Read through a recent copy of your area’s or your school’s newspaper. Make a list of topics covered by the newspaper to which sociologists might want to apply the sociological imagination. Can you find topics that you can characterize as existing at the intersection of private troubles and public issues? Which of these topics would you, as a new sociologist, like to study and why?

In this chapter, the authors discussed poverty as a private trouble and a public issue. Together with a small group, make a list of sociological factors that may help explain the existence and persistence of high levels of poverty in the United States, particularly in inner city and rural areas. Put this list in a notebook or other location where you can examine it over time. Check back on the list throughout the term to see if and how your explanatory variables might expand or change.

The global issues box asked you to look around your place of residence to see where the goods you use in daily life were manufactured. Globalization has affected our lives as consumers, but that is just one of its important effects. Can you come up with other specific ways that globalization has an effect on our individual lives and society? Which of these effects might be of interest to sociologists and why?

An important theme in this textbook is technology and the rise of digital societies. Technology is key to social interaction in ways that could not have been imagined even a single decade ago. Discuss this issue with classmates and identify 2–3 ways that face-to-face interaction is similar to and different from electronic interaction through media such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. How would you respond to a member of an older generation who argued that social media are “ruining” human social interaction?

The authors discuss how ethnocentric thinking creates barriers to sociological understanding.  Consider what you think you know about the specific beliefs, activities, and lifestyles of people in other countries.  Ask yourself how you feel about these other people’s beliefs, activities, and lifestyles.  Do you feel your society’s beliefs, activities, and lifestyles are more normal, right, or good?  Why or why not?   How do these feelings affect your ability to sociologically understand these societies?

Sociology researches social issues through the use of theoretical frameworks.  Examine the news and pick a controversial news story about a big social issue.  Consider what different questions a sociologist researching this topic might ask if they were investigating this issue from a conflict versus functionalist versus symbolic interactionist perspective.  How might these differing approaches work together to build a deeper sociological understanding of the issue?  

Together with a small group of peers, choose a social problem of interest to you. Prepare a brief set of research questions that you could use to learn more about the dimensions and roots of the phenomenon you chose. How could the topic be studied using quantitative methods? How could it be studied using qualitative methods?

In this chapter, we discussed the problem of respondents’ honesty in answering questions about socially awkward or embarrassing topics such as drug use. Imagine that you are designing a survey about an uncomfortable topic such as academic cheating or pornography use (you choose the topic!). How would you prepare your research project in a manner that maximizes respondent honesty?

Following your completion of exercise 2, think about the ethics of your project. What would be the ethical issues you need to consider in preparing your study of a socially uncomfortable topic?

For research to be valid, the operational definitions of the variables under study must be well constructed.  Think about if you were to conduct research on the prevalence of binge drinking among college students.  Consider what your operational definition of binge drinking would be and write it down.  Now ask a small group of your peers how they would define binge drinking and compare their responses to your operational definition.  On what basis are you and your peers constructing your operational definitions?   Are there other, more valid, bases on which you could form your operational definition? 

Imagine you wanted to conduct a survey about how the residents of your city felt about an important municipal issue.  To study this issue, you want to take a random sample of 200 people in your city.  What would the population of your study be?  What method could you use to identify the 200 people who will be your sample to ensure that they are chosen randomly?  Remember that being chosen randomly means that every resident of the city has an equal chance of being selected for your study.

Bring an object or picture to class that, in your opinion, illustrates “culture.” Explain to the class how your item represents culture, using concepts such as material or nonmaterial and real or ideal culture to talk about it.

Work with a small group to come up with an example of a cultural inconsistency between ideal and real culture in the United States. Can you come up with an example that relates to the family, higher education, consumer culture, or the workplace, for example?

Recall Miner’s (1956) description of the Nacirema. Could you write a description of a contemporary cultural practice that follows the model of his effort to detach the American obsession with care of the body from its presumed “naturalness” or “normalcy” in U.S. society? Could you write a culturally detached description of the U.S. ritual of Superbowl watch parties, celebrity culture, texting, the high school graduation, or baseball, for example? Prepare a description and share it with classmates to see if they can guess what you are describing.

With a group of your peers, describe the norms that govern your college or university.  Discuss whether these norms are folkways, mores, or taboos.  Debate why these norms exist in this particular social setting.

