Subject Sociology

Topic     Draft of Final

Type      Essay

Level     University

Style      MLA

Sources                –

Language             English(U.S.)

Description

Advice before writing your first draft:

The challenge of this assignment is to identify the social resources that have enhanced individual opportunities to create an economically secure and satisfying life. In order to provide you with a preliminary “thought experiment,вЂк I have given you statistical information on Piedmont, CA and the West Oakland neighborhood of Oakland, CA (zip code 94607) in the Final_Essay_Data worksheet. These two communities are both located in the East Bay—in fact, they are about 3 miles apart—but present stark differences in the quality of life within each community. Using your sociological imagination, what can you tell about the quality of life looking at the statistical data of these two communities? How do either community differ from the average Californian and American (US) community? How would residence in each community affect a typical childвЂTMs family circumstances and life chances? What larger social and economic factors might give insight into why these communities are so different in what they can offer their children? Think about the contemporary impact of privileges and disadvantages created in the past and note how these different community histories can perpetuate privilege or disadvantage through the resources (or lack thereof) provided to its residents. You do not need to write up this comparative analysis, but you might use these contrasts to generate ideas before starting work on your own socio-biography on social location and life chances.

 

Once you have thought about the sharp contrasts in the class and race profiles of Piedmont and West Oakland, how would your own experiences growing up compare to life in each of these cities? Check out the article “An Atlas of Upward Mobility Shows Paths Out of PovertyвЂк included in the Final Project Model. In the section entitled “The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up,вЂк You can type in your own zip code and receive information on general chances of upward mobility in your home community. Most of you have life experiences that fall in between those of the typical West Oakland or Piedmont resident, so you will need to consider a more complex interplay of resources and opportunities to explain the trajectory of your personal life.

This would be a good time to read/reread the literature on family life and structural opportunities. The work by Stephanie Coontz will be particularly useful to this essay (i.e., “What We Really Miss About the 1950sвЂк, “We Always Stood On Our Own Two FeetвЂк and “Wilding Boys, Pregnant Girls, Crack Babies and the Underclass: the myth of Black family collapseвЂк). You might also take a look at the readings included at the end of your course reader—the first chapter of Karen BrodkinвЂTMs How Jews Became White Folks and the Introduction and ch. 1 of Melvin Oliver and Thomas ShapiroвЂTMs book Black Wealth/White Wealth. These essays explicitly address how structural opportunities affect family formation and economic mobility. By the time you turn in your final draft, you should also be very familiar with the articles on families and race/ethnicity included in the course reader, (e.g., see especially articles by Taylor, Baca Zinn & Wells, Ishii-Kuntz, Woo, Nakano Glenn, and Collins). You should gather ideas from these readings to help you understand why growing up some communities have more opportunities and resources than others, based in large part on the prevalent race and class of the community (gender also plays a role in the distribution of economic and social resources).

 

Advice on writing the first draft (or shorter outline):

After thinking about the intersection of larger community resources and personal life chances, try to concretely explain how growing up in your particular social location, (i.e., your race, class, and the physical location of your home) affected your life chances. What opportunities were given to you? What opportunities were obtained through struggles/extraordinary efforts on you or your familyвЂTMs part? In addition to ideas from the course readings, use data from the data sheets as well as your answers to the questions in Section II to describe factors that have been important in creating your life chances. Make sure you consider the role of social policies in your answer. As your final essay should make considerable use of the course readings, try to create an overarching argument that explains the sociological forces that have shaped your life chances. To repeat, you will not be graded on your rough draft but readers will write comments that will help you shape and polish your final essay. Check out the essay criteria posted in the Final Project module as a separate handout. Much of this essay is a reflection in your own words upon your own experiences, but papers are awarded higher grades if they do two things: 1) present ideas that are organized around a central argument and 2) show familiarity with the course readings and content. In general, good essays have a clear, overarching argument that is developed and substantiated in the body of the paper. Sub-themes need to be related in some way to the main argument and you need to make the connections between sub-themes clear. By the conclusion, the reader should have a new perspective on the topic at hand.

 

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This is Draft paper of final essay.

You only need to write outline 2 pages.

I am international student, but you don’t have to write by international student.

Please message me if you have any questions

Spacing Double

Pages    2