APUS A Day in the Life of Norms Paper

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to recognize sociological concepts at play in your lived experience. Keeping a field log of your social and institutional experiences for one day, you will critically discuss how your daily life is shaped and constrained by society. This will allow you engage with many of the sociological concepts and theories you learned in class.  A presentation that offers additional assistance in completing the assignment is available at Field Analysis (https://prezi.com/view/DTakPcZ9NlkobNn93EMi/)

Instructions

1) Observation

Create a field log . For one day, observe and record the key interactions and institutions in your lived experience. Starting with waking up, you might want to log the following: who is the first person you talk to? What do you do next – take family members to school, go to the gym, go to work and interact with coworkers? Throughout the day you will take on different roles by interacting with different people and in different situations and will be in contact with different social institutions (education, government, health, etc). Type your field log and submit it with your written Assignment as the very last page of your Assignment, after the References page(s). Some students have their Log as page 1 of their paper. Please have it at the end of your paper – after your References page.

THE OBSERVATION FIELD LOG HAS ALREADY BEEN COMPLETED AND IS ATTACHED FOR REFERENCE. BELOW THIS IS WHAT WILL NEED TO BE COMPLETED.

2) Application: please start a new paragraph when shifting topic

The following part is to be written only in third person:

Describe how our day is shaped and constrained by social norms.

Analyze how at least four sociological concepts/theories you learned in class (e.g. roles, institutions, interactions, impression management, stage theory, emotional labor) apply to your field log observations. This part of the paper should not be focused on the general social norms you described earlier. Rather you are to dig in deeper with specific concepts/theories from our text (refrain from using dictionaries, encyclopedias, sociological web sites, other than those provided within the course materials, and anything WIKI!). Remember to cite all outside information and use our textbook as your main source – and avoid direct quotes

Please start a new paragraph when shifting topics.

For at least two of the concepts, find and incorporate an appropriate source , a peer-reviewed journal article is preferred, that highlights how sociologists study this concept in everyday society (for example, emotional labor in the restaurant industry). As a further example, here is a student’s paragraph when discussing gender socialization (do not use this in your paper):

A study by Crespi (2011) who researched gender socialization and gender roles within the family showed that a cross-gender relationship between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons has emerged as significant in determining traditional and non-traditional gender attitudes. This research suggests that the relationship with the parent of the opposite sex could be a strong factor in reducing stereotyped attitudes regarding gender roles (Crespi, 2011)

Please start a new paragraph when shifting topics.

Again, use a different example in your paper, as the purpose here is to show your research skills rather than repeat this student’s research skills. ? This example also shows how to cite within text and how to paraphrase!

3) Reflection; You may write this section in 1st person.

In this part of your paper, you are to reflect on your role as a larger part of society (i.e. your motives, instincts, feelings, and/or structural constraints). Then, discuss ways other people affected you and the ways you affected others in the social experiences of your day in which you kept the log. (ATTACHED)

Please start a new paragraph when shifting topics.

Again, do NOT use unverifiable, secondary sites such as Wikipedia, about.com, ask.com, Crossman, and similar ones, and do not use dictionaries or encyclopedias for any writing in this course. Use only our course materials, peer-reviewed journal articles from the library, and other scholarly sources. Again, this applies to all writings for this course.