Essay Instructions: Essay Description
Please select one of the following four essay prompts to respond to. You will be required to carefully analyze the relevant course readings for the prompt, and develop an argument (summarized in your thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph). Since your paper should be no longer than 6 pages, you will need to be selective in terms of what issues you choose to discuss and analyze. Thus, your thesis
statement should help you focus your argument, indicating those portions of the readings that are most relevant for the purposes of developing your thesis.
Each prompt provides a number of questions about the readings and other suggestions. It is not necessary that you address all of these points, but your essay should at least speak to them indirectly. Your essay should be a textual analysis. That is, the purpose of this essay is to carefully analyze and interrogate the ideas presented in the primary texts, and their interrelation to one another. This means that your essay must reflect a very careful reading of the relevant works?citing sources and page numbers
when appropriate?although it is acceptable to draw from lecture materials to provide contextual and background information. The handbook A Guide to Writing Sociology Papers (2008. The Sociology Writing Group. 6th Ed. New York: Worth Publishers, p. 119) provides the following advice: ?In textual analysis, the text is not only your data but also the source of your question. That is, your question will arise from the author?s ideas and arguments presented in the text and from your analysis of them. Your question is a vehicle for conversing with the author about the thesis or argument of the work.
This conversation should be conducted in an analytically critical manner, which means that to carry on your end you must raise questions about the logic of the argument, the type and credibility of the evidence, the soundness of the conclusion, and the fundamental assumptions on which the argument rests.?
Make sure to engage with the appropriate and relevant concepts of the thinkers, defining them thoroughly by drawing from both the primary readings and lecture. You may also wish to discuss the historical and other examples brought up by the thinkers to make their case.
Also, please put forward a clear and compelling thesis in the first paragraph, develop support for the argument in subsequent paragraphs by providing evidence (with each paragraph making one argument stated in the topic-sentence that relates to and supports your essay?s thesis), and end with a concluding paragraph that not only summarizes the argument made in the essay, but draws out and emphasizes the implications of the points you have made. One strategy is to construct an outline of your essay for you begin writing. The writing should be clear, concise, and grammatically correct.
Essay Guidelines Paper Requirements
? Answer one of the essay prompts. Please note on the first page which prompt you are responding to, in addition to your name and other information.
? Provide a thesis statement in your first paragraph that states your argument.
? This is an academic paper and should follow the conventions of formal essay-writing.
? 5-6 pages (i.e., 5 full pages with some overlap onto a sixth, but no more than 6 full pages).
? Paper format: double-spaced, 12pt font, Times New Roman, 1-inch margins.
? Follow APA citation format for references. That is, employ parenthetical citations within the with a list of full references at the end of the paper.
Put forward a clear and compelling thesis in the first paragraph, develop support for your argument in subsequent paragraphs by providing evidence (with each paragraph making one argument stated in the topic-sentence that relates to and supports your essay?s thesis), and end with a concluding paragraph that not only summarizes the argument made in the essay, but draws out and emphasizes the implications of the points you have made. One strategy is to construct an outline of your essay for you begin writing.
Your writing should be clear, concise, and grammatically correct.
Essay Prompts
Select one of the following sub-prompts:
1.) The Sociology of Knowledge: Classical Statements
a.) Karl Marx: Analyze the materialist conception of history and its critique of German
philosophy (i.e., idealism). What is the relationship between social consciousness and social being? What determines the ruling ideas of a particular epoch?
b.) Emile Durkheim: Analyze Durkheim?s argument that the categories of the understanding have a social origin. How does Durkheim contrast his sociological approach with those of the empiricists and a priorists? Why are the categories (and all concepts) collective representations and, therefore, social facts? How do the particular categories (i.e., space, time, contradiction) of the understanding reflect social organization and the need for collective renewal?
c.) Karl Mannheim: Analyze Mannheim?s discussion of the nature and scope of the sociology of knowledge. How are thought-models related to the social positions of given groups? How does Mannheim?s relational perspective differ from relativism?
d.) Synthetic/Comparative: Synthesize or compare the ideas from two or more of the classical theorists discussed in this course.
2.) Merton?s Sociology of Science
Analyze Merton?s institutional approach to the sociology of science. For example, you may want to discuss the normative structure of science, the reward and communication systems of science, and /or the ambivalence among scientists that emerges when scientific norms come into conflict. (the paper must engage with at least 3 of Merton?s articles).
3.) Synthetic/Comparative Paper
Develop an argument that synthesizes ideas and support from Merton and at least one of the classical thinkers. Alternatively, develop an argument by comparing the works of Merton and at least one of the classical thinkers.