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MARKETS AND INEQUALITIES: AN INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH

Departmentsof Gender Studies and Sociology and Social Anthropology

Central European University, Fall 2016

Times: Mondays and Fridays 9 – 10:40 a.m.

Location:Z412

Instructor: Ashley Mears

Email:

Office:

Office hours: Mondays 12 - 2 and by appointment

Course Description

This course examines developments in the vibrant field of “new” economic sociology, and first outlines how gender and culture operate as influences on markets, such as how markets are constrained by networks, norms, and social ties on economic exchange. We next consider markets as cultural formations in their own right first by studying particular discourses and practices that sustain market relationship; next by examining the commodification of ambiguous commodities like bodies and sex. Having established the interdependencies between culture and commerce, we examine how social processes produce inequalities in markets with case studies of multiple commercial sites, from luxury shopping to the labor market. Ultimately, the course shows how in all areas of economic life people are creating, maintaining, symbolizing, and transforming meaningful social relations, in the process reproducing intersecting inequalities of gender, race, and class.

Learning Outcomes

This course (1) provides students with an overview of the key debates, theoretical cannons and research agendas in the sociology of gender and economic sociology and (2) prepares students for doing their own research. By the end of the semester, you will have completed an original empirical research paper, have a grasp of the field and an understanding of how to do intersectional research in economic sociology.

Course Materials: All readings are available on the course websites site or through the CEU library online databases.

Course Assessment

Assessment of your mastery of the course materials is based on my evaluation of your participation in and contribution to the seminar discussions (30%), in-class presentations (30%), and a research paper based on original empirical research (40%).

Participation (30%): You are expected to complete the day’s readings, think about them, and prepare questions and comments before coming to class. Youare assessed each class session on the basis of your contribution to the discussion and your understanding of the material. Your final grade will be affected if you miss more than two sessions.

Summaries (15%):Each student presents two 5-minute summaries of the key ideas from the previous class, along with a short document (posted on the course website before the day’s session). Students may edit the uploaded material, and add what they find important. This will produce a collectively assembled set of notes from the class material.

Presentations (15%): Each session, two students will lead the course discussion of the readings, covering key points, areas of confusion or contention, and thought-provoking questions. This will help you develop critical reading and presentation skills, and give you the opportunity to frame the day’s discussion.

When planning your discussion of the readings, consider addressing:

a.what question is addressed by the author(s) and why is it worth asking?

b. what are competing answers to that question?

c. how well does the author address that question, in terms of logic and methodology?

d. what would be a different, useful way of addressing the same question, preferably one you regard as superior?

We will assign summaries and presentations on the first day.

Research Paper (40%): Each student will complete a paper based on original qualitative research. The paper will be based on a set of in-depth interviews (about 3-5), participant observation, or an analysis of published texts or images on a topic of your choice related to the course. It should be about 10-15 double spaced pages.

Papers are due on Fri Dec 16th; late papers are not accepted. We will workshop your paper ideas and progress throughout the semester in class. Paper proposalsare due onFri Oct 21stand a draft with preliminary findings is dueMonday Dec 5thfor a class workshop on Friday Dec 9th. We will assign discussants for each student’s preliminary paper the week of Dec. 5th.

COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS

Session 1, Monday Sept 19: Introductions

PART ONE: WHAT IS A MARKET?

Session 2, FridaySept 23: Orientation

Michael Sandel, 2012. “What Isn’t for Sale?” The Atlantic, pp. 1 – 9.

Viviana Zelizer, 2006. “Do Markets Poison Intimacy?” Contexts May, pp. 33-38.

England, Paula, and Folbre, Nancy, 2005. “Gender and Economic Sociology.” In Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg (eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 627-649. Princeton University Press.

Recommended

  • Viviana Zelizer, 2012. “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean?” Politics & Society,Junevol. 40, 2:pp. 145-174.
  • Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
  • Paul DiMaggio, 2005. “Culture and Economy” in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg. New York: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 27 – 57.
  • Kenneth Arrow, 1998. What has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination? The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(2), 91-100.

Session 3, Monday Sept 26: Embeddedness

Mark Granovetter, 1995 [1974]. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. University of Chicago Press. Introduction, pp. 3-22; Chapters 2 and 3, pp. 41-62.

