Soc 468 Exam 3 Topics

CSUN - SOC 468&468S - KARAGEORGIS – EXAM 3 Paper Topic Menu

Pick ONE of the following topics and respond within a minimum of three (3) and a maximum of eight (8) type-written, double-spaced pages, for a maximum of 300 points towards your final grade in the combined 'lecture and seminar' course. Proof-read your essay carefully (do not rely on the spell-checker). Properly cite the source of any direct quote, paraphrase or summary of another author’s ideas, concepts and arguments in-text (e.g. Goffman, STCE: 220) and provide a ‘Works Cited” final section. Make sure that any work you cite in-text also appears in your “Works Cited” and vice-versa. You must make and keep at least one hard- and one (easily-accessible, ‘virus- and malware-free’) electronic-copy of your final as ‘backup’. The exam is due on (OR BEFORE):

Wednesday May 14 by 11:59 p.m. through Moodle (Turnitin) and by e-mail (as an attachment) to stavros.karageorgis@csun.edu .

It is your responsibility to ensure that the Exam 3 essay you turn in through Moodle is accessible and printable and that you are available via e-mail promptly to remedy any problems with your Exam 3.

***************************************************************************************

1. How do you "do" being ‘man/woman' (N.B. “to ‘do’ gender is not always to live up to normative conceptions of femininity or masculinity; it is to engage in behavior at the risk of gender assessment.” West and Zimmerman: Doing Gender)? How do you enact and portray, how do you “give reality or substance to your status, position or social place” (Cf. Goffman 1959 in S.T.C.E.: 203) as a ‘man’ or ‘woman’? How do you hold yourself and others accountable on the same basis (i.e. as a member of one or the other ‘sex class’ or ‘sex category’)? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, from class discussions, online sources (e.g. West and Zimmerman: Doing Gender, Erving Goffman: The Arrangement between the Sexes , Erving Goffman: Gender Display), and, of course, your personal experiences.

2. Goffman writes: "Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses" (The Arrangement between the Sexes, p. 315). What is gender, according to Goffman? How is it related to sex? What is unique or special about sex/sex-class (male/female) as a principle to appeal to in making claims and warranting allocations, as compared to other possible principles (e.g. class, race, etc.)? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources (including the article by Goffman cited and linked-to above and Goffman's Gender Display, esp. section VII) and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, personal experiences, etc.

3. Do feminist theories remain "prisoners of gender" and of "modernist", Enlightenment-based grand-narratives? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources (e.g. Joan Alway - The Trouble with Gender: Tales of the Still-Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociological Theory , S.A. Mann and L.R. Kelley - Standing at the Crossroads of Modernist Thought: Collins, Smith, and the New Feminist Epistemologies Flax, Jane: Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990. five -- Feminisms Stories of Gender, Jane Flax, Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory, Daryl McGowan Tress, Comment on Flax's "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory"), personal experiences, etc.

4. Summarize and explicate Judith Butler's “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” (as excerpted in STCE: 373 - 377). Pay particular attention to her arguments about identity(ies), discourse(s), norms, practice(s), etc. with regard to sex, sexuality (desire, practice, identity, etc) and gender. Draw, as necessary, from additional original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in S.T.C.E., class discussions, online sources (e.g. Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn - Fashionable Subjects: On Judith Butler and the Causal Idioms of Postmodern Feminist Theory, Meijer and Prins: How Bodies Come to Matter : An Interview with Judith Butler, White - As the World Turns: Ontology and Politics in Judith Butler, Ki Namaste - The Politics of Inside/Out : Queer Theory, Poststructuralism, and a Sociological Approach to Sexuality, Mary McIntosh: The Homosexual Role) personal experiences, etc.

5. How is social order (as defined and discussed by Edles and Appelrouth in STCE: Chapter 1) accomplished and maintained, according to at least two of the following perspectives: symbolic interactionism, Goffman, Berger and Luckmann, ethnomethodology, feminist theories, Foucault, etc.? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources, etc.

