Blog #11

The concept I want to discuss is one that we only touched on briefly in class but which I found to be most interesting. We talked about Merton and strain theories and how people in society fall into different categories based on their goals and means. We all supposedly want to achieve some level of the American Dream, yet some people have greater barriers between getting there than others, so they may have to find alternative routes to their ultimate happiness. There are 5 different categories a person could fit into according to Merton. The first is conformist, where people go about their days in a conventional way, with the same goals and trying to achieve them in an honest way. A ritualist then would go through the honest motions and means, but really have no goal in place. I think of this as people who have stricter views on life who like to follow the rule, yet seems routine and simply going through the motions each day. Next, and innovative person would still have the same typical goals in place, but go about reaching those goals in ways that are not considered legitimate. For instance they could possibly be stealing money to save up for material goods rather than work an honest job and save like a conformist would do. There is then the retreatist group who has neither the conventional goals or means in mind. They've almost retreated for life and don't care much about what they do. They are possibly living a life through using drugs and giving little meaning to their days. Lastly the rebellion group would be outside the grid. They've decided to make their own set of goals and means and go about them in a completely different way. In my criminology class we talked about terrorists falling under these categories and going completely against our typical society.

I think it's interesting to think of where we could all fall within these categories. I think it's possible to say we've all drifted between them at one point or another until we decide where we truly want to be. It'd be ideal for us all to be in the conformist category having honest goals and legitimate means, but it's not necessarily realistic for everyone who deals with more troubles than us on a day to day basis. This is one reason why I want to get into social work and criminology to hopefully help get people out of innovative or retreatist lifestyles and hopefully become an inspiration to some people. 

Below is a picture of the concepts I talked about so you can see where people would fall according to their different goals and means. 

Sumblog #10 Clifford Geertz

In the last 20 minutes of class we touched on Clifford Geertz and his contribution to sociological theory. He played a major role in defining culture and explains that culture is a way that we develop symbols. Symbols can be attached to physical objects or simple gestures and then given meaning. Something as simple as a handshake can be a symbol, and we as a culture know that it's a greeting or sign of respect when meeting. This may mean something else in different cultures, but we still attach meaning to it to mean something more than what it looks like. This can also apply to physical things such as a wedding ring. In reality, a ring is just a piece of metal or some material worn around your finger. People wear rings for decoration and show, but a wedding ring specifically has a whole other meaning to it, since it's a sign of love, marriage, and committment to another person. We can compare sacred and profane in these circumstances. Sacred is something that has a lot of value attatched to it, such as a wedding ring, compared to something profane which is the opposite and has little value.

We also looked at the role of anthropology in discussing "thick descriptions." Thick descriptions is something that is rich with understanding and detail, and is reality being truly uncovered. If something were a thin description, it would be very superficial and not the complete story. The example given was of 2 boys making the winking motion. Taking a picture of these 2, we could simply say both boys were winking, and move on. Yet when we dig a little deeper with the thick description, we would find that one boy was actually twitching and was not giving meaning to his action, where as the other was winking as a purposeful gesture.

I liked this discussion the most about thick and thin descriptions, because it causes me to want to dig deeper into all aspects of life to find the true meaning. I feel with this thin approach that you're only getting half the story and you're missing out on the true details and wonders of what could actually be behind something. Thin is just looking at the surface and not uncovering what's underneath, and this is something that can cause issues by overgeneralizing others or assuming things in situations. We never really know everything in full unless we strive for thick descriptions, and I think people should attempt to make this a personal goal in everything that they do.

My high school was a part of the MTV show, "If you really knew me." Below is the link to the MTV website with full episodes of this show to watch. It took many groups from our school and showed the superficial labels on students and what was truly going on behind the scenes of individuals lives, in a way, getting the thick descriptions.

http://www.mtv.com/shows/if_you_really_knew_me/series.jhtml

Sumblog #9

We talked about several different concepts in class Tuesday that I want to discuss in this blog. It mainly had to do with out presentation of self. I learned that there's a difference between status and role; status bbeing a particular social position such as a professor, your age, or class, and a role is the expected behavior of a particular status. I thought of the different social positions I hold as a student, friend, sister, and daughter, just to name a few, and how much my roles vary within each position. The people you are around in each status expect different roles from you, and in my life at least, affects how I may act in each position. This leads me to mention the power of audience, and how their reactions can dictate how we act. It's called a self-label when you have an identity that you present to others in an attempt to manage their impression of him or her. You have the power to present yourself how you want to. In saying this, we are kind of relating life and the world to a stage and acting. This refers to the concept of dramaturgy, where we put on many different plays or dramas in our life. We can say that almost every interaction is a new stage, what we say is the script, what we wear are our costumes, and we have different props within each setting. Role distance plays a part in this, because there must be a relationship between the self label and role. It all needs to align to be happy or normal. One thing we talked about that can get in the way from a self label to a role is a stigma. A stigma is an inferiority of a person or group etc. It can be a physical defect, a character defect, or an "unacceptable group."

I thought this was an interesting way to look at the self and relationships with others. I've read about dramaturgy before and think in some ways it's accurate, but I also think looking at the world as a sort of stage is almost too simplistic. I don't see myself as always "acting" depending on who I'm around. I take different things into account but stay typically as true to myself as possible, just possibly with a few extra manners thrown in here and there depending on who I'm talking to. I still understand the concept though and how in some ways it makes sense. The concept of a stigma is a bit frustrating to me because it seems wrong to label people as inferior and can't understand who has the power to determine what those inferior qualities might be. It just shows the true power of your "audience" and the people around you and the impact they might have on others.

Below is a youtube clip describing dramaturgical theory and Goffmann which explains the concepts easily and completely. Further down is an image of what different labels and stigmas may be in our society that the audience can put on people. Negative ones such as this can strongly affect a person in negative ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iubtmGFJOV0

Sumblog #8 Mead

I liked our discussion this week about George Herbert Mead. We talked a lot about the self, along with the generalized other and the concept of the I and Me. When we talk about the generalized other, we're talking about the general attitude of a community. It's the sense that we are indeed concerned or at least aware of what others think, others being the groups we interact with and that are often around us. So this refers to the other people around us, whereas the self is our own identity. The self is our mental process and our thoughts, while we also note that the body is simply our physical characteristics.

The idea of the self leads us to think of ourselves in a couple of different ways that we call the I and the Me. We talked about the I being our true self and thoughts that are unfiltered. It's our initial thoughts and reactions to the generalized others. I is subjective; it's our own thoughts about ourselves or a situation we find one's self to be in. I liked the way we talked about it being our raw unfiltered instinct. I feel that's the best and most accurate way to describe the I part of us. When a filter is put in, though, we see the Me. I think thoughts get filtered through socialization and what we have learned to be norms in our culture. We may alter our raw intitial thoughts and even act upon them differently after we filter them because of different influences on us.

It was brought up in class whether or not we think it's a good thing that we have this cultural filter that affects the I and leads to the Me. Shouldn't we just be our raw unfiltered self in order to live a completely free and creative life? In a way I think this does sound ideal, but I also decided that our world needs this filter. I think things would be corrupt throught negative emotions that sometimes are our intitial instinct without us being able to help it. It would be a negative and hurtful lifestyle if you commented on things you don't like about someone, or to point out that a talent someone has really isn't as great as they think. I think it would result in hurt feelings a good amount of the time. What if people acted on every time they felt jealousy or a sense of revenge? I think our world would be a more violent place, and that the filter between the I and Me saves people from a lot of negativity.


The image below gives a visual of the concept of the I and Me. It shows how the Me may be more the performing part of what you actually do and how you behave based on different social roles and the public.