Consider the following popular extracurricular collegiate activities: member of a sports team, actor in a theater production, school club member, band member, and fraternity or sorority member.  Describe how your habitus has encouraged or hindered your likelihood to participate in these activities.

In the chapter, we discussed schools as agents of socialization. Our discussion was limited, however, to elementary through high school education. How do universities and colleges function as agents of socialization in the lives of students? How does this differ from early school socialization?

Keep a descriptive journal of your social interactions with 3 people who play different roles in your life (for instance, your significant other, your employer or employee, your sibling or parent) for 3–4 days. Note the key qualities of the interactions and the definition of the situation you are seeking to construct. At the end of the journaling period, look over your journal and assess it as Erving Goffman might. What observations would Goffman likely make about the techniques of impression management you utilized and your presentation of self?

Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology emphasizes the importance of effective meaning construction.  New forms of communication present new problems with constructing meaning.  With a group of peers, talk about the problem of meaning as it relates to text messaging and e-mail.  How often is meaning misinterpreted or unclear in texts or e-mails?  How do people feel when this happens?  What do they do?  How have the social practices of texting and e-mail changed to reflect the problem of meaning?  How do acronyms such as LOL or BRB and emojis help or hurt meaning?

Heroes driven by moral concerns are a central plot device of many action, suspense, mystery, and detective films, televisions shows, and books.  With a group of peers discuss the role of the hero driven by moral concerns in these forms of media by sharing specific examples of this plot device.  Discuss what actions the heroes in these stories undertake and the reasons and justifications the stories provide for their heroes’ actions.  Do you think the heroes’ actions are moral?  At what level of Kohlberg’s morality scale are the heroes’ justifications for their actions?  What would justifications at the other levels of the morality scale look like?  Are there patterns to the moral representations presented in popular culture?

In this chapter, you learned about experiments such as that of Solomon Asch, which were intended to test conformity. Work with a group of your classmates to design a simple test of conformity that we could use to contribute to our sociological knowledge of this phenomenon.

With a few classmates, construct a short dialogue between 4 members of a group that illustrates a case of groupthink where the process leads to an action that is unethical or illegal. Try to show in the dialogue the process by which pressures of group conformity unfold and draw in the members. Read the dialogue and discuss points at which different members might have challenged or dissented from the group’s decision making.

As we saw in the book, sociologist George Simmel hypothesized that, “As group size increases, the intensity of relationships within the group decreases, while overall group stability increases.” What did Simmel mean by this? Do you agree with this hypothesis? Offer evidence from your own experience that could be used to support or refute the idea.

List the types of economic, cultural, and social capital you possess and the social advantages or disadvantages you have in your community as a result of having these types of capital.  Now consider if you were suddenly placed into a tribal community living in the Amazonian rain forest, into a wealthy community within a large urban city in China, or into a religious community within a rural area in the Middle East.  How would your current economic, cultural, and social capital serve you in these new environments?  What forms of capital would still be valuable and what forms would put you at a disadvantage?  What forms of capital would be more useful than the ones you possess?

With a group of peers, make a list of a dozen people you think are historically influential leaders.  Debate how much you think these leaders’ powers were based on positional power versus personal power.  Discuss whether there are patterns in the types of leadership power the leaders had and their social behavior, roles, and activities.  Do certain types of leadership lend themselves more to one type of power than the other?

Over the course of several days, browse the print or online editions of a major U.S. newspaper (be sure to check each section of the paper, not just the front page).  Identify and record the various types of criminal deviance reported in the news.  Are certain types of criminal deviance represented more than others?  Which ones? Overall, did it seem like criminal deviance was a major or minor part of news coverage?

Marijuana use represents a type of contested deviant behavior. Some people feel that using marijuana is no more deviant than smoking cigarettes, while others feel it should be criminalized. The debate surrounding marijuana exemplifies how what is considered deviant can change over time and also how deviance varies based on the context. Pair up with another student and create two lists, one with reasons why marijuana use should not be considered deviant and another listing reasons why marijuana should remain a largely criminalized form of deviance. How many of the points you listed relate to ethical, moral or religious convictions? What about economic or social concerns? Given the opportunity, which side of the debate would you choose to argue and on what basis?

