Weekly tasks or assignments (Individual or Group Projects) will be due by Monday and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.

The Weekly Individual Projects and Your Final Submission in Week Five: The Individual Projects for this course will build on each other—that is, each week leading to the final submission in Week 5, you will do 1 piece of the project that builds the complete assignment. The topic of your assignment is the sociology of sport. This is a large field within the discipline and one that most people experience in one way or another in their culture.

Week One Individual Project

This week, you should research the field of sociology of sport.

Part A: The first step toward your final assignment is to write a brief essay on sports and what sociology offers, as a way to understand it from a human experience.

• Begin by reading Understanding Sociology.
• Respond to the question: You can look at sports from several theoretical perspectives including conflict, functionalist, interactionist, and feminist. Which of these is most useful in looking at the sociology of sports? Why?

Part B: Find at least 2 outside sources on the sociology of sports, and present a brief discussion of this field of study. Summarize what you found in your research, using APA citations.

Part C: Finally, answer the following:

• Why do so many people participate in sports, either as fans, players, or as a business?
• What do sports answer in terms of human needs?
• How can sports be explained from a sociological point of view?