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/union
d. Professions
e. Gender/Race

The assignment involves the following steps.

1. In order to figure out a specific topic to write about within the general topic areas, read about a topic area on Work in Progress, a blog of the American Sociological Association on work and organizations. The blog articles are op-ed style articles, very short, typically around 800-1,200 words.
a. The majority of the blog articles are in the op-ed style: A succinct but polished argument about a particular topic, with an intro, body and conclusion. There are a small number of shorter blog posts, which are brief commentaries rather than op-ed style articles (here is an example). You should focus on the op-ed style articles and not the brief commentary posts.
2. On the blog, search around a topic area using the above terms (e.g. “skill,” “wage,” “technology,” etc). Read through the resulting blog articles in order to find TWO blog articles that are on a common theme. It is up to you to find a theme; it could be something like “skill polarization,” “unions and inequality,” “professional autonomy,” “manufacturing versus services,” “gender discrimination,” etc.
3. Write your essay on the theme you pick. The article must be based on a minimum of FOUR academic journal articles or book chapters, two of which must be from the authors of the two blog articles 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 two journal articles or book chapters can be from the same authors or from different authors. Make an argument about the topic, using the journal articles or book chapters as the basis for your points. You may use more than four journal articles or chapters.
b. You must state in an endnote (not counted as part of your word count), which two blog articles you used as the basis for your entry into a topic. Cite as follows: “The articles used for entry into this topic are: Maria Azocar and Myra Marx Ferree, “Gender, lawyers and professional expertise,” Work in Progress, 23 Dec 2015; and ….”