Week 15 · Readings & resources

Week 15 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 15 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 81–97 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–23 min total)

① Births, deaths, and the demographic transition

Chapter 15, Section “Walk the demographic transition: a model, and Malthus beside it” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Demography, fertility rates, and the demographic transition” · Remember: a fertility rate is not a count of children, and Malthus predicted checks while the transition describes stages.

How Populations Grow and Change: Crash Course Geography #33 — CrashCourse — a tour of how geographers read population growth, with Malthus's prediction and the demographic transition model side by side; as you watch, keep the prediction and the model apart, the way the chapter does. Use it while working through the Week-15 module overview. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained — Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell — an animated walk through the stages of falling death rates and then falling birth rates; its figures come from an earlier year, so use the chapter's 2023 and 1950s fertility figures for this course. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Distilled Demographics: Population Momentum — Population Reference Bureau — a demographer explains why a population can keep growing for decades after families get smaller; check any number it gives against its own source and year before you use it. This builds on Week 1's work with rates, where the base decides what a number means. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
Glossary of Demographic Terms — Population Reference Bureau — a plain-language glossary from a population research organization; look up the entries for the birth rate, natural increase, the total fertility rate, population momentum, and the demographic transition, and compare each with the chapter's wording. (reading, 8–12 min)
An Essay on the Principle of Population by T. R. Malthus — Project Gutenberg — the free online edition of Malthus's 1798 essay in a free digital library; choose the read-online version and read a few pages to meet his argument that population tends to outrun food in his own words, and expect old, formal prose. (reading, 10–15 min)

② Rings, density, and suburbs: how cities grow

Chapter 15, Section “Watch the city grow: urbanization and the Chicago School” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Urbanization and the Chicago School” · Remember: the concentric-zone model is a simplification to test against a real city, and any urban share needs its year and definition.

How Are Cities Organized? Crash Course Geography #46 — CrashCourse — a look at how cities arrange their land, including the concentric-zone model applied to one city and the places where real cities break the rings; watch for the moment the model stops fitting. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs — a short news release on the world's growing urban share, from an earlier year's estimates; read each figure with its year and remember that countries define urban in different ways, which is why this course pins no urban share. (reading, 5–8 min)

③ Crowds, movements, and what movements want

Chapter 15, Section “Sort movements by aim: Aberle's four types” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Collective behavior, social movements, and Aberle's types” · Remember: a movement is organized and lasting, and you sort it by whom and how much it seeks to change, never by its size.

Sociology - What is Collective Behavior? — Sociodoug! — a short lecture on crowds, rumors, fads, and panics as collective behavior; as you watch, ask of each example whether it is organized and whether it lasts. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
The Four Types of Social Movement — Revolution and Ideology — a sociologist walks through Aberle's alterative, redemptive, reformative, and transformative types; pause after each and sort the chapter's four illustrative movements by whom and how much they seek to change. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Fertility Rate — Our World in Data — the topic page behind this week's 2.3 and 4.9 figures; read the opening summary and the global chart, and skip the country detail unless you want it. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com