A SOCIOLOGY FOR SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES - USING THE VIETNAM-WAR IN THE CLASSROOM

In this paper I describe a minicourse, adapted to an illiberal pedagog ical setting, that draws on the Vietnam War, and I provide a synopsis of its content. My purpose is to suggest a strategy for using the war as a case study for two topics central to the concerns of sociologists -inequality and ideology. Data about the war are marshaled to address two questions: ''Were the burdens of war equally distributed?'' and '' Was the American military handicapped in Vietnam by political constrai nts?'' To address the first question, I use information about the draf t, draft policy, and American casualties to suggest that policy reprod uced institutionalized inequalities of race and class. To the second q uestion I bring to bear measures of American operations-expenditures a nd destructive force-and total casualties to argue that conservative a pologies invoking self-defeating limits ignore the magnitude and conse quences of our efforts in Vietnam. Within the synopsis, I incorporate sources for data, note some problems in the data available, make sugge stions about interpretation, and address some pedagogical issues.