Week 3 — Sociology-in-Action Workshop · "Culture Audit"

Course: Introduction to Sociology (SOC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Adeyemi
Objective: Objective 3 — analyze culture (material/nonmaterial elements, values, norms, symbols) in a real artifact or setting · SLO A (apply theory) & SLO B (reason from evidence)
Worth 50 points · Sociology Workshops group = 15% of the grade · Workshop 3
Mode this week: structured observation/reflection (a culture audit; other weeks alternate with data-interpretation workshops). No special tools — just your eyes, a browser, and an approved chatbot.

This is the course's signature weekly component. Every instructional week has one Sociology Workshop. Some weeks you'll read real social data (a chart or table from the Census, Pew, BLS, the World Bank, or Our World in Data); other weeks you'll observe and reflect on your own social world. Either way you'll end by catching an AI's mistakes. All external resources are links — nothing to buy or download.

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that culture is the shared, learned way of life — its material objects and its nonmaterial values, beliefs, norms, and symbols — and that most of it runs invisibly, like a script we follow without noticing. This workshop hands you a magnifying glass: you'll pick one media artifact or one public space and audit it — catalog the values, norms, and symbols it encodes, and ask whose culture it treats as "normal."

The guiding question: What values, norms, and symbols are built into this ordinary artifact or space — and what does the choice of them reveal?

Part 2 — Choose Your Artifact or Space

Pick one thing to audit (use one of these or your own):

A media artifact:
- a TV or streaming advertisement (a great choice — ads are dense with values)
- one episode or scene of a show, or a music video / a song's lyrics
- the home screen / feed of an app (what it rewards, surfaces, and normalizes)

…or a public space (observe respectfully; don't photograph or record strangers):
- a coffee shop, store, gym, library, waiting room, or campus common area
- a transit setting (a bus, a train platform) — how people queue, where they look, the unspoken rules

Write your choice in one sentence: "The artifact/space I'm auditing is ______."

Part 3 — The Culture-Audit Scaffold (fill this in)

Find at least four distinct cultural elements in your artifact or space and run each through the what-I-observed → which-concept → so-what move. Aim for a spread: at least one material element, and among the rest at least one value, one norm (say whether it's a folkway or a more), and one symbol.

Tip: for an ad, ask what it treats as a "good life" (the values), what behavior it shows as normal (the norms), and what objects/words/images stand in for big ideas (the symbols — a ring for love, a logo for status). For a space, watch what people do without being told (the folkways) and what would get a strong reaction (the mores).

Part 4 — Whose Culture? (the conflict-lens beat)

In one or two sentences: whose values does your artifact or space treat as the default or "mainstream"? Who is centered, who is absent, and who might read it differently? (This is the conflict perspective on culture: the "normal" is rarely neutral.) Then, optionally, add the functionalist read (what shared values does it reinforce / what cohesion does it create?) and the interactionist read (the meaning "works" only because viewers share the symbols).

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

Answer in a sentence or two each:
1. Pick your clearest example and name the concept precisely. If it's a norm, is it a folkway or a more — and how do you know (what's the moral weight)?
2. Identify one material element and the nonmaterial idea it symbolizes. (Use the touch test to be sure it's material.)
3. Apply one of the three perspectives (functionalist / conflict / interactionist) to your artifact in one or two sentences.
4. Is there a place where your read could be a stereotype — treating a whole group as if everyone shares this value? How would you keep your claim about the artifact without overgeneralizing about people?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment (required — this is the BYOAI step)

Now bring in your approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and be the sociologist who checks its work.

