Week 14- Inside Toyland

Inequality in the workplace

"Inside Toyland" discusses the differences of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in two different types of toystores. Diamond Toys is for more affluent classes, with mostly white women working. In the Toy Wearhouse, there were more African-American workers, but they were only in the back. Men were the managers.

In my workplace, I don't see too much inequality, as I am the only worker. I babysit for a middle-class family and can still see elements of inequality. Their mom talks about who they prefer to have babysit, but usually in reference to age of the young adult babysitting. I've read about social inequality in regard to Nannies in the LA region. Affluent families tended to hire Hispanic women at low wages to work and clean for them. They were not treated well, and had little respect. In my job, the family treats me well, respects me, and is very flexible. As I take the girls places, I see how their preferences of middle class products play out. They don't like McDonalds. They also like to be a part of decisions, thus reflecting the middle-class child rearing techiniques of concerted cultivation discussed by Lareau in "Unequal Childhoods."

Week 13: Race & Ethnicity, Social Class and Education

Race & Ethnicity: C&S: Duran 297-310, BB:  Perry
Social Class and Education: BB: Julie Bettie, BB: Aries and Seidier

Race and Class, like Gender, are both omnipresent identities. In school, teachers respond to them. Perry talks about the culture of whiteness and how it is relayed in Valley Grove High School and Clavey High School.

In my Self and Society class, we read Lareau's book, Unequal Childhoods, which discusses two different types of child-rearing, linked to class and race. Middle-class (typically white) families used concerted cultivation to raise their kids. This type of child rearing allowed the kids a say in family affairs. Institutions (like school) tend to favor this type. These kids have a sense of entitlement and know how to manipulate these institutions, but are less independent. Lower-class families employ methods that teach kids how to be more independent and respectful of authority.

Urban Legends- Candyman

Urban legends are a reflection of fears in society. In the movie, Candyman, a graduate student is doing a study on the urban legend of Candyman- a serial killer, explained here:

In the beginning of the movie, Helen walks into a lecture hall at the University of Chicago, during which the professor is talking about urban legends and the sociological concepts associated with them. Helen doesn’t believe in the legend of Candyman and is studying him to solve the crime and to further develop the theories out there about urban legends. Obviously, Helen doesn’t believe in Candyman, but the people she interviews do and the consequences of the serial killer and its legend are real. The people respond to the legend and the fear associated with it causes people to act differently. As Helen gets more involved with the legend and the people, the more personal it gets and she begins fearing Candyman herself. Once she fears Candyman, there are more consequences—and deaths. According to Joel Best and Gerald T Horiuchi, “Urban legends, like collective behavior and social problems construction, are responses to social strain, shaped by the perception of the threat and social organization.” The urban legend of Candyman is a response to the threat of the serial killer and deaths that occurred mostly in the projects in the Chicago area in the movie. That, and the movie is a scary movie which portrays the urban legend as real, potentially perpetuating society’s fears and urban legends.

Institutional Selves

Institutional selves- Psych episode

In this episode of “Psych”, Shawn (the psychic cop) goes undercover into a mental hospital as a patient in order to try to prove that another patient should not be ‘not guilty’ of murder by reason of insanity. As we discussed in class, it is difficult for a patient who has been committed into a mental institution (a Total Institution) to create their own identity. Rather, every action and behavior of the patient is used to support the “sick” identity placed on the patient by doctors and nurses. In Shawn’s case, even though he is not actually a patient, few people actually know this. His behavior is seen as outside of the norm and supports his (fake) diagnosis. At one point he is even put into isolation and strapped down because the nurses believe he is sick. Because he is in the institution, it is hard for him to keep his identity as sane and normal. When a murder happens on-site, Shawn tells the nurses that he is a cop, but because they believe he is insane, they believe this behavior is just part of him being sick and don’t believe Shawn, even though he is telling the truth. Similarly, it is even harder for Shawn to prove that the other patient is sane and faking sick because he has already been committed into the institution and given the identity of being insane. At the end of the episode, Shawn requires someone else to vouch for him and to explain that he really is a cop and is not insane.

