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John Porter Vertical Mosaic Summary

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Born in Vancouver 1921, John Porter shattered the conventional image of Canada as a classless society and demonstrated the ethical inequality within our culture. In his research book The Vertical Mosaic, he proved Canada to be a highly stratified society. Important to the development of Canadian sociology, The Vertical Mosaic, provided Canadians with a reality check, unveiling the fact that our projected image is opposite to factuality and revealed the discrimination within power in our society. Within our current capitalistic society, people tend to disregard class and Canada is still viewed as a middle class society with ethnic inequality still as a ruling issue.
The Vertical layered hierarchy dimension of John Porter’s Vertical Mosaic introduced social theory through class, power and status.
Class is difficult to define and usually objectively determined by socioeconomic status, income and at times relational configurations. Normalization and uniformity of possessions created a middle class stereotype within Canada, which John Porter broke through outlining the hierarchy that class actually is. In fact, when the book was written, approximately only 3% of Canadians …show more content…

According to marxian theory, power is generally obtained through wealth and privilege (exploring soci textbok). The individuals at the top of societies hierarchy structure decide how wealth is both produce and distribute, with little attention to equality.
The “mosaic” portion of The Vertical Mosaic is strongly heritage based, focusing on factors such as race, ethnicity (ancestry, genetic culture), language, region, religion and immigration status. Prior to Porters work, several would argue that although Canada had diverse cultural groups, everyone had equal opportunity. Unfortanity, race became a social Although many of Porters ideas still remain relevant, a modern vertical

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horizontal) reflects their consciousness of the diversity in societies they seek to uplift. On one hand, although Carnegie writes that “[h]uman society loses homogeneity” (“Wealth”), he only mentions the economic disparities creating a “problem of Rich and Poor” (“Wealth”). This binary understanding of the division of society is reflected by his repeated use of terms like “the masses” (Carnegie, “Wealth”), and offers insight into Carnegie’s vision of social uplift. Indeed, he doesn’t mention any tailored actions for subgroups of the mass, whose needs and existence are completely flattened by his

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