Sociology- Max Weber and Kalleberg

First points: Be careful with who you attribute quotes to and how you discuss them . Max Weber didn’t say “time is money” he identified that as part of the “protestant ethic” that he was studying. And Kalleberg said nothing of the sort, so he shouldn’t be cited there in your introduction. There’s a few other places like this throughout your paper – where you attribute a statement or quote to someone, and it actually isn’t in there piece. You need to be very careful about this. Like we talked about, you’ll need to spend more time giving some background on Riviera, and discussing her argument, if you’re going to use her. Right now, you have about 4-5 paragraphs that discuss her, and attribute certain points to her, but it’s not actually clear what her study was or what her argument was.

For example, she doesn’t say that “it’s almost impossible to understand” why employers choose candidates. She argues that there’s a lot of different research that has looked at different aspects, and her argument is that “cultural matching” is important. The short paragraph on Braver man and technology feels irrelevant and probably needs to be taken out. Then there’s a discussion about females and gender. Again, it’s not clear how it fits into the rest of the paper Paragraphs about essential workers also feels irrelevant. Some of the outside sources on the effects of recessions on hiring and wages feels out of place near the end of the paper and should likely be moved. In general, be careful with your writing, and making sure that your meanings are clear to the reader.

Parts of this are quite strong. But you have sentences throughout your paper that are really difficult to get the meaning of.

Further Description

For example: “This appreciation leads to a particular comfort in individuals.” I really don’t know what that means! Or this one: “It affects the centrality of crucial matters like firms and industries that would otherwise help boost individual earnings.” There’s something missing from this sentences…. “Crucial matters like how firms and industries….operate? pay wages?” I’m really not sure. It’s just clear as written. Overarching suggestions: So this is a good start, but like we discussed, it’s a little bit all over the place, and needs some focusing. I think you could have a thesis statement that basically argues that the pandemic will have long-term repercussions for many college graduates, but that some are more vulnerable than others. Then I’d like to see your paper establish the following.

College educations are necessary (but not sufficient) to secure a stable, middle-class income (Draw on Sweet and Meiskins) here, and maybe Kalleberg (age of flexibility means that there are few stable, well-paying jobs for people without college degrees)2) Use some of your outside sources to argue that the pandemic will have repercussions for those students who are graduating soon3) Use the rest of the paper to argue that some groups will face additional burdens from this. It might be females (drawing on the weeks on gender?) It might be students from less elite schools (maybe drawing on Riviera and some news pieces that have discussed similar themes – see below for one link). It might be people of color. Whatever it is, this could really be the bulk of your paper. 1) right off the bat, you attribute ideas to Sweet and Meiskens that aren’t clear, and really aren’t their ideas.

Additional Information

This is not an accurate description of their piece.2) Same with McNicholas and Poydock – the statement that you attribute to them is NOT what their piece is about (and even if it was, this is not a peer-reviewed article, so won’t count towards your in-class sources).I’ve discussed this with you before. Properly citing works doesn’t just mean throwing in citations. It means accurately describing their ideas, and not misattributing ideas to them. Finally, many of your source are not sociology sources. See the paper guidelines for this. Most of your required number of sources should be from sociology journals. There are other problems, but I’ll leave it at this for now. Covid is going to be hard on college graduates. Especially college graduates. Thesis statement needs to clear on. A lot of the sources are econ sources. Rest of the sources, sociology sources.

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