Week 12: Gender, Race

C&S: Thorne 343-350, Tibbals 384-395; C&S: Weitz 351-365; C&S: Duran 297-310 BB:  Perry

Race and Gender are socially constructed and can contribute to the roles and identities of people. Both seem to be rooted biologically, but there is a lot more to both of them than genes and DNA.  The categories of Male, Female, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, etc.  are constructed. In some other cultures, seven different genders are recognized instead of just the two we tend to recognize in the United States. Historically, who is considered Black has been constructed as well; there has been the rule that “one-drop” of African American blood can cause a person to be considered Black instead of White (or a different race). Why is President Barak Obama considered Black when he is just as much White as he is Black?

Through interaction and personal displays, we reproduce and challenge societal norms of gender. Kids on the playground engage in borderwork (as discussed by Thorne) to define who they are and their differences based on whether they are boys or girls. They interact and establish those differences, thereby recreating gender stereotypes. When interacting with one another, their group identities (boys or girls) seem to take precedence over their own identities as individuals with particular names.

 Women in the workplace also do things to resist and establish gender norms. They present themselves in certain ways, embracing what is feminine as they style their hair and dress themselves even as they try to resist gender expectations. Tibbals discusses how waitresses and servers wear trendy belts and modify their uniforms and take on traditional feminine behavior to resist degendered norms placed on them by their employers. Women also use their hair to show power and position in public. Weitz argues that they use it to resist the idea that they are subordinate, but that they are also limited in their displays and resistance because they use traditionally feminine styles.

            The idea that hair and bodily displays have meanings and reflect personal identities and status is reflected in pop culture. I found this online quiz (one of many) that tells what your hair says about you and what your ideal hairstyle is. It is interesting as it shows both power and limits, as Weitz describes in her article. The quiz can be found at http://www.allthetests.com/quiz06/dasquiztd.php3?testid=1058749295.

Week 11: Halloween/Urban Legends, Institutional Selves, Prejudice/Discrimination

BB: Best & Horiuchi; C&S: Goffman 399-407 BB: Fox; BB: Blumer

               Society works to construct the identity of others and others’ selves. In the case of Halloween and urban legends, one story needs only to be taken slightly out of context or exaggerated for people to imagine and create it. Best and Horiuchi discuss the “Halloween sadist” who supposedly poisons kids’ candy, puts razor blades in it, and commits other crimes on Halloween. He strikes fear into people. Though there are some short reports on things like that happening during Halloween, for the most part they were few and specifically directed crimes intended for specific individuals—not to cause havoc among many families and threaten all children. This social problem is socially constructed through word-of-mouth spreading of the stories, through the media, and through responses of other individuals such as politicians. Urban legends tend to reflect wider beliefs in society and have a purpose. The fear of the Halloween sadist reflects old fears of ghosts during Halloween and reinforces the fear of strangers in today’s modern society where we don’t know our neighbor as well.

               We discussed in class how our world is increasingly privatized as we stay indoors more often and look online more for our social interaction. We fear strangers. We don’t know our neighbors. The website Nextdoor, as discussed in the article “Nextdoor launches to bring your real neighborhood online” (http://gigaom.com/2011/10/26/nextdoor-social-network/), reflects this. It allows people to get to know their neighbors, who they can borrow a cup of sugar from, and figure out what to do in an emergency all without ever really meeting or talking face-to-face with the person across the street or next door.

Week 10: Goffman, Electronic Identities

C&S: Gergen 182-188, Waskul 200-209; C&S: Wolkomir & Powers 219-232

              

               Online we use many of Goffman’s theorized techniques to give off a certain impression of who we are. Whether it’s on a social dating site like OK Cupid or a social networking site, we use certain words and specific pictures to manage our identity online. We can construct many ‘selves’ online, but in order for them to be successful, they must align with prior knowledge that others have of us (for those that know us from elsewhere too). There have been several occasions where my friends have made up new people online on Facebook and have requested to be my friend. They retrieve a picture from elsewhere, make up a name, and make up information about this ‘person,’ including likes and dislikes. Many people fell for this scam and believed it was a new girl at the school, when in reality it was a guy who made a second Facebook profile just to mess with people. Another friend of mine temporarily switched his online identity by changing his name, photo, and information to match up with a Muppets character. Everyone knew it wasn’t actually a Muppet that we were friends with, but he did a good enough job covering up his own information and giving off the Muppet’s identity that it took a really long time for others to figure it out.

