Anthony Giddens • Sociology 6th edition

Student Resources

Chapter 8 — The Life-Course

1. According to G.H. Mead, what is the commonsense term for an individual's internal conversations between the 'I' and the 'me'?
   a) discourse
   b) consciousness
   c) thinking
   d) psychoanalysis
2. Put Piaget's main stages of cognitive development in chronological order.
   a) sensorimotor stage; pre-operational stage; concrete operational stage; formal operational stage
   b) pre-operational stage; formal operational stage; concrete operational stage; sensorimotor stage
   c) formal operational stage; sensorimotor stage; pre-operational stage; concrete operational stage
   d) sensorimotor stage; pre-operational stage; formal operational stage; concrete operational stage;
3. Which of the following is not an agency of socialization?
   a) the family
   b) schools
   c) mass media
   d) hospitals
4. Which of the following animated films subverts traditional gender roles?
   a) Cinderella
   b) Beauty and the Beast
   c) Shrek
   d) Little Mermaid
5. Which theorist focused on the child’s attachment to and separation from the mother to explain key gender differences?
   a) Janet Sayers
   b) Sylvia Walby
   c) Sigmund Freud
   d) Nancy Chodorow
6. The thesis that generations may be as significant as social classes in shaping the life-course and producing social change was advanced by whom?
   a) Karl Marx
   b) Karl Manheim
   c) Karl Jaspers
   d) Carl Jung
7. How do recent critical studies conceptualize childhood?
   a) as a transitory stage leading to adulthood
   b) as part of the life-cycle
   c) as a social-structural position
   d) as a period of innocence
8. According to the United Nations, where will the most rapid growth of the 65 and over population take place?
   a) the Middle East
   b) Sub-Saharan Africa
   c) South Asia
   d) industrialized countries
9. In Europe, there are more women than men aged over 65. How has this situation been described?
   a) the greying of societies
   b) the dependency ratio
   c) the feminization of later life
   d) the age of women
10. In The Loneliness of the Dying (1985), who wrote that 'It is easier in the normal course of life to forget death'?
    a) Norbert Elias
    b) Zygmunt Bauman
    c) Tony Walter
    d) Mike Hepworth
11. The average life expectancy of someone born in Britain between 2005 and 2010 is:
    a) 77 for men; 81 for women
    b) 84 for men; 80 for women
    c) 82 for men; 88 for women
    d) 68 for men; 72 for women
12. G. H. Mead stresses that self-awareness comes when the child is able to distinguish the 'me' from the 'I'. The term he uses to describe the 'me' is:
    a) generalized other
    b) self-consciousness
    c) egoism
    d) social self
13. Mead's work is an example of:
    a) functionalism
    b) symbolic interactionism
    c) psychoanalysis
    d) cognitive theory
14. According to Piaget, the phase at which children master abstract, logical notions are able to grasp causality and can recognize false reasoning is the:
    a) sensorimotor stage
    b) preoperational stage
    c) concrete operational phase
    d) formal operational stage
15. The main agent in primary socialization is:
    a) school
    b) family
    c) television
    d) peer group
16. Which one of the following does Chodorow NOT argue is a consequence for boys and men of separating from their early attachment to their mother:
    a) feeling their self-esteem threatened by the lack a close relationship
    b) learning that to be a man is to reject being like a woman
    c) feeling endangered by close, intimate emotional relationships
    d) developing a detached and analytical approach to the world
17. In Carol Gilligan's research she found that when asked to consider a moral dilemma, women would typically solve it on the principle of:
    a) upholding moral duty
    b) supporting social justice
    c) promoting individual freedom
    d) avoiding harming others
18. Disengagement theory holds that it is functional for society if as people reach old age they:
    a) take on full-time paid employment
    b) take on less taxing and important roles
    c) take on new and demanding civic roles
    d) take on more active political roles
19. The life-course model views aging as:
    a) a process that continues from birth to death
    b) a process shaped by the forces of capitalism
    c) a process of adapting to changing social roles
    d) a process shaped by psychological decline
20. The dependency ratio describes:
    a) the size of working population supporting the young and the old
    b) the number of children dependent upon the adults in a family
    c) the amount of care both given and received by older people
    d) the number of welfare professionals that support a population
21. Constructionist studies of old age view it as:
    a) a medical condition
    b) a period of life
    c) a state of mind
    d) a social category
22. According to United nations estimates, by 2025 the world’s average life expectancy will have reached:
    a) 46
    b) 54
    c) 71
    d) 80

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