Over the course of two days maintain a diary of every act or behavior in which you engage that could be considered deviant or criminally deviant by anyone else. Also record any other aspects of yourself—for instance, medical conditions—that people might consider deviant if they knew about them. Review your list of “personal deviance.” Are you surprised by how often or rarely the label of “deviant” could be applied to you? To what extent does your recorded deviance conflict with your perception of yourself as a nondeviant (or deviant) person? 

Form small groups of 3–4 people.  Your instructor will assign to your group one of the following forms of deviance. Within your group, you must reach a consensus in order to construct an argument for why the deviant act you have been assigned should not be considered deviant.  Prepare to argue your group’s perspective before the class:

• prostitution

• downloading music from a free site instead of paying for it;        

• cheating and plagiarism;

• hard drug use (cocaine, crack, heroin, methamphetamine);

• marijuana use;

• drinking alcohol under age 21;

• taking items from your workplace for use at home.

1. Which of the types of deviance listed were easiest to argue should not be considered deviant?  Which were the most challenging?         

Since 1970, gun ownership in the United States has declined by over 50%. At the same time, the violent crime rate and the homicide rate have declined by over 50%. Design a research project that could test the hypothesis that the decline in gun ownership is a cause of the decline in violence and homicide rates.

Deviance is based on social judgments of how well a person’s attitudes, behaviors, or conditions follow cultural norms or social laws.  The rise of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs gives people greater opportunity to publicly reveal their attitudes, behaviors, and conditions on a large, sometimes impersonal, scale.  Comment boards on these forms of social media give people the opportunity to support or condemn the posted attitude, behavior, or condition.  Examine a week of social media postings and comments from your own and others social media sites.  What patterns do you see in the comments about deviance?  Are some actions considered more or less deviance?  Do all types of people see deviance in the same way?  How do the posters respond to accusations that they are being deviant?  Do you think social media encourages or inhibits deviance?

The media helps shape perceptions of the causes of deviance.  Watch several episodes of a television show about the workings of criminal investigation such as Law and Order, CSI, or NCIS.  How is the crime presented in the show?  What theory of deviance (strain, opportunity cost, control, etc.) is used to explain why the deviance occurred?  Can you use the other theories to explain why the deviance occurred?  Are there patterns to the types of theoretical explanations these shows use?

Work with a group of classmates to construct a basic, needs-oriented budget for a family of a specified size (for example, 2 adults and 2 children or 1 adult and 3 children) for a month. Consider the estimated cost of rent or a mortgage, transportation, communication, food, clothing, school supplies, electricity, and so forth. When you have created an estimated budget, multiply it by 12 to determine how much your hypothetical family would need to meet its basic needs for a year. Compare your calculation with the government’s poverty threshold. Do your calculations suggest that the government’s estimate of what a family needs to cover basic needs is too low, too high, or about right?

Using the online version of a national newspaper such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, do a keyword search for “income inequality” (both sites provide a search engine). Choose an article or two and read it carefully. Does the article highlight any of the trends discussed in the chapter? Does it offer something new on the topic that was not covered? Share your findings with a classmate or the group or write a paragraph to situate your findings in the context of the chapter material on income inequality.

Carefully read the Inequality Matters box on the minimum wage and organize a debate on the topic. Begin by determining the national and state minimum wage. Some students should research arguments advocating a rise in the minimum wage, while others should research arguments against raising the minimum wage. While the debaters discuss the issue, others should observe and take notes. Assuming the role of decision makers at the state or national level, the observers should assess the arguments and come to a decision, offering justification for their choice to raise or retain the existing minimum wage.

Make a map of the town and city surrounding your college or university.  Mark on the map all the places where you can get food of any kind.  For each of these food locations, add a symbol if that location provides “competitively priced, healthy, and fresh food.”  Are there any food deserts in your community?  Are these two types of food places equally distributed?  How well does public transportation in your community provide people the opportunity to shop at the locations providing “competitively priced, healthy, and fresh food?”  Why do you think there are or are not food deserts in your community versus other communities?

With a group of your peers, each make a list of your personal statuses, both ascribed and achieved.  Compare your lists.  Which of your statuses carry the most influence?  In what type of situations do your statuses matter more or less?  Do you get advantages or disadvantages versus your peers based on your statuses?

