Social Inequality | Ira Sliver

Summer 2013
Sociology 209
Mon, Tues, Wed: 9:30am – 12:00pm
Professor Ira Silver
E-mail: isilver@framingham.edu
Blog: www.oppforall.com

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course looks at how inequalities pertaining to class, race, and gender manifest themselves and are perpetuated within American society. Our emphasis will be on people’s lived experience within these hierarchies. We will explore a variety of explanations for the persistence of social inequalities.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

This course will enable you to:

• Critically examine the deeply rooted and widely held belief that any person in our society can achieve mobility by putting forth sufficient effort and hard work.
• Gain awareness of your own place within the American stratification system.
• Become comfortable with expressing your ideas orally in front of your peers.
• Write with focus, clarity, and brevity.

TEACHING STYLE:

The success of this course hinges on the productive exchange of ideas through discussions. While I will at times give short lectures, your active participation is essential. I am convinced that the more you each bring to class, the better it will go and the more that you will take from it. I may call on you to voice your ideas in the event that discussions begin to drag or if it becomes clear that only a handful of people are participating. My reason for taking the liberty to do this is to convince you that what you have to say matters. In a liberal arts course, there are often not “right” or “wrong” answers. Therefore, just contributing something to the discussion can be very constructive in productively moving it along.

ATTENDANCE:

You must be here, period. We only meet 12 times so each class is critical.

READINGS:

There is one book to purchase from the College Bookstore:

Annette Lareau, Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.

All other readings are posted below as indicated.

*Please bring readings to class. For those that are online, I recommend that you print them; otherwise, bring your laptop to class so you can access them electronically.

GRADING AND EVALUATION:

Your final grade will be based on a take-home midterm, a take-home final, and class attendance & participation. I will compute your final grade as follows:

30% Take-home midterm
30% Take-home final
40% Class attendance and participation

THE OPPORTUNITY DIVIDE: CLASS INEQUALITY IN THE U.S.

Mon, June 3^rd

*Watch in class: ”Nine Out of Ten Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact.” Upworthy, 2012.

*Watch: ”Poor Kids”

Tues, June 4^th

*Read: Mark Rank, “Rethinking American Poverty.” Contexts 2011 10 (2): 16-21.

*Read: Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3.” Education Review 2003.

*Read: Annette Lareau, chapters 2-5 in Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. THIS IS THE BOOK REQUIRED FOR PURCHASE.

Wed, June 5^th

*Read: Lareau, chapters 6-7 in Home Advantage.

*Read: Annette Lareau, “Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life.” Pp. 537-48 in The Inequality Reader. Edited by David Grusky and Szonja Szelenyi. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007.

*Read: Annette Lareau and Amanda Cox, “Social Class and the Transition to Adulthood: Differences in Parents’ Interactions with Institutions.” Pp. 134-64 in Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America. Edited by Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. (NOTE: This reading may appear sideways on your screen. The only way I know to fix this is if you first save the reading to your laptop and then open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Once you have opened it, click “View”, then scroll down to “Rotate View” and then click “Counterclockwise.”)

Mon, June 10^th

*Read: Lareau, chapter 8 in Home Advantage.

*Read: Robert Granfield, “Making It by Faking It.” Pp. 102-11 in Life in Society. Edited by James M. Henslin. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2005.

*In class, we will watch the film Born Rich.

RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

Tues, June 11^th- MORNING

*Read: Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski, “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.” American Sociological Review 2009 74: 777-799.

*Read: Cedric Herring, “Is Job Discrimination Dead?” Pp. 183-89 in The Contexts Reader. Edited by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper. New York: WW Norton, 2008.