sociology

Reflection Assignment Instructions:

Purpose:

This assignment has been created for you to reflect on the sociological concepts we have discussed. This is your opportunity to connect course topics to current events, past experiences, and/or things you may have seen in the mass media. This assignment is mainly an area to allow you to connect what you have been studying in some kind of relevant manner to your own life experiences.

Skills Learned: 1. How to provide a formal citation. 2. Describe the sociological concepts using their own words. 3. How to compare the concepts—how the concepts are similar to each other. 4. How to contrast the concepts—how the concepts are different from each other. 5. Demonstrate how students’ chosen sociological concepts apply to their everyday

life.

Task:

1. You will be provided a list of paired sociological concepts, which are related to the course material.

2. Select one pair of concepts and provide formal definitions for both concepts. The formal definitions should come directly from an introduction to sociology textbook—I encourage you to use our textbook. You will need to cite the formal definitions—see example on how to cite below (please note Wikipedia is not an acceptable source).

3. Restate the definitions in your own words (make sure to underline the sociological concepts you are defining—see example below).

4. Explain how the pairs are related. 5. Explain how the pairs are different. 6. Choose one of the concepts from the pair and provide an example of this

concept (make sure to underline the sociological concept you are providing an example for—see example below). You may pull your example from personal experiences, media (i.e. a movie clip, music, television, something you read outside of class), or create a case scenario of your own.

Example of Assignment:

Do Not Use this Example: The following is an example of this assignment: The sociological concept pair polygamy and monogamy

1. Polygamy: a form of marriage in which a person may have more than one spouse at a time. Monogamy: a form of marriage in which a person may have one spouse at a time. (Eglitis and Chambliss 2019: 317). (This is the formal definition of polygamy and monogamy—the definition comes directly from the required textbook for this course; your citations will be similar, but the pages numbers should be different).

2. Polygamy is when a person is allowed to have more than one spouse at the same time. There are different types of polygamy. There is polygyny where a man can have more than one wife. This type of polygamy is most common in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and parts of India. There is also polyandry where a woman can have more than one husband. Polyandry is extremely rare however, it does exist in Tibet. Monogamy is when a person is only allowed to be married to one person at a time. Typically, rules around marriage are based on the particular society and the culture within that society. (This is restating the definition of polygamy and monogamy in your own words).

3. The pairs are related due to the rules surrounding aspects of marriage. Polygamy and monogamy illustrate that the rules about marriage can vary depending on the culture, the history, and the social context of a society.

4. The pairs are different in that polygamy allows for persons to be married to more than one person at a time; while monogamy strictly enforces that persons can be married to only one person at a time. As explained in the textbook it is based on the culture of a society.

Example: In the book, Half of a Yellow Sun, which takes place in Nigeria in the 1960s, one of the characters, Ugwu, returns to his village because his mother is sick. When Ugwu enters the village, he goes to his father’s hut to inform him that he mother is sick and he is taking her back with him to city. Ugwu’s father comes out of the hut with his other wife. This is an example of polygamy, more specifically, polygyny. This example also shows how the rules of marriages can vary depending on the culture. Although, Ugwu’s father has multiple wives this is not the case for all of the characters in the novel. In fact, there is even a discussion of polygamy and how it appears to be an outdated belief because this society is becoming more modernized and there is no longer a need to have multiple wives in order to have many children to work the land. While others in the discussion understand that the rules for polygamy is based in religion.

Cultural Concepts to be used:

Material culture and Non-material culture Ethnocentrism and Cultural relativism Subculture and Counterculture High culture and Pop culture Folkways and Mores Ideal Culture and Real Culture Emic perspective and Etic perspective

Criteria for Success: Students will need to: • Respond to all questions in complete sentences. • Number each response (you do not need to re-write the question) • Submit the assignment using the following steps:

o Save assignment as word document file (either on your computer or thumb drive) please do not use Pages format--as I cannot access this format

o Go to Browse My Computer--after you have open this find your saved file o Upload the file o Once you have uploaded your file you will need to click submit in order to

submit the assignment. o Please do not use the comment box to submit your assignment.