Week 12: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post by Sunday at midnight.

=== AND BELOW ON THIS PAGE, THE COURSE UPDATE FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTER ===


1. Mark Whitaker

2. Social Reproduction in the USA: Trends of U.S. inequality and marriage bodes poorly for social mobility in the USA

3. There are some social reproduction of stratification issues in the USA that worry me, that might increasingly pull the USA apart and create an even greater underclass. I said that the family framework, education, and the welfare state are all ways of either encouraging social mobility in an open system or creating potentially a form of closed, caste society by using these instituitons in a closed way. The U.S. for its underclasses have huge social reproduction of inequality and poverty for children and this author argues the main issue for social reproduction of inequality in the USA is the very different marriage rates that condemn the next generations to low financial, cultural, emotional, and social stability--making it difficult to have social moblity once this 'marriageless' trap is started, leading into social reproduction of inequality more than social mobility out of it. Many children in the USA are without the social, emotional, and financial stability of two parents; there are massive ethnic inequalities in marriage levels that bring out tensions as well in social reproduction; plus, women get the 'double discrimination' here particularly without financial standing outside of marriage, as well as continued discrimination in the workplace they are encouraged to join.

Just a few of the trends of the USA that bode poorly I think. I've additionally read that the UK and the US have the most social reproduction of class position in any industrial country. I think this article discusses one of the mechanisms why this is so, for the USA: broken families in the underclasses.

Think about what Wilkinson said as well, in his Chapter 9: the biological implications of inequalities, in this case, the lack of a two parent working income.

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05-22-2011 15:03
Schwarzenegger just part of story of marriage woes

By Jay Ambrose

...It's now Arnold Schwarzenegger's media moment, something he earned by extra friendliness with household help, having a love child and finally telling Maria Shriver, his wife, about it. She has naturally enough separated from him, and some may think this one more message about an institution in deep trouble, though it is far from the heart of that story.

No, the Schwarzenegger tale mostly symbolizes how ambitious, driven, ego-centered men seem especially given to wandering off the ranch, the examples running the political gamut from John F. Kennedy in the 1960s to Newt Gingrich more recently.

These particular men, however, are upper middle class ― well, upper, upper, upper middle class. It's mostly poorer Americans with scant education who are most abandoning marriage, often not even giving it a whirl, as you can learn from Kay S. Hymowitz, a Manhattan Institute scholar and author of several books and some online writings I recently encountered.

She's full of reason, understanding and facts, and tells us among other things that all the news gab about the marital mayhem of celebrities can be very misleading.

Most educated, better-off folks are in fact growing more in love with marriage. When you catch a story such as a recent one saying three percent more married-couple families are celebrating 10th wedding anniversaries than in the 1980s, you can bet it's the most advantaged taking more advantage of this absolutely crucial institution.

Go back to the 1960s, and we were a marrying, stay-together nation. But then came the birth control pill, something called the sexual revolution and more widely respected rights and opportunities for women. Says Hymowitz, all of this caused many women to reevaluate the old idea that first comes love, marriage, then the baby carriage.

Divorce became a big deal with us, and still is, despite some decline over the past two decades. Very, very scary on top of that is that something more than a third of children are now born out of wedlock, if only a tiny percentage of them to college educated women. They've figured something important out. Marriage matters to children.

They get it that kids with two parents earning money are going to have more money coming in. They get it that having two married-couple parents means more training for the children, more guidance by example toward the kind of life that works best for families, more attention to academics. Those who don't get it are people with the least education ― often less than high school. Here is what single-parent homes give us on average: still no education to speak of in the next generation, still more poverty, still more single-parent moms.

Hymowitz skillfully takes on the people who argue differently, saying that it's the market economy or inadequate social programs that cause these difficulties or that poor women don't marry because there is no one out there for them, no acceptable male. She grants the market is increasingly less friendly to unskilled labor, but notes that marriage tends to engender education and skills in children.

She observes, too, that the women who don't marry often have live-in boyfriends. They have in fact located men they find suitable to have in the home. Hymowitz agrees that marriage may not be a panacea for poverty, but argues something bigger: It is the "sine qua non," that without which you get none of the rest of what it takes to climb out of it.

The percentages of unwed mothers among poor whites, blacks and some other minority groups are over half, and if we are going to fix what ails us, we have to fix this. I am dubious about the role of politics, though some good examples and good preaching might help.

