1. Sociologically, what is mental illness as an officially recognized category of deviance?
2. What perspective downplays or ignores the social foundations of deviance?
3. What is the most commonly identified mental illness in the U.S. today?
4. What is the perspective of “Pharmacracy”?
5. What is the policy importance of Erving Goffman’s book Asylums?
6. What is an example of a multifaceted theory about mental disorders?
7. What is the most common pathway through which mental illness leads to incarceration?
8. What proportion of the mentally ill pose threats of serious violence?
9. What is an example of “contextual sensitivity” in mental illness diagnoses?
10. What is “alienation in place” with regard to mental health careers?
11. What type of stress is most likely to lead to mental illness?
12. Describe “stigma management strategies” of the mentally ill.
13. Describe examples of “in-group stigma management.”
14. Sociologically, what are body-type ideals and the moral imputations attached to them?
15. When, where, and under what conditions did the cultural idealization of slim bodies emerge?
16. As women in the U.S. and Europe gained cultural and legal freedoms during the 20th century,
what body-type ideal did they increasingly confront?
17. What social categories of persons in the U.S. most intensely confront the ideal of the slim body?
18. What are the components of today’s “body panic”?
19. Describe whether gender and sexual identities are fixed or potentially varying over a person’s
life?
20. What is “transgender”?
21. Historically and cross culturally, how rare or prevalent have same-sex sexual activities been? To
what extent have they been associated with defined sexual identities?
22. When and how did the official classification of homosexuality as a mental illness end in the U.S.?
23. Describe examples of “interpretive licensing in defining sexuality” (specifically in this case,
engaging in some sort of same-sex “sexual” activity without self-identifying as LGBTQ).
24. In what context is the process of “coming out” socially meaningful?
25. What have been the key political features of “stigma management” among LGBTQ communities
in recent decades?
26. According to the textbook, what should the long-term goal from a “liberationist” LGBTQ
perspective be?
