Premio: CÓMO? QUE NO OS PARECE SUFICIENTE EL PLACER DEL CONOCIMIENTO???? Faltaría vamos!
In this course we will explore varied ways of “seeing” families – as households (political and economic units whose composition and dynamics change historically and vary by social class and culture); families as organized through kinship and discursive practices, including family ideologies, myths, rituals; and families as nodes of care, intimacy, inequality, and power-laden emotional connections. We will examine families through the lens of labor (paid and unpaid, structured through intersections of gender, age, “race,” migration, social class); sexuality, intimacy, care, and control; the social organization of time (e.g. historical constructions of “family time”; generational relations and processes of growing older); and space (varied geographies of daily living, including ties of families to other institutions). Throughout the course we will attend to varying standpoints, including those of children.
We will meet each Tuesday from 2 to 4 pm (one of our early-semester meetings will be at Bxx ’s home from 6 to 9 p.m., and will include dinner as well as discussion).
This is an intensive reading and discussion course; and the short and frequent written assignments, some of them to be posted and shared on-line, are designed to keep us moving at a shared, productive pace. Since collective dialogue is central to the course, you should plan to attend every week and to keep up with and think about the readings. Please e-mail Bxx ahead of time if you will not be able to attend a particular class session.
Course Requirements (each will count towards a third of your course grade):
1. Keeping up with the weekly readings and participating in each class Active engagement with our on-line discussions is also a plus.
2. Timely completion and on-line posting of 8 short (2 page) reaction memos, each in response to the readings assigned for a particular class session. Please space your memos throughout the term (roughly every other week). Each reaction memo should be posted on the course web site no later than Monday (11:59 pm!) on the day before the readings will be discussed. Everyone is expected to read and think about the on-line postings – and the readings themselves -- before our Tuesday 2 pm class. This should enhance participation and enliven our discussions. Reaction memos should focus your thoughts and reflections on the week’s readings as a set, highlighting a common theme, points of debate, and/or tracing a conceptual development reflected in readings over time. Craft each memo in whatever way seems most useful for stimulating our ongoing and collective thinking about the ideas of the course. Each memo should conclude with several suggested questions for class discussion. Everyone is encouraged to respond on-line, as well as in class, to the thoughts of our colleagues.
a) Drawing partly on assigned course readings, write a proposal (12-15 pp) and develop an initial bibliography for an empirical project you would like to pursue which is connected in some way to themes in the course. Describe the central issue(s) you will pose, the leading theoretical perspectives on your question(s), the methods you will employ, and your rationale and motives for undertaking this research.
b) Write a paper (15-17 pp.) in which you discuss the implications, contributions, and limitations that selected course readings (a minimum of 3) suggest for work you have done or are currently doing in your own current or projected research.
c) Drawing on assigned readings from the seminar, compose 4 questions for a Ph.D. qualifying examination in the sociology of families. Answer two of your questions in essays of 8-10 pp. each.
d) If you are already working on a pertinent paper or project (e.g. for an M.A. or for a field exam in education), develop it further, drawing on readings and ideas from the course.
Course website: http://bspace.berkeley.edu
Please sign up on the course “bspace” website as soon as possible, logging in with your Calnet ID; search for the course under SOC28
The course syllabus is posted on the website, as well as links to other relevant sources of information and announcements of upcoming events. .
On-line discussions: The “Discussion” section of the website is divided into weekly forums for the posting and reading of reaction memos, and also for additional discussion. Please set aside time each Tuesday, before 2 pm, to read the memos posted on Monday, and to add your thoughts, questions, amplifications, reactions. [Research has shown that the combination of face-to-face discussions and on-line dialogue enhances learning; it’s a way for the reticent to come more fully to voice, to extend discussions begun in the classroom, and to spark one another’s thinking. The website discussions should also help focus topics and analysis for the final written assignment.]
Books available for purchase at the University Bookstore and Ned’s Book Exchange:
-John R. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values. Harvard Univ. Press paperback, 1997
-Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. Univ. of Chicago Press paperback, 2000
-Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children Princeton Univ. Press paperback, 1994.
- Miri Song, Helping Out: Children's Labor in Ethnic Businesses. Temple Univ. Press paperback, 1999,
A course reader of all the other assigned readings will be available for purchase at Copy Central on Bancroft by Jan. 17. The full bibliography for these readings is at the end of this syllabus.
Topics and Reading Assignments
Introduction: Brainstorming question: How is a family different from a bowling team?
WEEK 1: Jan. 16: no readings.
WEEK 2: Jan. 23:
Jane Collier, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, and Sylvia Yanigasako, “Is There a Family? New Anthropological Views”
Dorothy E. Smith, “The Standard North American Family: SNAF as an Ideological
Martha Minow, “Redefining Families: Who’s In and Who’s Out?”
