Week 9 · Readings & resources

Week 9 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 9 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 74–92 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

① How are the world's countries ranked, and what does an average hide?

Chapter 9, Section “See the world's layers: global stratification and income groups” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Ranking countries and measuring development” · Remember: an income group classifies a country by its average income per person, not the life of a typical resident.

Global Stratification & Poverty: Crash Course Sociology #27 — CrashCourse — an overview of why the old First World and Third World labels were dropped, the four income groups that replaced them, and what extreme poverty means for daily life. Its maps and figures come from an earlier year, so use the chapter's fiscal year 2027 thresholds and the 3.00-dollar line for this course. Use it while working through the Week-9 module overview. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Who moves up and why? A closer look at the 2026-2027 release of the World Bank Group Country Income Classifications — World Bank Data Blog — the World Bank's own explanation of how the income groups are set from GNI per capita, why the thresholds are adjusted every year, and which countries changed groups in the latest release. This builds on Week 7's work with stratification, now drawn between countries instead of households. (reading, 6–10 min)
Human Development Index — Human Development Reports, United Nations Development Programme — a short page on what the index combines: a long and healthy life, schooling, and a decent standard of living. Read the three dimensions and notice that income is only one of them. (reading, 3–6 min)

② Why are some countries poorer? Three competing explanations

Chapter 9, Section “The second and third explanations: dependency and world systems” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Modernization, dependency, and world systems” · Remember: modernization theory looks inside a country, dependency theory looks at the tie between richer and poorer nations, and world-systems theory sees one world economy.

Theories of Global Stratification: Crash Course Sociology #28 — CrashCourse — the three explanations side by side: modernization theory with Rostow's stages, dependency theory, and Wallerstein's world system of core, semi-periphery, and periphery, each with its critics. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Dependency Theory in Sociology: Global Inequality Explained — Doodle Sociology — a short animated explainer of the claim that richer nations prosper by drawing on poorer ones; compare it with the chapter's mill-town example. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
What is World Systems Analysis? — Revolution and Ideology — a closer look at the idea of one world economy with a core, a semi-periphery, and a periphery, and at how a country's position shapes what it sells and buys. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)

③ How do you read the cross-national figures? Spread, level, and the arrow

Chapter 9, Section “Read the figures four ways: the Gini index and the arrow” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Reading the Gini set and the poverty line” · Remember: a Gini value measures how spread out incomes are, not how high they are, and a correlation does not show which way the arrow runs.

Understanding the Gini Coefficient — Singapore Department of Statistics (DOS) — a national statistics office walks through what the Gini coefficient measures, from perfect equality at one end to perfect inequality at the other. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
Measuring inequality: what is the Gini coefficient? — Our World in Data — a plain-language article with two ways to picture the Gini coefficient and a comparison with other inequality measures; notice that it uses the 0-to-1 scale, which this course multiplies by 100. (reading, 8–12 min)
200 years that changed the world (with Hans Rosling) — Gapminder Foundation — an animated chart in which every country's income per person moves against its life expectancy over two centuries, followed by two countries traced side by side. It was made in an earlier year, so read it for the pattern rather than the latest figures. Watch the dots rise together, then ask the chapter's question: which way does the arrow run? (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
Life expectancy vs. GDP per capita — Our World in Data — an interactive chart of the same pattern for recent years; hover over a few countries and write one sentence that uses "tends to come with" rather than "causes." (reading, 5–8 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

$3 a day: A new poverty line has shifted the World Bank's data on extreme poverty — Our World in Data — the explainer behind this week's poverty-line figures; read why the line moved and why the count rose with it, and skip the technical notes on price data unless you want them. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com