the assignment is an 1000 word summarynd analysis the details as well as the readings are all included the main document is Richard James Social Equity and higher education Week 2 readings are Jencks and Riesman- Excerpt from Mills- Lemert Social theory its uses and pleasures. Document Preview: Excerpt from Chapter 1 of C. Lemert (1999) Social Theory: the Multicultural and Classic Readings, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado) C.Lemert Social Theory: Its Uses and Pleasures Social theory is a basic survival skill. This may surprise those who believe it to be a special activity of experts of a certain kind. True, there are professional social theorists, usually academics. But this fact does not exclude my belief that social theory is something done necessarily, and often well, by people with no particular professional credential. When it is done well, by whomever, it can be a source of uncommon pleasure. When one of my sons was in elementary school, he came home one day with questions that led to some good social theory. After he spent his first two school years in an informal, somewhat countercultural school, we moved. He was then enrolled in a more traditional public school. Thus began a more lively and sociologically interesting line of dinner table talk. He observed, for example, that when his class marched from its classroom to the lunchroom, the boys were told to form one line, the girls another. The march itself was under a code of silence. Having grown accustomed to schools with few rules of any sort, my son found this strange. At din- ner, he reported this exotic practice with the ironic question, What was this for? Do they think we are going to attack the girls? Later, sometime in junior high school, he began to figure this out. After several years of close observation, he determined that schools impose arbitrary social rules, like walking silently in sex-segregated lines, because they are institutions concerned as much with civil discipline and authority as with learning. He used his own words, but he had developed a social theory congruent to his earlier questions. This he enjoyed because he felt the power of being able to say something persuasive about the world of people with whom he lived. Most people, whatever their social class, age, Attachments: Richard-James.pdf Jencks-and-Ri.pdf Excerpt-from-.docx Lemert-Social.docx