Short Essay pool Midterm #1, Spring 2oo8

This is the short essay pool used for the first midterm exam in SOCI 130, spring, 2008.

On the exam, students will be provided a randomly selected set of five questions. They must answer three and each question is worth 15 points for a total of 45.

This section of the exam has a time limit of 45 minutes.

Answer each question in one or two paragraphs. These are meant to be short essays. Each question calls for some information from the readings, lectures, or class presentations. Each question also asks for an interpretive or analytic response. Questions will be graded by evaluating the thoroughness and accuracy of both aspects of the answer students provide.

1. Give arguments for and against the assertion that anorexia is a form of mental illness.
2. What is the feminist argument that anorexia is a cultural rather than a medical problem?
3. How are the concepts of race and ethnicity similar and different?
4. How does institutional racism affect the health of African Americans?
5. What major changes have occurred in the health care system since 1960?
6. Theoretically speaking, what is the difference between a profession and a business?
7. What is the medical industrial complex and why is it important?
8. Why is the growing tendency for doctors to be salaried employees in large health maintenance organizations significant from the standpoint of the theory of professions?
9. Explain the obligations that go along with the sick role in Talcott Parsons' theory.
10. How is the conceptualization of ethical responsibility different in the professions of nursing and medicine?
11. What do the differences between the terms: disease, illness, sickness, disability, and handicap have to with the concepts of category and group?
12. Explain the difference between the following general viewpoints on the state: the Marxist perspective, the pluralist perspective, and the New Right perspective.
13. What is caring and how does it shape the distinctiveness of the nursing profession?
14. What is the significance of the contrast between altruism and autonomy in the history of nursing?
15. Why do hospitals NOT fit the bureaucratic model of organization?