Examine a week’s worth of stories from the print or online editions of a major U.S. newspaper (be sure to check each section of the paper, not just the front page).  Track each news article that is about another country. If there are several different articles about the same event, count each article separately.  List the name of the other country discussed in the article and what the article is about.  At the end of the week, examine the list and group the articles by country.  Are there patterns in what types of countries are discussed (high, upper middle, lower middle, and low-income)?  Are the topics of the articles the same for the different types of countries?  What overall message are these stories conveying about the similarities/differences between high, upper middle, lower middle, and low-income countries?

With a group of peers, have each of you write down from memory all the countries you believe are in Europe, Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America.  Compare your lists to each other and to an actual map of these places.  Discuss which regions’ countries you know better.  Why are you more familiar with these regions geographically?  Discuss what you know about the culture, history, and social institutions of these regions?  Do you know more about the places you are more geographically familiar with?  Why?  What are the personal consequences for you of being more aware of some countries and regions than others?  What are the global consequences of the people in some societies having higher awareness levels of some countries and regions than other?

Professional football and baseball teams, as well as numerous high school and college sports teams, use American Indian mascots. Some American Indians and their supporters object to this practice, suggesting that it is offensive. Together with a small group of classmates, use the Internet to research the issue and create a list of arguments used by those who defend and those who reject American Indian mascots. With which position do you agree and why?

Write down a list of fictional films you have recently watched and the genre into which they fall (for example, romantic comedy, drama, action film, horror, etc.). Next to the titles, note the main characters, their race and gender, and 2–3 defining characteristics. In how many of the films were the main character a racial or ethnic minority? In films where the main characters were not racial or ethnic minorities, what kinds of roles did minority characters have? Do you detect any pattern in the kinds of roles played by actors of different racial or ethnic groups? Share and compare your responses with classmates.

In the chapter, you read about Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1990). The quiz below is adapted from points made by McIntosh in her book. Fill in the first column from your own perspective and ask someone from another racial group to fill in the other column. When you both finish, write a few sentences describing what you found and your reaction to it.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the federal agency charged with investigating claims of discrimination that violate federal civil rights law.  Examine a wide selection of cases filed with the commission at the “newsroom” and “statistics” sections of their website: (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/index.cfm  and http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/index.cfm).  What patterns do you see in the types of discrimination claimed?  Is the discrimination individual or institutional?  Is it intentional or unintentional?  Are there some areas of the country with more claims than others?  Are some types of claims more common than others?  Based on this analysis, how big of a problem do you think discrimination is in the United States today?

With a group of peers discuss what you would say your race was on the U.S. Census.  Discuss why you would make that selection versus others.  How do you know what your race is?  How has society socialized you into thinking of yourself in this way?

Work with 2–3 classmates to create a small “database” of toys popularly associated with boys and toys normally associated with girls. Bring in examples of the toys if you have some at home or pictures from catalogs or the Internet if you do not. Examine the “girl” and “boy” toys and describe how they are played with and what kinds of skills they might teach. Use what you learn to write a short paragraph on how, specifically, toys are part of gender socialization.

Find 2 advertisements in a magazine that appear to speak to a female audience and 2 that seem to speak to a male audience. Do a simple gender analysis of the ads by answering the following questions: What kind of product is a given ad selling? What kind of gender image of men or women is it “selling” along with the product? What specifically does the ad lead us to believe about men or women? How are images of men and women in the ads similar to and different from one another? Compare your ads and analysis to those of other students and discuss commonalities or differences in your findings.

Discuss with a small group of classmates the issue of women and men as students in higher education. Review the reasons, as noted in the book, that today more women than men enroll in and complete higher education. Make a list of possible societal effects of this phenomenon.

This chapter talked about feminism as an ideology and practice and about attitudes toward feminism. Draw a picture in your notebook of a “feminist.” Share your picture with classmates and discuss it. What do the different pictures shared show about attitudes toward feminism and the characteristics we attribute to feminists?

If it’s possible to determine the proportion of men and women in different majors at your school, make a list of the majors with heavy proportions of women, those with a large proportion of men, and those that are closely split. Hypothesize reasons for differences that you find and consider both sociological roots and outcomes of differences.

