Internationalizing Introduction to Sociology

• In Event: 2122 - Workshop on Taking Introduction to Sociology to the Next Level

Abstract

On many campuses, Introduction to Sociology fulfills a general education requirement and is often the only sociology course that undergraduates take. Consequently, the class might be students’ only opportunity to see the social structures, processes and inequalities at work in a globalized world. This interactive workshop will be led by a scholar with nine years of experience overseas, primarily in China. The workshop will open with a visual tool for understanding global stratification by income and life expectancy. The workshop will then allow participants to develop criteria for selecting and evaluating the texts that they use for the introductory class. In recent years, many introductory textbooks have begun to include more international content, but instructors must strike a balance between breadth and depth when it comes to selecting internationally focused texts. Workshop participants will be asked to brainstorm on their own, then to share with the group ideas for and experiences with internationalizing some of the most important topics in introduction to sociology. The workshop facilitator will then present two international examples of norms pertaining to bodily functions, which she uses to help students understand the social construction of deviance. Finally, workshop participants will design an activity or assignment to implement in the introductory course and receive feedback on their activity from another participant. The workshop will end by introducing an online, visual tool the facilitator has used in her own introductory course to deepen students’ understanding of differing consumption patterns between households at divergent levels of economic development. This final tool makes a good basis for assignments on social mobility or world-systems theory.

Author

• Rachel Sarah Core, Stetson University