Sociology 1100 YA:  Introduction to Sociology
2005 Fall Midterm Assignment

Select one of the following topics and submit an 8 page report. You must use APA or MLA format, 12pt Arial font double-spaced, 1" margins. Be sure to define your principal concepts. Look for opportunities to incorporate scholarly, published sources. Be sociological at all times. See the Course Schedule for deadline. Late penalties apply. 

  1)	Examine your household garbage for a week. Imagine you are from another culture or solar system. What do these items of material culture reflect about the beliefs and values of your new host culture/planet? Is there a discrepancy between ideal cultural values and their actual behaviour (i.e., real culture)? Include in your discussion at least 2 published sources on "garbology".

  2)	Select a specific social problem (e.g., homelessness). Write a 2 page sociological descriptive analysis of the social problem using published sources. For the remainder of your paper, offer a theoretical analysis of your chosen social problem in which you compare and contrast structural functionalism and social conflict theory.

  3)	Research and write a report on the history of minority involvement in sociology. You may wish to consider the contributions and social action of Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams and W.E.B. DuBois.

  4)	Smoking cigarettes is a pervasive habit found in many cultures. Write a paper in which you explain cigarette smoking from both a macrosociological and microsociological level of analysis. Include strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

  5)	Select a pattern of behaviour which is common in some other cultures but foreign to ours (e.g., female genital mutilation, child labour, arranged marriages, etc.). Discuss your chosen issue in terms of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

  6)	Select and discuss an important technological artifact or process (e.g., the personal computer, nuclear weapons, automatic tellers, the internet, etc.) in terms of cultural lag and cultural change.

  7)	Design a scientific study to determine the levels of support Canadians give to the main ideas contained in the dominant ideology.

  8)	Write a paper on the sociology of coffee. Identify and adequately discuss 5 sociological features of coffee that clearly demonstrate its sociological nature.

  9)	Conduct a content analysis of children's Saturday morning cartoon television programming. Select an issue (e.g., violence, gender stereotyping, consumerism, etc), design a scientific study and administer the analysis on 2 separate Saturday mornings.

10)	Develop a model for gender-free socialization in the schools or in the home. Indicate the changes you would make in socialization practices and the difficulties you would encounter.

11)	Design and conduct a content analysis of mass circulation magazines (or popular music lyrics, television programming, video games, etc) in which you examine gender roles. What messages are being conveyed about gender, gender relations, gender stereotypes, etc. 

12)	How does your social location in society affect your perceptions, attitudes and behaviours? Include in your report a chart or matrix that answers this question using examples that are important to you.

13) 	Discuss body image (male or female, negative or positive) according to the dramaturgical model (e.g., impression management). Collect magazine advertisements that project body images; what images are being conveyed? What are advertisers motives in conveying these messages?

14)	Develop a list of "Ten Commandments for a Successful Marriage". Provide sociological evidence that supports your list.

15)	Design and administer a study in which you interview a sample of married couples about their division of household labour. Interview husbands and wives separately. Describe the observed division of labour by gender. What is the degree of agreement between husbands and wives on the husband's contribution to the division of labour? Is household labour a source of conflict in the marriage? (Research Ethics Committee approval required)

16)	Using data from the latest Canadian census (2001), compare your home province to the national average in terms of such variables as divorce, remarriage, fertility, childlessness, family size, incidence of lone-parent families, age at first marriage, etc. Assess the observed provincial-national differences with regard to the variables you selected and attempt to explain the differences in sociological terms.

17)	Take any effort to change Canadian laws relating to crime (e.g., decriminalization of marijuana use, driving while intoxicated, decriminalization of abortion, etc.) and examine the role of moral entrepreneurs and social power in these activities.

18)	Examine the depiction of crime & deviance in popular culture (popular songs, Hollywood films, television programming, video games, etc.): positive & negative depictions; deviants' self-perception; the fate of deviant characters; messages conveyed to the audience; etc.

19)	Write a personal case study on the temptation to commit, or the act of committing, academic dishonesty. Incorporate both Sutherland's notion of differential association and Hirschi's Social Control Theory. 

20)	Select a crime. Explain the crime by comparing & contrasting two of structural functionalism, social conflict theory or symbolic interactionism.