Examine the sports section of a major newspaper or the sports content area of a news website over the course of a week.  Compare how female athletic activity is reported compared to how male athletic activity is reported.  Count how many stories are about male athletes versus how many stories are about female athletes.  For situations such as professional tennis, professional golf, and college basketball where there are equivalent-level male and female leagues, tally how much coverage is provided to discussing events in the male leagues versus female leagues by counting the number of stories and amount of words and pictures provided in the stories for each league.  Examine if there are differences in the content of the stories  Do the reporters use different words, metaphors, or imagery to discuss female athletic activity versus male athletic activity?  What do your findings tell you about how gender and athletics is being represented in the media?  What is the impact of this representation?

With a group of male and female peers, discuss the household tasks and chores you were expected to do growing up.  Are there gendered patterns in the types of tasks you were expected to do?  Do these patterns fit the broader societal pattern of the second shift described in the text?  Why or why not?

In your notebook, draw a “typical American family.” On what assumptions did you choose your figures? Did media influence your choice? Based on what you learned in the readings, how typical would you say your sketched “typical” family is in the United States?

Research suggests that most marriages are endogamous—that is, between members of the same social group. So, for instance, college educated adults are more likely to marry other college-educated adults than to marry high school dropouts. And most marriages are still within rather than between racial groups. How would you explain the phenomenon of endogamy? Make a list with factors that could influence endogamy. In your list, distinguish between sociological and individual factors influencing marital endogamy. 

Do an informal survey of 5–10 friends to learn what kind of family structure they grew up in. Before doing the survey, work with classmates to choose categories that encompass major family forms in the United States today (for instance, married parent home, single parent home, grandparent headed home, etc.).

Add a few brief questions to learn about roles in the family, such as “Who            supported the family economically? Who stayed home when you were sick? How      was housework divided in your home?” Describe what you found and compare it   to findings of larger studies on family forms and roles covered in this chapter.

With a group of peers, discuss the nature of your more removed family interactions.  How much contact and involvement did you have with family members living outside your immediate home such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins?  Did these interactions, or lack of them, affect your family’s ability to function effectively as a family unit?  What would have changed for your immediate family if these larger familial interactions had increased or decreased?  What is the functional purpose of these larger familial connections?

Using an internet research tool such as The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), survey the plots of a sample of romantic comedy movies.  What do these movies have to say about marriage, love, and relationships?  What do they show to be the expected role of men and women in a relationship?  Is marriage represented as a primary goal of relationships?  How central is love in relationships?  How do they represent single people who are dating versus married couples?  How does this analysis compare with the findings in the chapter about the shifting role of marriage within the United States?  

Think about movies or television programs you have watched that portray college life and college students. Together with a small group, put together a list of characteristics of college students that media portrayals convey. Focus in particular on the demographic characteristics of the students shown. To what degree are media portrayals of college students today accurate representations of real life students? How do they differ?

Survey 8–10 students in your Sociology class or other classes about their family’s educational history: How many students have two parents who completed college? How many have one parent who completed college? How many are the first in their family to attend college? (You may add other questions you think are useful as well.) Share your results with other students in the class and discuss whether and in what ways parental educational attainment is a good predictor for children’s educational attainment. What does sociological research show? What argument would you make?

In many states, public schools are still funded primarily by local property taxes. This has historically translated into unequal funding for schools in well-off and poorer areas. Should this means of funding schools be changed? Prepare a discussion on this issue, attending in particular to arguments for maintaining local funding for local schools and for equalizing funding by distributing funds from the state or federal level.

Based on the chapter, make a list of the main reasons students drop out of college before completing a degree. Working with a small group, create two short but specific policy proposals that could be used to address the problem; write one proposal that addresses the issue at a school level and one that addresses the issue at a state or federal government level. Be sure that your proposals directly address the sociological roots of the problem.

The functionalist perspective argues that one of the primary functions of school is to foster social solidarity by promoting the development of shared norms and values.  The conflict perspective argues that schooling has been primarily used to replicate existing social order rather than to challenge social inequality and as a result schools have perpetuated social conflict. In the United States, school curriculum decisions have historically been largely decentralized with elected state and local officials developing curriculum standards for the students under their jurisdictions.  This is a very different model than in many other countries where curricular decisions are nationalized and made by a panel of educational professionals.  Compare and contrast these two models of curriculum standards from both a functionalist and conflict perspective.  Which model is more likely to create social solidarity?  Which is more likely to perpetuate the existing social order?

