SOCI 344
ASA Library J-Stor GSS Schedule

SOCI 344 Work and Society
Bethany Bryson, Spring 2007
Office Hours: Mondays 2-5 and Fridays 8-10am in 202 Sheldon Hall

Overview

This course examines the nature and meaning of work under various social and historical conditions. This includes such things as the relationship of work organization to life chances and personal experience, the place of work in social theory, the organization of occupations, occupational socialization and commitment, and how work changes in relation to local and global contexts.

Materials and Other Essentials

  • Access to a computer for word processing, email, web browsing and Blackboard.
  • Books:
            - Barbara Ehrenheich's Nickel and Dimed. (widely available used and cheap)
            - Amy Wharton's Working in America. (available at the JMU Bookstore)
  • Additional readings are available through Blackboard under documents.
  • Meeting times, office hours, and contact information may also be found on Blackboard.

    Requirements

    Attendance, Preparation and Participation - Discretionary portion of final grade

    Attendance, preparation and participation are expected and required in order to succeed at the other tasks we have set of ourselves this semester. If you do not accomplish this, you cannot pass the course. Each of you may miss three class meetings for any reason without penalty. After than, your ability to contribute to the course and to learn from it will be negatively affected and that will be reflected in your grade. The reason doesn't matter at that point. The problem is that you haven't been available to participate in the learning experience. I do not police excused versus unexcused absences. In addition, I may use this discretionary power to reward exceptional performance. I expect you to take seriously the responsibility you have to your peers: to attend, to read, and to contribute to the intellectual environment in our meetings. I reward, not individual achievements, but your (individual) contributions to the group. This changes the game, somewhat. The challenge is to increase the sophistication of the whole conversation, not to use the group as a baseline from which to distinguish yourself. I value the content of your contributions rather than the quantity of them.

    Memos - 60% of final grade

    This is a writing-intensive course, and I have allocated a the majority of your grade to these incremental writing assignments. Focus your energies here, and do not take these lightly. We grade this writing at midterm and at the end of the semester in the form of hardcopy portfolios which you prepare and submit on Feb 28th & Apr 25th. We do NOT simply to check and see that you wrote something. We grade the quality of your writing and the depth of your engagement with the material.

    Twice-weekly memos must be 250-400 words of text submitted electronically in the discussion boards. The deadline is 3pm on the the due date. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING SURE THAT YOUR ENTRY HAS SUCCEEDED. Schedule extra time for this, and DOUBLE check to make sure that your homework really went where you think it did. Compose your entries in a text editor and keep backup copies so that Blackboard problems won't cause you to lose your work.

    Tuesday memos address the readings for that week. On Thursday, you read the entire set of memos (for your group of 12) and respond to them in a second memo. You may skip up to four memos. ***Be warned, however, that those dropped assignments are your forgivenesses. You may choose any four assignments to skip EXCEPT the first two. Those are mandatory. Missing and late memos show up as zeros in the grade calculation. There are no individual exceptions to this rule!

    Tuesday memos should be thoughtful responses to all the week's readings. A good memo will engage the main point of each book, chapter or article and draw connections among the week's/semester's readings. Summaries are generally a waste of words. Practice using theoretical concepts (not just repeating them). Apply them to new material. Your memos will prepare you to make strong contributions in class and to identify potential research questions for your final project.

    You will be graded on correct use of concepts and ideas from the readings, your ability to apply them to new material (especially real life examples), to extend the author's ideas, and to generate new ones. You are graded on how much your memos show that you are thinking and how much your memos make other people think. Be rigorous, but also be creative. Many of you will find the space limiting. I value concision and clarity. Use fewer words to convey more meaning.

    Exams - 20% of final grade

    There are two exams scheduled during the semester (see the separate schedule). I DO NOT GIVE MAKE-UP EXAMS. If you miss one, just work extra hard on the other material to balance it out.

    Final Project - 20% of final grade

    The final project will be a PowerPoint presenting your research on an occupation or industry (competitively selected for presentation before the class). Each project will include a substantial theoretical starting point, and a primary source of evidence.

    Grading Policies

    I have not allocated a specific portion of your grade to attendance and participation, but unusual performance (positive or negative) may be reflected in my final determination of your grade (after averaging your scores). Otherwise, all assignments will be graded on a 100 point system, weighted, averaged and converted to letter grades in the last step by the following convention:
          97-100 is an A+,   93-96 is an A,   90-92 is an A-,   87-89 is a B+,   and so on.
    You are not competing with your classmates for grades!

    Attendance

    Attendance is required and expected. What happens in class is important and it appears on your "mini-tests." I announce schedule changes in class, and you coordinate with your group members in class. You are responsible for your own attendance or lack thereof. I make no distinction between excused and unexcused absence.

    First-Week Attendance Policy

    At the instructor's discretion, any student registered for a class in the College of Arts and Letters who does not attend the first two (2) scheduled meetings of the class (or does not attend the first scheduled meeting of a class that meets once a week) may be administratively dropped from the class.

    Enrollment

    Enrollment Procedures: Students are responsible for registering for classes and for verifying their class schedules on e-campus.

    Enrollment Deadlines: The deadline for adding a Fall Semester class without instructor and academic unit head signatures is Tuesday January 16, 2007. Instructor and and academic unit head signatures are required to add a Fall Semester 2007 class between Wednesday January 17, 2007 and Thursday January 25, 2007. The last day to drop a fall semester class without a W grade is Tuesday, January 16, 2007.

    Withdrawl

    Please pay careful attention to the university's withdrawal policies, as well. Failing to withdraw from a course that you are not attending can be even more serious than taking a course you have not enrolled in.

    Honor

    I take the JMU Honor Code very seriously and I expect you to follow it. We will also make heavy use of collaboration in this class and use the discussion boards to help each other complete assigned tasks. If you are unsure about the distinction between collaboration and plagiarism, please ask questions before you submit someone else's work as your own! All quizzes, texts and exams should represent your own unaided work. Plagiarism and cheating are grounds for course failure (in addition to any relevant university proceedings).

    No Make-up Exams

    Tests, exams, quizzes, and memos cannot be made up. I may, at my discretion, enter a grade other than zero for the missed exam based on your pervious work. You cannot pass the class if you miss more than one exam.

    Special Circumstances

    I am generally opposed to changing rules for the special circumstances of individual students. The reason is only that there are always other deserving candidates who haven't asked. As a result, you can expect me to reject most of your requests for individual exemptions, but you can also expect me to give serious consideration to bigger changes that might improve conditions for the whole class. Try to think sociologically (perhaps even collectively?) about your problem before you bring it to me, and you'll get better results. Read this ("the promise") for help framing your argument.

    Note: The conditions of this syllabus are subject to change as discussed in class.