This Pass or Prepared? is based on a number of Sociology Websites and texts. These are the books and theories jeanne thinks you ought to be able to talk about intelligently if you present yourself to the world as a sociologist. You'll find individual Pass? or Prepared?s on most of this material, but this will give you an overview. Try it is a Pre-Test. Then try it again as a Post-Test when the semester is over. See how much you've grown as a sociologist through the semester.

1. What is theory? In terms of assumptions, evidence, and discipline-wide issues?

   jeanne's perspective:

   Theory is our way of making sense of the world. We could, it is true, just live spontaneously, hedonistically, but humans have tended for as long as we can trace to live more deeply, stepping back, making themselves the object of their own reflection. That is certainly a piece of what makes us human. And this is also a piece of what creates choice, the source of most of our anguish. (That's a reference to Sartre. See Lewis R. Gordon on Sartre.)

   References

   • Postmodernism and Its Critics
     An excellent site at the University of Alabama, written by students, for students in the Anthropology graduate program. The site is organized as reasonable examination questions at graduate level, with reasonable answers. Well worth your time.
   • Rorty and Heidegger

2. What are some of the major issues facing sociologists today? Kemp's perspective to functionalism: where do you see the problem. where do you see the solution?

   How far do we go in trying to repair the sins of the past?

   Responsibility to whom? Rorty, Heidegger

   How insular can we be? When does our insularity become violent in the harm it causes to others?

   What does equality really mean? What does good faith really mean?

   Can we separate judgments from standards? Dewey's admonitions not to ignore the building expertise. See Philip W. Jackson. Also consider satisficing.

   the essentialist problem.

   self-reflective methodologies

   what is text?

   the meaning of interdependence and openness as opposed to knowingness

3. Where does sociology stand in 2000 with respect to race, class, and gender?

   jeanne's perspective:

   Gordon's essentialism, antiblack racism, racialization, identity, constructed or given, Freire and Berryman cautioning that we must not act for others. Cornel West's role of the liberal in conservative times and pragmatic philosophy.

4. How much do I have to know to be "literate" in sociology in the world out there?

   jeanne's perspective: Situate sociology within the social and political context of U.S. history in the past century. And give a parallel sense of the development of psychology. (testing and psychoanalysis)

   The American Soldier, out of philosphy and the social services, and the child savers and the suffragetttes, through the American Soldier, positivism, the Univ of Chicago, The Warner studies on social class, through to modern journals. Funding approaches. The problem with one on one accountability, the widening gap and its effect on normativity shaped in other times.

5. How much do I have to know to be "literate" in sociology in the world out there?

   One Plausible Answer question. Only you can answer that. You should know the names of leading sociologists, at least to the point of recognizing them.

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Copright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, June 2000. "Fair Use" encouraged.

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