Locating Yourself Sociologically

This assignment requires you to examine your life in an historical and sociological way.
This is not an autobiography in the usual sense. It requires you to identify the broader social patterns and more specific local events that were present at the time of your birth and/or the early years of your life. For example, the existence of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of a particular Prime Minister, the election of a popular Pope, a local strike, or corporate downsizing that affected your family.
You must try to relate these events to personal social practices such as participation in ethnic traditions, marriage, child bearing, working, voting, personal values, beliefs, and stereotypes. There are many other possibilities as well.
Cite the reading by C.W. Mills on the sociological imagination to help you relate your life to sociological notions of race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationalism. (You do not need to address all of these in your essay.)
You are encouraged to be a sociological theorist in coming to an understanding of the impact of these events on your personal social practices. More specifically, you must provide the day, year, and place of your birth and consult local and national newspapers to discover local, national, and international events on and around your date of birth. You may also consult your parents, relatives, or family friends who were around at the time of your birth.
You may want to explore the history of the community in which you grew up, examine the language, ethnicity, social class, economic, and political tendencies that predominated, and their effects on your social practices today.
Your assignment must be about 10 pages in length, plus a title page and a list of references.

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