Sociolgy Essay

Take-Home Final Exam

Due Wednesday, May 15th at 9:00pm on Canvas

Responses should be original and authentic work by the student doing the exam. Upon submission, each exam will be submitted to plagiarism-detection software.

Instructions:

DO NOT USE THE SAME THEORIST IN MORE THAN ONE ANSWER.

Formatting: 12 font, 1 inch margins, 1.5 spacing, 5-6 pages maximum.

The take-home exam is an opportunity for you to REFLECT on the readings and share your critical reactions. The take-home exam helps you organize your thoughts and can encourage you to be an active and critical reader.

Be sure to answer the questions DIRECTLY. Discuss the specific concepts/ideas that are relevant to the particular question, but please feel free to make links (WHEN APPROPRIATE) with other concepts or theories learned in class.

You need to include quotes from the primary readings and your own interpretations and analysis.

Please select TWO long-essays from the following essay questions. Each question is worth 50 points.

1. Reflect on an occasion when you placed trust in another individual. What factors influenced your decision? Were you related to this individual as part of an open or closed network? Compare this occasion to one in which you decided to place trust in another. In what ways was your decision shaped by the structure of the network in this case? How does the trust placed on each of the two individuals relate to social capital?

2. Symbolic interaction emphasizes the constructed and negotiated aspects of the self and social life. Use some of the key concepts in this framework (e.g., meaning, impression management, definition of the situation, interaction rituals, front and backstage, secondary adjustments, feeling rules, emotion work) to explore typical everyday life situations in your life (e.g. boss/employee; coach/athlete; professor/student).

3. What are total institutions? What are the goals of these type of institutions? How do they impact the self? What are some examples of these institutions? Have you ever been part of one or visited one? What about the staff/workers in these institutions? Are they affected by the total institution or not?

4. What is "the social construction of reality”? How does the social construction of reality apply to gender? Please provide a specific example.

5. According to Berger and Luckmann, “Habitualization carries with it the important psychological gain that choices are narrowed.” Discuss this point using a concrete example from your everyday life. How does this process result in objectivation? In what ways are “choices" part of the internalization process?

6. Michel Foucault has focused on surveillance and discipline to address sources of power and the role of the disciplinary society. He connected those notions to how punishment evolved historically. Please provide an overview and a critical commentary on Foucault’s work on discipline, punishment and power.

7. Pierre Bourdieu links the objectivist and the subjectivist approaches in his notion of habitus. What is habitus? How does it evolve and how is it connected to different types of capital? Please explain these concepts and provide examples for each.

8. Foucault, Bourdieu and Said all emphasize academic knowledge and discourse in relation to power. What are the theoretical similarities and differences in each approach?

9. “Imaginative geography… legitimates a vocabulary, a universe of representative discourse peculiar to the discussion and understanding of Islam and the Orient” (p.473). Please explain the concepts of Orientalism and Imaginative Geography. In what ways are these concepts connected? Do magazines, books, television shows, and movies “Orientalize” non-Westerns, or do they typically offer unbiased portrayals? What about journalists? Please provide examples to support your views.

DO NOT USE THE SAME THEORIST IN MORE THAN ONE ANSWER.

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