School Rampage Shootings in the US Assignments | Online Assignments Services

Begin your paper with a brief overview of the topic. Explain why researchers, policy makers and regular people have been concerned about this topic. Provide a brief history of the topic (i.e. the rise of school shootings or the origins and goals of the OCW program) and some key factors that explain why it has worsened over time (i.e. the incidence of school shootings or the abuse of OCW workers).

You should refer to these source materials to guide your discussion. Cite at least one example from one of these sources to support your discussion.

School Shootings
Larkin, “The Columbine legacy: Rampage Shootings as Political Acts”
Mahler and Kimmel, “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings”

Filipina Guest Workers
Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves (documentary)

Full citation info:
Boti, Marie (1997) Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves, Montreal, Canada: Diffusion Multi-Monde.

Micro-Analysis

Discuss at least two features of the micro-level performance of self (which can include the way people interpret stress and alienation) that relates to your topic. Discuss at least two of the following concepts or factors and support your discussion with at least two examples from our course readings.

Relevant readings are provided for each. Even if a reading is not directly relevant to your topic, you can still use an example that is relevant to the concept you want to apply (and explain in your paper, how it relates to the topic you’re writing on).

Cultural scripts (pertaining to gender, race, class, nationality, etc.)
Mahler and Kimmel “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence”
Reading 29 “Dude, You’re a Fag”: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse

Instructor Presentation Days for Feb 13, Feb 18 or April 16 (also see definition of
“Cultural Scripts” provided in the instructions for our Discussion Board
assignment on School Shootings: These slides are included because they contain
concise definitions of scripts/cultural scripts that are lacking in the readings.
Instructor presentations, however, do not count toward the two source
minimum for this part of the assignment.

Emotion work/feeling rules
Hochschild, Feeling in Sociology and the World
Reading 43, The Time Bind

The way that cultural meanings are interactively and collectively defined
Reading 10, Culture, a Sociological View
Collins, On the micro-foundations of macrosociology

Background expectancies that shape people’s behavior
Garfinkel, Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities

Interpersonal power dynamics between dominant and subdominant social groups
Reading 15, Making It by Faking It
Reading 18, Peer Power: Clique Dynamics Among School Children
Reading 52, Bad Boys: Public Schools and the Making of Black Masculinity

Macro-Analysis

Discuss at least two features of the macro-level context that help to explain the social problems that relate to your topic. Use examples from at least two of our class readings to support your discussion (you can use examples in any combination from the general reading list or topic-specific lists).

Macro Factors

Inequalities pertaining to wealth/income, or power/decision making authority

Inequalities that relate to gender, class or race (or which shed light on the intersections of race, class and gender)

The policies and practices of social institutions (schools, the government, the corporate sector, the military etc), or the failure of these institutions to enact or enforce appropriate policies and practices

General Readings

Reading 23, Some Principles of Stratification, with a critical response by Melvin Tumlin
Reading 26, Understanding the Dynamics of 2 dollars-a-Day Poverty in the US
Reading 27, Gender as Structure
Reading 35, The Power Elite in Mapping the Social Landscape
Reading 37, The Rise of the New Global Elite
Reading 31, What is Racial Domination?

Readings Specific to School Shootings

Larkin, “The Columbine legacy: Rampage Shootings as Political Acts”
Mahler and Kimmel, “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence

Readings Specific to Trafficking and Global Migration

John Miller, Slave Trade: Combating Human Trafficking
David Feingold, Human Trafficking
Scott Watson, The Criminalization of Human and Humanitarian Smuggling

Conclusion and Theoretical Discussion

Conclude your paper by briefly discussing what you think we need to better understand so that we can more effectively solve the social problems that you described in the body of your paper.

In this discussion you should

explain how your analysis of your chosen topic relates to either functionalist theory or conflict theory

explain how this theory can help us better understand the underlying causes of the problems you discussed in your essay (connecting to the opening discussion for this final section)

and please also take the time to define your chosen theory in your own words, using at least one example from Reading 4 (Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology) to support your discussion.

Citing Sources

Since this is a formal paper, you are expected to use a formal citation style when citing information from sources in the body of your paper, and to provide full citation info for all sources in a bibliography at the end of your paper.

Citing Sources in the Body of your Essay

If you are familiar with another citation style (for example MLA or APA style) please feel free to use it. But if you are not familiar with either of these styles, please follow these guidelines.

You should reference all sources you use in the middle or at the end of each sentence in which this information appears. For readings from our textbook, it is OK to cite the reading number.

For example:

In Reading 2, the author explains that ….

OR

The problem of teen suicide increased significantly in the 1980s (Reading 2).

If you are taking a specific quote from the reading, or summarizing a specific statistic or example, you should also include the page number.

For example:

The rate of teen suicide increased by over 65% between 1981 and 1992 (Reading 2, p. 15).

When you are citing examples from a journal article, include the author’s last name and/or publication year in parentheses.

For example:

Randall Collins’ (1981) idea that conversations are social rituals is central to his micro-sociological theory.

According to radical microsociology, “everyday-life microbehavior does not follow rationalist models of cognition and decision making,” (Collins 1981, p.285).

If you cite information from a documentary, treat it the same way as a regular academic source, citing the director as the author and the year it was released as the publication date.

For example:

The documentary Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves begins with a harrowing account of the story of Flor Contemplacion (Boti, 1998).

If you choose to cite specific information from instructor presentations, you can use the following protocol.

Cultural scripts can be defined as “narratives that influence the way we perform our identities and how these performances are judged by others.” (Instructor Presentation, April 16).

Constructing Your Bibliography

At the very end of your paper you should provide full citation information for all of the sources you cited in the body of the paper.

For articles that are posted on the class website, finding this information is very easy. Just open up the article file and look on the first page, which has all of the essential information, which includes:

Author name (surname first), Article Title (in quotes), Journal Title in Italics, Volume and Issue number (separated by colon), (Year published in parentheses): Page numbers (preceded by a colon).

Collins, Randall, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology.” American Journal of Sociology 86:5 (1981): 984-101.

For readings from our textbook, you do not have to list the author name. If you choose to list author names, please note that Susan Ferguson is editor of the book and not the author of any of the readings (which means that Ferguson should not be listed as the author). Each reading has a separate author. But again, author names are not required. You can use this method

Reading #: Reading Title, Mapping the Social Landscape, 8th Edition

Citing documentaries/audio-visual materials:

Full citation info for Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves is provided at the beginning of these assignment instructions. Here is a format you can use to cite any other documentary or other audio visual material.

Director/Production Co., Documentary or Clip Title, (Production Company, Year Released in Parentheses).

News source (ABC news, Reuters etc), Report name, Date and Year Released, Weblink

Instructor presentation slides can be cited this way:

Instructor Presentation, Date (Month and Day), Introduction to Sociology: Section 9, UMass-Boston, Spring 2020

Organizing your bibliography:

List all readings from our text book first.

List journal articles from our class website second, in alphabetical order (by author surname).

List documentaries third.

List instructor notes fourth.