Steve McDonald, Jacob C. Day. 2010. “Race, Gender, and the Invisible Hand of Social Capital.” Sociology Compass 4(7): 532–543.

Recommended

  • Gretta Kripner, 2001. “The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology.” Theory and Society 30: 775-810.
  • Ron S. Burt, 1982. “The Gender of Social Capital.” Rationality and Society 10: 5-46.
  • Granovetter, Mark, 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91(3), 481-510.
  • Sandra Smith, 2000. “Mobilizing Social Resources: Race, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in Social Capital and Persisting Wage Inequalities.” The Sociological Quarterly 41(4):509-537.

Session 4, Friday Sept 30,Culture

Zelizer, 2011. Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton University Press. “Introduction” and Part 1, Chapters 2 &3, “The Price and Value of Children” and “Baby Farms” pp 40 – 72.

Pierre Bourdieu. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 241-58 in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson. New York, Greenwood Press.

Recommended

  • Zelizer, “Circuits within Capitalism.” 2005, in The Economic Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg, Princeton University Press, pp. 289-322.
  • England, Paula, and Folbre, Nancy, 2005. “Gender and Economic Sociology.” In Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg (eds.), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, pp. 627-649. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Jens Beckert and Patrik Aspers, 2011. The Worth of Goods: Valuation and Pricing in the Economy. Introduction. Oxford University Press.Charles Smith, “Auctions: From Walras to the Real World,” in Explorations in Economic Sociology, edited by Richard Swedberg. Russell Sage Foundation, 1993, pp. 176-192.
  • Zelizer, 1978. “Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in Nineteenth-Century America.” American Journal of Sociology Vol. 84(3): 591-610.

Session 5, Mon Oct 3,Circuits of Commerce

Viviana Zelizer, 2006. “Money, Power, and Sex,” 18 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism303.

Danielle J. Lindemann, 2010. “Will the Real Dominatrix Please Stand up: Artistic Purity and Professionalism in the S&M Dungeon.” Sociological Forum 25, 3: 588-606

Recommended

  • Viviana Zelizer, 2001. "Sociology of Money," in Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, editors, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 15: 9991-4. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Nigel Dodd, “Reinventing Monies in Europe,” Economy and Society 34 (2005): 558-83.
  • Simone Polillo, “Money, Moral Authority, and the Politics of Creditworthiness,” American Sociological Review 76 (June 2011): 1-28.

Session 6, Fri Oct 7: Performing Homo Economicus

Pierre Bourdieu. “Making the Economic Habitus: Algerian Workers Revisited.” Ethnography 2000. 1(1): 17-41.

Karen Ho, Liquidated. An Ethnography of Wall Street. London: Duke University Press, 2009, Introduction, pp. 4-13; chapter 2, “Wall Street’s Orientation,” pp. 73-121.

Film to watch before coming to class: Equity(2016)

Recommended

  • Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, 2008. “The Social Construction of a Perfect Market: The Strawberry Auction at Fontaines-en-Sologne.” In MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu (eds.), Do economists make markets? On the performativity of economics, pp. 20-53.
  • Brooke Harrington, “Parsing Performativity.”
  • Mitchell Abolafia, 1996. Making Markets. Introduction, pp. 1-13 and Chapter 1, “Homo Economicus Unbound: Bond Traders on Wall Street,” pp. 14-37. Harvard University Press.
  • Donald MacKenzie, 2006. An Engine, Not a Camera. Cambridge: MIT, Ch.1–3, p. 1-89.
  • Vohs, Kathleen D. Nicole L. Mead and Miranda R. Goode. 2006. “The Psychological Consequences of Money.” Science 314(5802): 1154–56.

PART TWO: BRIDGING SEPARATE SPHERES

Session 7, Mon Oct 10: Household Economy I

Mary Blair-Loy, 2001. “Cultural Constructions of Family Schemas: The Case of Women Finance Executives.” Gender & Society 15: 687-709.

Michael Bittman, Paula England, Nancy Folbre, and George Matheson, “When does Gender Trump Money? Bargaining and Time in Household Work,” American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003): 186-214.

Session 8, Fri Oct 14: Household Economy II

Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, chapter 5, “Household Commerce,” pp. 209 – 286.

