Introduction

Oops! Tim Delaney, the author of our textbooks, accidentally omitted a very important chapter: Yours! We need to correct this problem right away.

The purpose of this assignment is to develop your sociological perspective:

• Do you lean more toward idealism or realism, idealism or materialism, realism or nominalism?
• Do you think that society needs strong sanctions to help maintain social cohesion and social solidarity or should we seek social structures that permit strong individual rights?
• What is the best approach to understand society: to focus upon interactions among individuals or to study institutions within a global marketplace of goods, services, and ideas?
• Are individuals mainly in control over their own destinies or are their fates determined more by macro-level processes far outside their control?
• Which is more important in shaping the selves of individuals: nature or nurture?
• To what extent are human behaviors guided by rational choice?
• To what extent does society follow consistent patterns of stasis and change?
• To what extent do traditional and emerging senses of morality and ethics affect social stability and change?
• Is contemporary society modern or postmodern, cohesive or fragmented, stable or unstable, secure or vulnerable?
• Does societal conflict emerge from disequilibriums among social institutions, inherent flaws in these institutions, or the actions of powerful elites?
• Can we best understand society from an evolutionary model, a dialectical one, or a cyclical one?
• Do inequalities represent differences in abilities and human capital or have they been produced and reproduced by powerful elites?

Assignment

We could ask these questions and many more to help us understand our sociological perspective. Your assignment is to write a paper of no more than 15 pages that describes:

1. your biography as it relates to your sociological perspective,
2. your key intellectual influences,
3. the sociologists whose work you like the most and the least,
4. your philosophical viewpoint (see: A Primer in Philosophy),
5. your sociological perspective (using some or all of the questions posed above).
6. your sociology within the classification scheme you developed for your portfolio. Who are you most like and least like in your perspective?

Have fun! This is your chapter!

Evaluation

This assignment will be graded by Dr. Sapp. The maximum value is 100 points.

The assignment will be evaluated based upon:

1. the thoroughness of the perspective, how much one learns about your sociology from reading the paper,
2. the logical consistency of the perspective. If you claim to be realist in some cases and nominalist in others, then explain the seeming contradiction of these positions,
3. how well your sociological perspective is compared and contrasted with the perspectives of other sociologists we have studied this semester,
4. the quality of your writing.

See: Writing instructions to learn the procedures for preparing your paper.

Due date: Friday, April 27th, 5:00 p.m.

Best wishes!