De Anza College Economic Inequality and Economic Disadvantage Questions

For this final project, you will have to analyze an economic debate, process, or institution through a sociological perspective. Your project should address one and only one of the following prompts and use a case as evidence for your argument:

1. Is economic inequality inevitable?

2. How can organizations reduce the role of class, gender, and/or race in reproducing internal inequalities?

3. Are markets necessarily and inevitably problematic?

4. How can social networks strengthen economic disadvantage?

5.  Is meritocracy impossible?

To address these prompts, you will have to combine sociological arguments from the videos, readings, and assignments with an original empirical case of your choice. A case refers to an identifiable event or process that is documented and that you can analyze as a relevant example associated to your argument. The current economic/heath crisis would be an example of ‘a case’; an organization or institution would also be an example of ‘a case’; personal experiences, as documented through interviews, would also be an example of ‘a case’; a heated discussion on Reddit is also a ‘case’.

In your project, you should really endeavor to  use the sociological concepts and discussions from the course’s reading list. You can write, for example, on the reproduction of social capital, the importance of institutions, the role of networks, the operation of culture, et cetera, when building your argument. Indeed, you are expected to use the relevant readings from the course to address the prompt you chose. You are welcome to use external readings too, but you should be able to tackle this project just with the readings in our reading list.

You are also expected to give us readers some information about the case that you selected and why you selected it. As part of the text, you will have to introduce briefly what the case is about and why it matters for your argument.

Along with the main text of your project, you are expected to include a list of references. Please, separate the references that refer to theories and sociological texts from those that refer to your selected case. This last group are “primary sources”, and may include news articles, online materials, reddit threads, etc.  Divide your references into “primary sources” (which refers to the sources for the case) and “bibliography” (which refers to the readings that you used to build your argument).