1 SOC1101 C – Principles of Sociology Fall 2021 Take-Home Final Exam: Integration Essay Due Date: December 9, 2021, by 23:59 Worth 35% of final course grade, graded on the basis of 70 points N.B.: Your Take-Home Final Exam: Integration Essay MUST be submitted electronically, through BrightSpace. Use the following format for the name of your single electronic file: Lastname.Firstname.Take-Home Final Exam.doc. The only acceptable file submission formats are: .doc, .docx, or .rtf. Files which do not adhere to the requirements will be penalized. BACKGROUND: Over the course of its development as a distinct social science discipline, sociology has become a comprehensive yet continuously expanding and evolving body of knowledge, research, and questioning about social groups and social relations. As with other academic disciplines, numerous subdisciplinary specializations have emerged as particular lines of questioning and of method became more complex and more advanced. And these subdisciplines have themselves continued to expand and to evolve, as well. Today, sociology, with all its subdisciplinary specializations, takes a bold and expansive view of society, crossculturally and transhistorically at the micro, meso, and macro levels, and dares to ask freshly compelling, nuanced questions that seek to address virtually all aspects of the newest social realities and social challenges as they emerge. In our contemporary period of human history, however, complex social problems have arisen which cannot be sufficiently addressed by any single sociological subdiscipline, on its own. Thus the ability and skill to recognize, and often even to create, connections between and across sociological subdisciplines is indispensably essential for the modern sociologist. The appearance of research teams that include subdisciplinary sociological specialists, often as well as specialists from other social science disciplines, is very much a reflection of the complexity of the social problems confronting us now. In our course, the required course textbooks and your professor and TA’s have endeavoured to draw your attention to some of the conceptual, theoretical, and practical connections between the sociological subdisciplines. Thus, although the individual chapters of Brym et al.’s Sociology: Your Compass for a New Social World (7th edition) loosely correspond to the main subdisciplines currently existing within sociology, attention has regularly been drawn to connections between the chapters/subdisciplines. For example, the same key sociological theoretical perspectives have been used to examine and to explain the diverse social phenomena examined in each chapter. 2 PURPOSE OF THE TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM: INTEGRATION ESSAY: The Take-Home Final Exam: Integration Essay requires you to make these connections explicitly and to apply sociological concepts, theories, and research to one key event or experience in your own life, in order to understand, describe, and explain it sociologically. It requires, therefore, that you use your sociological imagination, now informed by the discipline of sociology more generally, and by its subdisciplines more specifically, to put your chosen personal event/experience into its fuller sociological context. Your Take-Home Final Exam represents the culmination of your critical review, integration, and application of the concepts, theories, and research discussed in the required course textbooks, lecture slides and recordings, together with the feedback provided to you on your Sociological Imagination Outline Assignment. Instructions: Choose one event or experience, that really matters to you, from your own life. Make sure you feel comfortable to share the background and details of this event/experience in sufficient detail that your TA or professor will be able to assess the effectiveness of your use of sociological concepts, theories, and research, to describe and to explain this event/experience sociologically. After you have carefully selected your personal event/experience, examine the sociological subdisciplines addressed in Brym et al.’s Compass textbook (tip: check the table of contents). Note that the titles of the individual textbook chapters correspond loosely to sociology’s main subdisciplines. For example, the chapter entitled “Education” corresponds to the sociological subdiscipline of “sociology of education”. Now choose the five sociological subdisciplines that will best help you to describe and to explain, sociologically, your chosen event/experience. Finally, use your sociological imagination to apply the concepts, theories, and research discussed in your five selected chapters, in your sociological analysis of your chosen event/experience. Note that all chapters of Brym’s Sociology as a Life or Death Issue (4th edition) accompany specific chapter-based presentations in Brym et al.’s Sociology: Your Compass for a New Social World (7th edition) textbook. You must therefore also use all chapters from Brym’s Sociology as a Life or Death Issue (4th edition) textbook, that accompany your selected Brym Sociology: Your Compass for a New Social World (7th edition) textbook chapters, whenever it is relevant for your chosen life event/experience. For example, the chapter entitled “Hip Hop from Caps to Bling”, in Sociology as a Life or Death Issue (4th edition), intentionally accompanies the chapter entitled “Culture” in Sociology: Your Compass for a New Social World (7th edition). In addition to the textbook chapters, you must additionally incorporate all relevant lecture content, including both the lecture slides and recordings, as well as the feedback provided to you on your Sociological Imagination Outline Assignment. 