Sociology 4035 THIRD EXAM - TAKE HOME

Required REadings:

Rothman, Chapter 9
C & T, "Introduction to Power Inequality" pp. 151-159 articles by A. Joseph, Y. Armand, Schulz, Siim, and Flere

This exam consists of short answer questions and one longer essay questions.

Short Answer Questions

Please answer TWO of the following questions. These are questions based on the assigned articles and class lectures and discussions. Each answer should be at most two pages in length.

1. According to Joseph, there are important reasons why affirmative action intensifies racial conflict in the U.S. What are these reasons? What do you learn, from Joseph's analysis, about the dynamics of class and race in the U.S.?
2. There are class and status barriers to the development and consolidation of democratic institutions in Haiti. Explain.
3. A major obstacle to equality between the sexes is that men, not women, make the laws. Sociologically, is this statement useful to understand the persistence of gender inequality in modern societies? What are its strengths, if any? What are its weaknesses, if any?
4. Scandinavian countries are usually presented as examples of states' commitment to attaining equality between the sexes. However, feminists are quite critical of the scandinavian welfare state. Why? What are some of their main criticisms? In your view, would U.S. feminists agree? Why?
5. Yugoslavia is a country where, under the communist regime, the political system was committed to ethnic parity in political representation. This is a goal yet to be attained in Western societies. Nevertheless, once the communist regime collapsed, ethnic conflicts surged with extraordinary violence. What, according to Flere, are the main causes of ethnic struggles in the former Yugoslavia? Would any of his insights have relevance for understanding ethnic conflicts in the U.S. today? Why?

Long Essay Question

You have read in both your texts about power inequality, about the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling economic and political elites, about the different channels through which the elites exert their power and about the ways in which other social classes, women, and racial/ethnic minorities organize to struggle to attain their political objectives. Examine with care the data about how different groups voted in the recent elections and about the differential impact of state taxes upon the poorest, middle and richest strata. Use your sociological imagination to discuss the meaning of these data. Place it in the context of the sociological analysis of U.S. class, gender and racial/ethnic stratification, and of your texts analysis of political inequality, political power and influence and voting and political participation. Do you find this information challenges or supports sociological views on power inequality? Why? What do the voting pattern show? How, in your view, did class, gender and race/ethnic differences affected the way people voted? What does the information about taxation show? Use everything you have so far learned in this course to present a cogent sociological discussion of the information attached to this exam.