Unit 1 Home Page

Welcome to Unit 1 Home Page

Unit Overview

This first unit is the most important of the class because this is where we will lay the foundations of your sociological imagination. Your understanding of the initial sociological concepts, theories and methods is essential to your development of a new perspective on familiar domains. There will be a great deal of debunking going on: for instance, in Chapters 1 and 2, you will examine the difference between sociology and commonsense and realize that commonly accepted assumptions are actually myths; in Chapter 4 - Socialization - you will learn how your personality, your very individuality, is actually the product of society and culture.

Right from the start, you will realize how "radical" a discipline sociology is in its redrawing of the boundaries of our free will without transforming us into robots.

Learning Objectives

After reading Chapter 1, you should be able to:

Define sociology and explain how it helps us understand ourselves and our social world.

Explain how sociological theory helps us to understand social issues like consumerism.

Distinguish between commonsense knowledge and myths and sociological knowledge.

Explain what C. Wright Mills meant by the sociological imagination.

Define the Age of Enlightenment and discuss its key implications.

Define Industrialization and Urbanization and explain their relation to the development of sociology.

Summarize the ideas of Auguste Comte, Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer.

Explain what Durkheim meant by the concepts of "social facts" and "anomie"

Explain Karl Marx's ideas on capitalism.

Explain what Weber meant by the concepts of "verstehen" and "rationalization".

State the major assumptions of functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism and postmodernism.

Apply each perspectives to the issue of consumerism.

Distinguish between macrolevel and microlevel analyses.

After reading Chapter 2, you should be able to:

Distinguish between sociology and commonsense.

Explain why systematic research is necessary.

Distinguish between deductive and inductive points of view.

Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative research.

Describe and define the 6 steps of the research process.

Define and distinguish between independent and dependent variables in a hypothesis.

Define and distinguish between a representative sample and a random sample.

Define validity and reliability and explain their importance.

Define the major methods of sociological research, their strengths and weak points.

Explain the importance of ethical considerations in sociological research.

After reading Chapter 3, you should be able to:

Define culture, how it can stabilize or create conflict in societies.

Describe the importance of culture in determining how people think and act on a daily basis.

Describe the importance of language according to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Distinguish between real and ideal culture.

Define values, norms, folkways, mores and laws.

Distinguish between high culture and popular culture, between fads and fashion.

Distinguish between discovery, invention and diffusion as means of cultural change.

Define subcultures and countercultures.

Define culture shock, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

Describe the functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist and postmodernist perspectives on culture.

After reading Chapter 4, you should be able to:

Define socialization and explain why this process is essential for the individual and society.

Explain what we learn from cases of children raised in isolation.

Explain the theories of Cooley and Mead.

Explain Freud's theory on the conflict between individual desires and the demands of society.

Describe Erikson's stages of psychosocial development.

Describe Piaget's stages of cognitive development.

Describe moral development theories developed by Kohlberg and Gilligan.

Describe the different agents of socialization and their importance on children's development.

Explain what gender and racial socialization is.

Describe the different stages of the life course.

Describe the process of resocialization.

Readings & Assignments

Readings from the Textbook - "Sociology in Our Times - for Unit 1:

Chapter 1 - The Sociological Perspective
Chapter 2 - Sociological Research Methods
Chapter 3 - Culture
Chapter 4 - Socialization

Readings and Exercises from the Workbook - "Doing Sociology" - for Unit 1:

Exercise 1 - Suicide and Social Facts
Exercise 2 - Sex and Sampling
Exercise 3 - Comparisons and Correlations

Surveys

Survey 1 on Textbook Chapter 1
Survey 2 on Textbook Chapter 2
Survey 3 on Textbook Chapter 3
Survey 4 on Textbook Chapter 4

Internet Research Project

Choice of Topic

Test

Test 1 on Chapters 1 - 4, 100 Questions

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