Study Sheet for our First Exam

The exam will cover the following:

Introduction

Basic Theories and Theorists in Sociology

Two Approaches to Introduce Sociology

1.People Approach

• Great Questions of Great Dead Sociologists
  • Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
• Modern Sociological Thinking
  • Symbolic Interactionism
  • Functionalism
• Later Thinkers
  • Foucault

2. Perspective Approach

• Power and Conflict: Marx, Weber, Habermas, Foucault, Domhoff
• Functionalism: Comte, Durkheim, Parsons, Merton, and Gans
• Symbolic Interactionism: Mead, Heise
• Rational Choice

Sources in the literature that were assigned readings:

Intensive:

• Book: Chapter 1, What is Sociology

To build the general background:

• Reader: #1 Peter Berger: What are Sociologists and Why Are They Doing This?
• Reader: #2 C. Right Mills "From The Sociological Imagination."
• Reader: Concerning Conflict Theory: #19 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels " The Manifesto of the Communist Party."
• Reader: Concerning Functionalism: #21 Herbert Gans "The Uses of the Underclass."

2. Methods

Sociological Methods

Assignments:

• Book: Chapter 2
• Reader: #5 Joel Best: "Telling the Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics."
• To understand the arguments concerning obedience in the Milgram experiments, reader: #6 The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience"

Internet session

• Finding and Filtering Information.
• Creditability of Information: The Blair Witch Project.

How to study?

The very best way to improve is to learn from your mistakes.  My assistant, has your old exams in her office.  I suggest visiting her in her office hours (see electronic syllabus).  Once you determined pattern in your mistakes, we can start troubleshooting. 

 If the problem is content specific, consider the following study guide:

1. Prepare: organize your study plan.  Consider deadlines and exam dates.
2. Eat: read the relevant chapters in the textbook before coming to class.
3. Digest: use the class for asking questions you had about the reading.
4. Ruminate: take your class notes and/or my Internet postings to go though the assigned readings.  Take my lecture to guide you in your self-learning process.

If you have a specific question, please come by in my office hours. It is important that you are considered about your performance.  Studying is to a large part working on your improvement process.

I hope I can help.

Dr. Schneider

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