Contents
Module Overview
By the end of this module, you will:
– become familiar with the basic concepts of collective actions and political organizing in American politics.
– have a basic working knowledge the concept of “racial capitalism.
– Identify key ideas across several readings and assigned materials
– have practiced text annotation of the assigned reading
– critically analyze assigned text and video material
Lesson 4.1 – What is Social Class?
Social class is a fundamental, key concept in American politics (and in the politics of any society, really). Yet, often, it is talked about in a confusing way. Part of our goal in this module, is to avoid making the mistake of thinking about social class, in simplified and inaccurate ways.
WATCH – Intro Video
Here’s an overview of this lesson:
WATCH – Wealth Inequality in America
This video present how unequal the wealth created by Americans is distributed in America. How is this possible, what makes it possible? What does the existence of such inequality tell us about the society we live in? These questions cannot be answered comprehensively and meaningfully, if we don’t think about them through social classes:
READ – 4. 1 What Determines How Americans Perceive Their Social Class?
This reading present the usual way through which social class is defined, and understood in American society. So we have to be familiar with this view, only to reject it later, in favor of a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of social class:
READ – 4.2 “Inequality and New York’s Subway”
This reading presents another common view of how social class functions in our society. This time, we have the NYC subway map as a guide to social classes. Each station on the subway map corresponds with an average income level of the people living around that stop. This sets up an interesting view of NYC neighborhoods:
https://projects.newyorker.com/story/subway/
WRITE – Discussion Board 4.1
Head over to Discussion Board 4.1:
Lesson 4.2 – What is Social Class (continued)
In this lesson, we continue our study of social class by getting deeper into the question: what is social class, and how does it affect American politics.
WATCH – Intro Video
In this lesson we build on concepts we encountered in the previous lesson:
READ AND ANNOTATE – 4.3 Michael Parenti on Capital and Labor
Read and annotate (using Hypothesis) the following excerpt, which introduces more precise and key parts of what social class is: the concepts of capital and labor.
You will be asked to participate in a discussion group, and answer questions about this reading in the quiz that ends this module:
Here’s the clean, non-annotated version. I recommend you keep a non-annotated copy of this reading by downloading it on your device:
COMPLETE – Self-Assessment
Answer the following multiple-choice questions by clicking on the link below:
READ AND ANNOTATE – 4.4 Paul Heideman “Class Rules Everything Around Me”
Read and annotate the following text. Here, we have the same story as in the Parenti reading above, except in greater detail. An important part of this read is that it shows how class plays a role in current events, specifically how it intersects with race:
Here’s the clean, non-annotated version. I recommend you keep a non-annotated copy of this reading by downloading it on your device:
COMPLETE – Self-Assessment exercise
In preparation for our discussion board, review and make sure you have an initial, clear understanding of what the author said about the following concepts in Reading 4.4 (Note, at the end of this module, you will write and submit a response paper, which will ask you do discuss some of these concepts):
1. How do liberals think of social classes? How do socialists think of social classes (see pg. 1-2 especially).
2. What are the two ways in which class is different from social hierarchies? (see p. 5)
3. What are the two implications for politics if we follow the socialist understanding of class? (pg. 7)
WRITE – Discussion Board 4.2
Head over to Discusison Board 4.2:
WRITE – Response Paper 4
To conclude this module, think about and answer the following questions, which are designed to focus your attention to some of the key ideas we studies in this module.
Instructions:
– Think of your response paper as a collection of short essays. This is not supposed to be a research paper, but rather the goal is to answer each question as fully as you can.
– The questions you see here will appear on our exam in some form or another. Think of this as a preparation for our exam.
– GRADING: Response papers are NOT graded, but you receive credit for completing and submitting them. As the syllabus indicates, response papers account for 20% of your final course grade.
– Type your answers and save them as a Microsoft Word Document.
– A typical response paper should be in the range of 200 words per question.
– When you are finished with your response, upload your paper my entering your name, attaching your paper, and submitting it by using the form below:
- Reading 4.4 makes the point that capitalists and workers pursue different strategies in living their lives, because they have different interests. Why is this true? In what ways are the interests of workers and wealth-owners (capitalists) different? Give examples to support your point.
- Explain how the following statement from Reading 4.4 might be true in describing current American politics:
Since most people in society are in dependence to capitalists, this means that other forms of oppression in society are also connected to class power.You must log into your BMCC OpenLab account before you can upload a response paper.