With a group of peers discuss the extracurricular activities (clubs, sports teams, arts groups, debate team, etc.) you participated in during junior high and high school.  What did your school say were the manifest functions, educational and otherwise, of these activities?  What were the latent purposes of these activities?  Did these manifest and latent functions support or interfere with the larger manifest and latent functions of schooling more generally?

Look at a major national newspaper such as the Washington Post, New York Times, or Los Angeles Times in print or online and at a local paper in print or online. Look carefully and identify stories that relate in some way to religion or the practices or status of a religious group in the United States or elsewhere. What kinds of stories did you find in the national newspaper? What did you find in the local paper? Can you identify similarities or differences in the ways that religion is “in the news” nationally and locally?

The chapter noted the decline of religious affiliation among young adults in the United States. What might be the sociological roots of this decline? Consider the discussion in the chapter. Do you have a hypothesis to add to this? How would you test your hypothesis?

Review the theorized societal functions of religion from the functionalist perspective and the conflict perspective. What other functions could you add and what evidence would you cite to support them? Are there other conflict functions that you can add? Include evidence to support your points. Think about both local and global examples. Put together a final list and think about strengths and weaknesses of both perspectives and their theorization of religion as a sociological phenomenon.

Use an online mapping site such as Google Maps to trace out the religious economy of your community by doing a search for churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues in your area.  How many different religious groups are there in your community?  Where are they located within your community?  How do their locations match up with the racial, ethnic, and class make up of your community?  Are some parts of your community better served by the religious economy than others? 

In recent years, some religious organizations have sought, with mixed success, to have religiously based creationist ideas introduced into public school curriculum.  In advocating for creationist beliefs, the primary concern of these religious groups is to challenge the presentation of the science of evolution because they believe this science runs counter to their religious beliefs.  How is the social structure of religion within the United States likely to affect the chances of success or failure of these groups to successfully introduce creationist curriculum into schools?  Would the failure of these groups to introduce their ideas into school curriculum represent another period of disestablishment?  Why or why not?

Over the course of a week, record how often you engage with contemporary political issues.  What are the primary sources (e.g., online media, social media, newspaper, TV news programs) that you utilize when learning about and discussing political issues?  Do an informal survey of a few friends about their political engagement.  What trends do you notice?  Are you and your friends engaged with political debates and issues?  Hypothesize several reasons why students such as yourself may be engaged with or disengaged from contemporary politics.

Based on your reading of the chapter, list key ways in which the state exercises its influence in modern society. How do decisions made the government affect your life in concrete ways? Make a list of several specific ways and share them with a group of classmates. How does your list compare to theirs? What aspects of government power and influence did each of you emphasize?

Together with a small group of classmates, imagine that you are responsible for forming a new government for a new country named Exploitistan.  You must consider the various forms of government available based on your reading of the chapter.  Make a list of pros and cons for each government style, keeping in mind that the state of Exploitistan suffers from many social problems (poverty, violence, a poor economy, etc).  Which form of government do you think would best address the problems in Exploitistan in the short term?  Would this form of government be stable over the long term, or would you consider a transition to a different style of government after the country stabilizes?  Be prepared to defend your choices. 

War is a central topic in the media. Scroll through an online news site or examine a daily newspaper and count the number of references to wars across the globe that you find. Review the manifest and latent functions of war that are discussed in this chapter. How can these help explain the prevalence of war? What other “functions” could you identify that might help explain the existence and persistence of the phenomenon of war?

 You saw in the chapter that there is not one single definition of terrorism, even within the U.S. government. Terrorism is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon, which makes its definition challenging. Work with a small group of students to write a definition of the term that captures as fully as possible motivations, practices, and consequences. Compare your definition with that produced by other groups. How are they similar? How do they differ? How does this comparison and contrast illuminate difficulties with clearly identifying what constitutes terrorism and who is a terrorist.

Examine a major news website or a major newspaper and select a highly controversial political issue.  Then using the web conduct an investigation of who is supporting or opposing the issue and how much attention these supporters or opponents are getting in the major news media.  Do both sides get equal amount of coverage?  Is the coverage of each side neutral, supportive, or critical?  Whose voices are not being represented by these groups?  Are the people being affected the most by the issue being well represented in the discussion?  How does this analysis compare with the predictions made by Dahl’s idea of interest groups?

