Sociology 3945: Social Stratification
University of Minnesota, Duluth

Texts:
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
(Next time: Women Without Class)
Eric Schlosser, "The Chain Never Stops," Mother Jones Magazine, July/August 2001
Scott Sernau: Worlds Apart, 2nd edition
On-line and electronic reserve readings

We may also be using an adapted version of a game, "Life Happens: A Work, Class and Access to Resources Game," developed by Tracy Ore at St. Cloud State

INTERNET RESOURCES: The beginning point for accessing course materials on the internet is my home page, (http://www.d.umn.edu/~bmork). Click on the index page for Sociology 3945; then click on the schedule to access reading assignments and links to supplementary materials.

Course Description: Structural investigation of the effects of social class on people's lives. Theories and research on social class; social mobility theory and effects; economic change--causes and consequences; intertwinement of social class, gender, and race/ethnicities; social movements arising out of these inequalities. This course meets the requirements of an inequality course for either the Sociology Major or the Criminology Major, or if you have already completed the required inequality course, it can serve as one of the required electives for the Sociology Major.

Grading: Grades will be based on three exams and a paper, along with individual and group work in class, as follows:

Exam One		100 points
Exam Two		100 points
Exam Three		100 points
Mobility paper		100 points
Individual and group work		100-150 points

The exams will each cover about one third of the course and will be a combination of multiple choice and essay questions. Group work will often involve a video, and if you miss the video, you may have to rely on extra credit to replace the missing points. Your mobility paper will be docked 5 points for each day it is late.

Grading standards: A, 93-100; A-, 90-92; B+, 87-89; B, 83-87; B-, 80-82; C+, 77-79; C, 73-77; C-, 70-72; D+, 67-69; D, 63-67; D-, 60-62; F, below 60.

Academic Honesty: A violation of UMD's Academic Honesty Policy (behavior which is also referred to as Scholastic Misconduct) such as cheating, plagiarizing or any other "act which violates the rights of another student in academic work or that involves misrepresentation of your own work will result in penalties up to and including an F for the course.

Incompletes: To receive an incomplete at the end of the semester, you must have completed at least 2/3 of the coursework and have given me good reason why you cannot complete the course in a timely way.

Egradebook: I will be entering your grades into a software program called egradebook, accessible to you on the internet (http://www.d.umn.edu/egradebook). Be sure to let me know of any discrepancies between your records and the grades recorded on egradebook, so I can double-check my records. All discrepancies must be brought to my attention by the last Fridayf classes, so that everything will be in order for me to enter the final grades into the UMD records after our final exam

Extra-Credit: Option 1: A maximum of 25 points extra credit will be available, with up to 5 points for each short paper submitted via e-mail based on sociologically relevant campus presentations (check with me if you're not sure). This will include Soc/Crim Club meetings where a speaker makes a presentation. Option 2. Another option would be service learning, which could be arranged on your own or through UMD SERVE. You and I will have to review the parameters of your participation, the kinds of sociological learning that could take place, and the type of paper I'd expect (also 25 points possible, but you can't combine options). Option 3: Read the New York Times online (http://www.nytimes.com) each week and create a journal that includes a weekly summary of at least one article relevant to stratification (25 points).

My Expectations: I expect you to arrive on-time, to treat your fellow class members and me with respect, to have done the reading that is assigned for the day, to bring your questions and ideas about the material we are covering, to make me aware of any problems you are having with course materials. In return, I pledge to be prepared and organized, to communicate clearly my expectations of you, to evaluate your work promptly and fairly, to listen to your concerns, to respect your point of view, and to treat you as a person of value. I also promise not to expect from you more than 1.5 hours of work outside class for every hour in class. Please let me know if you feel that the assignments are exceeding that expectation.

Students with disabilities:

It is the policy and practice of the University of Minnesota Duluth to create inclusive learning environments for all students, including students with disabilities.  If there are aspects of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion or your ability to meet course requirements – such as time limited exams, inaccessible web content, or the use of non-captioned videos – please notify the instructor as soon as possible.  You are also encouraged to contact the Office of Disability Resources to discuss and arrange reasonable accommodations.   Please call 218-726-6130 or visit the DR website at www.d.umn.edu/access for more information. 

Social Mobility--A Three Generational Analysis: One of the persistent interests of stratification theorists has been social mobility: intragenerational, intergenerational, and geographic (both migration and immigration). Develop a history of your family for the past three generations (yourself, your parents, your grandparents; if your family doesn't readily fit this mode, see me early in the semester so we can adapt the assignment together to allow for step-parents, missing parents, the fact that you were raised by your grandparents, etc). Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, and 4-6 pages in length. For each person, specify occupational changes and "destination;" education; geographic mobility to the extent that it had anything to do with occupational moblity. Include these additional factors:

1. To what extent were occupational changes the result of large-scale societal transformations, e.g., from rural farm to a more urban occupation.

2. Did parents have specific or general educational/occupational ambitions. To what extent were they able to provide assistance; of what types?

3. Since most of you are still at an early stage of career-building, specify your ambtiions and what you see as the likely facilitating factors and/or obstacles. Do you find yourself concerned with downward mobility?

4. Do you see any signs that social class changes from one generation to the next created barriers between generations? For example, did lifestyles, values, or customs change dramatically and create barriers to mutual understanding?

5. What about ethnic or racial cultures? Did your grandparents marry within the same ethnic or racial group? Religious group? What about your parents? Is that important to you? Were there languages or cultures represented in the oldest generation that were lost in your parents' generation or your own?

6. What about changing roles of women? Was there a shift from homemaker role to a role in the paid workforce for your mothers or grandmothers? If so, how important was the woman's job to the economic well-being of the family? Were there inconsistencies in the prestige level or pay levels of men's jobs and women's jobs?

One of the biggest challenges with writing these papers in the past has been how to organize the papers. This has been especially problematic where people have tried to include a fourth generation. Whether you know about them or not, you've each got eight biological great grandparents, along with any step or foster or other substitutes. So just do three generations: your grandparents, your parents, yourself. Use bold-print headings to mark off the topics. For example, you might have sections headed: Maternal grandparents, paternal grandparents, mother, father, self; or you might do Mother's Side of the Family, Father's Side of the Family, Parents, Self.

Be sure to use the spell-check function in your word processor, and be sure to proofread (to pick up things like missing words, extra pages that your printer kicked out, and the like). In terms of writing skills, the most frequent problem I encounter is run-on sentences. It's probably a good idea to keep your sentences short, unless you've confident that you've mastered the basics of sentence construction and punctuation. Use "I" as a subject, and "me" as an object; that seems to get especially problematic when you are writing about yourself and others. For example, you would say: "My parents always expected that my sister and I would go to to college." Or: "My parents didn't have any specific educational or occupational goals for my brother and me."

What I most of all notice when I read these papers is that some of them flow. The story comes through clearly and even with an element of grace. There might be humor; there might be pathos. But some of the papers are so difficult to read that I can hardly grasp the basic story. I have to look back, reread, and even then I'm not sure. Try to include your story in the former camp and not the latter. Thanks! I will include your writing skills in my evaluation of your paper.