I, too, have done things to alter my cyberself and self-presentation. My friend and I once traded profile pictures and changed our names to match that of the other person. For twelve hours or so, I was no longer myself online and instead I was my friend. It was interesting to see how our other friends responded to this—they actually believed I was my friend. They would tag us in photos (as the other person), messaged us thinking we were who we said we were, and continued to respond and interact with us in ways that only helped to construct who we were online as the other person.

This website called My Fake Wall (http://myfakewall.com/) allows you to create fake profiles and make up a person. It uses pictures and names to construct a different online identity or person.

Week 9: Symbolic Interaction, Identity, Goffman

C&S: Cooley 151-155, Mead 156-160; C&S:  Stretesky & Pogrebin 173-181, Adler & Adler 210-218; C&S: Goffman 191-199

Who are you? Who am I? These are things that everyone considers and tries to figure out as they grow up and go through life. But Mead, Cooley, and Goffman developed several theories on how we figure that out. Mead talks about the generalized other and how, through stages of interaction, we learn who we are in comparison to others. According to Cooley, our sense of self and identity is developed through interacting with others and judging how they see us and applying and taking on that self that we imagine others see us as- this is called the looking glass self. We judge how others see us by responding to their reactions of us to help form who we think we are. Goffman theorizes that the self is created strictly though specific interactions and performing different selves. We try to display a certain self and give off a specific identity through identity management in this dramaturgical theory. In identity theft scams, such as the one found on http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/133770963.html, people try to give off the impression that they are a specific person in order for their own gain. The person in this article behaved like the lady’s granddaughter and did what she could to essentially be her over the phone in order to get money from the grandmother. This front-stage interaction wasn’t entirely successful because the grandmother was suspicious and refused to send money, but the grandmother did nearly believe it was her granddaughter on the phone because they sounded very similar.

Week 8: Religion and Social Construction

I am Christian and attend church services once or twice a week, every week. My experiences are not quite like those of The Church of Jesus with Signs Following. There is more structure to my services and less randomness. They also coincide more with social norms—there is no snake handling and people don’t speak up or out in the same ways. People do get up and dance, raise their hands, sit and pray, and do what they want during the time periods when music is being played. People pray with each other and for one another, and at different points in time I have felt different things. When listening to songs, praying, listening to the sermon, or being prayed for, I have had overwhelming feelings of joy, sadness, excitement, or sudden understanding. I can also relate to the feelings described in the book, particularly when Covington describes the feelings in the room when Aline was praying and praising, repeating “Akiii” (78). When listening to others pray or praying myself, I have had those feelings of “great pain, loss,” desperation, “A panting after something she could not quite reach. And then it would be a coming to rest in some exquisite space” and of being “transfixed.”

Emile Durkheim discusses religion and its importance in society. My church and campus ministry have given me a place and a sense of belonging. I love communing and talking with people who believe the same things I do and growing and learning from them; Durkheim calls this collective consciousness. The cross could be considered our totem or sacred image. The feelings I described in my experience would be described as effervescence to Durkheim. Durkheim would associate those ‘heightened feelings’ as coming from being in the group.

Week 7: Deviance, Mass/Collective behavior, Religion and Rational Choice

BB: Chambliss; C&S: Lifton 437-445; BB: Spickard

The world is socially constructed and ‘if people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (The Saints and the Roughnecks). Lifton discusses Nazi Doctors at Auschwitz and the processes and socialization they underwent in order to function in Nazi extermination camps, which were socially constructed realities. Chambliss compares two youth gangs and their actions and how they were perceived by the community to show that there were consequences to perceiving the Roughnecks as more deviant than the Saints.

Nazi Germany was a reality shaped by Hitler and those in authority, blaming Jews and other unaccepted groups for the economic and social distress of the time. This ‘reality’ was socially constructed. It wasn’t the Jews’ fault, but reasons were supplied to go with the blame and in despair and desperation, the community was willing to accept the explanation and go along with the solution: wipe them out. As a result, the situation was defined as real and had real consequences. The doctors who participated in the extermination and killing of people were socialized into this society. They were socialized into believing that this was the solution to the overall problem, and even though it was bad, it was better than letting the situation prevail. They did what Lifton calls ‘doubling’ in that they developed two selves in order to cope with the horrible job that they had. There was the self that did the exterminating and the kind self that did nice things to those who were at the camp and were alive. They also justified their jobs as necessary and defined themselves as generally good people who just had dirty jobs.

