For Friday, 10/18

Hey y’all, slight change of plans: we didn’t get a chance to really discuss the Ritzer article, so let’s go over that, and then begin our discussion of social stratification (we’ll save the Communist Manifesto for next week) with a look at the textbook discussion of it.  Please take some time to look over the Ritzer article again. Finally, here’s that video I mentioned Friday on the 1%, the 9.9%, and the rest of us.

Prep

• HW due 10/13: Class Participation Self-Evaluation
• HW due 10/14: Annotated Bibliography
• Review George Ritzer, ‘The McDonaldization of Society’ Journal of American Culture (1983), pp.100-107
• William Little and Ron McGivern, Introduction to Sociology, Ch. 9 (‘Social Stratification in Canada’), esp. Sects. 9.1 (‘What Is Social Stratification?’) and 9.4 (‘Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification’)

In Class

1. Attendance
2. Small Groups Exercise: Mapping Ritzer’s Argument
3. Small Groups Exercise: McDonaldisation in Brazil
4. Belated Introduction: Max Weber and the Rationalisation Process
   1. Rationalisation in Bed
5. BREAK
6. Q&AL Social Stratification
7. Review: Submitting the Midterm
8. For Next Time
   1. On Reading Marx

For Next Time

• Milton Friedman, ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’, New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970)
• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,The Communist Manifesto, (New York: Verso, 1998)