Exam: mid-term, ‘ re-test’

This will be administered on Monday of week 6, and will include both an individual and a group re-test. The individual portion of the exam will be worth 70% of the grade, and the group portion worth 30%. Group grades lower than an individual’s grade will not be counted. Both will occur on Monday (you’ll have 50 minutes for each exam—the second, group exam, will likely have one or two fewer questions to answer).

100 points possible

Each Thursday, students in small groups will have to put together—make sense of—the week’s material. You can bring in material to help, but I will give groups a couple of guiding questions. The idea is that you gain a clearer understanding of how to think abstractly about the week’s activities, to boil its essence down to the main points, and to work on applying it. In addition, these will be designed in a way that they will help you prepare for group presentation during week 10 (so we’ll probably stick with the same groups throughout the term). Students will be assigned to take on either Marx or Weber, but will also have to choose another other theorist to show how he/she might approach a theoretical problem differently. We will use as an organizing topic for the term the war in Iraq. You could choose from a few other theorists—Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, Marvin Harris and cultural materialism, a couple of recent works by Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, Michael Mann’s social power framework, etc. You can also widen or narrow the scope (e.g., focus specifically on the war in Iraq, connections with the so-called ‘war on terror’, or more generally address ideological clashes, cultural differences, natural resource pressures, military industrial complex, etc.). The first part of the course, though, I’d like to focus on Weber or Marx. Material on Weber will focus mostly on his historically contingent sociology, and on his emphasis on organizations (Michael Mann’s work should be very helpful, as will Steven Lukes and John Gaventa for Marx).

160 points possible; 20 per week.

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Term paper: Ask a question, apply a theory

Each individual will turn in a project in which they have asked a question, approved by me, and sought to find relevant theoretical research to answer that question. I’ll be looking for:

• Ability to identify and evaluate literature;
• Adoption of a theoretical viewpoint to help explain the question;
• Use of at least one competing, compelling theory;
• Collection of evidence that bears on the issue they’ve chosen (e.g., through news articles, historical events, previous research)
• Understanding of how the theory they’ve chosen could be tested

Here is some advice (seems like many peole are struggling trying to figure out how they're going to expand to fill 12 pages):

• Discuss your question, why it's an important question, and even how it evolved over time as you did more research into the topic, that is how your thinking evolved.
• Discuss your chosen theory (or idea, author, etc.), justify the choice, and show that you understand what the author(s) is saying. So, for instance, you might ask things like 'what are the key variables?' or 'what are some competing viewpoints?' or 'what empirical evidence does the author bring to bear in support of his/her ideas?' or 'does this approach lend itself more to quantitative or qualitative research (remember the wheel of science, and deduction and induction?)?' You should do this with a critical eye as well--I don't want to see you repeat what the author wrote, but demonstrate that you understand it, what's important about it, whether or not it seems to be theoretical (and remember, we've talked about traits of theory), whether it could be tested, etc. Remember scientific knowledge is based on logic and evidence, and you should address both these aspects.
• Illustrate the utility of the theory--how are you using it to inform your particular question? Here you probably want a study or two that will not only help you think and write about this, but show how scholars are actually using these ideas in their own research. How to they conceptualize variables? How do they go about measuring them?
• Discuss how you could apply the theory--bring it down to earth. What are the key kinds of tests that you think would help to determine the theory's usefulness? What kinds of research methods would work (e.g., comparing secondary data sources, studying specific 'cases' of a phenomenon, doing survey or interview or participant observation work, experimental design)?
• Conclusions--what did you learn from this process, both about your question, and about examining, understanding, and evaluating theory?

There. How's that for structure? Have I left some room for agency?

You’ll need to adhere to the following timeline:

• End of week 3: submit a one-page statement of your question and the research you’ve done to identify relevant theories (15 points possible).
• End of week 5: submit a one-page description of the theorist you’ll be using and how you plan to apply it to the question you’ve posed (10 points possible).
• End of week 8: submit a draft for peer review (to be conducted anonymously; 15 points possible)
• Monday of finals week: Final version due (70 points possible). No longer than 12 pages, double-spaced.

The term project is worth 110 points total.

Group Project

On Thursdays, we will meet in small groups. You get credit for this work in the 'weekly abstractions. But the assignments will be designed to move us toward presentations each group will give at the end of the term. We will be using the war in Iraq as a topic for theoretical examination. Each group will pick a theorist (groups can pick the same one—we’ll discuss this in class—but I hope we have Marx and Weber covered), and show how that theorist’s ideas can be used to understand the war in Iraq, to explain what has transpired there, and perhaps to predict what will happen, based on what the theorists would say. During week 10, we will schedule some sort of forum for presenting each group’s work. I’d like to make this public, but we’ll discuss this in class as well. You’ll have to do some work outside of class on this one, and I’ll serve as a resource as you build your cases. We’ll also watch a few films that address war-related issues. And I'm building a page of resources that should help.

Your work as a group should be accompanied by a brief paper, no more than 3 pages, outlining what you did and how you used your theorist. If you have a power point file or something similar, submit that by all means as well. The main part of the assignment will be your presentation—what did you learn from the process, how did you go about applying the theory, what insights did it provide, etc. So, here's some basic guidelines:

1. Did you understand the theory? Did you show that you understand what social theory is, and how to evaluate the one you chose (it could be you decided it didn't really meet the canons of theory--that would be fine, it shows you know what are some of the key traits that distinguish theory from ideas or concepts or frameworks). In other words, what were the key variables, how could you go about testing it, etc.
2. Were you able to apply the theory? Here you will have to show not only that you can take a theory and figure out its value when applied to a real world setting, but you'll need to determine that value--what did you learn from the process, did this shed light on some aspect of the war in Iraq?
3. What resources did you group use in this process? This shows that you did some actual research, both on the theory side and on the empirical side (evidence from the war that you can use to see how well the theory applies).
4. Any predictions? You've hopefully shown how the theory you've chosen helps explain some aspect of the war. Does it have predictive value as well?
5. This isn't about originality--you don't need to come up with your own ideas. You do need to show you understand theory and how to apply it.

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We will do peer evaluations of both the group and individual projects. The individual projects will be evaluated anonymously (I’ll assign those when the time comes).

Each will be worth 20 points to the evaluators. But—I’ll provide a rubric and the points will be assigned by the group/individual being evaluated. The basic criteria used will be thoroughness and usefulness of the feedback.

Grading procedures

Minuses will be given for the bottom third (0-3) of each range; pluses for the top third (7-9). I will also use pluses and minuses to help if I feel that one's grade did not reflect his/her effort; I will not use them to reduce a grade. All grades are final , unless I’ve made a mistake in the math.

I will grade on a straight percentage:

 Important dates

We will discuss the group presentations, and I’ll post some milestone dates for that project as well.