Writing Homework Help

Purpose

The assignment provides you with an opportunity to practice the following: 

• Apply working concepts such as social status, ascribe status, embodied status, privilege, and life chances.
• Reflect on your social statuses and the extent to which they enable or constrain your aspirations.
• Grasp the meaning of the concept of social status as the entry point to understanding social stratification and social inequality.
• Explain the various ways social conditions that impact our life chances.

Directions

After watching the following video, write a 2 page self reflexive analysis of the relationship between you (and your family’s) social statuses and consequent life chances in the structure of the American society.

TED. (2013, January 16). Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model. [Video file, Length 9:37]. (Links to an external site.)

Make sure to apply at least 5 working concepts and definitions seamlessly at strategic points in your analysis.

• In sociology, the entry to studying social inequality endemic in social relationships is social statuses–the set of positions people occupy at any point in time in society.  Have you thought of how your social status(es) in the structure of the American society both enable and/or constrain, or place you at an advantage or disadvantage?
• What are your 3 prominent ascribed statuses–are they overt or covert?
• What are your achieved statuses–are they overt or covert?
• How do your specific ascribed statuses obstruct or make it difficult for you to attain an achieved status compared to other people in other social situations or  social placements?
• How do your specific ascribed statuses make it easier for you to attain an achieved status compared to other people in other social situation  or social placement?
• How does your social status and social location influence or shaped your life chances?

Something to note: In doing this assignment, some students can’t help but to argue that they were born poor but they single handedly, “brought themselves up by their own bootstrap.”  This posture is a good ideology, but very bad sociology.

Concepts: social status, achieved status, ascribed status, master status, life chance, social class, racism, ethnicity, ses/gender, sexuality, social inequality, subordinate group (minority group), dominant group (majority group), de facto segregation, de jure segregation, prejudice, immigrant status.

Resources: Sociology Research Guide by NOVA Library (Links to an external site.)