Continuing Step 2: Literature Review

Please continue to research what has been published about your topic already.   Keep noting what research has been done.  Keep a list of the citation information and a summary of what the research is about. 

Use academic sociology journal articles.  The SHS ILC database JSTOR will be especially helpful here.   JSTOR, an online database that you can search by subject. Go to the SHS Library online where you can login to JSTOR under "Academic Journals". Click here to go directly to JSTOR Advanced search.

Also use the “the Society Pages,” a website of sociology resources, especially Discoveries page, and on the Contexts page, the In Brief section.

Note the citation information for each article you study. Once you are logged on, scroll down to select "sociology" then search any subject you would like.  You should add each article to a bibliography and annotate/summarize these articles.  In your research project, you should make sense of the background research you find.  What have other authors concluded?  How does the research fit together?  What story does the research tell?  What information is left out of the previous literature?

Race, Gender and School Discipline

Read this article from the Sociology of Education.


Here is data that you can use to conduct a similar study:
School discipline data

Research Project Step by Step Overview

1. Identify what you’d like to study. What topics are you interested in? Can you frame your interest into the form of a question? Some things to consider: What group/people are you attempting to study? Are you interested in study how this creates and reinforces social norms and stability? Are you interested in how this creates social inequality? Are you interested in how this creates meaning between people – either values, norms, etc.? Why are you interested in this topic? This will become the introduction of your project.

2.  Conduct a literature review.  Research what has been published about your topic already.  Use academic sociology journal articles.  The SHS ILC database JSTOR will be especially helpful here.  Also use the “the Society Pages,” a website of sociology resources, especially Discoveries page, and on the Contexts page, the In Brief section.

JSTOR, an online database that you can search by subject. Go to the SHS Library online where you can login to JSTOR under "Academic Journals". Click here to go directly to JSTOR Advanced search.

Note the citation information for each article you study. Once you are logged on, scroll down to select "sociology" then search any subject you would like.  You should add each article to a bibliography and annotate/summarize these articles.  In your research project, you should make sense of the background research you find.  What have other authors concluded?  How does the research fit together?  What story does the research tell?  What information is left out of the previous literature?

3.  After conducting the literature, write a hypothesis about what you think you will find if you study the topic.  Your hypothesis should include:  Operational definitions about what you would study, an explanation about what you think you will find and why.

4. Explain or propose your research.  Since this is just a 100-level intro to sociology class, you will be expected to propose a research project.  This includes choosing a method and designing a study even if you are not able to carry out that study.  This should be a thorough explanation of the research.  It should include all of the components of the research you choose to do.  For example, if you choose to do a survey, you should type up the survey. Here are some methods for you to choose from:

ethnography/participant observation, interviews, surveys, existing sources, or experiment.  For students who want to exceed expectations, you may conduct the actual research.  That would include actually gathering data then analyzing it. 

Here are some sights for exploring data:


Data from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research 

 Pew Research Center

 NORC's General Social Survey

Census Bureau here or here on my blog.

Data from U of Michigan's Monitoring the Future - Data on Teens and behaviors, attitudes, values

 National Center for Education Statistics

Data from Brookings Institute

 Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality

 Bureau of Labor Statistics

School discipline data

The Gender Pay Gap from the Washington Post explains the dynamics that lead to unequal pay for women.

Mass shooting data sets:
Mass Shooting Tracker
MotherJones data set of all school shootings.
TribLive list of all school shootings for the last 50 years.

Dollar Street is a website from Gapminder that compiles pictures from around the world.  You can sort the data by income, country or by the category such as bedrooms, or toothbrushes.

College and economic mobility.

Where college grads move.

Baby name database from SSA.

Race around the world

Please take out your handout for race.

If "race" is not biological then it is a social construction.  There is no way to biologically, physically or scientifically group humans into distinct racial groups.  If there was, then racial groups would be the same all over the world.  They would fit into the scientific classification system such as kingdom, order, phyllum etc...  But instead each culture has its own racial types.

Look at how different these racial categories are in Japan, Mexico and Brazil:







What are some physical features people in the U.S. use to define race?







Race in Japan:
When I was in Japan, I asked some Japanese friends what races were in Japan and they said "nihon-jin and gai-jin," Which means "Japanese people and foreign people.  In other words, the Japanese think that there are Japanese people in the world and then there is everyone else.  And then I pressed him further and I said, " But aren't there different groups within Japanese culture?"

My friend finally said, " Ahh yes... there were ancient Japanese who settled the islands from the north and there were ancient Japanese who settled the islands from the south, and you know how to tell who came from where?  Earwax." That's right, earwax! He explained that some Japanese have dry flaky earwax and others have wet greasy earwax.  That determines where your ancestors came from and a different biological group that you are a part of- essentially a different race.  But that makes no sense to us because in the US we never think of earwax as part of race.



Think about how the history of a country affects how that country perceives race.
Race in Mexico:

Here are racial groups in Mexico:

1. Mestizo: Spanish father and Indian mother
2. Castizo: Spanish father and Mestizo mother
3. Espomolo: Spanish mother and Castizo father
4. Mulatto: Spanish and black African
5. Moor: Spanish and Mulatto
6. Albino: Spanish father and Moor mother
7. Throwback: Spanish father and Albino mother
8. Wolf: Throwback father and Indian mother
9. Zambiago: Wolf father and Indian mother
10. Cambujo: Zambiago father and Indian mother
11. Alvarazado: Cambujo father and Mulatto mother
12. Borquino: Alvarazado father and Mulatto mother
13. Coyote: Borquino father and Mulatto mother
14. Chamizo: Coyote father and Mulatto mother
15. Coyote-Mestizo: Cahmizo father and Mestizo mother
16. Ahi Tan Estas: Coyote-Mestizo father and Mulatto mother

Take  one second and quickly answer the following question:
What color is your skin?







