Assignment Instructions:
Throughout this course you have learned about American values and the ways that American society realizes these values. In studying American values, we need to question not only how these values that have been an integral part of American society are ideally supposed to be experienced by all Americans as part of our values system, but also how these values are experienced in reality by different Americans in society.
The American value system emphasizes those of independence, power, wealth, materialism, etc. However, access to those values can be limited for certain groups. Furthermore, while most Americans are taught about the importance of achieving these values in their own lives, not everyone has the same resources to achieve them. Many of your readings have given examples of the problems that can occur for both the individual and society when people have limited abilities to achieve the values that Americans hold dear. For this assignment, you will be asked to not only identify and analyze the established values of American society, but to recognize the conflicts that exist in the American value system and the problems this creates for those experiencing contradictions and limitations in the overall values system.
Begin with an introduction. Identify two of the American values listed in the Williams document in the week 1 learning resources. Why did you choose these values? How important are these two values to American society?
One way you can help determine the importance of American values is to look at poll data, such as the Siena College Research Institute, or the Brookings Institute. However, you can also find your own information from other sources if you want. Some websites to get you started are:
https://scri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/AVS-Data-Appendix.pdf
Americans, Deeply Divided, Yet Share Core Values of Equality, Liberty & Progress
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/AVS-2020-Presentation-FINAL.pdf
Select any two topics you learned about in class. Using at least 3 course resources and 3 resources from your own research (at least 6 total sources), do the following for each topic:
Discuss who is most likely to fully experience the values you chose within the context of the topic.
How do they benefit from achieving these values? Who is most limited from fully experiencing these American values
What are some of barriers and challenges that people face in fully experiencing these established American values?
Make sure to use examples from the course resources and your own research to validate your opinions.
For each topic you selected, explain why you think these American values you associated with the topics are not equally experienced by all Americans (for example, if your topic is health care, and your value is humanitarianism you could discuss why this value is not experienced equally within the context of health care).
In your explanation, you should also include one or more of the sociological theories you learned about in class – such as the conflict theory, structural-functionalism, or symbolic interactionism (from your week 1 learning resources), or Merton’s anomie theory (from the week 7 learning resources). You can also bring in other relevant sociological theories from any of the other course readings.
End with a conclusion. What does your essay say about American values and American society? Give two suggestions that you think would help make your two chosen American values more equally accessible to all Americans. Make sure to validate your suggestions with your scholarly sources.