I do believe that cultural values count, as opposed to the politically correct social scientists, some of whom were saying in one news account that talking about wrong values amounts to blaming the victims. No, it's blaming the culture, including the social scientists who help form it. We need a new revolution, and wise thinkers like Hymowitz can help us get there.


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http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2011/05/160_87418.html



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FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTER, we meet only THREE more times beginning on May 30, 2011, because there is a holiday on one Monday June 6. So the last three days:

[1]

Monday, May 30, 2011

Sernau. (excerpts, ignore the U.S. centric examples, I'll introduce important terms once more)
a. Chapter 4: Class Privilege
b. Chapter 7: Status Prestige
c. Chapter 8: Power and Politics

42. Smythe, Hugh H. 1952. “The Eta: A Marginal Japanese Caste.” The American Journal
of Sociology 58(2), September:194–96. Http://www.jstor.org/stable/2772191.

43. [Japan] Kaplan, David E., and Alec. Dubro. 2003. Yakuza Japan’s Criminal
Underworld. Berkeley: University of California Press. Xi – 27.

[2]

Wednesday, June 1, 2011: THREE TOPICS INTERRELATED, TODAY Ascriptive Discrimination: The Gordian Knot of Race, Class, and Gender AND its Spatial Consequences: Spatial Discrimination in Environmental Justice/Injustice, Environmental Racism; spatial discrimination in gender as well); and Material Stratification: Raw Material Regimes Built From These Social Inequalities of Gender, Ethnicity, Ownership/Class

[a]

49. Sernau, Scott. 2011. Social Inequality in a Global Age. Third Edition. Los Angeles,California: Pine Forge Press.
a. Chapter 5: The Gordian Knot of Race[Ethnicity/Cultural Differences in Hierarchies], Class, and Gender

51. Chang, Mariko Lin. 2004. “Growing Pains: Cross-National Variation in Sex
Segregation in Sixteen Developing Countries.” American Sociological Review 69(1),
February:114–37. Http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593077.

[Cultural Stratification by Region in the Chosun Dynasty: Jolla-do in Koeran History] 58. Yu, Eui-Young. 1990. “Regionalism in the South Korean Job Market: An Analysis of Regional-Origin Inequality Among Migrants in Seoul.” Pacific Affairs 63(1), Spring: 24–39. Http://www.jstor.org/stable/2759812.

[b]

Environmental Racism and/or Environmental Classism, Inequalities of
Regions

56. Robinson, Deborah M., Ph.D. 2000. “Environmental Racism: Old Wine in a New Bottle.” Http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/echoes/echoes-17–02.html#1. (9 pages,
in packet)

53. Romero, Mary and Eric Margolis, eds. The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.
a. Pellow, David Naguib. “Chapter 7: Environmental Racism: Inequality in a
Toxic World,” 147-164.

[c]

The Political Power of Materials: Whether We Think of Them as a Form of Repression, Acceptable Clientelism, Unacceptable Clietelism, Choice, Lack of Choice--they are always forms of Stratification: "Raw Material Regimes" Versus Other Materials in Their Social Choice Groups (a PPT for this issue)

Cambell, Fiona. 2003. “The Cotton Club,” The Ecologist (October): 36-37. [consider
this short article as a case of what the above article describes.]

Whitaker, Mark. (Manuscript). Raw Materials and the Division of Labor (on cotton, wool, and worsted stratification compared) [PPT/Lecture as example]


[3]

Wednesday, June 8, 2011: What I Think About Stratification Ideas, Judged and Tested from my Comparative Historical Research: Putting it All Together in "Trialectics" Instead of Dialectics in Stratification and Inequality: Putting It All Together; Common Cross Cultural Positions of Power, Their Dynamics, Their Alliances, and Their Overall Historical Processes of Stratification Change in History

60. Whitaker, Mark. 2009. Ecological Revolution: The Political Origins of Environmental Degradation and the Environmental Origins of Axial Religions; China, Japan, Europe. Cologne, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing. [small excerpt, major PPT lecture]



[reposted for Yin, because she had difficulty posting this:]

1. Yin Yashuo

2． Do we need City Administration in China?

