Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
- Textbook: Chapters 1-12, 14
- Lesson: Weeks 1-7
- 1 outside scholarly source in addition to the textbook/lesson
Instructions
In the discipline of sociology, there is a strong tradition of creating both biographies and autobiographies that focus on exploring a person’s life from a sociological point of view.
For this assignment, you will reflect on your own life story, making connections between your everyday life/life story and the broad sociocultural structures within which you live. To begin this assignment, consider your own life as you review all the textbook readings and online weekly lessons and decide which sociological concepts you wish to explain in connection to a part or parts of your own life story. Focus on vocabulary words in bold in your textbook reading, for example, and decide which terms apply to you and to your life story.
Please note that you do not need to include, and should not include, intimate or sensitive information about your background in this assignment. There are many very general sociological concepts that apply to each person’s life. If you have an extenuating circumstance, please contact your instructor for additional guidance.
Your paper must contain scholarly support in the form of paraphrases *only* with respective citations from the assigned reading (the textbook/lesson) and the outside scholarly source that you identify on your own. Do not directly quote from sources for this paper, but instead, paraphrase in your own words from source material and cite the sources with parenthetical in-text citations and with full APA-style references on a reference page at the end of your essay.
Writing Tip: Focus
As Kanagy and Kraybill (1999) wrote in their book, The Riddles of Human Society, the socioautobiography is “not a diary” or a “point-by-point account” of life since birth (p. 287). Feel free to focus on only a part or parts of your life story.
Requirements
- Length: 2-3 pages (not including the reference page)
- 1-inch margins
- Double spaced
- 12-point font
- Page number in the upper right of all pages
- Parenthetical in-text citations and a reference page formatted in APA style
- Abstract and title page not required
- Acceptable file type: .doc, .docx, or PDF
Grading
This activity will be graded based on the Week 7 Assignment Grading Rubric.
Outcomes
- CO 1: Explain social problems using the “sociological imagination.”
- CO 2: Apply sociological theories to the study of society and social systems.
- CO 3: Analyze the concepts of culture and society.
- CO 4: Analyze interactions between ethnic or racial groups in social organizations based on the cultural characteristics of the groups.
- CO 5: Examine the impact of cultural differences related to the changing demographics of the United States and globalization of markets.
- CO 6: Compare and contrast multicultural issues related to subgroups identified by categories in addition to or other than race and ethnicity.
