Below is what I expect students to have learned from an introductory class ay this point in the semester.
1. Define sociology.
2. What is the sociological imagination?
3. How and when did sociology develop?
4. Distinguish between personal troubles and public issues.
5. Who was W.E.B. DuBois and what did he study? What is double consciousness?
6. Discuss the functionalist, conflict and interactionist perspectives. Which perspective was extended by sociologist Herbert Blumer into the theory that people’s actions are based on how they interpret what goes on around them?
7. Where was the first Sociology department in the United States?
8. Who coined the term “sociologyâ€�
9. What were Marx’s, Weber’s and Durkheim’s contributions to Sociology?
10. Distinguish between qualitative and quantitative research.
11. Be able to distinguish among the following: theory, hypothesis, dependent variable, independent variable, operationalization, correlation, causation.
12. How do the different types of research methods (experiment, survey research, participant observation, nonparticipant observation, secondary research, content analysis) vary?
13. What is a sample?
14. What are the different types?
15. What is unobtrusive research?
17. How is culture defined?
18. Give examples of material and nonmaterial culture.
19. What are the components of culture?
20. Be able to define the following: norm, folkways, mores, laws, symbol, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, values, ideal culture, real culture, informal sanction, formal sanction.
21. What’s the difference between high culture and popular culture?
22. Explain the difference in how the Functionalists and Conflict Theorists view popular culture.
23. How have discoveries, inventions and diffusion contributed to cultural change?
24. Define culture shock, cultural universal, cultural lag, ethnocentrism, cultural relativity, subculture and counterculture
25. What is socialization? The nature-nurture debate?
26. What are feral children and what can we learn from them?
27. What is the self-concept?
28. What is Cooley’s Theory? What are the steps in the Looking Glass Self Theory?
29. What are the 3 stages in Mead’s Theory? What are significant and generalized others
30. What is Freud’s Theory? The id, ego and superego?
31. What is Piaget’s Theory? Kohlberg’s Theory
32. List some examples of agents of socialization. Which is the most important
33. How do Functionalists and Conflict Theorists view socialization?
34. What is gender socialization?
35. What are the elements of social structure?
36. Define status, status set, ascribed statuses, achieved statuses, master status and status symbol
37. Define role expectations, role performances, role ambiguity, role conflict, role strain, and role exit
38. What are groups? Primary and Secondary
39. What are social institutions? How do Functionalists and Conflict Theorists view them?
40. How do ethnomethodologists study social interaction?
41. What is Symbolic Interactionism? Which theorist is associated with this theory?
42. What is Dramaturgical Sociology? Distinguish between the frontstage and backstage. What does Goffman mean by impression management?
43. Distinguish between a group and an aggregate. What is a social category?
44. What are in-groups and out-groups? Membership groups? Reference groups?
45. What is the difference between mechanical and organic solidarity? Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft?
46. If Hitler asked you to electrocute a stranger, would you? What did Milgram have to say about this? Which variables made someone more or less likely to administer shocks?
47. What are the three group characteristics? Explain them completely.
What are the different types of leadership
48. What is a formal organization? A bureaucracy?
49. What did Weber say about bureaucracies? What are the weaknesses.
50. What is the Japanese alternative?
51. What is deviance? What do we mean by the relative nature of deviance?
52. What are the various theories of Deviance? functionalist, strain, opportunity, control, differential association, labeling, conflict.
53. What is the profile of the average criminal? Who is most likely to be a victim?
54. What’s the problem with crime statistics? What’s the National Crime Victimization Survey?
55. Define the following terms: social stratification, life chances, social mobility (vertical and horizontal), intergenerational mobility, and intragenerational mobility. Be able to give examples of each.
56. Explain Marx’s theory of class stratification.
57. Distinguish between the functionalist and conflict perspectives on class stratification.
58. What are the “savage inequalities†according to Kozol? Which perspective best explains this?
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