Description:
Your assignment is to choose two sociological concepts we have discussed or read about in the course. The two concepts should seem related to you. Using scholarly sources to enhance your understanding of each of these concepts, your task is first to A. explain them in your own words, using specific examples of your own and B. make an original argument describing one or more relationships between these concepts. Your argument may rely upon personal examples or interpretations of news items (etc) but should reflect your own informed thinking and effort to work out how two sociological ideas fit together.
Other requirements:
Give your paper a title that describes it contents. Your paper must be relatively free of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes to be graded. Please hand it in as a Word document, using 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1 inch margins all around. The paper should be between 1,000 and 1,400 words, not counting bibliography, notes and heading. It is far better to turn in an articulate paper on the shorter side (1,000 words) than to add filler and careless prose to pad it up to 1,400.
You are expected to draw from four scholarly sources. These sources MUST meet the following criteria:
1.They must be scholarly.
2. They must be sociological. Avoid using sources from related disciplines like political science, psychology or anthropology. For the purposes of this assignment, also avoidsocial psychology.
3. At least two of your sources must come from a specific list of scholarly journals (below)
4. The remaining sources must be sociological books, not including textbooks, and not including anything called a ‘handbook’, ‘encyclopedia’ or ‘dictionary’
For every scholarly source you cite, you must turn in a single .pfd made up of screenshots of the library catalog/library database you used to guide you to that source.
Scholarly sources:
The links below are guides for identifying scholarly sources to use in your paper. You are expected to draw from at least two scholarly sources per concept (at least four total). Avoid using reference works as your sources (e.g. Encyclopedia of Sociology, or the textbook). Under no circumstances are you to rely upon wikipedia or similar web resource which offer no assurances of reliability. FYI, newspapers are not scholarly, nor are papers and reports prepared by not-for-profits and government agencies.
Please note that there is much that seems scholarly on the web that is not scholarly at all. While there are exceptions, the easiest rule of thumb is that scholarly sources are articles which are published in peer-reviewed journals, such as you would find in JSTOR database.
Here is the list of acceptable journals. At least two of your sources MUST come from this list:
Acta Sociological
Administrative Science Quarterly
American Journal of Sociology
American Sociological Review
American Sociologist
Annual Review of Sociology
International Journal of Comparative Sociology
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
Law and Society Review
Pacific Sociological Review
Organization
Qualitative Sociology
Sexualities
Research in Organizational Behavior
Science, Technology and Human Values
Social Problems
Social Science History
Sociological Forum
Sociological Quarterly
Sociology (Journalof the British Sociological Association)
Sociology of Health and Illness
Sociology of Religion
Social Forces (once called Journal of Social Forces)
Book sources:
For other sources, one place to look is in sociological books published by reputed academic presses. In sociology, some major academic presses are: University of California Press, Oxford University Press, Sage, Cambridge University Press, MIT Press, Princeton, Basic, University of Chicago, Blackwell, Berg, Harvard University Press. These same presses, however, publish works by scholars in many disciplines. How do you know if it is sociology? One way is to just google the author. If she or he is a professor of sociology, then it is a good bet that a book coming from one of these presses is both sociological and scholarly.
Note: Many of the concepts sociologists use can also be found in psychology, management/business, education, and criminology scholarship. However, the concepts are often used in different ways in those fields, so you are expected to stick to works that are specifically sociological – e.g. are written by sociologists, or appear in journals which are specifically and unambiguously devoted to sociology (not more general areas like “social science”, and certainly not to other disciplines, like psychology).
So, What is a Sociological Question or Issue?
Sociology is confusing. On the one hand, sociologists seem preoccupied with value-laden issues like social equality and justice while, at the same time, call themselves ‘social scientists’ and use research procedures they claim are neutral.
My short answer to this conundrum is that sociologists are interested in equality and democracy in the same way that psychologists are interested in sanity. It is a basic value and concern that drives inquiry and prompts us to understand the myriad barriers to such ideal states. At the same time, we study it because sociologists seek to understand both the general and minute patters of modern life, and how those patterns came to be. Inequality is so central to sociologists because our science convinces us that it is so central to our lives – from the dynamics within our families, to our place in the global pecking order. And of course, inequality is just one such example of many issues about which sociologists seek better understanding. Because sociologist focus on collective phenomena, including economic classes, religious groups, organizations, and national entities, our research takes on an immediate political form in a way that is not necessarily true for psychologists with their focus on individuals.
With that in mind, sociologists seek to ask how the world came to be as it is: what is the anatomy of our life experience? What are the obstacles to a different sort of existence?
Sociological questions are different from what we call normative questions or statements. We try to avoid normative questions in sociological research. While sociologists ask what ‘is’, and gather data to come to a better understanding, normative questions ask what ought to be, often relying on moralizing judgments. While sociologists seek to understand our world, our culture, and our lives through the lens of sociological concepts which have been refined through a tradition of research, normative approaches look at the world through the concepts of our time and place and culture, taking for granted ideas that are bandied about in our society. As sociologist Howard Becker puts it, “Sure, murder is wrong. But why is it the job of sociologists to say so?”
(There is of course interpenetration between sociology and world it understands; concepts like ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ and ‘social network’ come directly from sociology’)
In this class, you face the challenge of bracketing normative categories, terms, labels and concepts and turning to sociological ones. This might mean, for example, the difference between accepting American’s opinions about what class they belong to (most think they are middle class) and rejecting those opinions in light of the sociological reality that, conceptually speaking, most Americans are poor. It also might mean putting normative ideas under a sociological lens, asking questions like “why do Americans misunderstand their own social status?”
It can take work to get a grip on a sociological issue or question, and it takes thought and discussion. That is part of what this course is for, so let this be your invitation: think your ideas through, and ask!
