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.

Blog #7 Anna Julia Cooper

Our class discussion about Anna Julia Cooper caught my attention this week. She talked about the struggles of power in society, and questions the inequality of it all. In Cooper's discussions, she never really thought the individual was to blame for inequality. To her, society was at fault, and the way the system all works. She didn't think it was fair to blame, for instance, a racist individual who was brought up in a racist society. They were born and brought up in such a way that it became their nature. They may not be an evil individual, they're just living in a society that raised them with certain values and norms.

It seems that throughout history, diversity has been handled in many ways. We learned about 4 different ways that our country itself has dealt with diversity. The first is pluralism, which is when the walls of minorities and majorities are broken down. All cultures are accepted, and all the different cultures still stay distinct. We talked about this as more of a "stew" where all the different cultures and values are put into one pot (or country) but the different parts can still be separated out. The second method of diversity we talked about is assimilation. This is where the minority groups are expected to conform to the majority group. This is more of a "melting pot" because you couldn't distinguish between all the cultures since they are all becoming one. Then there is segregation, which is the separation between groups. You can formally do this, such as separating bathrooms, or informally such as choosing to live in certain areas. Lastly, we learned about genocide. This is where people systematically eliminate an entire group.

All 4 of these methods have been used in our country to "deal with" diversity. I think the obvious way that is most accepting and effective is the method of pluralism. This is ideal because it allows different groups of people to stay true to themselves and have the option of keeping all the norms of their own culture. It makes our world interesting and diverse and doesn't hurt minority groups. I don't think anyone should have the power to tell people exactly how to live and conform to be a certain way, because who is to say which culture or lifestyle is the best way to live? We were not successful or peaceful during times of segregation, genocide, or assimilation, making pluralism the best way for our society to live.

Below is a short youtube clip of the Native Americans history of being treated unfairly, being one of the biggest genocides known to mankind, and example of our poor and unfair  handling of diversity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-TyHB8fUrQ


Below is what assimilation looks like. You take many different diverse cultures and melt them into one; American.

Blog #6 Jane Addams

I enjoyed the class about Jane Addams. I'm going into the social work field and I feel as though we talk about a lot of the same concepts in those classes as we did in theory with her work. I have always thought the idea of the Hull House was cool and how she was doing something to benefit those in need and get people back on their feet and learning new skills. The idea that she took in women and children to teach them to work independently is really cool and a huge step towards realizing the full potential of females, which at the time I think was greatly underestimated. The book addressed the labor inequalities for females and how women often get sewing jobs where they work the entire day hour after hour and get paid only the bare minimum to allow them to survive on the smallest scraps of food. I think it's clearly necessary during that time period for women to learn different skills and be able to fully support themselves.

The other part of class that struck me, and I'm sure many others, was the movie clip we watched. The entire concept of the bride kidnapping was such a shock to watch and also quite disturbing. It completely, in my opinion, went against Jane Addams views we were discussing in class, especially when it came to comparing the 4 points we talked about for social democracy. One point that really stood out was that no group should be considered superior, where there clearly were superior groups in this practice, where the men of the households would decide which women could just be snatched off the streets and forced into a stranger's home. Not only the men were more in power though, the women of the male also had a sort of power over the bride-to-be. They held the woman in the film captive and forced scarves on her and dragged her as she was crying until she finally gave in. This also violates the whole point of being respectful to others, and also the point of ensuring safety. Dragging a crying human being into a room doesn't come off as safe or respectful to me at all. It was a difficult thing to watch and also a hard concept to wrap my mind around that women had to just accept and move on with their lives even if they were unhappy with the path being chosen for them. It was sad to watch, and I think some of Addams views would be useful in changing that part of society. For instance I think it would benefit that entire country to be educated and aware of the way their lives could be without the fear of the bride kidnapping practice. Also sharing experiences and memories of how people felt would benefit to see those unhappy with their culture and that a change really is necessary. I'd like to see more films of cases like this where there is great inequality. I feel like it affects enough people who live their negatively, along with people such as myself who simply watch things like this being done and feel disturbed. Addams had a good start and idea with empowering all people and changing these sorts of situations, and I think it needs to be continued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw4GZeABlNI

Above I have the link to a 6 minute video capping up Jane Addams accomplishments, some of which I have mentioned above, with emphasis on the Hull House. And below is an image of Jane Addams herself.

