Introduction to Sociology

Spring 2017
MIDTERM STUDY QUESTIONS

NOTES: (1) You will be asked to write on two of these seven questions. (2) You can
bring one 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper with notes/outlines to the exam, but it will
otherwise be closed book. (3) TIPS: There are multiple ways to answer each of these
questions. We want to see how well you can apply ideas we have discussed in class –
there no one “best” way to tackle each question. While summarizing the readings and
ideas in the class so far is often important, but analyzing and applying them and
using concrete examples is even more important!

1. Why do Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (in The Communist Manifesto) believe that the
relationship between workers and employers give them conflicting interests in a capitalist
society? Do these ideas help us understand the economy and political system in capitalist countries
like the United States today, or not? What changes or suggestions for improvement would you
recommend to Marx and Engels?

2. An Oxfam report from 2016 describes today's global economy as an "economy for the 1 percent."
Assess this claim. In your answer, identify what evidence and trends might support this claim,
drawing from the Oxfam report and other things we have read. Then describe how Kingsley Davis
and Wilbert Moore might make sense of this evidence in view of their argument for the virtues of
inequality in their 1945 essay?

3. In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, the then president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP gained
tremendous media attention after it was revealed by her parents that she was a white woman
passing as black. As sociologists, how can we understand this controversy? Specifically, how does
the Rachel Dolezal case relate to a sociological understanding of the concept of race? And why
might Dolezal’s identification have been controversial?

4. Emile Durkheim suggests that “social facts” impose themselves on people in such a way that they
are taken for granted. Yet the theory of symbolic interactionism described by Harvey Molotch
(TSP, Chap 4) and Erving Goffman suggests that social phenomena are largely produced by face to
face interactions between people who are “performing”. How do these theories differ? What would
be required to enable them fit together?

5. President Donald Trump has declared his intention to reduce the flow of immigrants into the
United States. Many Americans support this idea. What sociological ideas best help us explain the
hostility that many people feel towards immigrants?

6. In the years since President Obama’s election, some people have often commented that the
United States is a post-racial society. What do they mean by this? Is this an accurate claim? Cite
studies from the readings to support your argument and include a discussion of the mechanisms of
stratification that these studies highlight as well as the role that social institutions play in the
stratification process.

7. How do social institutions influence our social life? To answer this broad question, discuss one
specific example in which an institution ‘penetrates’ into a specific type of social interaction.
First, introduce the type of social interaction that you are going to talk about. Second, clearly define
the nature of the institution that affects the interaction of your choice. Subsequently, present an
analysis of this interaction, thereby relying on examples that support the effect of the social
institution. You can use an example from your own life if you would like.