One challenge for sociologists is to translate their knowledge of conditions producing social issues into concrete measures to improve them. In this assignment, you will work with a few classmates to gather online sources that provide data and propose solutions to a specific social issue. Then, as individuals, you will compose a letter or an online petition to send to local, state, and/or national representatives in support of a particular policy, solution, or approach. Through this assignment you will sharpen your sociological imagination and, by applying it, you will put into practice sociology’s principle that the personal is political.
Group work (20 points)
As a group, you will compile at least 5 online resources on a social issue (for example, homelessness, gun control, educational inequality, gender inequality, climate change, racial inequality, immigration, police brutality, drug addiction, and human trafficking). The resources can include websites, reports, scholarly papers, books, and other content from government agencies, nonprofit or advocacy organizations, university or think tank researchers, and the like. The sources can have different and even conflicting views about the issue. You can disagree with other group members about the issue. The sources should provide or refer to research (data), not just unsupported opinions about the issue. Also, please do not include any hateful sources that target vulnerable groups or promote violence.
In Module 2 you will be randomly assigned to a topic and a group of approximately 5 students. You will be able to work together as a group on Canvas. There, you should collectively put together a list of online resources. Each group member must contribute one resource on the topic to this list.
Once your group has assembled a list, then each group member will independently write a summary (annotation) of another student’s online resource (and not their own). Once this work is done, you should have a list of resources and one summary for each resource. (The number of resources on your list should total the number of active group members.) For each resource, please indicate the group member who found the source (Person X, full name) and the group member who did the summary (Person Y, full name). Each summary must:
- Briefly describe what the source is (a government website, a scholarly paper, etc.). How do we know the source is valid? For example, is the source a peer-reviewed journal? Does the source have any particular biases or political leaning?
- Give an overview of the information in, or purpose of, the online resource.
- Briefly summarize what the resource advocates being done about your issue.
- Briefly identify the data provided in support of the resource’s position.
For a sample summary, please see HERE