Reference no: EM133192264

Assignment: Social Science

Problem I: Explain how and when the ‘self-desiring subject' as a concept was produced in western societies and how that was aligned with different mood of production/consumption in these societies. Explain how the social production of gender relations works to reproduce the conditions of production in contemporary time.

Problem II: Drawing on Anderson (1997) Explain how and when the ‘nation' as a social concept grow in Europe, why and in what meaning it is ‘imagined'. And demonstrate some of the basic roles of the state in preserving the capitalism system.

Problem III: From the short ethnographic text by Alsultany "Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves", Specify and explain at least one structures of inequality that demonstrate through the text as means of reproducing the inequalities that Evelyn and/or her encounters experience.

Problem IV: Candace West and Don Zimmerman, in a famous article called "doing gender" (1987), analyze the way in which gender is constituted in routine interaction. People engaging in everyday conduct - across the spectrum from conversation and housework to interaction styles and economic behavior - are held accountable in terms of their presumed ‘sex category' as a man or woman. The conduct produced in the light of this accountability is not a product of gender, it is gender itself. We make our own gender, but we are not free to make it however we like. Our gender practice is powerfully shaped by the gender order in which we find ourselves. That is what West and Zimmerman imply when they say we are ‘held accountable' for our gendered conduct."

[Connell, Raewyn. 2009. Gender in World Perspective. Malden, Mass: Polity Press. 73-74]

Think through these two questions:

i. How do your ideas about gender change if you think of it as something you do instead of something you are?
ii. How are people "held accountable" for gendered conduct? Who or what holds them accountable and what are the results of this?

Or

Think through this note:

Earlier in the course, I mentioned an ongoing debate in the social sciences about the relationship between structure and agency (think of my favorite picture, society is in my stomach?). What is the relationship between structure and agency suggested by the passage above?

Problem V: "Races do not emerge full-blown. They are the results of diverse historical practices and are continually subject to challenge over their definition and meaning."

Engage the quote, show in your answer how Race is not just an ‘ideology' but a social institution of inequality.