With a group of peers discuss whether or not you voted in the last election and whether you plan on voting in the next election.  What reasons do you have for voting or not voting?  Are the structural reasons that affect college students’ likelihood to vote discussed in the book the same as the reason you and your peers have for voting or not voting?  Would the changes to how elections are run discussed in the book affect the likelihood of you and your peers to vote?  What other changes to how elections are run can you envision that would increase college students’ likelihood to vote?  Would these changes increase or decrease the likelihood of voting for other groups of people within the United States?  What would the functionalist and conflict perspectives say would be the result of such changes?

In this chapter, you learned that key innovations have been important drivers of major economic transformations: for example, the plow helped spur the agricultural revolution; the harnessing of steam and water power contributed to the rise of industrial societies; and the creation of the microchip helped usher in the digital age in which we live today. Talk with a class partner about the future of the world economy (yes, it’s a big topic!). Specifically, speculate about what kind of innovation could change the development path of modern economies. You may want to represent your ideas with a drawing or a written description. Share and compare with other classmates.

Fifteen years ago, there were no such job titles as webmaster and social media analyst or strategist. It is often said that some of the jobs of the future will be jobs we cannot today imagine. Try to imagine them! Write a sample example of a job that could exist in 15 years. Then, recalling labor market trends discussed in the chapter, write down some jobs that might not exist in 15 years.

Recall from the chapter the discussion of “emotional labor,” which sociologist Arlie Hochschild suggests is a characteristic of the modern service economy. Emotional labor is, in a sense, the new physical labor—sold for a wage, used for a company’s profit, and perhaps a source of alienation and exploitation. Think about jobs you have held or currently hold and talk to a small group of classmates about your job experiences. Have any of you held jobs requiring “emotional labor?” Do you agree with Hochschild’s characterization of these jobs? Why or why not?

While we often associate the informal economy with deviant behavior such as drug sales and prostitution, many people work “off the books” from time to time. Make a list of paid work you have done in the formal economy and work you have done in the informal economy. Discuss your list with other students. Do any of your findings surprise you? Do they shed light on any of the chapter’s points about the positive and negative aspects of the informal economy for workers themselves?

 For 3–4 days, keep a list of all your purchases, noting whether the item or service was a “need” or a “want.” Classify all the purchases, but note items for which the category is difficult to choose. When you complete your list, think about the sociological factors that drove your “wants.” In other words, how would you as a sociologist explain why you were willing to spend money on things you only wanted rather than needed?

With a group of peers make up a list of economic interactions that have become increasing automated during your lifetimes (e.g., voicemail response systems versus live operators, atm machines versus bank tellers, self-checkout lines versus cashiers).  Discuss what the social impact of this automation has been for consumers, for workers, for business owners, and for communities.  Is automation increasing or decreasing social solidarity?   Is automation increasing or decreasing social conflict? 

Read a major newspaper for a week.  Examine all the stories dealing with economic issues.  What are the economic issues being discussed?  Are the articles focused on the impact of events on businesses, capitalists, shareholders, workers, or communities?  Whose economic interests are being well represented and whose are not being well represented?  Do you see evidence of Marx’ reserve army of labor?  Do you see evidence of ideas related to scientific management?

As you saw in the opening story of this chapter, students at many schools are using study drugs. Duke University is among the first institutions of higher education to label the use of study drugs as cheating. Write a list of arguments on both sides of the debate about whether study drugs are cheating. Share your list with other students and discuss which of the arguments are more convincing and why.

This chapter examined some issues of how drug addiction, a common affliction in the United States, has been variously treated by society as deviance or as illness. Discuss this issue with a small group, considering the following questions: What are the individual-level and societal-level consequences of labeling drug addiction as deviance? What about illness? Which approach do you think would be more effective in addressing the problem today and why?

Teenage birth rates in the United States continue to be among the highest in modern countries. Think about recent films or television programs that portray the issue of teen motherhood. Make a list of media representations you have seen and think about how teen motherhood has been portrayed in those films or programs. Are most portrayals of the experience positive or negative overall? Would you hypothesize from a sociological perspective that these portrayals could have an effect on the phenomenon of teen motherhood? If yes, what kind of effect might they have? 