6. Describe an occasion in your life during which you experienced a sustained re-framing or reconstruction/change/alternation of your (sense of) 'reality' (including your sense of 'self' or ‘identity’). Discuss, in a self-reflexive but analytical way, using -- as necessary -- insights from original and secondary class readings on Symbolic Interactionism, Goffman, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann, Ethnomethodology, Foucault, etc.

A. the conditions which made that re-framing/reconstruction/change/alternation of ‘reality’ and ‘identity’ possible for you, and

B. the conditions which have allowed and enabled you to maintain that re-framing/reconstruction/change/alternation of ‘reality’ and ‘identity’ in the face of pressures (e.g. from ‘public opinion’, the mainstream mass media, school and work influences, your old friends and associates, your family of origin, your ‘old self’, etc) suggesting or insisting that an alternative framing or sense of 'reality' or of your identity is the 'real' reality, your ‘real’ self, etc.

(The following online readings MAY be useful: Berger & Luckmann: Maintenance and Transformation of Subjective Reality, Hilbert: Anomie and the Moral Regulation of Reality, Hilbert: Ethnomethodological Recovery of Durkheim, Cashmore - More than a Version: A Study of Reality Creation, Kim: Religious Deprogramming and Subjective Reality; you may also consult readings made available through Moodle)

7. How can a group's (socially constructed, taken-for-granted, objectified, legitimized and internalized, Cf. Berger and Luckmann) reality be deliberately changed? Would doing so involve undoing or undermining its members' sense of self and identity, the relative stability and persistence of the 'meaning' of 'things' (including actions and behaviors, words, signs, etc., Cf. Blumer) for them? Under what conditions and for what purposes would you be interested in, and support, the development of knowledge and techniques (Cf. Foucault) that would allow for the deliberate 'deconstruction' and 're-construction' of your own or other people’s realities, selves and meanings? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources, personal experiences, etc.

8. What types of issues, ideas, practices, etc. are you 'narrow-' and 'open-minded' (intolerant-tolerant, rigid-flexible, etc.) about? Give a few specific examples of each. How did you come to be narrow- or open-minded in just those ways? How do you remain so? How do you move or have you moved in the other direction (from narrow- to open-minded and vice-versa); what did/would it take? Offer a social/sociological theory-informed account or explanation of the above, using concepts and insights from our readings.

9. Compare and contrast at least two of your professors (you may use pseudonyms) using Goffman's theories of “impression [through expression] management” and “deference and demeanor”. For example, you may consider the following questions: How are their offices different? How do they dress and talk? How do they use settings and objects differently? How does their demeanor (in different settings) communicate different levels and kinds of expected deference from you and other students? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, and, of course, your personal experiences, etc.

10. Erving Goffman writes: "[T]he very obligation and profitability [i.e. benefit, advantage] of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces one to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage." (STCE: 220) What is the relationship between the 'authentic' or 'true' self and the 'contrived' self; between 'self-as-performer' and 'self-as-character'? Is there any 'time-out' from having to use 'techniques' of 'impression management'? Are strategic manipulation and morality radically opposed, in practice? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, personal experiences, etc.

11. What is the relationship between 'knowledge' and 'discourse(s)' on the one hand, and 'power' on the other, according to Foucault? How is power exercised, by whom, on whom, and to what effect, today? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources (e.g. Michel Foucault: The Subject and Power , Michel Foucault: Omnes et Singulatim - Toward a Criticism of Political Reason , Leslie Paul Thiele: Foucault's Triple Murder and the Modern Development of Power , V. Tadros: Between Governance and Discipline -- The Law and Michel Foucault , John O'Neill -- The Disciplinary Society: From Weber to Foucault , Summary of MICHEL FOUCAULT's "THE DISCOURSE ON LANGUAGE" (1971)), personal experiences, etc.