* Skim selections

Matthew Desmond, 2009. “Disposable Ties.” American Journal of Sociology117(5): 1295-1335.

Session 9, Mon Oct 17: Globalized Care Chains

Arlie R. Hochschild, “The Outsourced Life,” The New York Times, May 5, 2012, 5pp.

Rhacel Parreñas, 2000. Migrant Filipina domestic workers and the international division of reproductive labor.” Gender and Society 14 (4): 560-80.

Recommended

  • Sabino Kornrich, Julie Brines, Katrina Leup. 2012. “Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage.” American Sociological Review 78(1) 26 –50
  • Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. “Promises I Can Keep.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, Chapters 4 and 5.
  • Sheba Mariam George, When Women Come First. Gender and Class in Transnational Migration. Berkeley: University of California Press, introduction (pp. 1-18), and chapter 3, “Home: Redoing Gender in Immigrant Households.”
  • Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, 2001. “The Work Kids Do: Mexican and Central American Immigrant Children’s Contributions to Households and Schools in California,” Harvard Educational Review, volume 71, pp. 366-89.
  • Christopher Carrington, No Place Like Home. Relationships and Family Life among Lesbians and Gay Men, pp. 3-28; 67-107. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Session 10, Fri Oct 21: NO CLASS: RESCHEDULE TBD

Due: proposed paper topic, to be posted on the course website.

Session 11, Mon Oct 24: Contested Commodities

Martha M. Ertman, 2003. “What’s Wrong with a Parenthood Market? A New and Improved Theory of Commodification,” 82 North Carolina Law Review 1.

Rene Almeling. 2007. “Selling Genes, Selling Gender: Egg Agencies, Sperm Banks, and the Medical Market in Genetic Material.” American Sociological Review 72: 319-340.

Recommended

  • Michel Anteby 2010. “Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade: Jurisdictional Disputes.” Administrative Science Quarterly 55: 606 – 638.
  • Margaret Jane Radin. 2001. Chapter 10: Prostitution and Baby-selling: Contested Commodification and Women’s Capacities. Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children, Body Parts, and Other things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy. 2007. “Moral Views of MarketSociety.” Annual Review of Sociology. Annual Rev. Sociology. 33:285–311
  • Elizabeth M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, "The Economics of the Baby Shortage," Journal of Legal Studies 7(1978): 3232-48.
  • Debora L. Spar, The Baby Business. How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. Chapter 6, “Trading Places. The Practice and Politics of Adoption,” pp. 159-193.

Session 12, Fri Oct 28: Disreputable Exchange

Gabriel Rossman, 2014. “Obfuscatory Relational Work and Disreputable Exchange.” Sociological Theory 32: 43-63.

Alice Elizabeth Clemens. 2006. Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Introduction and Chap 2 (43 pps).

Session 13, Mon Oct 31: HOLIDAY; CEU IS CLOSED

Session 14, Fri Nov 4: Sex Work

Elizabeth Bernstein. 2007. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity and the Commerce of Sex. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-21 and 70-111.

Recommended

  • Rhacel Parrenas, 2013. “Cultures of Flirtation: Sex and the Moral Boundaries of Filipina Migrant Hostesses in Tokyo.” In Intimate Labors: Technologies, and the Politics of Care edited by Eileen Boris, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas.
  • Kieran Healy, Last Best Gifts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Chapter 1, “Exchange in Human Goods” and Chapter 2, “Making a Gift,” pp. 1-42.
  • Richard A. Posner, Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992, chapter 5, “Sex and Rationality,” pp. 111-145.
  • Gloria González-López. Erotic Journeys. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, chapter 7, “Sexual Bargains: Work, Money, and Power,” pp. 187-226.

PART THREE: INEQUALITIES

Session 15, M Nov 7: Traffic in Women

Gayle Rubin, 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” In Feminist Literary Criticism. p. 392-412. New York: Norton.

Session 16, Fri Nov 11: Labor Exploitation and Consent

Ashley Mears, 2015. “Working for Free in the VIP: Relational Work and the Production of Consent.” American Sociological Review 80(6): 1099-1122.

Session 17, Mon Nov 14: Aesthetic Labor

Eileen Otis, 2008. “Beyond the Industrial Market Paradigm: Market-Embedded Labor and the Gender Organization of Global Service Work in China.” American Sociological Review 73 (1): 15-36.

