photos courtesy of t.t. eiland

Data Workshop Assignment

The aim of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to write about what C.W. Mills calls the intersection of biography and history. Specifically, you will write about your intersection with a social structure, and the social impact of that structure. For this assignment you should only choose option A or option B. Your paper should be double-spaced, 1½ to 2 pages in length, and use 12 point (Times New Roman) font with 1-inch margins. Be sure to include an introductory paragraph in which you discuss the option you choose.

Option A
Write about your current job or a job you once held. You might write about the worst job you’ve had, or you can write about your favorite job. As you write the paper, please answer the specified questions below, and be sure to fully define sociological concepts for the reader, such as rationalization, alienation, and exploitation.

1. What were your tasks, what did you produce, or what did people purchase from you?
2. How did you feel about the things you produced?
3. How did you feel about the people who used the things or services you helped provide?
4. Were you in direct contact with these consumers?
5. Did you ever trick them or insult them, or were you ever tempted to trick them?
6. Did you ever feel like a machine?
7. Did others treat you like one?
8. How long did it take you to learn your job?
9. How much skill did the job take?
10. Did you or those around you have any standards of doing the job "right" as opposed to "any old way?"

The following are questions you are required to answer in your essay.

1. Was your job influenced by a process of rationalization?
2. Drawing from Karl Marx, would you say you experienced alienation? Why or why not?
3. Drawing from Karl Marx, would you say you experience exploitation? Why or why not?
4. Drawing from C.W. Mills, how was your experience a public issue, rather than a personal trouble?

Option B

Write about a bureaucracy that has had an impact on your life in some way. As you write the paper, please answer the specified questions below, and be sure to fully define sociological concepts for the reader, such as formal rationality, rationalization, and McDonaldization.
The following questions are prompts. You are not required to answer these, but you may find them helpful to get you thinking.

1. Can you name a bureaucracy in which you were employed or one in which you were a customer? In other words, what was your relationship to the bureaucracy?
2. What is the purpose of this bureaucracy? What are its goals?
3. Did the bureaucracy attempt to be efficient? How?
4. Did the bureaucracy attempt to be predictable? How?
5. How did the bureaucracy attempt to control how people behaved?
6. Other than money, what sorts of items or actions were made calculable in this bureaucracy?
7. How did the bureaucracy impact the lives of people? How did it impact your life?
8. Did the bureaucracy empower you to accomplish something you could not have done on your own?
9. Did you ever feel like “just a number” in the bureaucracy? What made you feel this way?

The following are questions you are required to answer in your essay.

1. Briefly discuss formal rationality and McDonaldization in the context of this bureaucracy?
2. Drawing from your experience in this bureaucracy, discuss Ritzer’s irrationality of rationality or Weber’s notion of an “iron cage.”
3. Drawing from C.W. Mills, how was your experience a public issue, rather than a personal trouble?

*This assignment was created by Lester Andrist and Anya Galli but was adapted from a writing exercise created by Mary Minard Moynihan in Moynihan, M. 1989. ³Writing in Sociology Classes: Informal Assignments.´ Teaching Sociology. 17(3)346-350. Thanks to Ann Horwitz, Jeehye Kang, Tyler Myroniuk, Rachel Shattuck, and Daniel Swann for their many helpful comments.