Download MOHAWK COLLEGE OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

MOHAWK COLLEGE OF APPLIED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
COURSE OUTLINE
This is not the official Course outline and is for Reference Only.
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY Course Code: SS108 Academic Year
Program Name: All Programs
Duration: - Total Hrs.: 42: Total Wks.: 14: Hrs./Wk.: 3
Department: - Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty: - Applied Arts and Brantford
Prerequisite Course: - None Official
A.
GENERAL COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Sociology provides insight into how society influences human behaviour. By studying the problems and social issues
in society, we are able to gain a better understanding of how society affects people. This course explores various
sociological perspectives and demonstrates how systematic studies are used to challenge commonsense
perspectives about social life. Particular areas of study include, culture, socialization, deviant behaviour, social
inequality, and the economy.
GENERAL EDUCATION GOALS:
Social Understanding, Personal Development, Cultural Understanding, Career Enhancement.
GENERIC SKILLS FOR SOCIOLOGY
Generic skills arc behaviours that are appropriately and responsibly used in the self-management of one’s affairs.
They are culturally universal skills required to enhance an individual’s success in life, including work, education, and
personal endeavors. Generic Skills are measurable and your demonstration of the skills will be a component of your
mark in this course.
Sociology will verify the acquisition of a select number of generic skills through the required tests.
Generic Skills to be Validated Through Testing:
Recall and remember data, observe presented information & objectively note important information.
Distinguish between relevant and non-relevant information.
Distinguish between objective scientifically valid data, personal opinions, common sense, and
incidental evidence.
Recognize and define a hypothesis/thesis, verify hypothesis/thesis with available data.
Translate data, i.e. apply concepts to various situations.
Time management, i.e. attend all tests or follow proper procedures when a test must be missed.
Instructor: John Lambert, Ph.D. Note: Please always contact me via email and not by phone.
Email: [email protected]
WRITING OF TEST
Tests must be written on the scheduled dates. A missed test will be assigned a mark of "0".
There is no established provision for rewriting missed tests. A substitute test maybe scheduled if in the instructor’s
assessment there is a valid reason. Students must negotiate this with their instructor. Re-evaluation shall be given
1
only at the end of the course, after an “incomplete” has been assigned. Re-evaluations are given at the discretion of
the instructor, based on the overall evaluation of the student’s course work.
EVALUATION INSTRUMENTS
There will be four-in-class tests (multiple-choice and true / false format) during the semester.
No test will include more than two chapters. SS1O8 does not include an essay component.
COMPUTATION OF FINAL GRADE
No one evaluation shall comprise more than one quarter of the final grade of the course. The final grade will be
based on the average of the four tests, each for 25% of the final grade.
C.
COURSE CONTENT
CHAPTER
2
3
4
16
6
11
Testing
MAIN MODULE
What is Sociology
What Do Sociologists Do?
Culture
Socialization
Deviance
Social Inequality
The Economy: Money & Work
Approximate
HOURS
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
6
Ch. 1. WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
I. To be able to define sociology and to distinguish it from other social sciences.
2. To be familiar with the historical sources and development of the discipline.
3. To understand the major theoretical positions taken by sociologists to explain human interaction,
including functionalist, conflict, symbolic-interactionist, and feminist perspectives.
4. To be familiar with the history of Canadian sociology.
Ch. 2. WHAT DO SOCIOLOGISTS DO?
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
1. To understand the problems with commonsense and why sociologists conduct research. To appreciate
the distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods.
2. To understand and be able to compare the workings of two major approaches - survey research and
participant observation - on the following: theory, complexity of model, measurement, sampling, and
data analysis, and to know the advantages and disadvantages of each.
3. To be aware of other specific research alternatives, like experiments and content analysis, as well as
some general approaches to methods, including Marxist and female-friendly science.
Ch. 3. CULTURE
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
1. To define culture and to distinguish and understand the sociological aspects of it.
2. To understand what makes humans different from other animals.
3. To be aware of the existence of cultural variation and of some cultural differences between the United
States and Canada.
2
4. To identify the components of symbolic culture and understand why language is so significant to culture.
5. To (define and understand the concepts such as values, norms, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and
cultural universals.
6. To understand cultural studies and how the major theories (functionalism, conflict theory, cu I tural
materialism, and feminism) explain cultural variation.
Ch. 4. SOCIALIZATION
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
1. To appreciate the content and limits of the Nature versus Nurture debate.
2. Use a variety of perspectives to define socialization, and to be aware of functionalist, conflict, and
symbolic interactionist perspectives as they pertain to the process of socialization.
3. To understand a few classic psychological approaches to socialization and how sociologists
critique them.
4. To be aware of the various socialization agents and contexts and how they have changed over
the past 200 years.
Ch. 16. SOCIAL DEVIANCE & SOCIAL CONTROL
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
I. To understand how societies decide what is deviant and what is not.
2. To discuss the four major sociological theories of social deviance.
3. To understand that social control is necessarily related to the process of socialization.
4. To know and discuss how societies react to social deviance and define the process of the
medicalization of deviance.
5. Explore the possibility of a more humane approach to treating social deviants
Ch. 6. SOCIAL INEQUALITY: GLOBAL & NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
1. To identify the major systems of social stratification.
2. To understand the basic concepts of social stratification: status, stratum, status hierarchies and
power dimensions, ascribed and achieved status, social mobility, class, and social class.
3. To understand several of the major theories of social stratification, including Marxist, Weberian,
and structural-functionalist positions.
4. To understand how the world’s Nations became stratified and how global stratification is
maintained.
5. To realize some of the major consequences of stratification for people, including its effects on life
chances, lifestyles, values, and beliefs.
6. To appreciate how wealth and property, occupation, education, race/ethnicity, region and ruralurban location, gender, age, and political power affect our life chances.
Ch 11 TIlE ECONOMY: MONEY & WORK
Objectives: This chapter provides information that will allow students:
1. Appreciate the transformation of economic systems and mediums of exchange and know the
differences between pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial societies.
2. To understand the systems of capitalism and socialism, and how capitalism dominates the global
economy.
3. To understand the differences between four main sociological perspective of work.
4. To define and appreciate the economic sectors and patterns of work in Canada.
5. To appreciate the various forms of labour resistance, the role of unions in them, and the
consequences of global capitalism.
3