SOCIAL AND CULTURAL WORLD
1) Fundamental concepts:
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2) Additional concepts:
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Students will apply each of the fundamental concepts to TWO of the following:
TASK
Apply the fundamental course concepts to your social and cultural world in this worksheet.
TECHNOLOGIES OVER TIME
- school
- family
- the media
- a group of which the student is a member.
TASK
Apply the fundamental course concepts to your social and cultural world in this worksheet.
TECHNOLOGIES OVER TIME
Related Depth Study Concepts
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ROLE PLAY TASKS
- Students role play being parents/at a party/driving/at school, with males and females playing opposite genders. This helps students realise how much society associates certain behaviours with gender which helps to form the social construct of gender.
- Students role play scenarios of authority in contrast to power. Eg police using physical force to make an arrest vs a coward punch; teacher's authority vs power of students; government authority vs power of the people.
Contemporary Context
Assess the impact of technologies, including communication technologies, on individuals, groups and institutions.
Syllabus p.26
RESEARCH TASK
Students find two articles in a newspaper or magazines about the impact of ICT on society and share with the rest of the class how the technologies that were written about in the articles relate to the course concepts.
Students find two articles in a newspaper or magazines about the impact of ICT on society and share with the rest of the class how the technologies that were written about in the articles relate to the course concepts.
The Nature of the Social and Cultural World
GROUP TASK - What is it to be Australian? What is our culture? >> What is it like being a student in your school? What is the culture of the school?
- Brainstorm/class discussion about the meaning of the term 'culture'.
- Brainstorm/class discussion about Australian culture.
- Watch the slide show of cartoons Cathy Wilcox created for Australia Day in 2015.
- Create one for your school (see example below)
- Write a paragraph of what you think your school culture involves. Include at least 10 letters of YOUR alphabet
The multicultural and hybrid nature of societies and cultures
Multiculturalism
An approach to cultural diversity in society that promotes the view that cultural difference should be respected and even encouraged and supported. Multiculturalism is premised on the belief that different cultural groups can live together harmoniously, each contributing to an enriching of the whole society.
Syllabus p.55
Hybrid society
A society that comprises a range of social and cultural influences and components, rather than having a homogenous identity.
Syllabus p.54
In other words, multiculturalism is an approach/ideology/concept, whereas hybrid is a description of what society is actually like, the reality. Australia, mainly through government policy, is seen as a multicultural society. It can also be observed a being multicultural but in Society and Culture try to use the term hybrid to describe the actual society. In contrast, Amish communities are close to being mono-cultural societies.
Persons and their interactions with individuals, groups and the community within the contexts of micro-level, meso-level and macro-level society
Micro, meso and macro in relation to cricket (Maxine Johnson - SCA)
TASK
Students draw the micro/meso/macro diagram (see Course Framework) with their interactions at each level.
Micro, meso and macro in relation to cricket (Maxine Johnson - SCA)
TASK
Students draw the micro/meso/macro diagram (see Course Framework) with their interactions at each level.
TASK: The social and cultural world through music (Tara Ellam - SCA)
Society as a construct that develops through time
- society is comprised of the interactions of its members at the micro, meso and macro levels
- society influences the ways its members interact
- how interactions between members of society cause change in the nature of society over time
Social construct
A socially created aspect of social life. Social constructionists argue that society is actively and creatively produced by human beings rather than being merely given or taken for granted.
The relationship between the micro and the macro remains one of the key problems confronting sociology. The German sociologist Georg Simmel pointed out that macro-level processes are in fact nothing more than the sum of all the unique interactions between specific individuals at any one time (1908), yet they have properties of their own which would be missed if sociologists only focused on the interactions of specific individuals.
https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter1-an-introduction-to-sociology/
On the other hand, macro-level phenomena like class structures, institutional organizations, legal systems, gender stereotypes, and urban ways of life provide the shared context for everyday life but do not explain its nuances and micro-variations very well. Macro-level structures constrain the daily interactions of the intimate circles in which we move, but they are also filtered through localized perceptions and “lived” in a myriad of inventive and unpredictable ways.
https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter1-an-introduction-to-sociology/
How individual behaviour towards others is socially constructed and influenced by social expectation
How groups and institutions of society shape and are shaped by individuals:
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READ Interrelationship between individual and society (Sociology Guide)
THINK about how individuals adapt and change according to social circumstance at the various micro/meso/macro levels. Eg how students act at home, compared to school, or a formal public place such as a courtroom or parliament house.
THINK about how individuals adapt and change according to social circumstance at the various micro/meso/macro levels. Eg how students act at home, compared to school, or a formal public place such as a courtroom or parliament house.
Social and Cultural Research
This part of the syllabus covers social and cultural research methods. At this stage it particularly focuses on:
- the differences between quantitative and qualitative research
- the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative methods for different research situations
- content analysis
- interview
- observation
- participant observation
- questionnaire
- secondary research
- statistical analysis
- content analysis of the media
- questionnaire (short)
- secondary research.
QUESTIONNAIRE TASK:
- Open a recent newspaper and choose a current issue of interest.
- Develop a focus question about the issue
- Read the article in full and research further to gain more information, if necessary
- Design a short questionnaire (possibly use SurveyMonkey or GoogleForms)
- Consider the ethics related to the questionnaire - for example, is it appropriate for children to complete?
- Send out the questionnaire to at least 20 people.
- Compile the responses and organise them into forms such as tables and graphs to help make sense of them
- Analyse the responses/data to interpret them into some meaning/answer to the focus question
- Write a short report about the topic/issue and what the research found. Include a bibliography.
- Ask someone to provide feedback.
- Repeat 1-10 for a different issue.
Cross-Cultural Study: The Amish
A cross-cultural study was part of the old syllabus but is no longer compulsory in this unit. However, it is a very useful way to learn interactions of society and the individual and how they shape each other.
PPT: Exploring the social and cultural world - The Amish (Fiona Brown - SCA)
Students can watch the feature film The Witness and/or the documentary The Devil's Playground to learn about the Amish. There are now also numerous shows about the Amish on YouTube. Just make sure they cover Rumspringa, when Amish adolescents experience the world beyond their Amish community. Students then compare their own lives to adolescent Amish. This document provides a scaffold.
PPT: Exploring the social and cultural world - The Amish (Fiona Brown - SCA)
Students can watch the feature film The Witness and/or the documentary The Devil's Playground to learn about the Amish. There are now also numerous shows about the Amish on YouTube. Just make sure they cover Rumspringa, when Amish adolescents experience the world beyond their Amish community. Students then compare their own lives to adolescent Amish. This document provides a scaffold.
READ: For more information about some these topic areas see Introduction to Sociology Chapter 1 Section 1.1 What is Sociology? (Open Textbooks BC in Canada)