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Welcome to New Students and Prospective Majors This webpage is designed to give you a sense of what sociology, anthropology and criminal justice are all about and to engage you directly in thinking in the terms of our disciplines by posing several challenges for you to consider. If these challenges--and the kind of thinking they are designed to provoke--seem interesting to you, you may want to explore our departmental website more fully: by clicking on the faculty link to the left, the current newsletter and web-enhanced curriculum links above, and whatever others appear interesting to you. Sociology and anthropology are often considered sister discplines, with much in common. Historically, sociologists have tended to study modern, large-scale societies and anthropologists have tended to study smaller, often pre-modern, societies. But today both study both types of societies, and so a better distinction is that sociogists tend to focus on society--conceptualized in terms of social relations and social structures--whereas anthropologists tend to focus on culture, on systems of meaning. In reality, there is much overlap. The study of criminal justice draws on perspectives and tools from both sociology and anthropology to analyze a particular aspects of society and culture--notably crime and justice. Our program is built around all three disciplines, and students tend to take courses in all three. On the assumption that the best way to learn is by doing, you will find below three challenges designed to get you thinking as a sociologist, anthropologist, or criminologist. These challenges will also highlight some of the ways we use technology in our teaching at Rutgers-Camden. Challenge One: Thinking Sociologically About Society and the Individual
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Challenge: Notice that the states with the highest suicide rates are mainly in the western part of the country, apart from Maine in the northeast. Can you think of an explanation that would not be based on the (dubious) assumption that people are psychologically different in different states, but rather on some social attribute that these states share? If you can, you are thinking sociologically, a skill that does not always come easy in our individualistic and psychologically-oriented society. Feel free to discuss this sociological problem with friends. If you'd like to try out your answer, you may send an email to Professor Robert Wood, who made this page and will reply to your answer.
Challenge Two: Thinking Anthropologically About How Culture Matters
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If your own culture is the only one you know, you probably don't know it very well. When we learn about other cultures, we gain new perspectives on our own. Cultural differences can even make something familiar--such as baseball--seem strange and hard to understand. Several years ago Prof. Wood assisted in the making of a short video clip that explores how cultural differences between Japan and the United States are reflected in the way they play baseball. You'll need a broadband internet connection to play it well, but you may play the online video clip, formatted for the Introduction to Sociology course, by clicking on the title below: Online
Video: Samurai Baseball Challenge: What are the main differences between baseball in Japan and the United States, and what are the cultural differences between the two societies that explain why baseball is a "whole other ballgame" in these two societies? If you'd like to try out your answer, you may send an email to Professor Robert Wood, who will reply to your answer. |
Challenge Three: Observing the Sources of Urban Violence
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Pervasive violence, particularly among youth, plagues many cities. Several of our criminal justice and sociology courses use a book based on fieldwork in north Philadelphia, entitled Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, by Elijah Anderson. Anderson's book looks both at the broader structural factors than have transformed inner-city neighborhoods as well as the street "codes" that have evolved to deal with the absence of a police presence and of norms of civility. In 2004-2005, two Rutgers students worked with Professor Wood to create a film documenting the first chapter of Anderson's book, in which he takes the reader down Germantown Avenue. Their short film, which is now used extensively in courses and youth programs around the country, may be accessed from the Down Germantown Avenue film webpage. |
Challenge: Watch the student film and think about whether it gives you a better understanding of the violence that plagues some of the communities along Philadelphia's Germantown Avenue and elsewhere. If you'd like to try out your answer, you may send an email to Professor Robert Wood, who will reply to your answer.
Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Rutgers-Camden Want to learn more about sociology, anthropology and criminal justice? We invite you to explore this website further, to consider taking some of our courses, and to drop by our new building. We are located at 405-7 Cooper Street (enter from the campus side through the white porch). The department has about 180 majors in criminal justice, 100 in sociology, and several dozen minors in sociology, anthropology and criminal justice. It has eleven full-time faculty and about the same number of adjunct faculty, many of them practicing professionals. All are described on our faculty webpage. |
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Questions or comments? Email Prof. Wood