SOCY 100

1. We often think of the choice of romantic and sexual partners as a personal choice. Describe the way social factors influence the choice of the object of romantic and sexual interest. How may social location (social class, culture, historical time period, ethnicity etc) influence those decisions? How does the sociological perspective differ from “common sense”? Why is the sociological perspective useful in studying and understanding society and social interactions? How can the sociological perspective help inform our understanding of how we select romantic and sexual partners?

2. Choose one of the following sociological approaches to deviance, and use it to explain the phenomenon of people cheating on their taxes: Durkheim’s structural-functionalist perspective, the social-conflict perspective, Merton’s strain theory of deviance, labeling theory, or Sutherland’s differential association theory. In your essay, be sure to explain the theory and then apply it to the phenomenon of cheating on taxes.

3. You are doing a study on the school to prison pipeline (the idea that race and class matter for the type of education students receive- middle class and wealthy students are prepared for future careers and poor and minority students are tracked into education that provides inadequate skills and leads directly to outcomes that lead to prison). In your studies you discover many protests both in and outside of prisons aimed at this issue. Describe what a successful social movement about this issue may look like (use social movement theories to detail a successful social movement campaign). Use social movement theories to explain what you need to get your movement started and what type of people may be attracted to your movement. What social structural issues would you need to address? What type of movement would this be?

4. Part 1-Take a look at the above pictures of clothing. How do we make decisions about which of these are professional attire and which are not? There are no objective reasons for these decisions- all reasons are subjective. Explain how this relates to social construction of reality. Explain how social construction influences how we think about clothing and the appropriateness of it. Part 2 In a leadership seminar, attendees are told that they should dress professionally in order to be perceived as successful. Examples are predominantly of white upper class men and women. How do standards of professional dress (including clothes, hair etc) reinforce and continue social inequalities along lines of race, gender and other minority categories (like weight or disability)?

5. In most parts of the U.S. schools are heavily funded by real estate taxes. There have been historical practices of discrimination in the purchases of real estate that have segregated blacks into certain neighborhoods with generally lower housing values (redlining). How does this relationship contribute to long term inequalities in education and wealth accumulation? What are the differences in wealth accumulation between blacks and whites? How have inequalities in wealth contributed to long-term inequality between blacks and whites in the United States? Which theoretical perspective does this best relate to and why?

6. Explain how Institutional discrimination differs from discrimination. Look at the following list of examples. For each example select if it is institutional discrimination or discrimination. Explain why you chose one or the other. How do these examples show why institutional discrimination is so difficult to eradicate?

a. A private club limited membership in the past to whites only. In the last few decades they have lifted the racial requirements and instead require that new members must be related to past members. Membership remains predominantly white.

b. A bank is less likely to give loans to minority applicants even when they are equally qualified

c. A black man and a white man are tried for the same crime. Both Juries are completely white. When the lawyer for the black man complains about not having a jury of peers for her client, she is told that jury selection is a fair and equal proceeding and therefore the jury is acceptable. However, by digging further the lawyer discovers that restrictions about serving on juries after being arrested impacts the demographics of eligible jurors.

d. A state clerk denies a marriage license to a same sex couple even though state and federal law allow it.

7. What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination? How does the concept of privilege relate to ideas of prejudice and discrimination? Many people have been taught ideas of color blindness (they will say I treat all people the same or I don't see color). Analyze why this may actually increase privilege for dominant groups and discrimination against minority groups.(in the course of answering these questions you will need to define prejudice, discrimination and privilege in your own words and back with in class citations but do not stop at definition answer the question).

8. Local activists are concerned that law enforcement are more likely to target minorities in traffic stops and more likely to escalate to search or arrest if a minority is involved. You have been asked to design a study to examine this issue. What theoretical perspective is most useful for this study? Why? What is your research question? What is your hypothesis? Would qualitative or quantitative methods be best for this study? Why? What method would be most appropriate for this study? Why? Leadership in the police department believe that any issues are a result of a few “bad apples” and overall there is no problem. How do you account for this in your study design?

9. The results of your study about officers targeting minorities at traffic stops find that minorities are pulled over and searched at higher rates compared to non-minorities and that this is an officer wide issue and not a result of a few officers. What are some possible structural explanations for these results? Design a study to test one or more of these reasons. What theoretical perspective is most useful for this study? Why? What is your research question? What is your hypothesis? Would qualitative or quantitative methods be best for this study? Why? What method would be most appropriate for this study? Why?

10. In the exercise we did using children randomly assigned to demographic characteristics, what was the general trend between a parents income and the final income for the children in adulthood? Why did this relationship exist? What is the best theoretical perspective to explain this relationship? Explain the concept of intersectionality. How does intersectionality relate to inequality? How does the concept of intersectionality relate to the exercise? Using class concepts explain why parents in different social classes may socialize children differently. How may different parenting styles be a result of inequality and social structure rather than parenting skill or ability.

11. You are doing a paper about obesity and discover that people who are overweight or obese have lower rates of employment, are paid less, and have lower rates of advancement. How would conflict theorists and symbolic interactionsists explain this difference? What is feminist theory? Could it be useful in this analysis? Why is functionalist theory not a good explanation for these differences? Would it be important to also consider race when explaining differences? Why or why not?

12. How is global stratification different from social stratification? What are some of the key historical reasons for global stratification? Analyze global stratification from each of the 3 main theoretical perspectives? Which of these theories have the most evidence of support? Analyze global stratification from a feminist perspective? How does adding the feminist perspective change or improve our understanding of global stratification?

RESOURCES

READ/VIEW

introduction-to-sociology-2e-12.6 (OpenSTAX) See attachment