Hakim, Catherine. 2009. “Erotic Capital.” European Sociological Review 26 (5): 499-518.

Green, Adam I. 2013. “‘Erotic capital’ and the Power of Desirability: Why ‘Honey Money’ is a Bad Collective Strategy for Remedying Gender Inequality.” Sexualities 16: 137-158.

Recommended

  • Evelyn Nakano Glenn, The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race pp. 3 – 35.
  • Deborah Rhode, 2010. Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. Oxford.
  • Balogun, Oluwakemi M. 2012. “Cultural and Cosmopolitan: Idealized Femininity and Embodied Nationalism in Nigerian Beauty Pageants.” Gender & Society 26(3): 357-381.
  • Christine L. Williams and Catherine Connell. 2010. “Looking Good and Sounding Right'' : Aesthetic Labor and Social Inequality in the Retail Industry.” Work and Occupations, 37, 349-377.

Session 18, Fri Nov 18: Consumption

Pierre Bourdieu, 1984. Distinction, Harvard University Press, “Introduction,” pp. 1-7.

Douglas Holt. 1998. “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?” The Journal of Consumer Research 25(1)” 1-25.

Session 19, Mon Nov 21: Services

Rachel Sherman, 2007. Class Acts. Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels. University of California Press. Introduction and Chapter 6, “Producing Entitlement,” pp. 223 – 256.

Recommended

  • Viviana Zelizer, 2005. “Culture and Consumption,” in Handbook of Economic Sociology, second edition, edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press and New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 331-54
  • Schor, Juliet. “In Defense of Consumer Critique: Re-visiting the Consumption Debates of the 20th Century,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611:16-30, May 2007.

Thorsten Veblen, 1994 [1899]. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Chapter 4, Conspicuous Consumption:

  • Daniel Miller, 1998. A Theory of Shopping, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Introduction and Chapter 1 “Making Love in Supermarkets,” pp. 1-49.
  • Tuba Üstüner and DouglasB. Holt. 2010. “Toward a Theory of Status Consumption in Less Industrialized Countries.” Journal of Consumer Research 37(1): 37-56

Session 20, Fri Nov 25: Sex in Global Finance Flows

Kimberley Hoang, Dealing in Desire, Introduction pp. 1-25, Chapters 2 and 3, pp. 39 – 77, Methodological Appendix pp. 181 – 195.

Recommended:

  • Anne Allison. 1994. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club: University of Chicago Press.
  • Osburg, John. 2013. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich. Stanford University Press.

Session 21, Mon Nov 28: Gendered Work

Alice Kessler-Harris, 1990. A Woman's Wage. Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, Introduction and Chapter 1, “The Wage Conceived,” pp. 1-33.

Christine L. Williams, 1995. Still A Man’s World: Men Who Do Women’s Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, Chapter 1, pp. 1-5; Chapter 5, pp. 81-108.

Session 22, Fri Dec 2:Race and Work

Deirdre A. Royster, 2003. Race and the Invisible Hand. Berkeley: University of California Press, Introduction, pp. 1-15; Chapter 7, “Networks of Inclusion, Networks of Exclusion,” pp. 144-78.

Session 23, Mon Dec 5:Intersectionality

Adia Harvey Wingfield. 2009. Racializing the Glass Escalator: Reconsidering Men’s Experiences with Women’s Work. Gender & Society, 23: 5-26

Lauren Rivera. 2012. “Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms.” Vol 77: 999-1022.

Recommended

  • Ofer Sharone, Flawed System / Flawed Self. Introduction and Chapters 2-4, 6-7
  • Noah McClain and Ashley Mears, 2012. “The Privilege of the Perk: The Everyday Affordance of Privilege.” Poetics 40: 133-149
  • Moss, Philip and Charles Tilly. 1996. ‘‘Soft’ Skills andRace: An Investigation of Black Men’s Employment Problems.’ Workand Occupations 23: 252–76.
  • Joan Acker. 1991. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations” pp.162-179, in Judith Lorber and Susan A. Farrell (eds).The Social Construction of Gender. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Session 24, Fri Dec 9: Presentations and conclusions.

Final Paper due 5 p.m. Friday Dec 16