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

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

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

4.  Institution ◦  ◦

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

6.  Socialization ◦  Nature vs. Nurture

7.  How socialization works ◦

8.  Deviance and Social Control ◦

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

10.  Functionalist Perspective ◦

11.  Conflict Perspective ◦ 

12.  Feminist perspective ◦

13.  Interactionist perspective ◦

14.  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

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

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

17.  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?

18.  Transformation process  Legitimization process ◦

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

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

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

22.  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