Sociology
149/249
"The Urban Underclass"
Syllabus
Spring quarter, 2004
Class Meets Monday and Wednesday 1:15-2:05P
Room: Bldg 380, Room 380C
Plus once a week section, day and time TBA
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
McClatchy Hall (Building 120) room 124
mrosenfe@stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe
Office Hours 2:30- 3:30 Wednesdays
TA:
Tahu Kukutai
tkukutai@stanford.edu
Introduction:
In this class we will read and discuss some of the classic work of urban sociology, and ask a series of questions about segregation, opportunity, race, class, and public policy.
Required Readings (Available at Stanford Bookstore and on
reserve at Green)
* Hirsch, Arnold. 1983. Making the Second Ghetto. Cambridge University Press
* Piven, Frances Fox and Richard A. Cloward. 1979. Poor Peoples' Movements. Vintage
* Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy Denton. 1993. American
Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
* Kotlowitz, Alex. 1991. There Are No Children Here. Doubleday
* Murray, Charles. 1995. Losing Ground. Basic Books.
* Anderson, Elijah.
1990. Streetwise: Race, Class and
Change in an Urban Community.
* Oliver, Melvin and Thomas Shapiro. 1995. Black Wealth, White Wealth. Routledge
Requirements:
For Undergraduates (soc 149):
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* Midterm Exam |
30% |
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* Make one 15 minute presentation to discussion section, and
lead (along with the TA) the section discussion for that week. |
20% |
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* Regular section participation |
10% |
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* Final Exam |
40% |
For Graduate Students (soc 249):
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* Midterm Exam |
20% |
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* Make one 15 minute presentation to discussion section,
and lead (along with the TA) the section discussion for that week. |
20% |
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* Regular section participation |
10% |
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* One 10 minute presentation to class, presenting a different book from the one you presented to section |
15% |
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* Final Exam |
35% |
Class Size:
In case of class size limitations, sign-up will require consent of the professor.
Students with Disabilities:
Students with disabilities that may necessitate an academic accommodation must initiate a request with the Disability Resource Center (DRC). See the website http://www.stanford.edu/group/DRC/, or call (650) 723-1066 voice (650) 723-1067 TTY.
Reading Assignments:
NOTE: Questions are posted on my website for each reading. See www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/urb_reading_questions_2002
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Week |
Class |
Assignment |
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Week 1 |
Weds, Mar 31 |
Class orientation |
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Week 2 |
Mon, Apr 5 |
Making the Second Ghetto, Ch 1-3 |
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Weds Apr 7 |
Making the Second Ghetto, Ch 4,5 |
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Week 3 |
Mon Apr 12 |
Making the Second Ghetto, finish the book |
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Weds Apr 14 |
Poor Peoples' Movements, Intro and Ch 1. |
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Week 4 |
Mon Apr 19 |
Poor Peoples' Movements, Ch 4 |
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Weds Apr 21 |
Poor Peoples' Movements, Ch 5 |
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Week 5 |
Mon Apr 26 |
American Apartheid, preface + Ch 1-2 |
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Weds Apr 28 |
American Apartheid, Ch 3-5 |
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Week 6 |
Mon May 3 |
In Class Midterm Exam |
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Weds May 5 |
American Apartheid, finish the book |
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Week 7 |
Mon May 10 |
There Are no Children Here, Preface, and |
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Weds May 12 |
There Are no Children Here, Finish the Book |
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Week 8 |
Mon May 17 |
Black Wealth/ White Wealth, Intro, Ch 1-5 |
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Weds May 19 |
Streetwise, Intro and Ch 1-2 |
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Week 9 |
Mon May 24 |
Streetwise, Finish the book |
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Weds May 26 |
Losing Ground, reading TBA |
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Week 10 |
Mon May 31 |
No Class- Memorial Day |
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Weds June 2 |
No |
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Tuesday, June 8 |
8:30A- 11:30A, Final Exam |
Additional, Suggested Readings:
These are readings you may want to
consult to supplement your discussion of the required texts.
1) How does the
structure of work affect the urban underclass?
What barriers do the urban underclass face in finding work or in holding
a job? What role does public policy
play? How do race, geography, and
language effect an individual's ability to get a job?
*Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio Cambridge.
*MacLeod, Jay. 1995. Ain't No Making It. Westview Press
*Kirschenman, Joleen and Kathryn M. Neckerman. 1991. "We'd love to hire them but..." The Meaning of Race for Employers. p. 203-234 in The Urban Underclass, Jencks and Peterson editors.
*Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears. Knopf
*Waldinger,
Roger. 1996. Still the promised city? :
African-Americans and new immigrants in postindustrial New York.
2) Have American Incomes become more unequal? What kinds of public policies are most responsible for rising inequality? If the rich are getting richer, is that necessarily bad for the urban underclass? That is, is inequality necessarily a bad thing?
*Look at the chapters in the edited volumes The Urban Underclass, State of the Union, Confronting Poverty, and Uneven Tides (all cited below)
3) What factors contributed to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, and the Watts riots of 1964? What is the effect of these riots? What do the riots mean and what effects do they have? What role does police violence play?
*Abelmann, Nancy
and John Lie. 1995. Blue
Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots. Cambridge, MA.
*Button, James W. 1978. Black Violence: Political Impact of the 1960's Riots. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press
*Conot,
James. 1967
*Gooding-Williams, Robert, editor. 1993. Reading Rodney King, Reading Urban Uprising Routledge
*Gurr, Ted Robert. 1970. Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
*Hobsbawm, Eric. 1963. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York, NY. Norton
*Jacobs, Ronald
N. 2000.
Race, media, and the crisis of civil society : from
*Ogletree, Charles J. et al. Beyond the Rodney King story : an investigation of police conduct in minority communities. NAACP.
*Olzak, Susan. 1992. The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict. Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press
4) Who are the homeless and what does their presence imply for the rest of us? Is the homeless population really growing, or is it an illusion? What kinds of public policies are responsible for homelessness? What kinds of public policies might alleviate the problem?
*Snow, David
A. 1993.
Down on their luck : a study of homeless street people .
*Jencks,
Christopher. 1994. The homeless.
5) The Massey- Wilson debate. What are the causes for black isolation? Is the flight of the black middle class to blame for the isolation of the poor blacks in the ghetto?
*Wilson, William Julius. 1980. The Declining Significance of Race. University of Chicago Press
*Massey, Douglas
S. and Nancy Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the
Making of the Underclass.
*Wilson, William
Julius. 1987. The
Truly Disadvantaged.
*Jargowsky, Paul A. 1997. Poverty and place : ghettos, barrios, and the American city. Russell Sage Foundation.
If you're casting about for other sources, a good place to start are these edited volumes which contain lots of articles about poverty, economic trends, and public policy. Note that these books also have excellent bibliographies.
*Jencks, Christopher and Paul E. Peterson, Editors. 1991. The Urban Underclass. Brookings Institution
*Danziger, Sheldon J., Gary D. Sandefur and Daniel H. Weinberg, Editors. 1994. Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change. Harvard and Russell Sage Foundation
*Danziger, Sheldon and Peter Gottschalk, Editors. 1993. Uneven Tides: Rising Inequality in America. Russell Sage Foundation.
*Farley, Reynolds, Editor. 1995. State of the Union: America in the 1990s. Volume One: Economic Trends. Russell Sage Foundation.
*Waldinger, Roger and Medhi Bozorgmehr, editors. 1996. Ethnic Los Angeles. Russell Sage Foundation.