soc 185n: week 7 socioautobiography

Instructions

There is a strong tradition of creating both sociologically-informed biographies and sociologically-informed autobiographies in the discipline of sociology. The socioautobiography is a “disciplined, systematic exploration of one’s life from a sociological point of view” (Hill, 2009, p. 3). Also, the sociobiography is the systematic exploration of another person’s life from a sociological point of view.

For this assignment, you will reflect on your own life story, making connections between your everyday life/life story and the broad sociocultural structures within which you live. To begin this assignment, consider your own life as you review all the textbook readings and online weekly lessons and decide which sociological concepts you wish to explain in connection to a part or parts of your own life story. Focus on vocabulary words in bold in your textbook reading, for example, and decide which terms apply to you and to your life story.

Please note that you do not need to include, and should not include, intimate or sensitive information about your background in this assignment. There are many very general sociological concepts that apply to each person’s life. If you have an extenuating circumstance, please contact your instructor for additional guidance.

Your paper must contain scholarly support in the form of paraphrases *only* with respective citations from the assigned reading (the textbook/lesson) and the outside scholarly source that you identify on your own. Do not directly quote from sources for this paper, but instead paraphrase in your own words from source material and cite the sources with parenthetical in-text citations and with full APA-style references on a reference page at the end of your essay.

Writing Tip: Focus

As Kanagy and Kraybill (1999) wrote in their book, The Riddles of Human Society, the socioautobiography is “not a diary” or a “point-by-point account” of life since birth (p. 287).  Feel free to focus on only a part or parts of your life story.