Prestige Worldwide

In class this week, we talked about prestige and how our American society uses it rather than in different countries. You can earn it in respect or reward, go higher or lower in rank through occupations, and its determined by pay, education and abstract thought. Prestige is very prominent in the American culture. As we grow up, we learn that we must aspire to work hard if we want to live and enriched, rich life. Sometimes, people are born as heirs or born in the ghetto. With the diversity in class, people can achieve to be whatever they want to be to contribute in society. We learn to want to be a doctor or a lawyer because of what rank in society we are born into. Socialist and Communist countries don’t work because of this. We need someone to be the leader and someone to be poor. If everyone earned the same amount of money, no one would even try to work harder and push themselves to be better. Every society needs prestige to function. I’m talking prestige worldwide!

The Magic of Photoshop

Today in class, our teacher assigned us to look through some ads or articles from the Internet and magazines and point out some negative attacks on people, especially females. We see it all the time: weight loss diet ads, supermodels, hyper-sexualized images, and so on. We may not realize it at a first glance, but it is still there, silently torturing us. And yet, we fall for it, trying to compete with it or living up to it, the ideals, the visuals. It discriminates and kills. So as an assignment, we found one of these ads and wrote out a complaint letter. Our teacher gave us an option to send off the letter. One source we used was the website about-face.com, a site used to help females of all ages to see how the media distorts in ads to make the visuals extremely, in a way, unrealistic. Photoshop tends to make the unrealistic-ness appear to look realistic. Images, such as the one you see here, start off with a very normal looking person, posed in the “Vogue” way, with make-up and what not. With a little help from the magical Photoshop touch up kit, she now looks flawless: smaller waist and belly, even complexion, no stretch marks or cellulite is visible, thinner legs, and, of course, perfect hair with no fly-away’s. If magazines showed what she really looks like, then maybe women won’t have to go to drastic measure to compete with the images. Note: Not even the women in the magazines look like those images in real life. Food for thought!

Evolution of the Looking-Glass Self

Earlier this week we learned a bit about the social construction of ‘self’. One theorist was Charles Horton Cooley and his “looking-glass self” theory. It states that we view the self we think we see in the behaviors of others toward us. This means we think what we think how they think of you”. People worry and think of how others think of you. We constantly manage our image to appear friendly, socially desired, competent and skilled, principled, attractive, not conceited, etc. The most modern way we manage our images is through the Internet. We continuously update our Facebook statuses and profile pictures, we check if we posted anything considered “bad” or risqué, trying not to give wrong impressions, for example, seeming as if you’re online all the time to show you have no life, etc. This is known as the online looking-glass. We are shaped by expectations and influences of a strict society. How far will this go and to what extremes? What will the outcomes be? Food for thought!

Wild Child

This week, we learned about feral children. These children are raised in the wild, which prevents society telling them how to act. We all have heard of stories about children all over the world in different cultures raised by wolves. But, I never really thought about it. Would children learn to speak? Get to know humanity? Understand and mimic our ways of living? We watched a movie of popular cases regarding feral children.
One is the case of Oxana Malaya, a girl from Ukraine who spent eight years of her life living in a kennel, practically raised by neighborhood dogs since her alcoholic parents couldn’t take care of her. She learned many dog-like habits and learning language was difficult for her. What’s very surprising is that she was born in 1983. It’s incredible to believe that occurrences such as this happen today.
Another interesting case is that of Genie, who spent thirteen years trapped and isolated and strapped to a potty chair in her Californian home. She never learned language or how to socialize. Genie’s mother ran away from the house in 1970 after a physical argument, taking Genie with her. Charges for child abuse were on both parents. Still alive and deprived from the childhood she deserved, Genie still has questions and much to learn about the world
Questions we must ask ourselves are: What can we do to prevent this? How many more are out there? How can we help them? How do they survive? How do they come to understand about society?
Food for thought!

