How can you analyze a current event using sociological concepts?

Hi Courtney,

Pick an event... say the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Here are a few examples of what you might try doing with your analysis:

Try describing what happened, what's going on now, and what may happen in the future using a few sociological concepts. For example, social roles, bureaucracy, and social change. What happened? How about the various roles that people were playing at the time of the explosion? Eleven people died.. what roles were they playing? There were people on boats who helped survivors in the water. BP excutives were involved in making decisions. There were oil industry workers, fishermen, hotel clerks, potential tourists to the Gulf area, President Obama, etc. How did bureaucracy.. BP.. government.. media, etc. play into the situation? How did the situation change after the accident? What do you expect will happen in the future? To fishermen? To shrimpers? To BP bureaucracy? Regards.

Sociology refers to group behavior, why a large group of people would behave a certain way during a crisis, an big event, a disturbing event, etc. Search for 5 or 6 top news stories recently, some will be about large groups of people doing something in response to an external event, then figure out the reasons they would do what they did.