3. The resources of the article:

中国能不能不要“城管”？
这里说的“城管”是狭义的，老百姓望文生义条件反射般想到的，是专门对付街边巷尾地摊或游动小贩（广州话“走鬼”）的那种“大盖帽”。
广义的“城管”即“城市管理”，行政机构全名是“城市管理执法局”。我这两天读新闻，广州番禺市城管局负责人称会江村居民“5000人联名意见书只能算一张反对票”，被网民“拍砖”，始知垃圾焚烧厂选址这种事也归“城管”管，我还想当然以为这是市政规划或环保部门管的事呢。

“城管”发展到今天，与“强拆”并列为两大热点新闻源，隔三差五就有搅动舆论沸沸扬扬的事件发生。
这些事件若以戏剧为喻，大体有三类。一是悲剧：沈阳下岗工人、街头摆摊卖烧烤的夏俊峰刺死两名城管队员案二审，正受到社会广泛关注；当事双方的家庭都由此陷入困境。
二是悲喜剧或正剧：如这些天被传为佳话的，成都街头，一个卖杨梅的老大爷，杆秤被城管折断，杨梅也撒了一地，一群路见不平，挺身上前挡住执法车，坚持要城管协管员向老大爷道歉。谁说中国人冷漠呢？三是喜剧：城管与摊贩的猫与老鼠游戏，每天都在上演。通常城管人员奉行“穷寇勿追”的原则，吓跑就收手；“走鬼”互相关照“打游击”；路人也有帮他们通风报信的。 所谓“人心向背”是不言而喻的。何以“人民城管为人民”，“人民”却不领情，这帮大学生还跟着起哄？
这样的场景，使我想到城市的“市”，本来就是集市，水陆码头给人们做交易谋生形成的。至于“城”，除了皇上住的紫禁城，也应该是有市坊的；集市固然没有“城管”，那么《清明上河图》所描绘的首都开封城里，有“城管”吗？
好像也没有呀。
为什么世界大多数国家，可以没有“城管”，而我们必须有呢？如果用成龙大哥“关于中国人就是要人管”的话为“城管”的存在辩护，是没有说服力的，因为我们的老祖宗并没有“城管”。
是不是，因为我们从单位制、人民公社和计划经济时代过来，已经没有了社会自治，没有了对社会自治的信仰？是不是因为我们被文化批评家朱大可所说的“权力美学”浸染的太久，太过看重整齐划一和表面秩序，而将“看上去很美”看得高于底层人的生存权？
这是一个值得探讨的问题。如果社会自治的思路（并不排斥政府作用，黑帮占“码头”收保护费之类就要靠政府强力取缔）被否定了，那就尽快出台《行政强制法》，规范“城管”的执法行为吧。


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4. The summary of the article
Recently, there are two heated news resources in China: the city administration and the Forced evictions. This article asked us a question: Do we need the city administration in China?
The city administration has two meanings: narrowly speaking, it is a department that takes charge of the people who are doing street vendors and ask the stall disappeared in all kinds of street fiercely. Generally speaking, it is a department that takes charge of the city development and urban environment. Here, what we related is the narrow meaning.
It seems so common that the city administrator quarrel with the stall owners or they fight with each other. Because the ways of the administrator are powerful and force the stall owners always can not accept or obey their control. Therefore, there also exist three extreme but common phenomena in the street: one is the stall owners killed the administrator, the second is the administrators hurt the stall owners, the third is the stall owner escape from the expelling of the city administrators.
No matter what effects, common people always hate the city administration department.
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5. There is no doubt that the generally meaning city administration is necessary for our society. However, the common people are questioned the necessary of the narrowly meaning city administration. Some people asked why we Chinese people need the city administration while many countries in the world don`t need this kind of city administration?
In my opinion, it is a problem that we need to pay much more attention to think about it. Why common people always criticize the administrator and have mercy on the stall owners? Because the stall owner is the vulnerable groups of our society, because they have no other choice to make a living, because the control of the administrator is not human.
I think we can not neglect the conflict between the weakness and the strength, we should not only condemn who is right or who is wrong. What we should do is ask the origin of the phenomena, why the stall is so common? On one hand, the development of the city also needs the existence of stall because it is convenient to some degree. On the hand, these people have to make a living depending on the stall. Yes, how to solve the deep problems is more meaningful than punishment and control.
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http://bbs.huanqiu.com/thread-673352-1-1.html