Sociology of Work

  Coursework assignment Spring Term 2017 The assignment is to write a 1,000-word essay on one of the following topic areas: a. Skills/wages/technology/inequality/bad jobs b. Manufacturing/industry/service/retail/finance c. Labor/unions d. Professions e. Gender/Race The assignment requires you to base your paper on four academic journal articles: An academic or scholarly journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation of new theory or research, and the critique of existing theory or research. Content typically takes the form of articles presenting original research, review articles, theoretical articles and book reviews. You should find research articles or review articles (not book reviews, which are clearly labelled as such). The assignment requires you to find articles written by sociologists or organizational management scholars. You should not cite articles by economists or psychologists. This means you should focus on sociology or management journals. Here are links to lists of sociology journals and academic management journals. These lists are not exhaustive; there are other sociology and management journals. Details on where to search for journal articles are below. You should exclude journals that have the terms “economics” or “psychology” in them. Some sociology journals may have the word “economy” in them, but will also have a signifier such as “society” in them, for example “Economy and Society.” Industrial relations journals are also acceptable, including “Industrial Relations” and “Industrial and Labor Relations Review.” Economists and psychologists do publish in industrial relations journals. You should also check the author affiliation, which will typically state the department and be listed in an asterisk after their name in the title of the article, and exclude articles authored by anyone in an economics or psychology department. The assignment involves the following steps: 1. In order to figure out a specific topic to write about within the general topic areas above, read about a topic area on Work in Progress, a blog of the American Sociological Association on work and organizations. a. The majority of the blog posts are short, polished articles, typically around 800-1,500 words. There are a small number of shorter blog posts, which are brief commentaries rather than polished articles (here is an example). You should focus on the polished, 800-1,500 word articles. These are typically tagged as “research findings” (here is an example). 2. On the blog, search around a topic area using the above terms (e.g. “skill,” “wage,” “technology,” etc). Pick a blog article you like, and then find an academic journal article from that author on that topic. a. Look on the author’s webpage for a list of their publications or their CV; or search for their name (and possibly the topic) on Google Scholar b. In most – but not all – cases, the author of a blog article will have written a journal article or book chapter on the topic. If not, then you can find another published journal article on the topic. 3. Find three other academic journal articles that are on the same topic as the one you picked in step 3. Your essay must be based on a minimum of FOUR academic journal articles, one of which must be from the author of the blog article you picked (if a blog article has more than one author, you only need to cite a journal article by one of the authors). The other three journal articles should be from different authors, with a maximum of two articles per author. a. It will take some creativity in finding a coherent topic; you’ll often have to broaden your topic from the focus of the first article to a wider focus. i. Come up with your own title for the essay b. Make an argument about the topic, using the journal articles as the basis – evidence and theory – for your argument. c. In order to find the other three academic journal articles, search the Proquest Social Science Premium Collection i. If you have any questions about finding academic sources, ask a librarian! ii. You should not have to pay for journal articles; KCL has access to most of them through the library. In order to access journal articles from off campus, please see this page. d. You must include a citation of the blog article you based your search on. Example: i. “Cervantes, Andrea Gómez and ChangHwan Kim. 2016. “Male immigrants with darker skin have fewer job opportunities than women and those with lighter skin,” Work in Progress 26 Jan.” ii. The blog article does not count as one of your four journal articles. e. You may email Matt a single time regarding this coursework. In that email, you can ask him to (a) check your sources and (b) check your thesis statement. He will provide feedback on each. Since there are 430 students, Matt simply cannot answer more than one email on this topic. However, you will have many other opportunities for feedback and advice: i. During two tutorials dedicated to the coursework ii. During one of many coursework surgeries Matt will run iii. Talk to Matt around lectures (before, after, during break) iv. Talk to Matt during office hours v. Talk to your tutorial leaders around tutorials vi. Talk to your tutorial leaders during office hours General information – Read all of the following points closely. There are both substantive and stylistic issues below that may affect your mark. • One electronic copy of the assignment should be submitted via KEATS by 10 am on Thursday 23 March. • If you have never written an essay before, or if you want to brush up on your skills, I recommend that you read an introductory book on essay writing. There are many types of these books, which can be found on amazon.co.uk, for example. I recommend the following: Peter Redman, Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide, Sage (2005). But any book on essay writing will be helpful. There is also a four-week course on Academic Writing, and related topics, at the KCL English Language Centre, if you are interested: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/elc/support/in-sessionalsupport/index1.aspx. • Your minimum of four sources need to be journal articles or book chapters. You can cite reports from think tanks and the like, but you should not cite Wikipedia, blogs, or web pages (e.g., notes from a professor or on a particular topic do not count as a source). Encyclopaedia articles (excluding user-generated sources like Wikipedia), newspaper, magazine and blog articles are fine to cite, but they do not count as academic references for purposes of your coursework. • Write in the first person. Avoiding the first person in order to appear objective is an old stylistic convention that is increasingly being discarded. Although it is still common in academic writing for UK publishers, American publishers generally ask authors to use the first person. This more direct style can improve writing by making it clearer (avoiding the first person can lead to awkward constructions and vagueness). Whenever asserting your own idea or argument, use “I” or “my.” For example: "In this essay I argue that ...” or “My argument is ....” • Your paper should be written as a coherent essay, with an introduction, a body of text and a conclusion. Write it like a blog article on Work in Progress. • Your paper must contain a thesis statement. For more on thesis statements, see my handout on “Coursework FAQs.” • Write your paper using black and white, 12 point font, Times New Roman, with double spacing. Do not use fancy formatting or colour. I will deduct 5 points if you don’t follow this rule. • You must use the Harvard referencing system. For essays in social science, proper referencing is crucial. In this course we will use the Harvard system of referencing. Please see the document entitled “Harvard referencing quick guide” on KEATS for more information. If you are not familiar with the Harvard system, please review this document carefully. • You need to cite every article or book that you have either quoted directly or have drawn an idea from. If you do not do this, you are plagiarizing, which is a serious problem. For serious plagiarism you can be expelled from the College. When in doubt, it’s better to err on the side of over-citing. Each year I have a serious cases of plagiarism in which the students receive a zero for the coursework, up to ten cases of minor plagiarism in which the students received up to 50% deducted from their mark, and a dozen other cases of sloppy referencing in which students received between 5 – 15 points deducted from their mark. • I will deduct up to a full letter grade (10 points) off your coursework for papers that do not use the Harvard style. If you are sloppy in referencing, I may deduct up to 25% off your mark. This does not mean that you must obsessively get every single aspect of the system correct – commas in the right place, periods in the right place, etc. I am flexible about that. What it does mean is that you must: (a) cite every reference in the text (Name date) and in the bibliography, and (b) the bibliography must include all the information for each reference as specified in the above document. Bibliographies also must be in alphabetical order, do not have bullet points, numbered references, or multiple citations of the same source. You do not include web links for journal articles or print books; just include the full information with them, as indicated in the Quick Guide. • The word limit for the assignment is 1,000 words. Reasonable use of appendices is not normally included in the word count. An electronic word count must be noted on the front of all pieces of assessed work. Word limits apply to the main body of the text (title, text, in-text citations, footnotes and diagrams) only and not to endnotes or your bibliography. The penalties for exceeding the stated word limit will be as follows: 5% penalty for exceeding the word limit up to 10%, and a further 0.5% deduction for every 1% exceeding the word limit.