These are only suggestions, not assigned topics. By looking at them you might come up with some ideas of your own. If you choose an essay topic and are not sure how to organize your essay, don't be afraid to ask me for help. You can e-mail me a proposed essay topic (along with your research question or thesis statement) and I will give you some feedback to let you know if you're on the right path.
1) According to Auguste Comte's ‘law of the three stages', are we now living in the positivist stage or are there parts of society that have resisted or challenged this form of social evolution?
2) Herbert Spencer argued that government should not intervene in the economy and believed that progress was a result of competition among companies and individual workers. We now live in a society where governments have deregulated industry, reduced taxes, and cut spending on social programs. Are we moving closer to the ‘survival of the fittest' society that Spencer envisioned in the nineteenth century?
3) Karl Marx argued that workers are exploited when employers underpay workers in order to make a profit. Are today's service workers exploited in the same way as the factory workers of the nineteenth century?
4) Emile Durkheim said that modern industrial societies have a social division of labour in which people have different sets of skills and knowledge. And because people have different skills, they are interdependent and rely on each other's expertise. With the rise of the Internet, artificial intelligence and ‘do it yourself' books, are people becoming less interdependent?
5) Max Weber believed that modern industrial societies are at risk of being trapped in an ‘iron cage of rationality' as reason and science come to define more of reality and the way people live and work. In what ways have the mass media and education helped this process along?
6) Georg Simmel looked at the effects of a ‘money economy' on relationships between people. Nowadays more of our daily activities are mediated by money, and the level of consumer debt keeps increasing. Has it become difficult for people to have quality leisure time without spending money?
7) Thorstein Veblen's theory of the leisure class examines the lifestyles of wealthier members of society and the examples they apparently set for everyone else. Do today's superstar athletes, entertainers, and business leaders qualify as a ‘leisure class'?
8) Joseph Schumpeter said that capitalist economies undergo a process of ‘creative destruction' when new technologies are introduced and temporarily displace workers. As more jobs are taken over by computers and robots, is this another round of ‘creative destruction' or will it lead to permanent mass unemployment?
9) How would Karl Mannheim's theories of ideology and utopia apply to the current political and cultural divide in the United States?
10) How would bullying and peer pressure be explained according to George Herbert Mead's theories of the ‘self' and child development?Guidelines for writing essays
Title page
Place the title of your essay in the middle of the page. Your name, student number, class, instructor's name, and due date all go in the bottom right hand corner of the page. Do not put phrases like ‘running head' on the title page.
Page numbers
Page numbers should go in the top right corner of every page. Do not count the title page as page 1.
Text of essay
This is everything between the title page and the bibliography. It consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. The text of the essay should be 8 to 10 pages in length. Lines should be double spaced and typed in twelve point font.
Introduction
This is where you tell the reader what you are going to write about. Identify the topic you want to write about and tell the reader how you are going to explore that topic. Are you making an argument for or against a particular policy? Are you going to look at different sides of a debate over a particular social problem? Are you going to look at the history of an institution, policy, program, or problem? There are many ways you can go about writing an essay, but the introduction is quite important because you are telling the reader what you are going to write about.
Body
The body of your essay is the ‘guts', or all the essential elements you are using to explain, investigate, make critical assessment, or define whatever problem or issue you are writing about. This is where you introduce evidence to show that a problem or issue exists and/or how the evidence supports a particular theory, argument, or viewpoint. You may look at how things evolve over time, or how conflicts arise over a particular issue, or how facts and/or data support or refute any claims that are made about any issue or problem. For example, you may introduce statistical data that show that workfare programs are not successful at helping social assistance recipients move into the labour market.
The body of your essay may also be made up of different parts. Suppose you are looking at different dimensions of a social problem, such as poverty. So you may want to use headings to identify each of the dimensions, such as unemployment, education, substance abuse, mental health, nutrition, etc. Or if you are writing a historical paper you might want to divide your analysis of an issue or problem by time period and/or major events at different points in history.
Conclusion
In the conclusion you restate your position or approach to whatever you are writing about and provide a brief summary of findings. Here you determine whether or not your research findings provide an adequate explanation of what is happening, or if they support your argument.
When to cite sources in the text of your paper
The sources of any information you obtain to support your position should be identified. This is especially the case wherever you are using numbers (i.e. statistics). The work of other writers should also be cited to avoid accusations of plagiarism. So if you are discussing someone else's findings or ideas in your own words or quoting another author directly, always identify the source.
How to cite sources in the text
Use the ‘social science' style of citation. (Author's last name, year of publication) e.g. (Ritzer, 2011) If you know the page number of the material you are citing, then it should be (Author's last name, year of publication: page number) e.g. (Ritzer, 2011: 32). If there is no author, then give the name of the organization supplying the information.
How many sources and what kind?
A minimum of ten sources will indicate that you have done some research on whatever you want to write about. Books, chapters of books containing collections of essays, journal articles, magazine articles, newspaper articles, Internet web pages, films, videos, sound recordings, and TV or radio programs are possible sources of information.
Bibliographic citation
There are several different styles of bibliographic citation, but my personal preference is the MLA style. If you prefer APA or another style, that's fine, but your citations should at least have the following ingredients:
Author's Last Name, First Name, Title, Place of Publication: Publisher, year of publication.
Example:
Ritzer, George, Classical Sociological Theory, Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
These particular citations are for books, but there are also ways to cite other sources of information. To find out how to cite other sources, the library has several style manuals that you can refer to if you are not sure.