Assessment Description: You will write an essay (1000 words) that applies your understanding of key sociological concepts to everyday social life. This assessment task is a reflective essay (1000 words) that applies your understanding of a critical sociological concept to everyday social life. It builds from your workbook portfolio but is a more formal writing exercise than the workbook. In other words, it is like a traditional essay requiring an introduction, conclusion, and reference list. But having said that, it also allows you to apply the concept to an example of your choice. You may use ‘I’ to drive the paper’s discussion (it would be awkward otherwise!), and you should include in-text citations throughout (e.g., Du Bois 2007:9). How to complete the assessment: There are three steps to this assessment task.
Step 1 Please choose one of the following conceptual approaches that help us to rethink the social:
1. W.E.B. Du Bois’s understanding of the double-consciousness of the black person and the experience of prejudice (as discussed in Week 8)
Step 2 Consider an example (it can be anything. It could be a personal experience, a news story, a social or political or cultural event, a movie, a poem, a ritual, etc.). The only constraint is that it must have a ‘social’ dimension. Step 3 Now, reflect on how your chosen conceptual approach helps you appreciate something new about your chosen example. In other words, we want you to think about how your chosen conceptual approach helps you to ‘rethink’ an aspect of social life. Please include these elements:
1. Provide an introduction of approximately 100 words. • Your introduction should be short and to the point: ‘The purpose of this essay is to apply [INSERT NAME OF THINKER AND THEIR CONCEPT] to the example of [INSERT] to demonstrate how to rethink the social.’ From there you can briefly explain how the thinker helps us to rethink the social, and sketch out how the essay proceeds.
2. Define the concept of double-consciousness in approximately 200 words.
3. Briefly describe your example in approximately 100 words.
4. Demonstrate how your example illustrates the concept you have chosen in 400 words. • Remember that you can provide further detail about the example in your demonstration here.
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5. In your conclusion, explain how the concept and example help us to rethink the ‘social’ in about 200 words.
