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Topics, Themes, and
the Research Question Papers
need a topic and a theme. Mills
explains the difference: A topic is a subject, like “the
careers of corporation executives” or “the increased power of military
officials”…. A theme is an idea, usually of some signal trend, some master
conception, or a key distinction, like rationality and reason, for example.
(Mills 1959, 16) To
use the assignment from Freedom and Social Control as an example, the topic
of the institutional analysis is “the effects of corporate bureaucratic
culture, operations, and strategies on personal freedom.” Within this topic, the student is
instructed to focus on the modern business firm, or corporation, which is the
paradigm (or representative example) of a corporate bureaucratic association.
The
theme for the Institutional Analysis assignment is already associated with
the topic, identified by the character of the course materials. Through assigned texts, The New Media
Monopoly (Ben Bagdikian) and The McDonaldization of Society (George Ritzer),
recommended texts, The Corporation (Joel Bakan) and Manufacturing Consent (Edward Herman
and Noam Chomsky), and documentaries by the same name, as well as several
lectures delivered in class, the student will see that a significant piece of
Freedom and Social Control explores the link between freedom, represented by
citizenship in a democratic republic and all the rights that attend to this
status, and rationality, expressed through the bureaucratic corporation
organization of modern life. That there is a contradiction between the two, if not
already obvious, is demonstrated over the course of the semester. For
upper division courses, students are given more latitude, as it is assumed
that they have developed further the craft of writing papers. Returning to our Race and Ethnic
Relations example, while the field is given, the topic is not. A good topic might be “apartheid and
apartheid-like relations in two countries” or “ethnic determinants of
transnational corporate organization on two continents” or “different modes
of racial control in various periods of United States history.” The student chooses (again, we
are just scratching the surface).
I think the theme is this: the problem of human relations in a world of
resources made scare by social hierarchy. When
thinking about the topic and synthesizing the literature, students need to
formulate a research question.
What is the problem the paper aims to address? What is the arguer trying to explain?
What does the author want the audience to understand? The assignments noted above suggest a
broad form of a research question, especially the question concerning
institutional analyses of corporate culture and operations. The student develops the specific
research question. Developing the
question will help focus attention and energies, as then researcher is
seeking information to answer the question. Only those materials relevant to answering the question
are sought. Searching for
answers gives research a purpose. |
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