A “sociobiography” looks at how the big story of the world relates to the little story of you. It follows in the tradition of sociologist C. Wright Mills, who emphasized the influence of society on the individual. He argued that personal troubles are typically rooted in larger social forces — that is, in public issues. Why do teenagers start smoking? Often because they’ve seen their parents do it and/or they have been influenced by media images that show smoking as cool. We all experience the effects of social forces that we can do little to avoid. As we begin to understand how we have been acted upon, we have greater freedom to control how we shape and produce the culture around us as well as ourselves.
Elements of the paper
For the socioautobiography, you will need to analyze how social forces shaped a core value or belief. In particular:
Select one value or belief that is central to how you think about yourself. (This should be some guiding principle in your life that defines who you are.)
Discuss how at least four agents of socialization (as discussed in the lecture and text) instilled this value or belief in you. Include specific examples or stories about how each agent of socialization developed this core value or belief.
Discuss how a global social event helped shape this core value or belief.
Research and reflect upon how other social forces influenced this core value or belief.
Refer to and apply ideas, concepts, and theories from the course, including, at minimum, the following terms: achieved status, ascribed status, and master status. Also include at least one of the following: Sapir Whorf hypothesis, Thomas Theorem, the looking glass self, or the presentation of self.
Be sure to briefly identify and define/explain each concept used in your paper, then discuss how it is relevant or applicable to something in your paper.
Selecting a core value or belief
To identify and select a core value or belief, think about things you value above all else, or what your most strongly held belief is. It may be helpful to first brainstorm what values and beliefs you hold and then reflect upon which of those are the most important to you or central to your identity. Values may revolve around life, family, work, religion, politics, or society. Some core American values include: equal opportunity, achievement and success, material comfort, hard work, progress, democracy, and freedom (see Williams). Other examples of values include: individuality, freedom of speech, patriotism or nationalism, cooperation, compassion, and so on.
Identifying perspective
To tie your life to a major world event, look back at some of the many books available that chronicle the major national/world events of your lifetime. History books that include pictures of war years, major economic recessions, and other events are very evocative. Magazines (e.g., past issues of Life) often commemorate major events. You can also surf the web to jog your memory. The website www.ourtimelines.com (Links to an external site.) allows you to enter the current date, your birth date, and some events in your life. A historical timeline will then be generated showing your personal events in the context of other historical events.
To help place your life in sociological context, you may also research how similar some of your life events and experiences are to the rest of the country. See Tips for Academic Research for information on how to find academic resources that relate to your experiences. Also, take advantage of the wealth of data collected by the U.S. Census (Links to an external site.) or other national data sets relevant to your location. Some information you can include are: the percent of the country who is your race, gender, has an annual family income similar to yours, or works in industries or occupations similar to yours. Since you are all college students, you could search for research on values and beliefs or experiences of college students.
Browse through whatever historical material you have available and see what seems significant to you. Does your memory and awareness of certain events (e.g., stock market crash, 9/11, racial riots, etc.) influence your core value? Think of inventions or advances you’ve seen in your lifetime. How did this invention or advance develop your core value?
What are some of the special features of the cultural time of each event that shaped your thinking and behavior – and helped develop your core value? How did the cultural time shape and mold your values, beliefs, and view of the world? Looking up public opinion polls can be very helpful here. Check out the General Social Survey (Links to an external site.), Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (Links to an external site.) and the International Social Survey Programme (Links to an external site.).
Requirements
For this assignment, you must include at least TWO citations from some academic source other than your textbook. (See Citation Information for guidance on how to format reference citations.) Your external source can be a journal or a book printed by an academic press. Online sources, such as Wikipedia, are not acceptable. You should additionally use and cite your textbook, but it WILL NOT count as one of your required academic sources. Newspaper articles are not academic sources. Direct quotes need to be substantive, and should only be used when you cannot paraphrase that information without it losing some of its meaning. That is, do not include a quote defining socialization or values or some other term. Use the quote to support some argument you are making in your paper – why your value/belief is important, why your value/belief should be a guiding principle in a person’s life, how someone else viewed a similar value/belief, how some social theorist views your value, the social significance of your value or the global social event, how other Americans or people in other countries view your core value or global social event, etc.
The final paper will be 5 to 10 typed pages (page count does not include the bibliography or title page). 4 3/4 pages will not pass.
FORMAT:
1. Title page required.
2. Do not put identifying marks (your name, etc as a header or footer) on the paper itself. That information should only appear on the title page.
3. Use 1 inch margins all around.
4. Double-space. Do not triple space between paragraphs. Paragraphs should be indented.
5. Use Times New Roman 12 pt font.
6. Reference page must be formatted using APA style.