1. Briefly describe your artifact or space and ask: "Audit this for its cultural values, norms, and symbols; tell me whose culture it centers; and give me one statistic about this group's culture."
2. Check everything it says against this week's ideas and a real source:
   - Did it overgeneralize or stereotype — claim that everyone in some group thinks or behaves a certain way ("people from X all value Y")? Cultures are internally diverse; flag any sweeping group claim. (This is the #1 culture slip — chatbots do it constantly.)
   - Did it state the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (if it comes up) as a proven fact rather than a hypothesis?
   - Did it invent a statistic or a "study"? Search for any number it gives at the source (Census, Pew, the World Bank, Our World in Data). If you can't find it, treat it as fabricated — and say so. Do not repeat a figure you haven't seen on the source's own page.
   - Did it slide from correlation to causation (e.g., "this group buys X because they're Y")?
3. Write 3–4 sentences reporting what the AI got right and at least one thing you had to correct, verify, or flag — a stereotype/overgeneralization, an overstated Sapir-Whorf claim, a correlation-as-causation slip, or a number you couldn't confirm at the source. (If it happened to get everything right, say how you verified each claim — that's the skill.)

The habit all term: the tool drafts, you judge. With culture, a chatbot will confidently stereotype a whole group or invent a "fact" about it — catching that is the point.

Part 7 — What to Submit

Submit a single document (or text entry) with: your chosen artifact/space (Part 2), your completed audit scaffold of at least four elements (Part 3), your "whose culture?" note (Part 4), your Part 5 answers, and your Part 6 AI-critique paragraph. Due Sunday, Sep 20, 11:59 p.m. (50 points).

Instructor answer key & model responses — REMOVE BEFORE PUBLISHING TO STUDENTS

Students audit their own chosen artifact or space, so responses vary. The key grades the reasoning — correct concept labels, the what-I-observed → which-concept → so-what move, the "whose culture" insight, and the quality of the AI-critique — not a specific "right" artifact.

Model worked example (a holiday-shopping advertisement):
- Observed → concept → so-what (sample rows):
- "Family gathered around a large pile of wrapped gifts" → value (and a symbol: gifts = love/belonging) → reveals a value tying affection to consumer spending; treats an affluent, gift-heavy holiday as the "normal" one.
- "Everyone dressed up and smiling at a big table" → folkway (holiday-gathering etiquette) → reveals norms of festive togetherness.
- "Brand logo on every product shown" → material culture + symbol → the logo stands in for status/quality.
- "Voiceover: 'make this the best one yet'" → value (improvement/abundance) → normalizes spending as caring.
- Whose culture? the ad centers a particular (commercial, comfortable, often nuclear-family) version of the holiday; people who celebrate differently, or can't spend, are absent. (Conflict lens.) A functionalist could add the ritual builds shared cohesion; an interactionist notes the gift-as-love meaning only "works" because viewers share that symbol.
- No statistic is asserted here. If a student wants to support a claim with data (e.g., holiday consumer spending from the Census or a Pew survey on holiday traditions), the key requires them to verify it on the source's page and cite the year — the workshop itself claims no figure.

Expected answers:
- Part 5 Q1: correct, precise concept; for a norm, a sound folkway-vs-more call justified by moral weight. Q2: a genuine material object paired with the nonmaterial idea it symbolizes (touch test passed). Q3: any one perspective applied accurately (functionalist = cohesion/shared values; conflict = whose values/power; interactionist = shared meaning). Q4: recognizes the risk of generalizing from an artifact to "all people," and keeps the claim about the artifact.
- Part 6 (AI-critique): full credit for a specific catch — most commonly the AI stereotyping a whole group, inventing a statistic (unverifiable at the source), overstating Sapir-Whorf, or asserting a cause from a mere pattern. Full credit also if the student verified each AI claim against a real source and reported how.

Grading rubric — 50 points

Quality gate (self-checked): this is an observation/reflection workshop (a culture audit), so it asserts no specific statistic as fact — the only numbers mentioned are illustrative and explicitly conditioned on the student verifying them at the source (Census/Pew/World Bank/Our World in Data). All concepts are accurate: material vs. nonmaterial, values/beliefs/norms, folkways vs. mores, symbols, the three perspectives on culture, and the framing of Sapir-Whorf as a hypothesis (in the AI-critique step). The AI-critique explicitly targets overgeneralization/stereotyping, fabricated statistics/studies, and correlation-vs-causation — the discipline's load-bearing AI risks, and the ones most acute for culture. No correlation is presented as causation.