Race in Brazil:
In Brazil, In 1976, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) conducted a study to ask people to identify their own skin color.  Here are the 134 terms, listed in alphabetical order:

Acastanhada (cashewlike tint; caramel colored)
Agalegada
Alva (pure white)
Alva-escura (dark or off-white)
Alverenta (or aliviero, "shadow in the water")
Alvarinta (tinted or bleached white)
Alva-rosada (or jamote, roseate, white with pink highlights)
Alvinha (bleached; white-washed)
Amarela (yellow)
Amarelada (yellowish)
Amarela-quemada (burnt yellow or ochre)
Amarelosa (yellowed)
Amorenada (tannish)
Avermelhada (reddish, with blood vessels showing through the skin)
Azul (bluish)
Azul-marinho (deep bluish)
Baiano (ebony)
Bem-branca (very white)
Bem-clara (translucent)
Bem-morena (very dusky)
Branca (white)
Branca-avermelhada (peach white)
Branca-melada (honey toned)
Branca-morena (darkish white)
Branca-p�lida (pallid)
Branca-queimada (sunburned white)
Branca-sardenta (white with brown spots)
Branca-suja (dirty white)
Branqui�a (a white variation)
Branquinha (whitish)
Bronze (bronze)
Bronzeada (bronzed tan)
Bugrezinha-escura (Indian characteristics)
Burro-quanto-foge ("burro running away," implying racial mixture of unknown origin)
Cabocla (mixture of white, Negro and Indian)
Cabo-Verde (black; Cape Verdean)
Caf� (coffee)
Caf�-com-leite (coffee with milk)
Canela (cinnamon)
Canelada (tawny)
Cast�o (thistle colored)
Castanha (cashew)
Castanha-clara (clear, cashewlike)
Castanha-escura (dark, cashewlike)
Chocolate (chocolate brown)
Clara (light)
Clarinha (very light)
Cobre (copper hued)
Corado (ruddy)
Cor-de-caf� (tint of coffee)
Cor-de-canela (tint of cinnamon)
Cor-de-cuia (tea colored)
Cor-de-leite (milky)
Cor-de-oro (golden)
Cor-de-rosa (pink)
Cor-firma ("no doubt about it")
Crioula (little servant or slave; African)
Encerada (waxy)
Enxofrada (pallid yellow; jaundiced)
Esbranquecimento (mostly white)
Escura (dark)
Escurinha (semidark)
Fogoio (florid; flushed)
Galega (see agalegada above)
Galegada (see agalegada above)
Jambo (like a fruit the deep-red color of a blood orange)
Laranja (orange)
Lil�s (lily)
Loira (blond hair and white skin)
Loira-clara (pale blond)
Loura (blond)
Lourinha (flaxen)
Malaia (from Malabar)
Marinheira (dark greyish)
Marrom (brown)
Meio-amerela (mid-yellow)
Meio-branca (mid-white)
Meio-morena (mid-tan)
Meio-preta (mid-Negro)
Melada (honey colored)
Mesti�a (mixture of white and Indian)
Miscigena��o (mixed --- literally "miscegenated")
Mista (mixed)
Morena (tan)
Morena-bem-chegada (very tan)
Morena-bronzeada (bronzed tan)
Morena-canelada (cinnamonlike brunette)
Morena-castanha (cashewlike tan)
Morena clara (light tan)
Morena-cor-de-canela (cinnamon-hued brunette)
Morena-jambo (dark red)
Morenada (mocha)
Morena-escura (dark tan)
Morena-fechada (very dark, almost mulatta)
Moren�o (very dusky tan)
Morena-parda (brown-hued tan)
Morena-roxa (purplish-tan)
Morena-ruiva (reddish-tan)
Morena-trigueira (wheat colored)
Moreninha (toffeelike)
Mulatta (mixture of white and Negro)
Mulatinha (lighter-skinned white-Negro)
Negra (negro)
Negrota (Negro with a corpulent vody)
P�lida (pale)
Para�ba (like the color of marupa wood)
Parda (dark brown)
Parda-clara (lighter-skinned person of mixed race)
Polaca (Polish features; prostitute)
Pouco-clara (not very clear)
Pouco-morena (dusky)
Preta (black)
Pretinha (black of a lighter hue)
Puxa-para-branca (more like a white than a mulatta)
Quase-negra (almost Negro)
Queimada (burnt)
Queimada-de-praia (suntanned)
Queimada-de-sol (sunburned)
Regular (regular; nondescript)
Retinta ("layered" dark skin)
Rosa (roseate)
Rosada (high pink)
Rosa-queimada (burnished rose)
Roxa (purplish)
Ruiva (strawberry blond)
Russo (Russian; see also polaca)
Sapecada (burnished red)
Sarar� (mulatta with reddish kinky hair, aquiline nose)
Sara�ba (or saraiva: like a white meringue)
Tostada (toasted)
Trigueira (wheat colored)
Turva (opaque)
Verde (greenish)
Vermelha (reddish)

Can a plane ride change your race?

Looking at the distinctions in Japan, Mexico and Brazil might not make sense to us because we view race so differently.  However, all of this is evidence that race is a social construction.   Read the passage below and then answer the questions after.

4.  Answer individually:   Did the girl’s race change?  Why or why not?

 5.  As a group discuss, each student share his/her answer to this question.  Change or add to your thoughts above as needed.  Then as a group decide on one answer: Yes or NO?

Here is a link to different censuses around the world.


Click on the link and then note in your packet which race you would be in the other countries around the world.
When you are finished, which countries were you a different race than how you identify yourself in the U.S.?