Question 1
In my lifetime, more people are becoming aware of their sexuality and are sticking to defending it. This has seen the gay community come out and speak out asking to be treated equally as humans. This has seen most of the communities come out strongly and harshly against such groups, and have regarded these people as ungodly and cursed. I can attribute this change to the urbanization concept which has seen more people become more aware of different cultures from other areas and after interaction they have adopted such practices. Urbanization has come with its pros and cons and I think, according to the traditional aspects of most communities, homosexuality is a taboo and had been considered so throughout history (Bawer, 2008).
Question 2
In research, we are supposed to consider thesis statements given or drawn up from conclusions and thoughts of different scholars or our own. For research to be considered high quality and relevant different concepts have to be applied to guide the research. The secret to a good research with relevant conclusions is the adoption of relevant research approaches and methods adopted. One also has to rely on previous researches to get a base of what is expected and what will suffice in that specific topic (Denzin, 2006).
Question 3
Industrial Revolution is one of the most important times in history since it saw some great changes in the society. In his work Eisenstadt (1968) pointed out that alongside the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution was one of the times that most social aspects were redefined and was supported by Nisbet (1966) who described this time in history as the redefinition of the society as we once knew it. Many of the sociology philosophies and aspects are predominantly drawn from the experience of this era (Peck & Bryant 2006).
Question 4
In my view, the authors aimed at directing our attention to the various ways in which rural areas contribute to the development of the society. I agree with them that rural people and communities play a critical role because of different reasons. However the most important to show the importance of the rural societies is that because of the increased urbanization in the early 1930s, it became important for scholars to redefine the concept of rurality. Therefore typical rural areas provided great insight in developing the arguments necessary to come up with the most accurate descriptions of rural and urban areas (Brown &Kandel, reading week 2).
Question 5
Poverty can be described as the inability to meet the needs while rurality may be described as the aspects that culminate an area being described as a rural area. Persistent poverty is where poverty remains in the family line or society from generation to generation. In the article, the author describes the theory of human capital. Basically the more the skilled the person, the better and more productive they are thus they get better wages. It is assumed that most rural people have little or no skills thus they are more likely to remain poor as compared to those in urban areas. If a society has persistent poverty, it means that people in that society has a shortage of skilled labour and thus the productivity of the rural area is seen to be lower as compared to other areas.
References
Bawer B., (2008). Place At The Table: The Gay Individual in American History. Touchstone New York.
Denzin, N. K. (2006). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks [u.a.: Sage.
Peck D. L. & Bryant D. C., (2006)."The Sociological Perspective." 21st Century Sociology. SAGE Publications. 19 Mar. 2011. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/oswmedia3e/study/chapters/handbooks/handbook1.1.pdf
Brown D. L, &Kandel W. A., “Rural America Through a Demographic Lens” (from week 2)
“Human capital, labor supply, and poverty in rural America” (reading from week 7)
