Sociology 3945: Outline--Week Thirteen

I. Career trajectories in the study of American stratification

A. C. Wright Mills

1. 1948: New Men of Power

2. 1952: White Collar

3. 1954: The Power Elite

B. Katherine Newman

1. Declining Fortunes

2. Falling From Grace

3. No Shame in My Game

4. Chutes and ladders: tracking down the people she'd studied in No Shame, who'd started their work lives working in a fast food restaurant

Jamal... working in the lumber industry in northern California, making a salary in the mid-$30,000s

Kyesha: supervising a building for the New York Housing Authority... making around $30,000

Of the people her team was able to track down, about 20% had made it out of poverty...

5. The Missing Class... Newman and Victor Tan Chen....

a. 57 million Americans, including 21% of children, live "above the poverty line but well below a secure station"... households making between $20,000 and $60,000 a year... a lot less studied than the poverty class

b. Compare with 37 million below the poverty line

b. "Firmly attached" to the world of work as transit workers, daycare providers, hospital attendants, teachers aides, clerical assistants, etc.

c. Sending their children to college ("the single most important fault line in determining their long range prospects") is difficult... parents poorly placed to offer advice and kids apt to be attending schools that are marginal (city and inner ring suburb schools), without great college advisement

d. Mobility prospects: from 1996 to 2002, 16% lost 1/10 or more of their income, but majority gained 30% of more... economic boom times....authors see this group as quite optimistic, as they compare themselves to families mired in poverty

In late fall 2008, it looks likely that many families among the "missing class" will be moving down in the near future, if the present economic crisis continues to deepen

e. Many of the members of this group still renters, and those who gained home ownership in the last recent years apt to contribute a disproportionate share of those facing mortgage foreclosure now.

f. This is also a category that has accumulated way too much credit card debt in recent years, as the credit card companies deluged them with offers... after all, aren't we a consumer society?

g. Jobs that mostly don't include health insurance, or include it only with very substantial deductibles and copays

h. Instructor: Lots of divorce and stepfamilies (divorce in the United States correlates strongly with social class) ... one more major complication in their family finances (and another route to downward social mobility)... mostly need two earners to maintain position

Research basis for this book: For seven years, followed lives of nine families in four New York City neighborhoods... also interviewed community leaders and service providers in Puerto Rican, Dominican and African American neighborhoods where their research subjects lived.

We will circle back to this book at the very end of the semester

II. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

A. Precedents

1. Minnesota Historical Society: "An Undercover Reporter Tries on the Life of a Sales Clerk in 1888"

2. George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London... 1930s

B. Erhrenreich: Chapter One--"Getting Ready"

1. Her family background: husband, sister, father

"So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty; something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who'd had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear."

2. National Coalition of the homeless estimate in 1998: average nationwide wage to afford a one-bedroom apartment was $8.89... so why do this research?

3. Ground rules

a. Could not fall back on skills from education or usual work

b. Take the highest paying job offered and try to hold onto it

c. Cheapest accomodations she could find with a reasonable degree of safety and privacy

d. How to present herself to employers: divorced homemaker reentering the work force

e. Would always have a car (which she did not pay for from her earnings) and would not be homeless.

4. Limits of what she would learn: clearly she would only be "visiting" low-wage work... what's more she is white and a native English speaker, which many low-wage workers are not... no children to support... in better health than average worker of this type at her age (my wife's impressions of those working as nursing assistants or in laundry or cleaning at the BHC)...

5. But couldn't everybody tell that you didn't belong there? "Low wage people are no more homogeneous in personality or ability than people who write for a living, and no less likely to be funny or bright. Anyone in the educated classes who thinks otherwise ought to broaden their circle of friends."

6. Notetaking: An hour or two on the laptop at the end of every day... clearly an extra burden her coworkers didn't have, but then they likely had kids or other responsibilities, and might well be working more than one job (as she did at times)

So altogether, how typical a portrait of working class life?

"Just bear in mind that when I stumble, that this is in fact the best case scenario: a person with every advantage that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer attempting , in a time of exuberant economy, to survive in the economy's lower depths." (And I would add, in the world's richest and most powerful society.)

Sociology 3945: Outline--Week Thirteen

I. Career trajectories in the study of American stratification

A. C. Wright Mills

1. 1948: New Men of Power

2. 1952: White Collar

3. 1954: The Power Elite

B. Katherine Newman

1. Declining Fortunes

2. Falling From Grace

3. No Shame in My Game

4. Chutes and ladders: tracking down the people she'd studied in No Shame, who'd started their work lives working in a fast food restaurant

Jamal... working in the lumber industry in northern California, making a salary in the mid-$30,000s

Kyesha: supervising a building for the New York Housing Authority... making around $30,000

Of the people her team was able to track down, about 20% had made it out of poverty...

5. The Missing Class... Newman and Victor Tan Chen....

a. 57 million Americans, including 21% of children, live "above the poverty line but well below a secure station"... households making between $20,000 and $60,000 a year... a lot less studied than the poverty class

b. Compare with 37 million below the poverty line

b. "Firmly attached" to the world of work as transit workers, daycare providers, hospital attendants, teachers aides, clerical assistants, etc.

c. Sending their children to college ("the single most important fault line in determining their long range prospects") is difficult... parents poorly placed to offer advice and kids apt to be attending schools that are marginal (city and inner ring suburb schools), without great college advisement

d. Mobility prospects: from 1996 to 2002, 16% lost 1/10 or more of their income, but majority gained 30% of more... economic boom times....authors see this group as quite optimistic, as they compare themselves to families mired in poverty

In late fall 2008, it looks likely that many families among the "missing class" will be moving down in the near future, if the present economic crisis continues to deepen

e. Many of the members of this group still renters, and those who gained home ownership in the last recent years apt to contribute a disproportionate share of those facing mortgage foreclosure now.

f. This is also a category that has accumulated way too much credit card debt in recent years, as the credit card companies deluged them with offers... after all, aren't we a consumer society?

g. Jobs that mostly don't include health insurance, or include it only with very substantial deductibles and copays

h. Instructor: Lots of divorce and stepfamilies (divorce in the United States correlates strongly with social class) ... one more major complication in their family finances (and another route to downward social mobility)... mostly need two earners to maintain position

Research basis for this book: For seven years, followed lives of nine families in four New York City neighborhoods... also interviewed community leaders and service providers in Puerto Rican, Dominican and African American neighborhoods where their research subjects lived.

We will circle back to this book at the very end of the semester

II. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

A. Precedents

1. Minnesota Historical Society: "An Undercover Reporter Tries on the Life of a Sales Clerk in 1888"

2. George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London... 1930s

B. Erhrenreich: Chapter One--"Getting Ready"

1. Her family background: husband, sister, father

"So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty; something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who'd had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear."

2. National Coalition of the homeless estimate in 1998: average nationwide wage to afford a one-bedroom apartment was $8.89... so why do this research?

3. Ground rules

a. Could not fall back on skills from education or usual work

b. Take the highest paying job offered and try to hold onto it

c. Cheapest accomodations she could find with a reasonable degree of safety and privacy

d. How to present herself to employers: divorced homemaker reentering the work force

e. Would always have a car (which she did not pay for from her earnings) and would not be homeless.

6. Notetaking: An hour or two on the laptop at the end of every day... clearly an extra burden her coworkers didn't have, but then they likely had kids or other responsibilities, and might well be working more than one job (as she did at times)

So altogether, how typical a portrait of working class life?

III. Chapter Two: "Serving in Florida" Bring to class two discussion questions dealing with this chapter.

A. Groups

B. Highlights of your group discussion to the class as a whole.