Answer the pair of questions for each essay set in 4-6 pages total. Use your personal experiences and observations as the basis of each essay; do not discuss events or experiences that happened to someone else or are in the news unless these have a direct connection to your life. Cite the readings (author's name and page number) to support your sociological claims. The essays will be graded on the originality and insight of your analysis, and the accuracy and depth with which they integrate course ideas.
The essays are due at the beginning of class on each due date. Since the questions are available well in advance of the due date, I encourage you to begin thinking about and writing your essays as soon as we have covered the relevant course materials.
1. Describe an example of whiteness in popular culture, current events, or personal consciousness. Following Erica Chito Childs' analysis, how is white privilege sustained through symbolic narratives, characterizations, stereotypes, and/or themes? What does your example suggest about the persistence or erosion of racism in our society?
2. Using Karl Marx's concept of ideology, analyze a value, belief, law, cultural phenomenon, or social movement that has influenced your life. Explain how your example illustrates a "ruling idea" or a "revolutionary idea." If it is a "ruling idea," how does it serve the interests of the ruling class while obscuring their power over society? If it is a "revolutionary idea," how does it promote the interests of a revolutionary class while revealing the effect of historical circumstances not entirely of their creation?
1. Describe a portable community that you belong or once belonged to. What is the technological medium for this community? Are members anonymous or known by their "offline" identities, and how does that affect members' interactions? Following Georg Simmel, to what extent are the sociomental bonds of this community based in dyadic versus triadic properties of subjective "intimacy" versus objective "commonality," respectively? What are the personal and social consequences of this community?
2. How much did social class shape your childhood upbringing? (Be sure to indicate your class background in this essay.) Did your daily schedule, use of language, and interactions with professionals and bureaucracies reflect the class patterns described by Annette Lareau? How did individual/familal/community/social contexts promote the way your parents or guardians raised you? Did your family experience the benefits and costs which Lareau identifies that accompany certain child-raising strategies ?
1. Explain a social problem that has touched you somehow through the lens of Durkheim's idea of anomie. Which group(s) does this problem affect most? What is the social cause (not to be confused that with the historic orgins) of this problem? What does this reveal about the structure of society today, and what kinds of moral regulation could ease or solve this social problem?
2a. Describe an instance of rationalization in a group, activity, organization, or setting that you take part in. (Note: rationalization refers to a process of change, so you will have to discuss your example both before and after rationalization happened.) What were the forces promoting rationalization: the need for efficiency, the use of bureaucracy or technology, etc.? In your opinion, has rationalization been a wholly positive change? OR...
2b. Does the enchantment of social life still thrive in modern society? Present your argument based on a social activity, group, or setting that makes you happy or fulfilled. Is this activity, group, or setting sustained through rational forms (e.g., technology, bureaucracy, market exchange)? Does that erode the authenticity of the enchantment that you experience? How does your argument square with Weber's concerns for the "iron cage of rationalization"?