Essay Review Questions for Exam #2 - Weds, November 10

To answer these questions, you should draw from, and integegrate, most
of the chapter/lecture material in each one. You could also include
socialization from earlier chapters.
NOTE: THESE ARE SAMPLE QUESTIONS and may or may not be on the exam as
worded, but if you can answer them, you should do well.

1.  Drawing from the theories in chapter 8, compare and contrast
these theories of global poverty:
   --Development and MOdernization theory
   --Dependency Theory
   --World Systems Theory
   --International Division of Labor Theory

Now, drawing from those theories, devise a plan to eliminate global poverty.

2. What does it mean to say that age, race, or gender are SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTS?  EXPLAIN FULLY, USING EXAMPLES!

3. Fully compare and contrast any of the following theories on class and
stratification:
  --conflict
  --functionalism
  --symbolic interactionism

4. What is social stratification and how does it affect our lives?
(that is, what are some of the consequence?)

6. Is global or US stratification inevitable? Explain fully!

7. How does one DO race, age, class, or gender?

8. Select any of the following theories and fully describe how they
would explain a) race; b) class; c) gender:
   --feminism
   --conflict theory
   --functionalism
   --symbolic interactionism

9) Assume that you're old (over 60), Hispanic or African-American,
and female. What issues would you face that a 35 year old, white,
Euro-caucasion male might not face that put you at a disadvantage
because of these ASCRIBED statuses, and how might ACHIEVED statuses
be harder to attain?

10) What social factors have led to changes in how we (as a culture in the
U.S.) view race, age, and gender? (HINT: In class today, two students
mentioned culture, to which we tied such factors as technology and
recent cultural views of exercise that alter conceptions of age and
beauty)

Any questions, drop me a note. Jim Thomas - jthomas@math.niu.edu