application of concepts
Develop a 3-5 page outline of concepts you would like to apply to your own life and identify relevant scholarly sources that will help you with your application of concepts.
As you may have noticed as you have worked through earlier assessments, Sociology is applicable to our everyday lives. We can oftentimes take a sociological concept and use it to explain something that occurs in our own lives. For example, you have learned about norms and how we tend to follow the norms of a society. You can use that to explain how people behave when they are in an elevator. Most people face forward, look up at the numbers, and don’t talk.
Many of your experiences can be analyzed using sociological concepts. For your final assessment, Assessment 6, you will complete a Sociology of Me and apply many of the concepts you have learned about in this course to your own life. For Assessment 5, begin to think about which concepts you would like to apply to your own experience, develop an outline, and identify appropriate resources. In order to complete this assessment, you will need to show your understanding of some additional concepts related to social structure, education, and technology/media.
We have learned how a society’s culture can influence people. There are other elements in society, however, that also affect our decisions and behavior. Sociological research has found that in addition to culture, social structure and groups also significantly impact many of our individual choices. Our position in the social structure affects our behaviors, attitudes, and ideas. For example, an important element of social structure are groups. We belong to a variety of different groups. Decades of research have documented the impact of group conformity on the individual. Although people tend to often believe that they act as individuals and aren’t impacted by others, research has found this is usually not the case. The Milgram experiment in your Resources is a great example. Milgram (1963) examined conformity and obedience and found that people are highly influenced by authority and the demands of conformity, even to the point that we will inflict pain on another person to obey authority.
Sociologists also study education and how it is impacted by a society’s culture and structure. The purpose of education is to provide knowledge (facts, skills, cultural norms) to members of a society. In the United States, education teaches us not just skills, but also how to be effective citizens. Education transmits the dominant culture, ensuring that children understand cultural norms and values. Educational attainment impacts life outcomes—it affects our occupation, earnings, work conditions, and health. Thus, education is related to social inequality. We have a tendency to assume that education is an equalizer in the United States, but this is something that is debated by sociologists. Is education equally available to everyone? Studies suggest it is not. Social class can impact the quality of school children attend, what they study, and how many years they attend school. Many students graduate from college with significant student loan debt. How might someone’s experience after college graduation be different if they graduated from college debt-free because their parents could afford to pay for it?
We regularly see new products and services as a result of increasing technology. We often take the influence of technology and media for granted, but it has a substantial impact on how we understand our culture and society as a whole. Many new products and services are a response to society’s changing needs. But technology can also serve to shape the values held by a society. Think about how our interaction has changed in the past ten years as a result of technology. Has that impacted our values? A small number of corporations deliver Internet platforms and a small number of corporations produce most of our media. What impact does that have on our access to technology and information?
