Part 1 – Written Essay
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Using theories from our class, analyze your social network(s) and the nature and impact of your socialization on your Self-identity and/or life course. You are encouraged to focus on gender, political, and/or religious socialization experiences. Excellent papers will demonstrate critical analyses about how power, inequality, and/or privilege have shaped your network and socialization experiences.
Part 2 – Network Diagram
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On a separate page, draw an accurate network diagram with you in the center surrounded by people you consider friends/family (go no farther than the third degree of separation, or your friends’ friends’ friends). To ensure confidentiality, do not use your friends’ full names in the diagram, only first names, initials, and/or a code name. Be sure to include the connections between you and your friends/family, as well as between your friends/family (e.g., draw a line between them if they are connected to each other).
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You must have at least 30 nodes in your network diagram
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It may be helpful to distinguish between different network ties (ex: dotted line for acquaintances, solid line for friends, double line for friends/family you are close to; alternatively, you are welcome to color code your network ties in some fashion). Please include a key if you are distinguishing between nodes and/or ties.
OTHER SUGGESTIONS
You may want to focus your paper on a specific subset of your entire network and/or on a specific type of socialization if this is useful for your essay’s argument. You are welcome to use other course theories as relevant to help deepen your analysis (e.g., self-identity, implicit bias/prejudice, privilege, conformity/obedience).
To get you thinking more deeply about the prompt, you might consider questions such as:
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What was the home/base reality that you internalized during primary socialization?
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Did your primary socialization differ from secondary socialization experiences? Have the influences from your network changed over time, and if so, in what ways? Did you end up rejecting earlier forms of socialization you experienced, and/or did you undergo resocialization at any point?
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How did socialization into gender norms during childhood impact your choices later in life?
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In what ways has political and/or religious socialization affected your belief or value system, and has this changed as you have aged? Why?
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Have you experienced contradictory socialization experiences (e.g., into two cultures), and how have you navigated this dissonance in your life?
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Who are specific agents of socialization who were important in your life, and why were they so influential? Are all these agents people in real life, or have there been other agents who have been influential (e.g., the animal world, in online spaces)?
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Is your network segregated according to factors like gender, race/ethnicity, class, religion, political affiliation, or other, and why? How might this network segregation (or lack of it) have influenced your identity or life course? In what ways has your network’s characteristics contributed to or helped you overcome internalized biases?
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What are the contagions within your network and how have they “flowed” through your network connections? To/from what degree of influence? How have weak ties in your network influenced the direction of your life course?
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What is the shape, structure, or size of your network, and how has your centrality (or not) to your network impacted your life?
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How much social capital or other forms of capital can you access through your network, and how has this impacted you?
Remember, this is not an opinion paper or a narrative story of your life, it is an analysis. You should approach the topic objectively and sociologically, utilizing theory throughout. Your paper should be well thought-out, carefully planned, executed, and edited to represent a college-level exploration of the topic in terms of writing quality and critical thinking. Each paper will be graded both for (1) its reflection of your ability to work with sociological ideas in relation to mastery of course issues, and (2) its demonstration of writing skills, including organization, grammar, syntax, clarity, punctuation, spelling, appropriate formatting, and so forth.
REQUIRED CITATIONS
You must cite at least TWO academic course readings, as well as TWO external academic sources that relate to the topic of socialization, networks, and/or relate to other aspects of your paper’s argument. (So FOUR academic sources are required in total.) These sources should be used to deepen your analysis (you do not need to include a formal literature review).
Academic means peer-reviewed articles or academic books (published with an academic press), NOT general websites, blogs, news articles, interviews, or other media sources. Please use the library system to search for sociological articles. Google scholar can be helpful, and you can also access either “Sage” or “JStor” databases. In either “Sage” or “JStor” be sure to use the advanced search option and refine by field of study, so you should search only within “Sociology” journals or sister disciplines like Child Development, Psychology, or Education.