3 Components: Title page: Make sure to include a title page, with your essay title, the course information (i.e., course title, course code, session, and professor’s name), your name and student number, your TA’s name, and the date. Skeleton outline: Before beginning to write your Take-Home Final Exam: Integration Essay, you must create a skeleton outline of your Take-Home Final Exam. This must be included, immediately following the title page. Introduction: First, Identify and describe the details of one important life event or experience taken from your own life, and briefly explain why your chosen life event/experience matters to you. Make sure you feel comfortable to share the background and details of this event/experience in sufficient detail that your TA or professor will be able to assess the effectiveness of your use of sociological concepts, theories, and research, to describe and to explain this event/experience sociologically. Second, state the five sociological subdisciplines (i.e., the five chapters) from Brym et al.’s Sociology: Your Compass for a New Social World (7th edition) textbook, as well as all corresponding chapters from Brym’s Sociology as a Life or Death Issue (4th edition) textbook, that you will use to describe and to explain your chosen life event or experience. You do not need to state the dates or class numbers of the lectures that you will also use, since these will usually be the ones oriented explicitly to the subdisciplines addressed in your chosen textbook chapters. Third, briefly explain what a “sociological imagination” is. Then, list the key aspects that you have identified, through your use of your sociological imagination, as pertinent and necessary to describe and to explain your chosen personal life event/experience in its fuller sociological context. Critical integration analysis (– this is the “body” of your essay): Your critical literature review must comprise six key subsections, each of which must be substantially developed and efficiently written (i.e., idea-dense). In each of the first five subsections, use your sociological imagination to apply the concepts, theories, and research, taken from each of your five selected sociological subdisciplines, to understand and to explain your chosen life event/experience. For example, if one of your selected Compass chapters is “Networks, Groups, Bureaucracies, and Societies”, then you will have one subsection, with “Networks, Groups, Bureaucracies, and Societies” as its subtitle, in which you examine your personal event/experience in light of the concepts, theories, and research developed in the “Networks, Groups, Bureaucracies, and Societies” chapter. Your remaining four, of these five, subsections will similarly be subtitled and focused according to your selected Compass chapters. In the sixth subsection, examine your chosen life event or experience by making connections between and across your five selected sociological subdisciplines. Helpful tip: This subsection should be at least twice as long as the average length of each of the previous five subsections. The skeleton outline that you created as the first step in your Take-Home Final Exam will prove to be of paramount importance, as will the feedback that you have already received in your 4 Sociological Imagination Outline Assignment. Helpful tip: Do not start writing your essay until you have fully developed your skeleton outline. In addition, remember to cite your references correctly, using either APA or ASA style! Conclusion: Don’t forget to include a conclusion! Bibliography or References List: Your bibliography (or references list) must include a separate entry for each full chapter used from the required two course textbooks. (A separate chapter entry is required since you are not using either textbook, in its entirety, but only selected chapters from each.) Length: Your final essay must be typed with 12-point font, double-spaced (except for the skeleton outline component), and use 2.5-cm page margins. The written component of your essay, excluding other components such as the title page, skeleton outline, and bibliography/references list, must be 2,750-3,000 words in length. Essays which exceed the maximum permitted word count by more than 250 words will be penalized; essays with a word count lower than 2,500 are most likely underdeveloped or incomplete. Helpful tip to illustrate word count planning: If you were to use 350 words for each of your introduction and each of the first five critical integration subsections, and 700 words for the sixth critical integration subsection, you would have a total word count of 2,800 words – very manageable if the Take-Home Final Exam is not left to the last minute. Of course, the exact word count distribution in your own Take-Home Final Exam will depend on exactly what you need to write in each section, so this illustration should be viewed as a flexible guide rather than a strict requirement. (Technically, in-text citations are not included in a document’s final word count.) Formatting Style: The style guide in use for this course is indicated on the course syllabus (i.e., either APA or ASA). Correct and consistent referencing is expected. Note that style help is available, if needed, from the FSS sociology librarian or the Academic Writing Help Centre. Additional style guidance resources are provided on the BrightSpace course page. 5 Assessment: Marks will be allocated according to the distribution indicated in the following table: Assessment: I. Skeleton outline of Take-Home Final Exam: 10 II. Introduction: 5 III. Critical integration analysis: EACH of first five subsections – 5 X 6 = 30: 30 Intersubdisciplinary analysis (sixth subsection): 15 IV. Conclusion: 5 V. References list: 5 Total: 70 points * = 35% of the final course grade * Writing quality: Excellent writing (grammar, spelling, punctuation, ASA or APA in-text referencing and bibliographic citation, correct use of terms, respect of length limitations, overall organization) is expected; deficiencies will be penalized up to 10.5 points (15% of the take- home final exam’s contribution to the final course grade). * Lateness penalty: A daily penalty for lateness of 3.5 points/day late (5% of the take-home final exam’s contribution to the final course grade, including weekend and holiday days) will be applied to take-home final exams submitted after the due date. No take-home final exam will be accepted for course credit after December 12 at 23:59, without an FSS-approved deferral of the final course grade.