Headlines' Facts With Hidden Third Variables

Last week, our class was given a packet with headlines of different articles. Data was written underneath each headline to support or abandon it. If the data didn’t support the headline, it was due to a “third variable” to basically throw off a reader.

Example) Headline: “Diet of fish ‘can prevent’ teen violence.” The facts said:

Participants were a group of 3-year-olds given an ‘enriched diet, exercise, and cognitive stimulation,’ assuming that the enriched diet included fish. They were compared to a control group who did not go through this same program. By age 23 they were 64% less likely than a control group of children not on the program to have criminal records. The media article doesn’t include what other kids ate or did.

The data, here, does not support the headline because the data doesn’t specifically say how fish at all aids to the prevention of teen violence. The data only says that one group of toddlers were given enriched diet assuming fish was in the diet. Along with the diet was exercise, which is what young, growing bodies need to get energy, and cognitive stimulation, which is the awareness and understanding of surroundings by utilization of planned stimuli. Wouldn’t cognitive stimulation have a larger impact on whether kids grow to be violent or not rather than an enriched diet that may (or may not) include fish?

Food for thought!

Men Vs Women

Last week, we read a short article about the differences between men and women. I found it particularly interesting and quite true for what I found out:
- Women apologize so much not to put herself down, as most men would think, but to make it so that they were still are at the same “rank” as the other person, on equal footing, even if it is the other person that may have done something wrong. Same goes for “thank you’s”; women do it to stay level with people, even though it may really be unnecessary.
- Women’s brains can multitask; men’s brain’s can only work one thing at a time without losing focus.
- Women give soft criticism; men are straight, to the point.
- Women see the “bigger picture”; men focus narrowly on a specific task.
- Women link all information of various topics (relationships, stimulus, emotions, etc.) in their brains; men separate the various topics in theirs.
- Men’s dominant sense is sight; women have more finely tuned senses then men do.
Obviously with this research along with much more out in the universe, women and men are different, even if we are a part of the same species.

The WoW Influence

We all have heard of World of Warcraft. Some call it the worst game ever created. Others call it a social environment where people gather and work together on quests. In a sense, it seems almost like a culture all on its own. A subculture is a group within a culture with separate norms and values. The “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” extends all over theworld with new gamers as fantasty players, doing whatever they want to do, in whatever appearance (virtually) they want to be in. We have seen games like this like Sims and Second Life, where people get together online. Some business companies use games like this to have business meetings without stepping one foot out of the comfort of their own home and into their company buildings. Is this way of “life” the new social norm of the 21st century? Will people wind up not ever going outside in the near future and step into the Internet-based games to talk to people?

Time's Society Effect

Technology Takeover

Earlier this week, our Soc class watched a documentary about how technology, like cell phones, computers, and the Internet has become a monster in the modern culture. Everyone everywhere must have a Facebook, E-mail account, the latest iPod, the latest cell phone, the most high-tech computers and cameras. Texts fly through the radio waves. People as young as three to as old as ninety stare constantly, without blinking, at blue glowing screens. What has this modern culture come to? No one calls each other on land phones anymore. No one works in office buildings anymore; they can work efficiently, if not more, from the comfort of their own homes. We start to rely on our computers to hold so much information that if we somehow lost any of the data we have, we cannot function. This madness is a wave of laziness, poor brain usage, and possibly a new norm in the modern public environment. Some modern technology is, however, very competent for day to day living, such as the wheel, electricity, antibiotics, indoor plumbing, and the printing press. We have needed these things and they make our lives easier! We don’t need the video color iPod or the fastest 3G network; they break all the time anyway! And our culture is practically alien to this way of life, this living with technology! If this is not a technological takeover, then what is it?