Chambliss’ two groups, the Roughnecks and the Saints did a similar amount of delinquent acts, but because the public perceived them as different, the consequences for the Roughnecks and Saints were different. The Saints actually did more, but the public saw them as overall good boys who were involved in school and just having a little fun. They were rarely pulled over by policemen and often let off. Teachers gave them good grades because they were perceived as good students. For the Roughnecks, they were seen and treated just the opposite. They often got into trouble with the police and had a lower grade point average. The public thought they were bigger trouble makers because they didn’t dress as well and got into more fights, though they actually didn’t miss class as much as the Saints or take part in as many delinquent acts. There were real consequences to the way the public thought reality was.

In my life, there are real consequences to the way I perceive others and to the way I perceive myself. If I see myself as a bad person, useless, inadequate, and incapable of doing what I need to do, I usually am less productive on those days and have a sour mood. That mood and attitude can then cause me to be less polite and sometimes mean to others, thus causing me to be the bad, lazy, unproductive person that I perceive myself as. However, I am more productive when I feel like I am capable of accomplishing things. Similarly, when others believe I am a good and responsible person, their encouragement helps me to get things done and to do them well. They also then trust me with more things to do, and the more I have to do the more I get done, and thus the more productive and responsible I appear.

Week 6: Social Group Dynamics, Influence, Obedience, Conformity, Influence and the Media

C&S: Altheide 422-436, BB: Revisiting The Stanford Prison Experiment – Zimbardo, Behavioral Study of Obedience – Milgram

In both The Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience, people committed heinous acts or potentially heinous acts. They almost unquestioningly conformed to what was asked and expected of them, despite the consequences that may ensue. They were obedient to what was asked of them by authority figures. These experiments shocked the world. With proper instruction from a person who appears to be in a position of authority, people were willing to severely harm or kill others. There is the diffusion of responsibility—if something goes wrong, the authority figure may be held responsible. Also, there is the trust in the authority figure that he knows what is going on and it can be assumed that his judgment is more accurate and knowledgeable.

These experiments cause us to stop and think and remind us that we must think critically and independently. Though no physical harm was inflicted upon the subjects of Milgram’s experiment, there was severe emotional distress and the potential to kill people (if the shocks really were administered to someone). It serves as a warning as to how we may be influenced by authority and obedience. “Consuming Terrorism” discusses how politicians use fear and the media to influence people. How often do we take information for granted and leave it unquestioned? I know I have used the excuses before that “I am just going off of what I heard” or “I heard it on the news, so it must be correct” or “I’m just doing as I was instructed.” These excuses are meant to take any potential blame away from myself. Instead of responding this way, however, it would be more productive for me to critically think before acting so that I may properly know what I am doing and can take responsibility for it.

Both of these are reflected in the incidents of torture that occurred at the prison in Guantanamo Bay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO-eFPE-vw8

Week 5: Emotion and the Body, EXAM 1

BB: Stearns; C&S: Waskul, Vannini, and Wiesen 95-108, Orend & Gagne 137-147

               The body is a very private and personal thing, yet we learn about it and come to understand it in public forums. Like the women in the article by Waskul, Vannini, and Wiesen, we all learn to make sense of our bodies through different types of social institutions. Biology class, health class, and peer discussions make school a place where people learn to make sense of exactly what each part of the body is. Family is another social institution where the body is discussed and taught. However, these understandings become limited by what is socially acceptable and what is appropriate speech. Many women are taught only vaguely about parts that are not seen as critical to reproduction. Thus, understanding becomes very limited and certain taboos and stigmas prevail. Other people have an effect on how we experience our bodies and conceptualize them. Not only in sex discussions, but also of things such as tattoos. Other people’s perceptions become imposed on these personal things whether we like it or not.

               My experience with institutions and discussion of the parts of the body was very similar to many of the women’s experiences. It was limited to what was ‘essential’ for reproduction. Without getting too personal, it left me quite ignorant for quite some time. Without proper language or knowledge to discuss things, society almost pretends that they don’t exist, and for some women, they might as well not exist because they don’t know about it. Here is an example of how even private matters are socially constructed. Society gives us the proper language to conceptualize and make things real or seem real. Many women didn’t know about their clitoris (or enough about it, including what it is called), and to some degree, it might as well not have existed for them. They didn’t know, and so they didn’t do much about it. Many of the testimonies showed that simply after learning it had a name, masturbation increased. The fact that there is a word for something legitimizes it and makes it more acceptable and ‘real.’ We interact with symbols, like language, to make sense of our world.

