maintained to prevent those at the top from having to share prestige and privilege. I remember it. (Vance J., 2016, p. 9) JD Vance begins his story this way not to indicate his tragic childhood but to encourage readers to havea more sympathetic understanding towards people who, like him, have lived or still live in such conditions. However, JD Vance wants to show that he found a way to achieve upward mobility despite being statistically labeled a failure due to the failure of his ancestors to achieve this. Yet the community he loves still suffers for the simple reason that even though he grew up in that community and was poor like he says, he still had more social capital than most people there. . There are different types of poverty: absolute poverty, relative poverty, private poverty and subjective poverty. For example, he cited in his memoir: "As the manufacturing center of the industrial Midwest emptied, the white working class lost both its economic security and the stability of home and family life that accompanied it . » (Vance J., introduction, 2016, p. 18) This demonstrates perfectly absolute poverty, that is to say the lack of the basic needs required for a healthy life. In this world, difference often gives rise to stereotypes and prejudices. Likewise, having a culture different from that of the society in which one lives is born from ethnocentrism. Vance says that the highlanders are synonymous with poverty because the white working class is seen by the white upper class as white trash, which signifies the shame of the white races. Unfortunately, this is a sad truth; Appalachia is poor. Why then? “Although the country faced the Great Recession that shook our nation's economy, where people struggled through a long and extremely high season of unemployment, it was the lower classes who felt it most acutely. 'impact." They were already poor and, theoretically, after this chaotic event, they were left without government assistance. Their situation therefore became worse because they were stereotyped as xenophobic simply because of their strong cultural values and traditions. The reason is that the system was always planned this way to maintain the order of class stratification. As a result, their descendants inherit their poverty because even the education system fails to prevent poverty from taking hold in these areas. Children, who are the future, were doomed to failure, simply because their families were at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder and their teachers gave them the palpable feeling that they would never make it. (Lannamann, 2016) Then most end up quitting and hope to work in the famous Armco or other big steel companies. “Public schools are so bad that the state of Kentucky recently took control of them. Nonetheless, parents send their children to these schools because they have little extra money, and the high school fails to send its students to college with alarming consistency. Moreover, for most, achieving a higher standard of living has become an unrealistic dream. This is why most give in to deviance and despair. “Federal housing policy has actively encouraged homeownership, from Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act to George W. Bush's Home Ownership Corporation. and “As jobs disappear in a given area, falling home values trap people in certain neighborhoods.” » (Vance J., chapter 4, 2016, p. 143) As a result, many people are trapped by this law and unable to leave these poor neighborhoods to find better opportunities, because it is expensive. “For many, part-time work is the only thing they have access to because businesses around the world are going bankrupt and,?
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