M/W 6:10 to 8:00 PM 236 Bentley Hall

 Culture ◦  Values ◦  Culture as a product of action, or as an element of further action

 Institution ◦ An accepted and persistent constellation of statuses, roles, values, and norms that respond to important social needs 

 Institution ◦  ◦

 Social Structure ◦  Statuses – your position in the social structure  Roles – the sum total of expectations about the behavior attached to a particular social status

 Socialization ◦  Nature vs. Nurture

 How socialization works ◦

 Deviance and Social Control ◦

 Deviance and Social Control ◦ Why deviance is good for society 

 Functionalist Perspective ◦

 Conflict Perspective ◦ 

 Feminist perspective ◦

 Interactionist perspective ◦

 Interactionist perspective ◦ Highlights “what we take for granted: the expectations, rules, and norms that we learn and practice without even noticing” (Leon-Guerrero 2011) ◦ Social problems are created and defined by social interaction

 “personal” problems vs. “social problems”  The Sociological Imagination  Biological and Psychological influences  “Objective reality”  “Subjective reality” ◦ The Social Construction of Society

 The role of “meaning”  The role of “language”  The role of “social learning”  How social “things” are socially constructed

 Who defines something as a social problem? ◦ ◦  What do they (try to) do about it?  How does it “spread?”  How does it impact those affected?

 Transformation process  Legitimization process ◦

 Conflict stage ◦  Outside the system, or change the system? ◦

 “…all human knowledge is socially constructed through our language, which means that all social problems are socially constructed.” (Best 2008:16)

 Making arguments  Issues and Conclusions  Reasons and Evidence  Stated and Unstated Assumptions  Fallacies of logic

 What is a “value?”  Values as goals to achieve  Value hierarchy ◦  Overt, or hidden  Value congruence and conflict  Importance of in critical thinking and reading