Reflection Assignment Instructions:
Purpose:
This assignment has been created for you to reflect on the sociological concepts we have
discussed. This is your opportunity to connect course topics to current events, past experiences,
and/or things you may have seen in the mass media. This assignment is mainly an area to
allow you to connect what you have been studying in some kind of relevant manner to your own
life experiences.
Skills Learned:
1. How to provide a formal citation.
2. Describe the sociological concepts using their own words.
3. How to compare the concepts—how the concepts are similar to each other.
4. How to contrast the concepts—how the concepts are different from each other.
5. Demonstrate how students’ chosen sociological concepts apply to their everyday
life.
Task:
1. You will be provided a list of paired sociological concepts, which are related to
the course material.
2. Select one pair of concepts and provide formal definitions for both
concepts. The formal definitions should come directly from an introduction to
sociology textbook—I encourage you to use our textbook. You will need to cite
the formal definitions—see example on how to cite below (please note Wikipedia
is not an acceptable source).
3. Restate the definitions in your own words (make sure to underline the
sociological concepts you are defining—see example below).
4. Explain how the pairs are related.
5. Explain how the pairs are different.
6. Choose one of the concepts from the pair and provide an example of this
concept (make sure to underline the sociological concept you are providing an
example for—see example below). You may pull your example from personal
experiences, media (i.e. a movie clip, music, television, something you read
outside of class), or create a case scenario of your own.
Example of Assignment:
Do Not Use this Example: The following is an example of this assignment: The
sociological concept pair polygamy and monogamy
1. Polygamy: a form of marriage in which a person may have more than
one spouse at a time. Monogamy: a form of marriage in which a person
may have one spouse at a time. (Eglitis and Chambliss 2019: 317). (This is
the formal definition of polygamy and monogamy—the definition comes
directly from the required textbook for this course; your citations will be
similar, but the pages numbers should be different).
2. Polygamy is when a person is allowed to have more than one spouse at the
same time. There are different types of polygamy. There is polygyny where a
man can have more than one wife. This type of polygamy is most common in
parts of Africa, the Middle East, and parts of India. There is also polyandry
where a woman can have more than one husband. Polyandry is extremely rare
however, it does exist in Tibet. Monogamy is when a person is only allowed to
be married to one person at a time. Typically, rules around marriage are based
on the particular society and the culture within that society. (This is restating
the definition of polygamy and monogamy in your own words).
3. The pairs are related due to the rules surrounding aspects of
marriage. Polygamy and monogamy illustrate that the rules about marriage can
vary depending on the culture, the history, and the social context of a society.
4. The pairs are different in that polygamy allows for persons to be married to
more than one person at a time; while monogamy strictly enforces that persons
can be married to only one person at a time. As explained in the textbook it is
based on the culture of a society.
Example: In the book, Half of a Yellow Sun, which takes place in Nigeria in the 1960s,
one of the characters, Ugwu, returns to his village because his mother is sick. When
Ugwu enters the village, he goes to his father’s hut to inform him that he mother is sick
and he is taking her back with him to city. Ugwu’s father comes out of the hut with his
other wife. This is an example of polygamy, more specifically, polygyny. This example
also shows how the rules of marriages can vary depending on the culture. Although,
Ugwu’s father has multiple wives this is not the case for all of the characters in the
novel. In fact, there is even a discussion of polygamy and how it appears to be an
outdated belief because this society is becoming more modernized and there is no
longer a need to have multiple wives in order to have many children to work the land.
While others in the discussion understand that the rules for polygamy is based in
religion.
Cultural Concepts to be used:
Material culture and Non-material culture
Ethnocentrism and Cultural relativism
Subculture and Counterculture
High culture and Pop culture
Folkways and Mores
Ideal Culture and Real Culture
Emic perspective and Etic perspective
Criteria for Success: Students will need to:
• Respond to all questions in complete sentences.
• Number each response (you do not need to re-write the question)
• Submit the assignment using the following steps:
o Save assignment as word document file (either on your computer or
thumb drive) please do not use Pages format–as I cannot access this
format
o Go to Browse My Computer–after you have open this find your saved file
o Upload the file
o Once you have uploaded your file you will need to click submit in order to
submit the assignment.
o Please do not use the comment box to submit your assignment.
