Sociology 312Office: Seabury 202

Sociology 312Office: Seabury 202

Social Class and MobilityOffice Hours: Wednesday 4:00-5:00

Professor Stephen Valocchi

Spring 2018 T TH 2:55-4:10

Course Description

This course will be an intellectual journey through the class structure of the United States. Despite claims that there are no social classes in the U.S. or that everyone has the same chance to become middle class or that the boundaries separating classes are blurry, constantly changing, and meaningless, this course begins from the premise that social class is an important feature of American society. We see it everywhere these days: in politics, social movements, culture and, of course, at Trinity College.

Regardless of how we define the concept of class, and we will see that there is little agreement in this regard, the fact that our society is structured in ways that distribute resources unequally has important consequences for individual well being, social mobility, educational attainment, political power, individual identity, and democracy. We will examine some of these ways that class matters. In addition, we will investigate the institutions, policies, and practices that reproduce, heighten, and in some cases, reduce inequality. We will also devote a considerable amount of time to the ways that class inequality and class identity intersect with other types of social inequality and identities organized around gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

Required texts (available at the bookstore)

Jay MacLeod, Ain't No Makin' It. third edition Westview Press. 2009

Tim Black, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid. Pantheon Press. 2010

Julie Bettie, Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. University of California Press. 2015

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. University of California Press. 2011

Karyn Lacy, Blue Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Middle Class. University of California Press2007

Diane Kendall, The Power of Good Deeds, Roman & Littlefield. 2002

Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton University Press. 2011

These books are on reserve in the library for the duration of the semester. There will also be additional reading I will distribute in class either as print or electronic copies.

Grading and Assignments

15% of your final grade will be determined by the quality and quantity of your class participation.

You will be permitted 2 absences without penalty. Use these absences wisely. Each additional absence will lower your final grade by one half letter grade (e.g. from B to B-; from B- to C+). Note: these excused absences include absences because of illness, sports, family events, etc. In other words, you do not get excused from two classesplus classes for sickness, away games, home games, physical therapy, doctor’s appointments etc. Again, use these absences wisely.

65% of your final grade will be determined by your performance on four papers assigned throughout the semester.Depending on the “weightiness” of the assignment, some papers will be comprise a greater percentage of the 65% than other paper assignments.

20% of your final grade will be determined by a final project that will entail a class analysis of an individual where you will use some of the participant observation, open-ended interviewing and/or life history methods used in many of the materials for the class. I will distribute a set of guidelines during the 4thor 5th week of the semester and we will discuss this project periodically throughout the semester.

Schedule and Reading Materials

Week 1-4Introduction to the Study of Social Class and Mobility;

1/22- 2/16The Poor, OpportunityStructures and Constrained Choices

Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin It.Chapters 1; 3-5; 9-10.

The Big Picture: How we got into this mess and how we get out of it, Robert Reich

Victor Rios, excerpt from Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys 2011 (chapter 5: “Dummy Smart”)

Katherine Newman, chapter 6 (“Getting Stuck, Moving Up”) from No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. 2000 (handout or pdf)

Tim Black, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid.2010. (Introduction, chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, conclusion)

David M. Kotz,The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008: A Systemic Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism” Review of Radical Political Economics 41(3) 2009

Documentary: 13th, Ava DuVernay (Netflix) 2016

Excerpt from Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States 1986 (chapter 4 “Racial Formation”; chapter 5 “The Racial State”

Chapters 4 and 5 from Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America, 1993 Valerie Polakow. (handout pp. 63-89).

Excerpt from Martin Marger, Inequality. (Why are the Poor Poor?)

Paper 1

Weeks 5 and 6Working Class Girls: Gender, Ethnicity and Performing

2/19-3/2Class

Trinity Days

Julie Bettie, Women without Class.pp. 1-16; chapters 3-5.

February 27guest speaker, Alvin Chang.

Week 7Working Class and Middle Class:Cultural

3/5-3/9Capital and Social Reproduction.

Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods (chapter 2, Parts I and II) 2011

Annette Lareau, Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality.

American Sociological Review 2014 (handout or pdf)

Paper 2

Week 8Spring Break

3/12-3/16

Week 9Social Mobility in a Capitalist System

3/19-3/22

Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, “Some Hidden Injuries of Class” from Hidden Injuries of Class 1972 (handout or pdf)

Chapter 3 “Rejected Managers and the Culture of Meritocracy” from Katherine S. Newman’s Falling from Grace 1989 pp. 42-83 (handout or pdf)

Jessi Streib, “How Love Crosses Class Lines: Cultural Complements and the Case of Different Origin Marriages.” Sociological Forum2015 (handout or pdf)

Elizabeth Higgenbotham and Lynn Weber, “Moving Up with Kin and Community: Upward Social Mobility for Black and White Women,” Gender & Society September 1992

Week 10The Discursive Construction ofClass Boundaries

3/26-3/30

Michele Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men. 2000. Chapters 1 and 3 (handout or pdf).

Jennie Stuber, “Talking Class: The Discursive Repertoires of White Working and Upper Middle Class College Students.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography June 2006 (handout or pdf)

Rachel Sherman, “What the Rich Won’t tell you” New York Times September 8, 2017

Week 11Education: Class Mobility or Class Reproduction

4/2-4/6

Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist Society Revisited Sociology of Education, 75 (1) 2002;

Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track, Part I: The Policy and Practice of Curriculum Inequality. Phi Delta Kappan. 1985. (handout or pdf)

Jonathan Kozol. The Shame of the Nation 2005, selected chapter (handout or pdf)

(parts 1 and 2)

Persell and Cookson, “Chartering and Bartering in America’s Elite Boarding Schools” 1985 (handout)

(Un)Privileged: The Cost of Being Poor at an Elite Institution. Documentary by Bettina Gonzalez (Trinity College)

Mitchell Stevens, Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites, chapter 6 (handout or pdf)

Paper 3

Week 12The BlackMiddle Class: Wealth, Income, and Housing

4/9-4/13

Interview with Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute: Historian Says Don’t Sanitize How Our Government Created Ghettos. National Public Radio, Fresh Air. May 14, 2015.

Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode 3, The House We Live In. (California Newsreel documentary, start viewing at 1:23: 49) (on reserve)

Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad, The Recession’s Racial Divide. 2009. (handout or pdf)

Karyn R. Lacy. Blue-Chip Black p.5, 56-70, chapters 3 and 5.

Weeks 13-14The Upper Class: Economic, Political, and Social Power

4/16-4/27

Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege. 2011. Pp.1-14; chapters 2, 3, 5

Diana Kendall, The Power of Good Deeds.2002 pp.7-10; chapters 2, 3, 6

G. William Domhoff. Chapter 4 from Who Rules America?

2010. (Handout or pdf)

Paper 4

Week 15Individual Meetings for Class Analysis Paper

5/1

Class Analysis Paper Due