Beyond the Intersection: A New Culinary Metaphor for Race-Class-Gender Studies

Author(s): Ivy Ken

Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 2008), pp. 152-172

? Write a factual question and answer it yourself using resources outside the article

? Factual questions include: What does [a word] mean? Who is [a person]? When did [an event] happen? What is [a thing]?

? Write an evaluative statement (500 words)

? Evaluative statements include: I disagree with [position or idea]. I relate to [idea] because in my own life [personal experience]...

? Write an interpretive question (no answer, 100-500 words)

? Interpretive questions include: When the author says [passage], does s/he mean [an interpretation] or [another interpretation]? On the one hand, the author says [passage], but then elsewhere s/he says [different passage]-is that inconsistent? Is the real meaning of what the author is saying [your thought], or is it something else? When I read [passage], I think it means [your thought]-but I'm not sure because [doubt]. Am I right? In one reading, I thought [something] was true, but in this reading the author says [passage]. Is [something] really true?

Please include page numbers for all questions and statements in the FEI paper.

Below is a sample FEI post that I have written for another reading from another class. If you mimic this post, you'll be fulfilling my expectations for an FEI paper.

1) What was the legislation from the UK Friedman is referring to on page 12, the "control of engagement order"? According to the website UnionHistory.info, ´´This regulation ensured that anyone looking for work should apply through Ministry of Labour employment exchanges or an approved employment agency. Under the order, certain industries, mainly coal and goods for export, were designated "essential". Exchange officials could compel workers to take essential jobs by issuing a "direction." Failure to follow a "direction" was subject to severe legal penalty. Only 29 directions, excluding directions in coal and agriculture which were still under wartime regulations, were issued before the Order was withdrawn in March 1950.´´

2) On page 13, Friedman writes that markets permit coordination without coercion because buyers and sellers enter into exchanges voluntarily and on terms they agree to rather than through a process of centralization. Buyers can buy elsewhere, workers can work elsewhere. Markets are therefore a decentralized coordination process where total freedom increases. I disagree with this claim, at least in one important case: the labor exchange. In capitalism, independently of the type of government (democracy, fascism, oligarchy), to sustain oneself one must work for a wage. Workers, to work, have to do so for a wage. Now, at this point, we haven't really reached coercion because workers could live "off the grid" and sustain themselves. They have that choice and capitalism says "good luck" to them. There is more of a pressure than a coercion to work for wages. There is a coercion within the market system by definition, however, once the worker has chosen to sell their labor. That coercion is through the wage. Wages cannot compensate the worker entirely for their work. Otherwise the employers would not spend the money--there wouldn't be anything in it for them if wages fairly compensated workers. The labor exchange goes like this: the worker agrees to give the employer his labor for the price of the wage. The worker is the seller and the employer the purchaser. But the worker does not get the full value of their labor in their wage, though the system of prices and the employers claim otherwise. No matter how high the wage goes, it will never be high enough to compensate the worker. That is coercive--it deprives the worker of the full value of what they sell.

3) According to Friedman's argument, is the term "political freedom" an oxymoron? He claims that governments, when they distribute power, always centralize and prohibit freedom. Ideally they should be fora for thinking about decisions in the marketplace and thinking about the rules of the game. If government should be tailored exclusively to the needs of the market, and the market is the realm of economic freedom, then is there no such thing as political freedom? What is the difference here? The only example we get is of the promoters of different social structures. (Which is strange because I don't think capitalists would fund socialist revolutionaries...) On the other hand, is economic freedom really freedom or just the quality of unfettered marketplace activity from government oversight? Is every case of unfettering from government freedom? Is economic freedom lawlessness, in other words? (Finally, is education political or economic, according to his categories?)