Buy an essay on Reaction paper to Nickel and Dimed Book and apply theories

Barbara Ehrenreich’s non-fiction bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, is the story of an essay writer who went undercover as a low wage worker to find out how non-skilled workers make ends meet. The experiment took place in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, with the author finding a job and lodgings in each location (Woods). This book seems to be outstanding work, which involves incredibly relevant sociological aspects. In this order, large amount of popular scientific theories can be interpreted on the base of Barbara Ehrenreich’s experience. Today, we are going to draw some of these interpretations considering thoughts of such famous thinkers as Weber, Durkheim and Marks.
Being aimed to provide wanted analysis, we should stress the conclusions which were generated by “Nickel and Dimed” author. Regarding this purpose, evaluations of achieved experience in the last chapter is to the point. The author attracts readers attention with next conclusions: unskilled jobs are not only physically and mentally challenging; employers policies are directed against their employees, to keep the wage low; due to low-wage working environment, employees have few options, little education, and transportation problems; contemporary temps of rent rise are much higher than temps of payment rise. In fact, readers are able to find pretty oppressive picture, which is the real display of nowadays life. The point is people without social or educational advantages are restricted with their options for self-development. The society builds boundaries, which hardly can be overcome by large part of humankind. These general conclusions are enough to begin interpretation.
The first theory to apply is Emile Durkheim’s “functionalism”. Let’s remind that Durkheim was one of the first scientist who explained the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in keeping the society healthy and balanced, and is thus sometimes seen as a precursor to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts. The concept of function played a key part in all of Durkheim’s work from “The Division of Labor”, in which he sees his prime objective in the determination of “the functions of division of labor, that is to say, what social needs it satisfies” (Coser). In other words, famous sociologist stated that inequalities are good for society in general and at working places particularly. Certain people are designed and trained to perform certain jobs, and only those people can perform them to their full capacity. The workplace must reward the employee for good jobs and advances in specialization and training. This will induce the employee to work at his or her full potential (Coser). It looks like this theory is useful to explain serious differences between people with their social status. However, derivative from functionalism thoughts about functional satisfaction hardly can be interpreted to the lives of low skilled employees. As it was noted above, these people often meet pretty unjust policies from their employers, which intended to keep the low wage and restrict options of usual workers. Thereby, restricted people are not able to get self-development and self-improvement as it is stipulated by Durkheim.
Weber’s theory of “Social class” is the next to be analyzed. Being aimed to get the general perspective towards Weber’s ideas, the words of Timothy Shortell are helpful: “Weber’s treatment of class and status indicates the manner in which the material basis of society is related to the ideological. Social conflict can result from one or the other, or both. Social action is motivated by both, though in some cases more one than the other. By bringing in status, Weber provides a more flexible view of the details of social differences, and their implications for the lived experience of social actors” (Shortell). In this regard, different people are endowed with different values and priors. Weber’s theory contains two main terms, which have to be reminded. The first is class – a specific causal component of actors life chances which rests exclusively on economic interests and wealth, and is represented under conditions of labor and commodity markets (Shortell). The next is status – the likelihood that life chances are determined by social honor, or, prestige. Status groups are linked by a common style of life, and the attendant social restrictions (Shortell). According to Weber, the wage of employee is determinative factor of his/her wealth, as it establishes the social patterns of behavior. Seemingly, this theory is closely related to read text, according to the issue of social satisfaction, which is addressed in Weber’s theory. As you remember, Barbara Ehrenreich found that employers’ treatment towards their workers was often too exploitative. This social phenomenon is fully explained by Weber’s study about power and domination, as inherent features of social class. Let’s remind that Weber defines power as the ability of an actor (or actors) to realize his or her will in a social action, even against the will of other actors (Shortell). In its turn, domination can be defined as the exercise of authority, possession of power in a sphere results in dominance (Shortell). These two features are primary to get the clear difference between people of different social classes. It looks like experience obtained by Barbara Ehrenreich is the direct display of social oppression by one class and social satisfaction by other class, as it is in Weber’s study.