Blog #5 Martineau

I thought the entire reading and class that we had about Harriet Martineau was very interesting. I like the more "feminist" views and I think it's cool that we can look more into the female perspectives because so much of that work has been lost throughout history. I really just like the basic ideas of Martineau's writing this week. I already find it extremely impressive that she overcame the struggle of being deaf and in addition conveyed so many truly important life messages. I love that the "law of social life" all in all is happiness. It was a vague description on what exactly happiness is to each and every person, which I think is almost impossible to figure out. I think there are some things that people can universally agree bring generic happiness such as physical health in terms of having food and shelter, and also freedom. I also liked the concept of applying sympathy when we look at different cultures. I think it's a really inspirational way to live to try to be understanding of other cultures without being biased by your own life and culture. We should embrace and be open to the diverse world that we live in, and also learn from one another to possibly adopt styles and cultures that may suit our lives better than what we know. I do think it's important to stay true to our own cultures and not ignore who we are, but we also need to be open minded. By practicing this open mindedness, different problems could be easily solved. We often think people are strange or that their way of doing things in wrong, simply because it's different from our own. Yet to others, some things we do in our own culture may seem extremely odd to people in other cultures. No one can really ultimately judge who's way is right or wrong, it's just clear that they are different, which is something we should embrace rather than be afraid of or judge. All of these concepts are things that I agree with that I think offer a more open and diverse way of life. It seems less judgmental to me to be open to other cultures and start celebrating our differences, and all work towards the ultimate goal of happiness. I learned that the term "anomaly" refers to a disruption from achieving goals. When thinking about these seemingly simple goals of happiness, many things can get in the way. For example, different obstacles we have come across are slavery, war, gender inequality, and social class issues. While we still have such big roadblocks in the way, it seems hard to reach certain goals such as diversity and happiness. If we can just break all of these barriers down, our world would continue to be a more accepting and peaceful place. 

Below I have a sort of hierarchy of happiness, which is what I believe is generally thought of around the world as happiness. As I said, physiological needs such as food and water is the base of happiness. Once you have that covered, I think people do search for safety, love, and esteem. Even though we are all different, these are the simple aspects of happiness that I believe all cultures can agree on and strive for. 

Sum Blog 4 Weber/Authority

Talking about Weber in the past classes brought up the different types of authority that he describes. These three types include traditional, rational, and charismatic authorities. Traditional authority is led by what it sounds like; tradition. It is something that doesn’t really change over time, and are rules that we have grown up with. This would be something along the lines of having certain traditions having to do with marriage or even religion. Second, rational authority has to do more with the law and legal actions. There are written rules that we all need to obey under this type of authority. Lastly, there is charismatic authority which is when there is a certain leader who inspires others, and is common with figures in society.

            Looking at all of these different types of authorities, I think that they all still play a role in society today. It seems like people eventually fall into one of the categories, even if it changes at some point. For instance if I apply it to my own life, I think I fall greatly into charismatic authority along with rational authority. I’ve always been inspired by a number of people in my life including past coaches, my guitar teacher, professors, and individuals that I volunteer with. Rational also plays a big role in my life because it is my go-to thought before my actions. If it’s something considered bad in society and has laws associated with it, I am most likely not to do it in order to avoid consequences. Traditional has played a very small role in my life. My outside family isn’t really in contact with mine, so the only sorts of traditions we have are small new ones started with my parents and sister. I do wish that it played a bigger role in my life, and I think it is important for everyone to have a little bit of each in theirs.

            I chose and posted the link below to a video of the classic Martin Luther King I Have A Dream Speech. He was such an influential person with great charisma that got people to truly believe and live in such ways that helped his cause. I think he’s a very charismatic leader that really changed people’s lives and had so many followers, black and white, that looked up to him and followed his lead. It’s important to have charismatic leaders like this in our lives. It gives us someone to look up to not in fear of legal actions or just following family lifestyles, but really gives us someone to make us want to do more or be better. This is probably my favorite kind of authority since it has played a pretty significant role in my life. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRIF4_WzU1w