Using the data in this chapter and the chapter on deviance, prepare a position statement about the health effects of gun ownership within the United States.  Does the widespread ownership and availability of guns within the United States increase or decrease the health and safety of a community?  What data would you point toward to support this position? 

With a group of peers, define the expected sick role of a person who is knocked down and hits their head hard on the ground.  Now imagine this person was a toddler walking across a room, a secretary working in an office, or a professional athlete competing in a big game.  Would the sick role be the same for each person hitting their head?  What would be the same and what would be different?  How does social context shape how the sick role is constructed and how much pressure people have to enact that role in the expected manner?  What would the community’s response likely be if the appropriate sick role was not enacted? What is the societal purpose of the sick role in each of these cases?

Read carefully through the arguments of Malthus, Simon, and Marx in this chapter. Divide the class into groups, assign one of the thinkers to each group, and prepare a discussion on the problems and prospects of global population growth. Consider the following questions (and add some of your own): What are the benefits and consequences of continued growth of the global population? Can these thinkers shed light on the unevenness of global population growth today? Should growth or the unequal division of resources globally be of greater concern for countries and communities? What effect would a more equitable division of resources have on population growth?

In this chapter, we talked about contemporary problems of e-waste and its safe disposal. Ask a sample of friends or family how they decide when to replace an “old” mobile phone or personal computer. Ask them as well what they did with the old device or what plans they have for the device. Does your sample offer any insight into the problem of e-waste? Does it offer any ideas for solutions to the problem?

Take a tour of your nearest grocery store.  Walk through the store and look at the packaging of the food and note in what country it was produced and manufactured.  Pay particular attention to the origins of such perishable items as fruits, vegetables, and fresh seafood and meat.  How many different countries are involved in the production of the food available to you in the grocery store?  Are these countries wealthier or poorer countries?  What do you think the social and environmental costs and benefits are of creating this global system of food production?

Form two groups with your classmates and prepare a debate about the societal impact of undergoing the second demographic transition.   Have one group of students debate from the functionalist perspective, arguing about the impact of the second demographic transition on social solidarity and order.  Have the other group of students argue from the conflict perspective, arguing about the impact of the second demographic transition on systems of power and equality.  Do the perspectives agree or disagree on the positive or negative consequences of such a transition?  Do they think society would ultimately benefit or suffer as a result of this demographic shift?

Together with a small group of your classmates, design a social movement to address an issue you identify as interesting and important. Consider, using information from the chapter, what you might need in terms of resources, how you might structure the organization of your movement, to whom you might appeal and how, and what obstacles you might encounter. Draw your plan on a sheet of paper and share it with others. How do they evaluate your plan? What kinds of comments, complements and critiques does your plan invite? How might you revise the plan in light of these to make it more effective?

Think about and list at least 5 “fads” prevalent today.  How does each of the fads you identified illustrate (or challenge) the concept as described in the chapter?  Do people engaging in the fads you listed seem to want to be different?  What are they differentiating themselves from?  Do you notice any patterns linking these fads together?  Finally, of the fads you identified, which, if any, do you feel have the greatest likelihood of becoming fashions and why?   

Choose a social issue of importance to you. Imagine that you are part of a social movement that is seeking social, economic, political or other change related to your issue and is interested in telling others about the issue and recruiting others to the cause. One of the ways in which activists sometimes inform others is through demonstration signs. Make a sign representing your issue and bring it to class to share. Work on making the sign a good visual and textual representation of your issue that clearly and concisely tells your “audience” about the issue. Share your sign with others and discuss what makes an effective presentation of an issue in this format.

Overcoming the free rider problem is a significant challenge for social movements.  Imagine you were a leader of a social movement working to significantly raise the minimum wage.  How do you get people who support your position and stand to benefit if it is enacted to actually participate in the work of the movement?  What barriers and costs keep people from participating?  What could you do as a movement to lower these barriers and costs to make it more likely people will participate?

Research a social movement online.  Pay particular attention to the slogans, signs, and symbols used by the movement.  How is the movement using frame alignment?  With what frame or frames are they trying to align?  Does their framing change over time?  Why or why not?  Does this framing appeal to you?  Why or why not?