12. How are changes in the social organization of 'time' and 'space' associated with 'globalization', the transition to a post-industrial 'information-' and/or 'service-' economy, etc. related to the processes of identity-, self-, and reality-construction in which we engage, and by which we are affected? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources (e.g. Ritzer, The Globalization of Nothing, Castells: Toward a Sociology of the Network Society, Janet Lee: The Utility of a Strategic Postmodernism, M. Poster: Postmodern Virtualities, Globalization - Resources and Links), personal experiences, etc.

13. Explore Foucault’s (broadly Althusserian – see "The Soul is the Prison of the Body": Althusser and Foucault, 1970-1975) notion of disciplinary and normalizing power as they operate and are practiced in institutions of higher education by examining your own ‘career’ so far as a college student. Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online sources (e.g. POWER GOES TO SCHOOL: TEACHERS, STUDENTS, AND DISCIPLINE and OVERCOMING AMBIVALENCE ABOUT FOUCAULT’S RELEVANCE FOR EDUCATION), and, of course, personal experiences.

14. In what ways can the current "War on Terrorism" be analyzed and understood as hyperreal and/or as a series of simulacra (For definitions and a useful discussion see: reality, hyperreality (1), reality, hyperreality (2) and simulation, simulacrum (1), simulation, simulacrum (2))? How do we know what the 'real' threats are? How do we know (i.e. how do we come to know) what is 'really' going e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan or even here, in the U.S.A.? Against what do we judge this or that 'image' (or re-presentation or account) of reality as 'truthful' or 'false'? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary analyses and commentary in our readings, class discussions, personal experiences, online sources (e.g. Gamson et al: Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality, W. Bogard - Closing Down the Social: Baudrillard’s Challenge to Contemporary Sociology, Der Derian: Virtuous War/Virtual Theory , M. Poster: Postmodern Virtualities), etc.

15. “The existence of racism does not require that there are races; it requires the belief that there are races." What does believing “that there are races” entail? Is “the belief that there are races” sufficient for racism to exist? For racism not to exist, must belief that races exist disappear? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary explanations and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online resources (e.g. Winant: Race and Race Theory, Race and Racism: A Symposium, Winant: Rethinking Race in Brazil, Amanda Lewis - "What Group?" Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era of "Color-Blindness", and/or additional readings provided through the Moodle site for the course), personal experiences, etc.

16. The ambivalence that dogs the logic of social constructionist positions should now be all too familiar to feminist sociologists. If we are true to our pronouncements that social inequalities and the categories they reference (e.g., gender, race, and class) are not rooted in biology, then we may at some point seem to flirt with the notion that they are, therefore, rooted in nothing. For us, biology is not only not destiny but also not the only reality. Gender, race, and class inequalities are firmly rooted in the ever-present realities of individual practice, cultural conventions, and social institutions. That's reality enough, when we ponder the pernicious and pervasive character of racism, sexism, and economic oppression. (C. West & S. Fenstermaker. Doing Difference: pp. 33-34).

Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary explanations and commentary in our readings, class discussions, online resources, personal experiences, etc.

17. In what ways is the issue of “same-sex” or “gay” marriage not (merely, only or simply) about sexuality (sexual desire and sexual activity) and identity? What about marriage, love, sex, children and property does this issue (also) touch upon and render problematic, and how does it relate to more general trends and transformations in advanced, post-industrial societies such as ours? Discuss, drawing as necessary from original sources and secondary commentary in our readings, class discussions, online resources (e.g. Ch. Calhoun: Denaturalizing and Desexualizing Lesbian and Gay Identity, Nancy D. Polikoff - We Will Get What We Ask for: Why Legalizing Gay and Lesbian Marriage Will Not "Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender in Every Marriage", Julie Abraham: Abraham - Public Relations - Why the Rush to Same-Sex Marriage? And Who Stands to Benefit?), personal experiences, etc.