Sociology 310 and 500 Class Meetings

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Sociology 310: Special Topics - Death and Dying

Your assignment was to read the Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola. In it, a man is buried alive by his family who assumes his comatose state is death, only to awaken, escape his tomb, and choose not to return to his old life.

The closing lines are "I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like
anybody else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to
care for me now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes
fear that I have been forgotten upon earth."

Your essay question is: Does the introduction of death into the realm of life devalue life itself? Does life inherently have less meaning in the face of death, or more?

Please feel free to use your own personal experience in your response. You do not have an assignment for Monday, enjoy the weekend.




Sociology 500: The Sociology of Deviance

First, please pass in your assignment from last class, which was to write a short essay on the definition of deviance, if you have not done so.

Today we will be discussing one of the theories sociologists use to study this field. It is called Labeling Theory.
"Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance." - Howard S. Becker, 1963.

Lecture Notes

Labeling Theory considers that someone becomes deviant by being labeled negatively, and that person may continue these behaviors because they internalize the label. Please feel free to share any reactions you have to that idea.

Your assignment for next week: Choose a deviant subculture that you would like to study in more depth.




[OOC: You can always say "Blahblah hands in her stunningly well-crafted assignment with a grin." I am just giving you topics to explore IC and w/ your classmates if you wish. I am going to start axing people who haven't commented at all by the beginning of next week, however.]