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Higher Education

Sociology, 4e: Chapter 18

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

According to Weber, ________.
a) power is the capacity to realize one’s will despite the resistance of others
b) power of money is socially negotiated and only has value because people agree that it does
c) in human history, different staples have been used to represent value instead of paper and metals
d) power is under constant negotiation or challenge
e) all of the above

Question 2:

Which of the following is NOT one of the functions that the state performs?
a) It is the only institution whose officials have the right to tax people.
b) It can assault people through the police and military.
c) It can permit or force people to commit murder when conscripted into military service.
d) It can choose where people live based on their income.
e) It can set policies and laws governing personal behaviour.

Question 3:

In exchange for ________ that grant(s) rights and privileges, people agree to follow and support the institutions of the state.
a) credentials
b) citizenship
c) laws
d) military service
e) licenses

Question 4:

State power is ________.
a) largely contingent on whether or not people recognize it as legitimate
b) founded in its ability to use violence legitimately against those who oppose its leaders
c) based on whether or not other states, social groups, and organizations recognize its legitimacy and do not challenge its claim to hold power over its citizens
d) based on its ability to restrict the ways individuals conduct business and their personal and love relationships
e) all of the above

Question 5:

States emerged as one of the many transitions related to the Industrial Revolution. Which of the following was NOT one of these transitions?
a) As societies became larger and more urbanized and work became more specialized and mechanized, older forms of social order became unworkable.
b) Peasants challenged the traditional authority of aristocracies.
c) Land ownership, which was once the epitome of material power, was replaced by capital and money as symbolic forms of material power.
d) Divine and hereditary rights, which formed the fundamental bases for power in feudal societies, were questioned as families began to marry outside of ethnic and religious lines.
e) The dominance of churches and other religious institutions was challenged by science.

Question 6:

________ enabled power to be exercised through a staff abiding by impersonal practices and procedures.
a) The modern state
b) Rationality
c) Bureaucracy
d) The stratification system
e) The vertical mosaic

Question 7:

With which of the following statements about power would Marx NOT agree?
a) Those who owned and controlled the means of production have exercised the most power in human societies.
b) In the industrial era, those who owned machinery and factories—the proletariat—wielded much power over the workers that kept them running—the bourgeoisie.
c) A person’s power is contingent on her class position or her relationship to the means of production.
d) Other institutions that comprise a society, like the state, religion, family, and the education and legal systems—the superstructure—also reflected and sustained the power of the dominant class.
e) The subordinate class operated under a false consciousness, which masked the true reasons why elites held power, which was because they controlled or owned the means of production.

Question 8:

With which of the following statements would Weber NOT agree?
a) Most societies are stratified and access to material resources is an important determinant of that order.
b) Those who owned and controlled the means of production have always exercised the most power in human societies.
c) People’s capacity to participate in the economy, to produce goods or services in exchange for income, ultimately shaped their life chances.
d) Material power flows from class, status, and party.
e) Material power resides not only in the ownership of the means of production but also in the possession of other material-related assets.

Question 9:

________ argued that the post-WWII US was ruled by a higher circle of corporate, military, and political leaders. They held power because their controlled the economy, army, and state that made up the means of power.
a) John Porter
b) Max Weber
c) Lorne Tepperman
d) C. Wright Mills
e) Antonio Gramsci

Question 10:

With which of the following statements about Canadian society would John Porter (1965) NOT agree?
a) Canadian society is a vertical mosaic whose own power elite was comprised of political, economic, and cultural leaders from the charter groups.
b) Charter groups, whose heritage is linked to Canada’s English and French ‘founders’, used their material and other advantages to sustain their power and hold subsequent migrants to Canada in an entrance status.
c) Non-charter groups earned lower incomes for their labour, held less prestigious positions, had fewer educational opportunities, and had less access to the state bureaucracy and political system.
d) The privileged position of charter groups has been challenged by other European ethnic groups.
e) There has been little change in the class and ethnic composition of the elites who controlled various power structures between 1931 and 1961.

Question 11:

________ predicted that the global proletariat would eventually experience conditions so dire that they would develop a class consciousness and overthrow the bourgeoisie-dominated capitalist system that so aggrieved them.
a) Max Weber
b) Karl Marx
c) Antonio Gramsci
d) Emile Durkheim
e) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno

Question 12:

________ theory highlights how crucial material assets are for launching successful challenges to power.
a) Frame alignment
b) Breakdown
c) Resource mobilization
d) Solidarity
e) Power-balance

Question 13:

Resource mobilization theorists such as John McCarthy and Mayer Zaid (1977) noted that ________.
a) crowds and feelings of anger and injustice are sufficient to motivate people to start or join in collective action to challenge existing power structures
b) in order to sustain mobilization and generate change, groups have to draw upon and rely on various resources
c) power of partisans of change must be greater than the power of authorities in order to challenge existing power structures
d) relative deprivation is sufficient to motivate people to start or join in collective action to challenge existing power structures
e) a collective sense of injustice grows when people experience widespread social and/or psychological breakdown

Question 14:

According to ________, objects, ideas, symbols, and activities associated with “high culture,” such as opera, are more highly valued in society than things affiliated with “pop culture,” such as fast-food restaurants, and people who have access to, control over, and familiarity with high culture tend to have higher status than those knowledgeable about pop culture, which can be used to enhance a person’s power.
a) Herbert J. Gans
b) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
c) Pierre Bourdieu
d) Antonio Gramsci
e) Raymond Breton

