Socioautobiography
Assignment Guidelines
The
purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to apply the
sociological imagination to your everyday life: To make connections between
your everyday life and the broad sociocultural structures within which you
live. In this assignment, you will reference appropriate Terminal Course
Objectives (TCOs) that relate to your socioautobiography. You can find the TCOs
in this course listed in the Syllabus and in the weekly objectives. This
assignment can be related to any and all of the TCOs.
The socioautobiography
is a reflective paper that allows you the opportunity to explore the
interconnections between biography (a slice of your life), the social
structure, and culture. In preparation for this paper, please read this
document, Socioautobiography Assignment Guideline. At the end of the paragraph
where a concept is used, indicate which TCOs your sociological concept refers.
This should be done using parenthetical citation. An example of how to do this is
provided below.
The
final paper will be due at the end of Week 5. It should be three-to-four pages
in length and may be in any format you choose. Feel free to get creative. You
may choose to do a standard APA style paper or you can do your socioautobiography
as a news story, movie review of your life, letter home to family, obituary,
poem, lyrics, dialogue, old time radio program, or Shakespearean play, whatever
format you choose. Be sure to identify your format, double-space your paper,
and correctly use a minimum of six sociological concepts covered in the weekly
readings or lecture. Your six
concepts should be in boldface and underlined. Consider the following
example.
As I think about my experience growing up, I
realized that I was at an advantage compared with some of the other students. I
came from a middle-class family.
In my family gender didn’t
matter, boys and girls were raised with the same expectation that they would be
going off to college right after high school. As such, writing and speaking properly
was considered a high priority. (TCO 3 and TCO 6).
Note
how, in this mini-socioautobiography, there are references to social class and
gender.
Below
are guidelines to follow as you work on your socioautobiography assignment.
·
Papers should
contain 3-to 4-pages of text, double-spaced (this does not include the title
page).
·
Refer to and
properly use at least six sociological concepts covered in the lectures or
textbook reading.
·
Underline and boldface
these concepts.
·
Connect your
concepts to the TCOs. Indicate the TCOs covered in parentheses, as demonstrated
in the assignment instructions.
·
Cite the
textbook and/or lecture for the concepts and the Syllabus or course objectives
for the TCOs in addition to any outside source material used both in body and
on your reference page.
Grading:
|
Component |
Points |
|
Submission refers to at least six sociological concepts covered |
60 |
|
Submission underlines each concept and puts them in boldface and relates them to the |
60 |
|
Submission meets minimum length requirement of three-to-four pages |
10 |
|
Submission is well-written and well-organized and free from |
10 |
|
Submission properly referenced course lecture and/or text for |
10 |
|
Total |
150 |
You might find the following excerpt on a
socioautobiography helpful as you are thinking about what a socioautobiography
is. It is taken directly from: Kanagy, C. L., & Kraybill, D. B., (1999). The
Riddles of Human Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. (pp. 287–289).
Socioautobiography
“The purpose of the
socioautobiography is to use the insights from sociology to better understand
your own story; it is a way of using the concepts of sociology to explore our
personal riddle. But the socioautobiography is not a diary or a point-by-point
account of your life since infancy. It is rather a reflective exercise in which
you step outside of yourself and employ sociological concepts to interpret your
experiences . . . it uses the concepts of the discipline to interpret our life
in its social context.” (p. 287)
“The
socioautobiography follows the tradition of C. Wright Mills, a sociologist who
emphasized the influence of society on the individual. He argued that personal
troubles are typically rooted in larger social forces—that is public issues.”
(p. 287)
The
socioautobiography invites you to consider, in the tradition of C. Wright
Mills, how social influences have shaped you. As you contemplate your socioautobiography,
you might ask, what were the social forces that constructed the riddle of my
life? How did I negotiate the crisscrossing pressures of autonomy and
conformity? The connection between the micro and macro realms is an important
area to address in your socioautobiography.
The
socioautobiography also gives you the opportunity to place your life under the
sociological microscope and apply the skills of sociological analysis. Try to
understand who you are in your social context using a sociological perspective.
As you write your story, use sociological concepts—such as social class,
reference group, conformity, norm, role, deviance, subculture, and any others
that are helpful—to interpret your life experiences.
You may want to focus
on several events, special moments, or important relationships in your life
that have impacted you in significant ways. Recall key themes, events, or
circumstances that have contributed to the construction of your identity. You
may want to discuss the importance of some of the following influences:
significant others, family structure, residence (urban, suburban, rural),
ethnicity, religion, social status, group memberships, economic status, leisure,
work, death, and crisis. Regardless of which themes you discuss, be sure to
interpret them with some of the sociological concepts that have been introduced
throughout the book.
Questions like the
following may be appropriate: How have social forces—groups, larger social
trends, and cultural values—molded my behavior and world view? In what sense am
I both a produce and producers of culture? How has my family background
expanded or restricted my opportunities and life chances? How might I be different
had I been born into another culture? What have been the most influential
social forces in my life?
In crafting a
socioautobiography, we have the opportunity to reflect on the construction of
our self-identity. Only as we begin to understand how we have been socially
created can we become fully empowered to act. Many of us go through life
repeating patterns given to us by the faces in our mirror without realizing
that we have the power to change those patterns in our own lives. As we begin
to understand how we have been created, we have greater freedom to control how
we shape and produce the culture around us. (pp. 288-289)
