Exercise 3 solution

There is no single right answer, so this is a model of the method using Chapter 3 as the example.

Summary (about 100 words): Chapter 3 describes culture as the shared stock of meanings in a society. The Culture page splits it into non-material culture (values, norms, language) and material culture (objects). Norms are shared standards of acceptable behaviour; folkways are enforced by gentle pressure and mores carry moral weight. Values are broad preferences and norms are specific rules that express them. Subcultures are groups within a larger culture with their own norms. Culture shock follows Oberg's four phases, with reverse culture shock on return. Cultural relativism asks us to understand a culture in its own context before judging it, and critics dispute how far to take that.

Confidence: medium.

Reasons, using the course's habits:
- Reading: the chapter says Culture was read to about 52 percent, Social norm to about 46 percent, and Value (ethics), Subculture and Cultural relativism each to 100,000 characters, so later sections of several pages were not seen.
- Marked items: the chapter flags several of its own examples and its ordering of the norm table with "(check", so those parts are the author's view, not a page's.
- Disagreement: the chapter reports no source conflicts, but it also says it did not read the original works, so everything is second-hand.

Open question: the chapter shows that whether to refuse all outside judgment is still debated, so one open question is where a sociologist should stop describing and begin evaluating.

A good answer in your own words does three things: it summarises in your own phrasing, it picks a confidence level, and it justifies that level by naming specific limits (pages partly read, marked items, second-hand sources), not by saying "I think so".