Exercise in the Sociological Imagination

Exercise in the Sociological Imagination

Gaining an awareness of the relationship between your life experiences and social institutions and social forces.

 20% of final course grade

Please read carefully and ask questions early. Failure to follow directions can result in a failing grade for this assignment. 

Choose one of the two options (Option A or Option B) listed below (be sure to state at the top of your first page which option you have chosen). 

Paper Formatting Requirements –

• Not less than 5 pages-typed
• There is no maximum number of pages
• Double-spaced
• Times New Roman (TNR) 12-point font
• Standard 1” margins at top and bottom and sides
• Standard spacing between lines and letters
• Please do NOT write your name or course info on the paper. 

You MUST CITE ANY RELEVANT ASSIGNED MATERIALS FROM THIS CLASS using in-text citations and a Works Cited page at the end of your document. Failure to cite assigned readings, lectures, and videos will result in a substantial point deduction. 

You must apply relevant sociological concepts and key terms TO YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES throughout your paper in a way that makes it clear that you understand these terms and concepts. 

Failure to apply concepts and terms where they fit in your paper or using terms or concepts incorrectly will result in point deductions.

OPTION A: CHART YOUR CAREER PATH WITH SOCIOLOGY

You will be analyzing your career goals and the effect that two agents of socialization or institutions played in shaping your opportunities to achieve these goals.

Instructions for Option A: 

Name any career that you once dreamed about or still dream about pursuing. Ask yourself the following questions to jumpstart your thinking and answer them in your paper in essay format by connecting them to the relevant sociological concepts in your texts as well as any two institutions or agents of socialization: 

If you felt you had to give up this career path in favor of other pursuits, what were the structural arrangements/ lack of resources that prevented you from achieving that dream?

If you are still pursuing it, then what resources do you need to make that happen? How likely is it that you will have access to those resources? What resources would have helped you more along the way? What structural conditions contributed to helping you thus far? 

Explain the role the various agents of socialization and social institutions played in this process. CHOOSE ONLY TWO. Others will obviously be connected, but your primary focus should be on two only unless you choose to write more than five pages. 

Discuss how structural arrangements, economic conditions, family relationships, educational conditions (the building itself, opportunities for learning, teachers, resources (i.e. textbooks, technology, learning assistance, library access, etc.)), religion, access to health care, laws and other personal experiences (positive or negative) influenced your ability or lack thereof to pursue your ultimate dream career. 

Note: If you had a dream career and simply changed your mind because you developed other interests, this would not be a good option for your paper. 

OPTION B: YOUR SELF THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

The looking-glass self describes the process wherein individuals base their sense of self on how they believe others view them. Using social interaction as a type of “mirror,” people use the judgments they receive from others to measure their own worth, values, and behavior.

How did you come to see yourself based on how you believed others viewed you? What led you to conclude these perceptions were accurate? Did these perceived judgements affect you positively or negatively? If applicable, at what point did you discover that, according to others, you should be something other than what you were? Did you adjust yourself to fit this perceived judgement or did you react to it by defying it? How and why? How does this affect your life today? 

Instructions for Option B: Using the relevant sociological concepts that we’ve covered in readings, lectures, and videos this semester, especially the looking-glass self, explain how you have come to see yourself as you do (negatively or positively) by focusing on the influence of two institutions or agents of socialization. 

• Ideas to jump-start your thinking (also take a look at the Sample Essays posted in Moodle) 
• If there was a teacher who said that you weren’t good at something.... 
• If you experienced sexism…
• If you experienced racial prejudice or discrimination.... 
• If people made fun of your clothes because you didn’t always have the latest and greatest fads.... 
• If your parent(s) never sat down or always sat down with you at the dinner table.... 
• Did your friends support you or hold you back? If so how? 
• How did your religion play a role? 
• Did the programs you watched on television play a role? 
• What about comic books, action figures, Barbies? 

Was there ever something you weren’t able to do because you didn’t have enough money? How did affect the way you perceived others to judge you?How did sports play a role in your development? Did they teach you to face challenges head-on or did they negate certain aspects of your being (i.e. did they force you into a “tough guy” role that you really didn’t want to portray)? Girls are taught (by families, religions, the media, etc.) that they should be nice, agreeable, sensitive, nurturing, sexy, but not sexual. Boys are taught to be tough, in control, independent, good leaders, studs, and intelligent. When did you receive these messages? How did they impact how you saw yourself?