Lost Boys Found

We watched a movie in class at the end of last week about the Lost Boys of Sudan. I knew quite a bit about them for my church, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Barrington, has a ongoing twelve-year covenant relationship with the Diocese of Renk in Sudan. The Second Sudanese civil war left tens of thousands of boys orphaned and displaced, fighting to take refuge elsewhere or to not give up hope on their beloved country. Our goal is to rebuild the social structure and to develop Christian leadership and to support and strengthen in the now peaceful, southern Sudan. The video we saw in class was to show the stories of some of the Lost Boys who fled to the United States to adapt to our culture, find a home, find a job, make new friends, get an education, and create a prosperous life. Though the challenges (such as learning to keep receipts, needing to get a license before driving a car, etc.) they face are familiar to us, the boys unknowingly trudged through and learned how to become an American. They prefer living in the United States rather than Sudan because there are more opportunities to succeed for a better future.

Cultures Apart From Our Culture

Last week, we started looking into different cultures. We started with a tiny quiz on the American culture, seeing if we knew what movies are appropriate to let a small child to watch, what is a modern teenage pastime, greetings for different kinds of people (for example, you can high five a friend opposed to shaking hands with your boyfriend or girlfriend’s parents), and so on. I found it particularly interesting to find that cultures today that exist in other parts of the world may have different rituals apart from the United States and many European countries. For instance, the Asu tribe, in India, take an extreme amount of care and worship of the Rac, similar to the bull. Every family in the tribe must own at least one. The wealthier members of the tribe own two or more, showing of their social rank as well. Everyone must keep the Racs in tip top health because the breed itself tends not to live over seven or so years. These animals are used in puberty rituals for teenagers becoming adults. They also have special paths specifically for Rac use; only the herds may go on them for enjoyment. In comparison to the modern world culture, the Asu mainly worship the Rac, making it the center of life, where modern cultures don’t exactly worship animals or such. It’s fascinating to see how cultures like this live and survive in today’s world.

Labels: Searching For a Sense of Self

We watched a late ninety’s show called Freaks and Geeks earlier this week. Not only was it entertaining, but we needed to relate it to this week’s topic of sociological perspectives. While watching this show, I found that the characters are similar, yet exaggerated characteristics of high school students in the United States. For example, we have the wanderer who doesn’t know who to be friends with, but she knows what’s right wherever she goes, whether it’s standing up to a bully or telling someone off for being a jerk. Another example is the one who feels like he or she is in control of everyone else; He/she may not be in control at home (possibly having family issues), but he/she picks on others for their own gain, even though it really may be hurting them more deep down. For examples that give the show its name are the freaks, the people with unusual behaviors and appearances, and the geeks, the “uncool” nerds. Because the characteristics of the characters in this show are a little bit romanticized compared to what we have in high school today (the show sets in 1980), the characteristics weren’t far from reality. Most teenagers still are wandering from group to group to find a sense of self and a place to express that sense of self. We all feel like freaks and call each other a geek at times when we get real passionate about something, like art or music or math, but these terms aren’t exactly used nowadays. Still, we seem to function as a school society all the same with or without the labels.

Objects in class

During the first week of Sociology, we were given a task to complete a worksheet to analyze a certain object of our choice. We needed to describe the object, discuss how it relates to social life, how is it used globally, does it affect life on earth significantly, how has the object come about, and how has the object changed over time, as well as how will it be like in the future. We basically needed to find out how it relates to us and its impact to society. My group chose to analyze a jester-like, snow plow hat. We concluded that it came into existence a long, long time ago when people needed warmth on their heads during winter. It is also derived from the renaissance style of the court jester’s headwear; who knows, maybe the jester-like style will come back in fashion. It could be jester-like for the sole purpose of the wearer getting people to laugh! It seems highly unlikely for anyone to be offended at seeing such a hat. Like in the picture above, the dog doesn't seem to be at all offended or annoyed with the hat. Then again, the hat is being worn by a dog (rather than a human, but humans love to dress up animals for some reason...) and the hat could be photoshopped on a picture of a dog, but sociologically, it works!