1. What is the difference between Karl Marx’s conceptualization of stratification and Max Weber’s?
  2. How did the cultural attitude toward the proper role of racial, ethnic, and religious identity in America change                 from the early 20th Century to the early 21st Century?
  3. What is the difference between “ascribed” and “achieved” characteristics, as these terms are used in           sociology?  Give a couple of examples of each.
  4. Summarize Milton Gordon’s three models for understanding American diversity in one sentence each.
  5. Explain:  “The Jew is the antisemite’s Rorschach ink-blot.”
  6. Explain “scapegoating” as part of the etiology of bigotry.
  7. How did Emile Durkheim use the distinction between “sacred” and “profane” to explain social solidarity?
  8. How do secularism and atheism differ from each other regarding the validity and social functions of religion?
  9. What is the actual relationship between religion and the public realm (“church” and “state”) in America?
  10. Why can’t one prove a religion’s position on an issue by citing verses from its sacred literature?
  11. What are some of the factors that make Uniform Crime Reports not really uniform?
  12. What is “anomie,” and how is it a source of criminality?
  13. How does imprisonment contribute to recidivism?
  14. In what sense are we all, in Margaret Mead’s phrase, “immigrants in time?”
  15. Explain and illustrate why we cannot predict the future simply by extrapolating current trends.