Be sure to include how not more than two primary social forces and institutions (family life, school, the media, your peers, relationships, religion, the economy, heath care, etc.) played a role in how you came to define yourself. You should pick out those two that played a critical role in your self-definition. Of course, others will play a part, but the focus should be on two only. If you must include a third or more, your paper will likely need to be longer than 5 pages. I strongly recommend sending a draft to me if you include more than two. 

FOR EITHER PAPER:

You must make your narrative sociological by connecting it to concepts and themes from this course. Simply telling me a wonderfully interesting story about how you came to see yourself or how you chose your career-path without sociological analysis will result in a failing grade for the assignment. Your grade will reflect how much detail you provide and your ability to connect your experiences to “the bigger picture” of the social forces, institutions and/or judgments that influence you. Your grade will not reflect any judgment of your experiences, only how well you are able to understand your experiences sociologically. 

If you aren’t sure you understand what is expected of you, please, please ask. I would hate for you not to receive a passing grade due to lack of clarity about the assignment. 

I will be happy to look over drafts of the paper to tell you whether or not you are on the right track. Please get drafts to me early so I have time to read through and respond to them all before the assignment is due.  The last date I will accept drafts is the Sunday before the paper is due. 

Past examples for option A: 

A student wrote about how her dream was to become Miss America and why. She gave up on that dream because once her family tried to support her by finding out more information about it, they realized that their working-class incomes would not support the expenses associated with attending pageants. She also described what role her family’s income had on her sense of self-worth as a result of this experience. 

A student wrote about wanting to be a paleontologist (study dinosaurs), but as a female, she felt she was discouraged from the sciences in school, despite her family’s support of her dreams. 

A student wrote about the cultural expectations her family had for her career and how her desire to be a chef didn’t fit within these expectations

A student wrote about the amazing resources and support he had from his family, from teachers and from coaches about developing his athletic ability. He was currently living his dream on an athletic scholarship and being scouted for pro-teams. 

Several students wrote about how they were in the process of achieving their dreams despite everything they were up against. If this is the case for you, you must still discuss all the structural arrangements and social conditions that you faced and the few areas in which you did find validation and support to keep going. Be sure your paper still meets the requirements for sociological analysis. This path can be tricky. 

Past examples for Option B 

A student wrote about the lack of power and control she experienced in her home environment (structural conditions) and eventually in other arenas and how this contributed to her struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder. She also discussed how she perceived her classmates judged her as “weird” and how she reacted responded to this perceived judgment. 

A student that grew up in a very religious household wrote about not feeling free to question her faith and her struggle to define herself and her sexual orientation within a very narrow context. 

 A student wrote about how being poor and having less contributed to a negative self-concept because of the perceived judgment of other people.

Several students have written about how having the encouragement they needed, as well as the resources and the time to explore themselves resulted in a positive self-concept. Be careful. This can be tricky to explore sociologically. Be sure to incorporate many of the sociological concepts listed below

For either option, you need to be sure to make connections between your life experiences and the concepts we have been learning in this class wherever they are appropriate. Failure to use a concept where it is appropriate will result in point deductions as will the incorrect application of concepts. 

• Mead's theory of self .
• Socialization.
• The looking-glass self.
• The generalized other .
• significant others.
• taking the role of the other (a.k.a role-taking).
• role and role set .
• status and status set .
• role conflict. 
• role strain. 
• material culture. 
• symbolic culture. 
• presentation of self. 
• impression management.
• looking-glass self. 
• Thomas theorem. 
• alienation. 
• anomie. 
• social integration.
• social arrangements/social structure. 
• the I and the Me. 
• norms
• beliefs
• values
• cultural capital
• social class
• gender
• race
• ethnicity
• power
• the hidden curriculum
• the glass ceiling
• discrimination
• prejudice
• intersectionality
• matrix of domination

There are far more available for you to use beyond what I've listed here. Remember YOU MUST CITE THE ASSIGNED MATERIALS THROUGHOUT YOUR PAPER. You may use materials outside of class, but you must also cite materials that I assigned for this class to a larger extent.