Exam Appointments Here

Instructions: show up a few minutes early and knock with vigor when your time comes. Everyone does a course summary diagram and comes prepared to answer three questions. I'll have a selection of 3 to 6 questions to supplement these. Answer in a manner that best shows what you know.

Course Jeopardy Game #1

Question Universe

Last problem was 0480 (HELP)

Q70. If social order equals coordination and cooperation, provide some illustrations that support the authors' contention that "the problem of social order underlies questions of central concern to sociologists in substantive areas as diverse as crime and deviance, social movements, organizations, politics, religion, international relations, and the family" (xiii.1). Use this an opportunity to show you can distinguish cooperation and coordination and in general "get" the course. Perhaps add a category or two of your own.

Q238.

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Fehr and Gintis describe experiments using a "public goods game." In the regular game, players tended to free-ride more and more as the game progresses. These results suggest that the sociological idea that people do the right thing because they are socialized to care about others is naive. Most people do not act in a “pro-social” manner. They free-ride.

When punishment is permitted, players punish free-riders even at a cost. Public goods increase as free-riding drops. Results like this defy the economic idea of people as selfish maximizers. They also suggest that hierarchy (surveillance/punishment) need not be centralized.

In the light of these results and the rest of the course, how do you think individual internalization of social values/norms, hierarchy, decentralized market interaction, and groups combine to create social order?

Q362. The theorists whose work was included in the section on individuals and social order each suggest mechanisms for how shared meaning happens through actual social interaction. Describe how each thinker is saying that the picture below is NOT how it happens - that is, we don't just magically have a bunch of social/cultural content in our heads; it gets there through a process, there's a mechanism that we can describe.

If it's later in the course, relate this to life in groups - how is this social content connected to ideas on internalization and socialization of group members?

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Q364. Thinking back to the Kanazawa article on evolutionary biology, use this diagram to talk about at least six different ideas from this course.

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Q399. Identify and elaborate on three ways in which the shopfloor culture described by Willis parallels the counter-school culture he talks about.

(for final exam) Bring the phenomena Willis describes into conversation with material from the "groups" section of the course. What mechanisms described in that section might illuminate the lads' oppositional culture or shop floor culture?

Q450. Centola, et al. describe a process whereby people collectively "produce" something that is contrary to their individual beliefs/interests/preferences. Thomas Schelling, similarly, described a process whereby socially irrational results emerged from individually rational action. Identify points of similarity and difference, using it as an opportunity to show what you know about the two thinkers' ideas as well as your ability to compare markets and groups as generators of social order.

Q452. Develop a summary diagram for the entire course. Some examples of the genre from a social control class in solutions.

Q453.

Q337. In "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact" Ludwik Fleck starts out with the bold statement that "cognition is the most socially-conditioned activity…." Why is this a bold statement? What conventional assumption is he contradicting at the outset?

Q338. "As an entity [a thought collective] is even more stable and consistent than the so-called individual, who always consists of contradictory drives" (57.8). Explain what Fleck means.

Q339. Ludwik Fleck wrote: "what actually thinks within a person is not the individual himself but his social community" (Hechter & Horne 59.5). Explain wha

Q454. Consider the essay you wrote for the warm-up assignment at the start of this course on a film or book in which social order "disappeared." How would you re-write it in a manner that would show off some of what you learned in this course?

Q455. Think about the articles by Fehr & Gintis and Centola et al. Show what you take away from these articles by talking about how norms can support cooperation and social order and how they can support an order that might be high on coordination but low on the benefits of cooperation.

Q456. Provide a high level comparison of shared meaning, hierarchy, markets, and groups as sources of social organization understood as coordination and cooperation.

Q457. The overall logic of the final section of the course was that groups can promote social order through internalization of norms and provision of incentives. Explain how each of these work and what the difference is using at least one thinker to illustrate each.

Q458. If you are doing a thesis this year or have a general topic in mind for one in the future, pick two theorists, each from a different section of the course, and show what you have learned about their ideas by "applying" them to your research topic.

Q459. What, to your mind, was the best article of the course - the one you really understood or that really clicked for you or that you've taken to explaining to friends and family it's so awesome. Describe it in a manner that shows the depth of your understanding.