Readings for Backman’s SOCY1000, Fall 2012
(Readings for the entire semester)
In some cases I give a link to the reading, in other cases you will need to go online to use E-Reserve at the library. For E-Reserve, use the password I gave in class. (KarlWeber). You can use this link to go straight to E-Reserves or from the library homepage click Find Resources, then Reserves, then E-Reserve
Week 15 October 26-30 No readings assigned
Week 14 October 12-16 No readings assigned (exam)
Week 13 November 5-9
Required. Chapters 1 and 2 from An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1st edition, by Thomas Robert Malthus. 1798. Link at .
Annotation. This famous essay first appeared anonymously in 1798. Malthus kept polishing it over the years, producing six editions during his lifetime, plus a summary. The sixth was the edition that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace read that inspired their understanding of natural selection and its role in evolution. I’ve assigned the first edition because it was the pathbreaking work, because I like the clarity with which he begins, and because he doesn’t state his “postulata” as “postulata” in the later editions.
P.1 Malthus's "friend" was his father. Mr. Godwin (1756-1836) was a journalist and philosopher. According to Wikipedia, the essay Malthus responded to was a response to the French Revolution; the essay laid out how wonderful the world would be with minimal government. Godwin was the wife of Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist, and the father of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
P.2 Scholarly works usually begin with a discussion of what earlier scholars have said on the topic of the work. This is called a "review of the literature" or "lit(erature) review." In this paragraph Malthus obliquely admits he didn't do a lit review.
I.11 David Hume is generally considered one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Adam Smith is generally considered the most important of the founders of modern economics. Hume and Smith were central participants in the so-called Scottish Enlightenment. I know nothing about Mr. Wallace.
I.12 Condorcet (1743-1794) -- mathematician, philosopher, and political theorist -- was one of the great figures of the Enlightenment. Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind was probably one of Condorcet's works Malthus was responding to.
I.14 A postulate is a statement that we assume to be true. Postulates are often used in making logical arguments.
I.18 Growth in a geometrical ratio is also called multiplicative or exponential growth. Every year the size changes by a certain proportion, say 10 percent, not by a certain amount, say 10 people. Growth in an arithmetical ratio, also called additive or linear growth, adds a certain amount, say 10 people, every year, not a certain proportion. [Malthus was a math major at Oxford. Later he was trained as a minister. Eventually he became a professor of history and political economy (according to Wikipedia).]
II.6 "… double itself in twenty-five years." One way to describe geometric growth is in terms of the annual percentage growth. The World Bank's estimate for the 2008 growth rate for the world is 1.2 percent. A second way is in terms of how long it will take the population to double in size. Based on ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Malthus says that the United States was then (1798) growing so fast as to double in 25 years. Growth rates and doubling time are related by the so-called rule of 70: years to double approximately equals (70 / percent growth). Using the 2008 growth rate estimate of 1.2 percent, the world should double its population of 6.9 billion in 70/1.2 years, that is, in 58 years (assuming the growth rate does not change). Rearranging the equation tells us that the US growth rate Malthus was using was 70/25 = 2.8 percent.
II.8 "this Island" refers to the island of Great Britain, not to be confused with the country of Great Britain. The country includes Northern Ireland, which is on a different island.
II.15 "emigration" refers to people moving away from a place. Immigration is people moving to a place
II.17 "thousand millions" In the traditional British system of counting, the word billion was 1,000,000,000,000, or a million million. In American English a billion is 1,000,000,000, or a thousand million. So Malthus is supposing the world's population to be 1 American billion in 1798. He seems to have been pretty close.
II.23 and II.25. "Vicious" means "full of vice" here, not "nasty and cruel." The vices he has in mind include prostitution, abortion, birth control, and perhaps infanticide.
II.26 "Oscillation" refers to fluctuation, usually in the form of going back and forth rapidly between two different places. The "period" of an oscillation refers to how long it takes to get back to where you started from. Here the fluctuation is in population as especially the poor first have too many children to support, then control population for awhile while agriculture catches up, then have too many again, then control, and so on.
II.30 “…the nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing…" refers to inflation (the same amount of money won’t buy as much stuff as it did before). “…facility of combination among the rich" refers to the ability of the rich to work together to control wages. This whole section is about labor economics
Questions. 1. What is Malthus’s view of the French Revolution? [A: it's still not clear 11 years after the start of the Revolution if it is going to be a total disaster or a grand success] I.1
2. What is Malthus's gripe about "speculative philosophers" (the folks who see humans as perfectible) in terms of where they spend their intellectual time? I.8
3. What are Malthus's two "postulata?" [Important] I.14 What does he seem to mean by "postulate" (I assume "postulata" is the plural of "postulate")? I.14
4. Why is he not convinced by Godwin's suggestion that the passion between the sexes may disappear some time? I.16 [You might think that as a professor Malthus would have appreciated Godwin's suggestion that sexual desire might be replaced by "the development of intellectual pleasures" (Wikipedia). On the other hand, being a professor might have convinced him that that is not very likely.]
