SOCI 401 – Short Essay Assignment
You must answer all questions, in logically organized and well-written short essays. Questions one through three are worth four points. Note that grades for each question may be assigned as either whole numbers or decimals. The expectations for your short essays are as follows:
• Awareness: your short essays should demonstrate that you are aware of pertinent ideas expressed in the readings and lectures in the course.
• Thoughtfulness: your short essays should clearly express your ideas about the questions that have been posed.
• Coherence and Expression: your short essays should coherently address the questions posed, be a pleasure to read, and have few spelling errors or grammatical mistakes.

Each of your essays should be approximately 1 page (double spaced, with 12-point font) in length. There is no need to include a list of references. To cite the readings from the course, simply insert the names of the authors and a page number. Here are two examples:
• As Snow and Anderson (p. 5) describe…
• The young men interviewed had various jobs (Creese, p. 7).
To cite something from a lecture, you can either indicate the date of the lecture or simply identify the number of the lecture (5, 6, 7, or 8). Here would be an example:
• As McLean (Lecture 7) stated…
Your Assignment must be submitted by noon on December 9. No extensions will be granted.

Questions

1. Identities are simultaneously subjective (in the minds of those who bear them) and objective (in their consequences). We have a sense of who we are, but other people also have a sense of who we are (Proposition 3). On page 1421, Rafalow writes, “Existing work suggests that race and class are intimately connected to teachers’ assumptions about their students’ trajectory in the labor market, which in turn shapes their day-to-day lessons.” Using specific examples from the students Rafalow observed at Chavez, Heathcliff, and Sheldon junior high schools, explain how teachers’ assumptions about their students’ career pathways structured those teachers’ reactions to students’ use of information and computer technologies.

2. Sociological categories – such as social class, race, gender, nation, locality, age, and religion… should be understood as intersectional in nature (Proposition 6). Silva considered all of her interviewees to have working class backgrounds. However, while some of her interviewees had succeeded in establishing stable, blue-collar careers in the public sector, most had more precarious employment in the service sector. Describe how race, gender, and security of employment influenced the coming of age narratives of Silva’s interviewees.

3. Identities have plural roots. There is no singular, essential, or universal pathway to identity. (Proposition 8). Whitehead writes, “Although a great deal has been learned about collective identity, many questions have been left unanswered. We still do not know about the ‘cultural building blocks’, which are used to cultivate collective identities… That is, we need to understand the components of culture that contribute to the construction of collective identities” (p. 599). Summarize the five “highly gendered practices” through which members of the Pro-ED community nurture and sustain a sense of community online. Why does Whitehead consider each of these practices to be “highly gendered”?
• Promoting surreptitiousness.
• Organizing around the domestic realm.
• Equating beauty with self-worth.
• Fostering friendship.
• Drawing inspiration from extremely thin celebrities.