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Week 3 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 3 — Sorting the Rules: A Short Culture-Reading Report — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition
Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 3 of the term — sort the rules in this week's illustrative six-norm sort, read a real figure for cultural lag, run one workplace rule through the three perspectives, and explain to someone outside sociology what a figure about objects can and cannot say about norms.

This week you learned to tell culture from society, to sort a group's rules as folkways, mores, and taboos, to sort the sanctions that enforce them, and to tell judging a custom from understanding it. In Week 1 you learned the three perspectives and their levels of analysis; in Week 2 you learned to read a figure for what it measures and what it does not. In this assignment you work four short problems on this week's illustrative six-norm sort and one real figure, interpret each one, and explain a claim to someone who has never studied sociology. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Sociology in Action Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will use these materials, all from this week's chapter:

  • Pew Research Center's Mobile Fact Sheet: 35% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone in 2011 and 91% in 2025.
  • The six-norm sort, an illustrative set of six norms built for this course (not real data): answering a friend's group-chat message within a day (folkway; a teasing "hello??", negative and informal); waiting until everyone is served at a family dinner (folkway; a grandparent's approving smile, positive and informal); wearing the store's uniform shirt on shift (folkway, even though it is written into a workplace rule; a written warning from the manager, negative and formal); doing your own work on an exam (mos; a zero and an academic-integrity report, negative and formal); returning a lost wallet with the cash inside (mos; the neighborhood association's good-neighbor award, positive and formal); and never disturbing a grave (taboo; a criminal charge, negative and formal).

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

  1. Pew Research Center reports that smartphone ownership among U.S. adults rose from 35% in 2011 to 91% in 2025. On average, by how many percentage points per year did ownership rise?
  2. In the illustrative six-norm sort, 3 norms are folkways, 2 are mores, and 1 is a taboo. How many of the six norms carry moral weight?
  3. In the illustrative six-norm sort, the six sanctions are 1 positive informal, 1 positive formal, 1 negative informal, and 3 negative formal. How many of the six sanctions are formal?
  4. In the illustrative six-norm sort, 3 of the 6 norms are folkways. What percentage of the norms in the sort are folkways?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation. For problem 1, say what the figure measures and explain why it cannot, by itself, show whether the norms for using phones have lagged behind. For problem 2, sort the store's uniform-shirt rule and explain why its written warning does not make it a mos. For problem 3, explain how the formal-or-informal question differs from the moral-weight question, and point to one positive and one negative sanction in the sort. For problem 4, say what your percentage does and does not describe, then run the uniform-shirt rule through structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism, one sentence each, naming each perspective's level of analysis.

Explain it to a non-expert

The editor of a neighborhood newsletter has never studied sociology and plans to write: "Since 91% of adults now own smartphones, our community's manners have collapsed." Write a 3–5 sentence message to the editor that recommends a more accurate way to say it, explains in everyday words what the 91% measures and what it does not, uses the idea of cultural lag in plain words, and names one limit, such as that the figure describes adults across the country rather than this neighborhood. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one accurate wording can be defensible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a gym manager who plans to post a sign reading "People who don't wipe down the machines are immoral." Model answer: "I'd post 'Please wipe down each machine after you use it; the next person will thank you.' Wiping down equipment is an everyday custom, what sociologists call a folkway, so calling people immoral makes it sound far more serious than members treat it. A friendly reminder fits the kind of rule it is. One limit: I'm judging from how members react here, and another gym might treat the same rule more strictly."

Use that pattern for your message to the editor, with your own recommendation and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single culture-reading report containing:

  • the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and a brief interpretation as the task describes;
  • your message to the newsletter editor, recommending a more accurate wording, explaining what the 91% measures and does not, using cultural lag in plain words, and naming one limit; and
  • a one-line restatement of the values you used, so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram that sorts the six norms by moral weight and by sanction with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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