SOC 206 FINAL EXAM

IDENTIFICATIONS (PICK 5 at 4 pts each = 20 points)
(identify, describe, explain)

1. “sifting and sorting” function of schools
2. Bad Faith
3. etymology of “religion”
4. “sick role”
5. family of association
6. mythical traditional family
7. latent function
8. Social Darwinism
9. Political consensus
10. secularization

CHOICE QUESTIONS (PICK 2 at 25 pts each = 50 points)

1. EXPLAIN: the micro consists of “persons” playing roles in the meso institutions which in turn constitute the macro structural patterns of society...which help enforce the meso institutions which create micro role-players.

2. Using the concepts of “social relation,” “synergism,” “definition of the situation,” and “ideology”...explain what an “institution” is sociologically.

3. Of the following institutions we’ve covered to some degree (education, family, health care, religion, media, military/security, and political economy), pick TWO of them and select and explain a related concept, general idea, or issue FOR EACH of the two you’ve picked. (These can come from the text, lectures, videos, or online readings.)

REQUIRED QUESTION FOR ALL (30 Points)

You’ve just experienced a critically-oriented and sociological overview of institutions. I’d like you to summarize this experience/perspective by utilizing the ideas contained in the following two quotes...by Paulo Freire and Erich Fromm. In short, I feel that what I’ve been about in this course is generally expressed in these two quotes...what sense can YOU make of it (me, you, and the course material)...using these ideas?

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Online), Freire says: “Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate men from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.”

In “The Psychology of Normalcy” (Online), Fromm says: “The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make them virtuous, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truth, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make them sane.”