5. The power of population is indefinitely ______than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for people. I.17
6. What does Malthus think increases in a geometrical ratio? What in an arithmetic ratio? I.18 Which will get bigger, something growing geometrically or something growing arithmetically? I.18
7. The great insurmountable difficulty Malthus identifies on the path toward the perfectibility of society is a. humanity's natural inclination toward war b. in a perfect society no one would have to do unpleasant labor, but there are some unpleasant jobs that will always have to be done c. a perfect society will involve the transformation of sexual desire into a search for more intellectual satisfactions, which will not happen given human nature d. in a perfect society population would grow at a rate that eventually would exceed the ability of the society to feed itself; the result of an imbalance between numbers and subsistence would certainly be misery and probably be vice e. perfection is possible, but it will take many hundreds of thousands of years because it will require changing the human genome, which will take that long f. conflict between the law that individuals and groups always look out mostly for their own interests and the law that minorities tend to have more babies than those who are winning the battle for good things will necessarily lead to suppression of the many by the few, which is hardly a perfect society. I.22 and earlier
8. What did Malthus report as the doubling time of the United States? What percent annual growth rate would that be? [A: 70/25=2.8%] II.6 Today’s growth for the US is about .9 pct, hence doubling in (70/.9 = 67) years
9. What tends to discourage the "lower classes" from early marriage, according to Malthus? II.3
10. What tends to discourage the "higher classes" from early marriage, according to Malthus? II.3
11. What did Malthus think of the possibility that Great Britain could double its agricultural productivity between 1800 and 1825? II.9
12. What did Malthus think of the possibility that Great Britain could quadruple its agricultural productivity between 1800 and 1850? II.10
13. What example does Malthus use to try to convince us that the rate of increase of subsistence is at best arithmetical? II.8-12
14. When Malthus says, "In a state of equality, this would be the simple question [whether to bring a new being into the world]," what equality is he talking about? What bad things might happen to someone who had too many children? II.22
15. What is it that prevents "any great permanent amelioration of their [the lower classes of society] condition?” II.23
16. How does population growth affect the price of labor? Why? [A: Supply and demand.] How does the price of labor affect the production of subsistence? Why? II.25
17. In a stratified society (a society of “inequality”) who will suffer the most from the ups and downs of population? II.32
18. What is the gist of Malthus's argument about how populations grow and are checked? What does this have to do with the perfectibility of society? [Whole piece]
Week 12 October 29-Nov 2 No readings assigned
Week 11 October 22-26 No readings assigned
Week 10 October 15-19
Required. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Available on e-reserve.
Annotation. Pollish [sic] sausage. [sic] means that the error, in this case the misspelling of “Polish,” was in the original source. 233
Minimize server-cook contact. 233 A famous study during World War II by one of my professors, William Foote Whyte, analyzed server-cook conflict and showed how having waitresses put orders on a wheel instead of giving them directly to the cook reduced conflict. The root of the conflict was the problem that cooks have the highest status in the kitchen, but they take orders from lower status people, the waitresses.
Booker T. Washington was the president of Tuskegee Institute (now TuskegeeUniversity) for many years around 1900. Max Weber tried to meet him in 1904 when Weber was in the US but had to settle for meeting his wife. 233
Oxytocin is a versatile hormone. It is involved in childbirth and lactation. Of sociological interest, it may be related to feeling comfortable around other people (Wikipedia). 234
Mao’s little red book was a book of adages and “wisdom” by the hero of the Chinese Revolution, Mao Tse-tung (now usually transliterated as Mao Zedung). It was popular among US college students, especially student activists, during the 1970s. Ehrenreich got her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at ReedCollege in Oregon in 1963. Reed was a hotbed of student activism in the ‘70s; I don’t know about the ‘60s. Reed’s informal motto used to be “Communism, Atheism, and Free Love.” Tee shirts are available with that motto at the Reed bookstore. Some say it has mellowed a little these days to “Socialism, Agnosticism, and Safe Sex.” 234
Czech dishwasher: the best dishwasher I worked directly with in my disher days was from Czechoslovakia, back in its communist days before it split into the CzechRepublic and Slovakia. He could sort silverware faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. 237 and 241
Ehrenreich’s experiences as waiter and housekeeper are only part of the book. She also describes her jobs as a maid in Maine and at Wal-Mart and a nursing home in Minnesota.
