Soc 110
SeattleCentralCommunity College
FINAL EXAM REVIEW
The final exam will consist of 5 short answers (10 points each) and one essay (50 points total).
To prepare for the final exam, you should review Lecture notes, Reading notes, Reading summaries, Learning objectives, Quizzes.
TERMS & CONCEPTS
Define each term (in your own words, of course), give an example and explain why it is important to understanding how society makes some choices & outcomes more or less available to some individuals and groups.
Assimilation
Class
Culture
Cultural relativism
Deviance
Discrimination
Functions of deviance
Gender
Gender Identity
Gender roles
Globalization
Homophobia
Identity
Impression management
Intergenerational mobility
Issue / Trouble
Looking Glass Self
McWorld
Minority
Norms
Oppression (5 faces)
Patriarchy
Pluralism
Policies
Power
Privilege (White/heterosexual/male)
Race
Reality
Role conflict
Role distancing
Sanctions
Sex
Sexual Orientation
Social Capital
Social groups
Social network
Social stability
Social stratification
Socialization
Sociological Imagination
Status (ascribed / achieved)
Status cues
Stereotypes
Subculture
ESSAY
The questions below are modeled after the actual exam questions. The questions on the final exam will be narrower, asking you to focus on one particular kind of explanation or use one type of social grouping (race, ethnicity, class, sex, sexual orientation)in your answer.
The best answers will use examples from class lectures and readings and will fully explain the mechanisms in question (ie: explain what a role is when the term role is used in the answer).
Assume the reader has no background in sociology, does not understand that culture is learned, that reality is socially constructed, and so on…
- Explain the concept of social stratification. What facts can you offer as evidence that stratification is a social construct?
- Write an essay designed to convince someone that reality is socially constructed. How many different arguments can you make to support your assertion?
- Explain specific ways that culture can unite or create divisions among social groups.
- Explain why stereotypes are harmful and why they are so hard to get rid of.
- What does it mean to say that gender is socially constructed?
- In his sociological classic The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills wrote “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” Briefly explain how your own biography can be best understood as the product of the time and place in which you live.
- What specific things can we learn about a culture by observing actions and attitudes that are deviant in that society?
- It is said that Americans tend to marry for love, yet it can also be argued that social forces guide our choices of a mate. Explain. How many different ways can you think of to make this argument?
- Family is our point of entry into the social system. Both culture and stratification require learning to be transmitted. Explain ways that families can transmit culture and perpetuate stratification. Be sure your answer addresses stratification on more than one dimension. (gender, race, wealth, etc …)
- Explain the following sentence in your own words: Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs.
- What does it mean that an individual’s identity is shaped by the social world?