Sociological Dinner Parties

This general lesson plan, created by Molly Scott and delivered in the form of a simple PowerPoint Presentation, requires students to imagine they’re organising and hosting a dinner party to which, in this particular instance, a range of sociologists of religion have been invited.

To this end you can either use the ready-made guest list provided (from old favourites like Durkheim and Marx to newer names like Woodhead and El Saadawi) or devise your own based on the sociologists that have been introduced and discussed with your students in relation to perspectives on the role of religion.

The Presentation is pretty self-explanatory and doesn’t demand much in the way of resources, although you can supply a few white paper plates for note-taking purposes if you want to add a little atmosphere to the party.

Although this particular example has been designed round different perspectives on the role of religion, once you’ve grasped the basics it shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange further dinner parties around any topic that involves the application of sociological perspectives…

Update

I don’t remember how I chanced upon this set of Google docs, created by Claire Wells, but the important thing is they take the Sociological Dinner Party idea outlined above and apply it to global development.

The resource is also intended to help students develop their essay-writing skills, with a particular focus on AO3 – analysis and evaluation.