Comments Ehrenreich blogged about Nickel and Dimed in 2011 are accessible at
Questions.
1. When did Ehrenreich do her study? 228
2. Did people use her name very much? 228 How would you interpret this? [Figure it out]
3. Where was she trying to work? 229 [A: Key West, Florida]
4. What change in Federal law inspired her “study?” 229
5. Why on the surface does it seem impossible to make a living with the jobs available to the unskilled? 230 [Note that she assumes one adult in this one-bedroom apartment.]
6. Why are want ads not a reliable measure of the jobs available at any time, at least in a tourist destination like where she was looking for work? 232
7. What did Ehrenreich miss most on her job as a waitress? 233
8. Why does she (and her peers) not like the managers? 235
9. What is the central issue Ehrenreich’s fellow workers seem to talk about as soon as they show up for work? a. food and shopping for food b. lodging c. sex d. sports e. shopping for other than food f. the fabulous entomological specimens they live with 236 How many of the folks she describes are living alone? How many of them live in a house or apartment or room?
10. What typical charge makes getting an apartment often impossible for workers like Ehrenreich and her peers? How was it that she was able to get housing that she didn’t have to share? 237
11. What secret economy that “nourishes the poor” does she discover? 237
12. What solution did she come up with when she figured out she wasn’t going to be able to make her rent? 238 (I lasted about two days trying to work two full time jobs during my summer vacation when I was in college.)
13. What reason may be part of why she was not hired as a housekeeper, at least not at first? 238
14. What “good deal” kept Ehrenreich’s friend Gail working at the Hearthside? 240
15. What was it about the appearance of Carlotta (Carla, the housekeeper who trained her) that told Ehrenreich about health insurance in the new job? 243
16. How did her last day as a waiter go? a. good except for the hangover from after the party her friends organized b. good but sad since her Czech friend George had been fired c. lousy because the kitchen was so shorthanded that she had to cook as well as take orders d. difficult but rewarding when the manager asked the customers from hell to leave e. slow, which would have been good except that without a good night of tips she couldn’t pay the rent on her trailer f. lousy enough, due to shorthandedness in the kitchen and demanding and unpleasant customers, that she just walked off the job while customers were waiting to be served g. so bad that she had a meltdown, just missed when she tried to kick the manager in a sensitive location when he broke into the bathroom to tell her to get back on the floor, flipped off four tables of customers from around the world as she walked out mid-shift, and got a standing ovation from her fellow workers when she came back the next day to pick up her check 245-6
17. How easy does she feel it is to survive in the low-wage workforce? 246
18. What did she like most about her experience as a low-wage worker? 247
Week 9 October 8-12
Required. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. All but Chapter 3, "Socialist and Communist Literature." 1848/1888. There are many other ways to access this most famous of pamphlets. This particular edition is the last, published by Engels in 1888, 40 years after the first edition.
Annotation. The Communist Manifesto is one of the most widely read documents in history. Written 160 years ago, it retains a modern ring. It also has an archaic ring, as it refers to various political parties and events that people today -- even I! -- don't remember. If you find this document interesting, you might want to look at Marx’s description of the development of his ideas, Marx on the History of His Ideas
More Annotation. The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
I-1. In the history books Metternich (an Austrian diplomat) is far more important than Guizot (French foreign minister, later prime minister), but in Marx’s life it was Guizot who threw Marx out of Paris.
I-4 "cosmopolitan" -- often used as the opposite of "local" or "parochial." In the Manifesto Marx uses it more or less synonymously with today's word "global." One of the themes of the Manifesto and Marx's whole life was that capitalism has undermined national identities and that the proletarian revolution needs to see itself as an international movement even if the concrete steps toward revolution will vary to fit local/national circumstances. Part of the tension between the West and the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries (communist eastern European countries) was due to the attempts of the communist movement to spread internationally. An important organization in this light was the Communist International, or Comintern, run out of Moscow, which attempted to foment revolutions around the globe. It and its successors seem to have formally ended with Stalin's death in 1953.
I-7 "The proletarians" and "the proletariat" are the same
I-10 "ideologists" These are intellectuals whose area of intellectual activity is providing explanations (ideologies) for why some course of action or approach to the world is correct and just. They tend to be members of the bourgeoisie or to be supported by the bourgeoisie.
Questions. Note: unless specified otherwise, when I use the present tense, I am referring to the time when the Manifesto was written, 1848. The page numbers are based on the pages I got when I printed each chapter. I-3, for instance, refers to page 3 of Chapter I on my hard copy. The numbers have no relationship I am aware of to screen numbers. They may also differ from what you get when you print.