"Who Are Your Second Cousins?" A Lecture/Discussion Technique for Introducing "Status," "Norm," and "Role" in the First Year Sociology Course

Abstract

Teaching students to use the concepts of sociology is a fundamental goal of sociology courses. In year introductory courses, we teach our students how to use basic concepts of the discipline. In this paper I describe a lecture/discussion technique which I use during the or week of the term to introduce students to the meaning and usefulness of three basic concepts of sociology: status, norm, and role. This lecture/ discussion uses an extended example of kinship, especially first and second cousins, and through it students learn the definitions of status, norm, and role. More importantly, they learn how to use these three concepts to think sociologically about kin relationships. They also learn how much they knowor don't know-about their own families. I have used this lecture/discussion technique for many years and have found that it works well. Students are interested in the kinship questions I raise (I get a lot of student participation in the discussion, even in classes of 70 or 80 students), and they readily grasp the meaning and usefulness of the three concepts. On course evaluation forms, students have told me that the on was one of the best. During the week of the term, I introduce the concepts status, norm, and role. I tell students that these three concepts are fundamental to sociology and that it would be impossible to do sociology without them. I begin the second-cousins lecture by distributing the kinship diagram handout to each student and by reproducing it on the blackboard (see Figure 1). In this idealized family, I have given each married couple two offspring, one female and one male, in order to illustrate each of the basic kinship categories. Additionally, to keep complications to a minimum, there are no deaths, divorces, or remarriages in this clearly idealized family.1 Using basic kinship terms and their abbreviations (i.e., Mother, Father, Daughter, Son, Sister, Brother, Wife, Husband), I lead the cl ss quickly through the entire diagram, labeling each person with the appropriate abbreviation (or string of abbreviations) from the point of view of EGO-the person to whom the other persons in the diagram are related. To save class time, I sometimes distribute a diagram with these labels already worked out. We count the number of different persons on the diagram (total 21, not counting EGO). I point out that although each person, as we have labeled him or her, is different from all the others on the diagram, we in fact think about these persons collectively, as members of a set of kinship categories or kinship statuses. I ask the students to identify the persons included in such kinship categories as siblings, parents, uncles, aunts, nieces, ephews, grandparents, grandchildren, and on the diagram. Each of these kinship categories, I tell them, is an example of a social status. Each is a social position relative to other social positions. Next I ask students to give me a definition for such kinship statuses as uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces. Then I tell them to assume they are explaining to someone who does not know our kinship system what each of these statuses means. Uncles are quickly defined as the brothers of Ego's mother and father; nieces are the daughters of Ego's brothers and sisters, and so on. When I ask for a definition of cousin, students tell me that cousins are the sons and daughters of Ego's mother's and father's brothers and sisters. Not-