1. What is the central difference between Karl Marxs understandingof stratification and Max Webers?
2. Briefly evaluate (dont just state) Milton Gordons three models to describe American diversity.
3. Explain how scapegoating is part of the etiology of bigotry.
4. How did Emile Durkheim use the distinction between sacred and profane to explain social solidarity?
5. How do atheism and secularism differ from each other?
6. What is the actual relationship between religion (church) and the public realm (state) in America?
7. Why cant a religions position on an issue be proven by quotingits sacred literature?
8. What are some of the factors that make the Uniform Crime Reports not really uniform?
9. What is anomie, and how is it a source of criminality?
10. How does imprisonment contribute to recidivism?
11. In what sense are we all, in Margaret Meads phrase, immigrants in time?
12. Explain and illustrate why we cannot predict the future by extrapolating c
urrent trends.
Part II. Essay. Choose one of the following questions. Write afull and thoughtful essay, drawing on several of the ideascovered in the course.
13. Explain how Gordon Allports paradigm for understanding the etiology of prejudice can be used generally in studying allbehavior (not only prejudice). Then give an illustration by applying it to some behavior other than prejudice.
14. C. Wright Mills (a mid-20th Century sociologist) defined the sociological imagination as the ability to appreciate the links between individual motivations and sociocultural realities. Choose some behavior that interests you, and reflect on it with sociological imagination. (Dont just say that we are influenced by our culture. We are, of course, but if you choose this question, be sure to go beyond that obvious observation.)
15. A friend who never heard of sociology asks you what it is all about. Write a few paragraphs for your friend in which youexplain sociology as an academic discipline