Kath Weston, “The Politics of Gay Families”
Arlene S. Skolnick, “The Life Course Revolution”
Carol B. Stack and Linda M. Burton, “Kinscripts: Reflections of Family, Generation, and
Historical Changes in the Ideals and Realities of Family Life
WEEK 3: Jan. 30: John Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, chs. 1-7.
Social Class, the State, and Changing Constructions of “Public/Private” and “Dependency”
WEEK 4: Feb. 6
Gillis, chs. 8-11.
Leonore Davidoff, “Regarding Some ‘Old Husbands’ Tale’s: Public and Private in
Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon. 1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing
A Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State”
Sexuality, Intimacy, Marriage, and Reproduction Through The Lenses of Colonialism, Globalization, and Transmigration
WEEK 5: Feb. 13
Ellen Ross and Rayna Rapp, “Sex and Society: A Research Note from
Social History and Anthropology”
Ann Stoler, 1997. “Making Empire Respectable: the Politics of Race and Sexual
Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures”
Hung Cam Thai, “For Better or Worse: Gender Allures in the Vietnamese Global Marriage Market”
Jennifer S. Hirsch, “ En el Norte la Mujer Manda: Gender, Generation, and Geography in a Mexican Transnational Community”
Families, Neighborhoods, Class, and Racialization in the Contemporary
WEEK 6: Feb. 20 Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences
Experiences of Intimacy, Domesticity, Work and Family
WEEK 7: Feb. 27 Christopher Carrington, No Place Like Home
Family Labor Systems and Generational Relations
WEEK 8: March 6 Miri Song, Helping Out
[*By March 7th be sure to email Bxxx with a description of your final paper/project]
Theorizing Care and Carework
WEEK 9: March 13
Sara Ruddick, “Care as Labor and Relationship.”
Joan Tronto, “Care as a Basis for Radical Political Judgments”
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “The Commodity Frontier”
Evelyn Nakano Glenn. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the
Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.”
Constructions of Motherhood
WEEK 10: March 20:
Shellee Colen, “’Like a Mother to Them’: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian
Childcare Workers and Employers in
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “(M)Other Love: Culture, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking”
Claudia Fonseca, “Patterns of Shared Parenthood among the Brazilian Poor”
Anne Allison, “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch-Box as Ideological State
Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing”
Lynet Uttal, “Custodial Care, Surrogate Care, and Coordinated Care: Employed Mothers
and the Meaning of Child Care”
Constructions of Fatherhood
Constructions of Fatherhood
WEEK 11: April 3:
Andrea Doucet, Do Men Mother? Fathering, Care, and Domestic Responsibility, pp. 1-136;
Changing Constructions of Childhood (and Adulthood)
WEEK 12: April 10: Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child
WEEK 13:: April 17
Donald Hernandez, with David E. Myers, “Revolutions in Children’s Lives”
Sharon Stephens, “Children and the Politics of Culture in ‘Late Capitalism”
Anne Solberg, “Negotiating Childhood: Changing Constructions of Age for Norwegian
Pat Allatt, Conceptualizing Parenting from the Standpoint of Children: Relationship and Transition in the Life Course”
Gender, Generation, and the Emotional Dynamics of Families
WEEK 14: April 26: Carolyn Kay Steedman. 1987. Landscape for a Good Woman
Conclusion and Sharing of Projects
WEEK 15: May 1: no reading
**. The final seminar paper or project is due in May 16 at the latest.
Després vam dirigir-nos cap a Big Sur, i aquí sí que ens vam quedar impressionats. De fet, crec que és un dels llocs més macos i màgics on he estat mai. No vam tenir temps de veure'l com cal, donat que ara es fa fosc molt d'hora. Peró algunes imatges han quedat gravades a la meva retina i segur que tornarem.
Ens van quedar pendents els parcs naturals cap a l'interior. Hi ha un munt de cabins, campings i llocs on estar per tal de planejar un viatge ple d'excursionetes interessants...potser en el recés del març...ja ho veurem!
Després va venir el notición i el dia 27 de decembre el Diego va començar a treballar a Cupertino! Wow! Tant temps parlant de Silicon Valley, sempre com algo llunyà i ara està al mig del meollo, li haurieu de veure la cara: està exultant! jeje i és que tot, TOT, passa a Silicon Valley...
Lo unic és que aleshores les nostres vacances together es van escurçar una mica, i em quedaven 15 dies de vacances però sense ell...:( ...tot sigui per la causa!!!!!! i quina causa! :P
Bé, ara que he tornat demà us postejo una mica més!