Major Paradigms Paper (25%):
For your midterm assignment, you will discuss, compare, and contrast two sociological paradigms (theories/perspectives) of your choice (i.e. functionalism, conflict, symbolic interactionism) by selecting a social issue and providing an analysis from each perspective.
The social issue can be from a current event, a social theme or trend you observe, or even an issue from a movie, television show, or book. Since the focus of this paper is on showing your understanding of the theories, you should not waste space summarizing the social issue/movie/scene/etc. Instead, you should briefly (around 2-3 sentences) describe the issue/topic, followed by sociologically analyzing the issue and comparing/contrasting your two paradigms’ perspectives on the issues. This will involve providing examples of/from the issue followed by the analysis/comparison/contrast of the example. Your final result in this paper will show your comprehension of two major sociological paradigms.