Question 15:

Josee Johnston and Shyon Baumann (2009) observe that ________.
a) people who embrace recent trends in organic/local/fair trade foods come from a variety of classes
b) most of the people who embrace recent trends in organic/local/fair trade are white and affluent
c) we cannot distinguish the privileged from other based on their food choices
d) most people are knowledgeable about organic/local/fair trade foods
e) food choice is an insignificant status marker

Question 16:

According to Bourdieu, ________ capital is a resource that fosters social relationships and the privileges and obligations that one can draw from them.
a) cultural
b) human
c) financial
d) social
e) social network

Question 17:

Putnam (2000) claimed that ________.
a) the US was experiencing increasing rates of participation in social clubs, which he interpreted as an indication of the continuing importance of civil society
b) fewer people were acquiring and cultivating the social capital necessary to sustain an effective political community
c) there was an increase in people’s access to the bridging social capital that voluntary associations fostered
d) it is important to foster the growth of bonding social capital, which is essential to the unity of North American society
e) all of the above

Question 18:

Lipset (1991; 1964; 1963) observed ________.
a) high rates of union membership in Canada as compared to the US
b) Americans tended to be more conservative and supportive of tradition and collective politics than Canadians, owing to America’s history of commitment to loyalist traditions
c) Canada was born of rebellion
d) Canada has a history that fostered a culture of individualism that discouraged collective responses such as unionism
e) Canadian attitudes are not significantly different from those of Americans

Question 19:

Alvin Toffler (1994) in A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age, argued that ________.
a) the new “Knowledge Age” came about because communication technology, most significantly the Internet, liberated knowledge from its physical environment and led to a democratization of power that would shake up the old authority structures
b) access to the new technologies is limited to the world’s most materially-privileged populations
c) control over the production and distribution of new technologies has, with the support of most governments, remained in the hands of huge private corporations
d) new technologies actually sustain, even strengthen, existing power arrangements, allowing the most materially powerful people and private interests to determine who possesses and uses technology and in what sorts of ways
e) the new network technologies allow for interaction among people in boundless communication space

Question 20:

Olzak (1983) and Nagel and Olzak (1982) observed that ________.
a) the shift in cultural and material conditions among the francophone population fostered ethnic solidarity with Anglo groups
b) as the Catholic Church came to play an increasingly smaller role in provincial affairs, and as Quebec experienced the Quiet Revolution, the province witnessed unprecedented educational attainment, middle-class wealth, and urbanization among francophones
c) Quebecois nationalism grew when Anglo groups gained economic superiority over the francophones
d) colonial and post-colonial grievances associated with self-identity are a necessary means to mobilization
e) all of the above

Question 21:

In a comparative-historical analysis of the revolutions in China, France, and Russia, Theda Skocpol (1979) ________.
a) traced the impetus for revolution in each case to the incapacity of existing state structures to meet or resolve crises arising in the international realm, from war, or economic troubles
b) argued that whichever subordinate groups ended up exploiting situations and fostering revolution depended on the relationships that had been conditioned by the state institutions in crisis
c) argued that democratic state institutions do not always foster peace by permitting everyone access to the state so they can resolve group conflicts in an orderly manner
d) found that the elite power-holding groups in these countries define who has legitimate citizenry in ethnic terms
e) all of the above

Question 22:

Mann (1999; 2004) argued that genocide ________.
a) is a terrible manifestation of rabid “tribal” racisms
b) occurs mostly in undemocratic countries
c) does not result in democratic countries because they permit everyone access to the state so they can resolve group conflicts in an orderly manner
d) results in places where elite power-holding groups define certain groups as non-persons without legitimate citizenry, which leads to these minorities to be liable to persecution or repression or mass murder
e) all of the above

Question 23:

According to Paul Dimaggio and Walter Powell (1983), ________.
a) bureaucratization has proliferated because of its efficiency
b) bureaucratization has become the primary way that organizations are structured because there are forces present in modern societies that press them all to look the same
c) there is an extraordinary heterogeneity of organizational forms across the social spectrum, which conform to the institutional arrangements configuring the state
d) it is much more difficult for organizational leaders to communicate with and abide by the directives of the state if their organizations align with the ordering of state agencies with which they deal
e) contention emerges when political institutions are “closed” or unresponsive enough to create dissent or “open” or accessible enough not to repress it

Question 24:

________ theory pays attention to the interaction of political opportunities of mobilizing structures, such as organization, resources, and access to elites, and the conceptual frames of issues and grievances used to challenge and sustain power.
a) Organizational
b) Power-balance
c) Political process
d) Resource mobilization
e) Post-colonial

Question 25:

Globalization has fostered the development of new, sometimes more exploitative labour practices such as use of ________, which circumvent the ability of workers to unionize and challenge power-holders.
a) export processing zones
b) transnationalism
c) free trade agreements
d) global commodity chains
e) peripheralization

Question 26:

Sidney Tarrow (2005) shows that ________.
a) the number of social movements that transcend local or national boundaries have increased over time
b) all social movements are class based
c) the majority of social movements involve labourers
d) the most successful social movements are led by people who are well-informed about national rather than global issues
e) the physical proximity of activists is not as crucial anymore to the capacity of a social movement to challenge power successfully