Week 14 · Readings & resources

Week 14 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 14 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 83–103 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–20 min total)

① Take it, make it, serve it: sectors and economic systems

Chapter 14, Section “Follow the coffee: the economy's three sectors” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The economy's sectors and economic systems” · Remember: sort the activity, not the company, and treat capitalism and socialism as models that real, mixed economies combine.

Economic Systems & the Labor Market: Crash Course Sociology #29 — CrashCourse — a quick tour of the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors, the long shift toward a service economy, and capitalism and socialism as two models. Use it while working through the Week-14 module overview. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Employment in Agriculture — Our World in Data — charts of how the share of workers on farms has changed across countries and over long stretches of time; read the opening summary and one chart to see the primary sector shrink as other sectors grow. Read each figure with its own source and year. (reading, 10–15 min)

② Contracts, gigs, and alienation: how work is changing

Chapter 14, Section “Watch work change: automation, gigs, and contracts” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The changing nature of work and alienation” · Remember: the task does not set a worker's status, the arrangement does, and alienation describes how work is organized, not one worker's mood.

Independent Contractor (Self-Employed) or Employee? — Internal Revenue Service — the federal tax agency's guide to telling the two apart, sorted into behavioral control, financial control, and the type of relationship; notice that no single fact decides it. (reading, 6–10 min)
Employment and Gig Work, from the Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024 — Federal Reserve Board — a national survey's section on who does gig work and why; read the gig activities part and note how broadly the survey defines a gig before you read any of its percentages. (reading, 10–15 min)
Companies and States Clash Over How to Classify a Gig Worker — Bloomberg Tech — a business-news report on the fight over whether app-based drivers are employees or independent contractors; treat it as a snapshot of one moment in an argument this course does not settle. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
E001: Alienation — Simon Lindgren — a one-minute explainer of Marx's idea that when an owner decides how the work is done and what happens to its products, workers are cut off from what they make, from how it is made, from their own creativity, and from one another; match what you hear to the four parts in the chapter. It speaks of how workers feel, so read it for how the work is organized. (video, 1 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Power, authority, and who decides

Chapter 14, Section “Tell power from authority: Weber's three types” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Power, authority, and who holds power” · Remember: authority is power people accept as legitimate, and the pluralist and power-elite models are weighed, not crowned.

Politics: Crash Course Sociology #30 — CrashCourse — power, authority, and Weber's traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal types, then the question of who holds power. This builds on Week 5's work on Weber's bureaucracy, the home of rational-legal authority. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Elite vs. Pluralist Theory: Power and Politics in US Government 2 of 30 — Study Hall — sets the elite view and the pluralist view side by side; as you watch, write one sentence of evidence for each and give no verdict. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Branches of the U.S. Government — USAGov — the federal government's short guide to its three branches and how each checks the others; read it as a picture of the lasting institutions of the state that outlast any one government. (reading, 3–5 min)

④ Reading the union figures

Chapter 14, Section “Read the union figures: 2025 and 1983, four ways” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Reading the union membership figures” · Remember: the union rate is a share of wage and salary workers, not of people, and the figures describe the fall without explaining it.

The fall (and rise?) of unions in the US — Vox — one news outlet's account of why union membership fell and whether it might rise; treat its explanations as interpretations to weigh, and check any figure it gives against the release below before you use it. Stop here before population and social change; next week takes that up. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Union Members Summary — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — the release behind this week's union rates and counts; read the opening highlights for the overall rate and the public- and private-sector rates, and skip the detailed tables unless you want them. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com