               Tattoos are also personal and have personal meanings. However, when others see them, they perceive their meaning based on their own experiences and understanding and can then recreate the meaning behind the tattoo and impress their own meanings on the person who has it. These meanings are socially constructed. While a cross has religious affiliations, tattoos have often been seen as rebellious and defiant of the beliefs associated with that same religion. Thus, how is one to make sense of a tattoo of a cross? The person who gets it may get it to show their faith or religion, but another person may perceive it as an act of rebellion against that religion. Even personal matters are socially constructed.

Week 4: Memory, Intelligence, and Emotion

BB:  Wagner-Pacifici & Schwartz; C&S: Hochschild 51-56, Arluke 326-339

Required entry: Anniversary of 9/11.  Please follow these general guidelines, but tell a story!

-Read “Commemorating America’s Involvement in Vietnam” by Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz.
-How do you remember September 11th, 2001?
-Use the reading to explain how our memory of 9/11 is currently being constructed by media, politicians, etc.

                     

On September 11, 2001, I woke up expecting it to be like any other school day. However, instead of getting up and getting dressed and brushing my teeth as I would for a typical day in the fourth grade, my mom had me come straight downstairs. All I can clearly remember is standing in my living room in front of the TV while Mom was in the kitchen, and watching the planes fly into the twin towers repeatedly. There was red ticker tape running across the top of the news station we had on, and there was smoke coming from the towers. There was a sense of shock, unbelief, and sorrow. At some point (I don’t know when), my mom explained to me that not just a couple years before, we had stood at the top of those towers. She explained it was in New York. She also explained that the towers were no longer standing because those planes crashed into them. She said that there had been another plane headed for the Pentagon that crashed, but didn’t make it all the way to Washington D.C.

I was young and confused and slightly disconnected from all of it. Sadness registered within me, and so did worry for our personal safety and for the safety of the country, but otherwise it didn’t affect me much. I didn’t personally know anyone who worked or lived in New York or Washington D.C. I don’t remember how the rest of the day went. I don’t remember being at school, or anything else about that day. At some point following that morning, my family had a conversation that Colorado (where we lived) wouldn’t be a target for an attack, so there was no need to worry about that. That was the extent of my personal memory and connection to what actually happened on 9/11.

However, as the last ten years have passed in remembrance of 9/11, there have been ideas and impressions associated with what happened on that tragic day. As more pictures were released each year by the media, the collective memory has been shaped differently from that of how I personally remember that day. There is a sense of national pride, unity, and coming together in a time of tragedy. There is a sense of honor and respect for the emergency personnel who responded. Now, it’s these people that I think of and picture when I think of 9/11. There are also things about 9/11 that we would rather not remember—such as how it caused a lot of tension, suspicion, and racial profiling in regards to Middle-Eastern Americans. This is something that the media didn’t depict and that memorial services on Sunday didn’t talk about. Similarly, the article read for class talks about how the Vietnam Memorial was constructed in honor of those who lost their lives, not so much about how our government and how we as a country acted in regards to the Vietnam War. We (meaning the media, politicians, and U.S. citizens) don’t talk about and remember the negative responses in both the Vietnam War and September 11^th, 2001. What we do remember and talk about are those who fought and lost their lives. We remember and choose to remember these events in ways that reflect our love for our country.

Week 3: Perception and Cognition

C&S: Zerubavel 23-29, Waskul & Vannini 41-50; C&S: Karp 70-77

We are constantly taking in information, perceiving it, interpreting it, and storing it. In a previous sociology class, I learned about how we categorize information and store it in order to better access it and interpret and evaluate new information. This is similar to the mental processes that Zerubavel discusses. As I walk around campus, I see different things: people, friends, plants, buildings, places, school supplies, etc. If it weren’t for classification and typification and creating islands of meaning, how I would interpret what I see as very different: red book, blue flower with 5 petals, large tree, small tree, different tree, tall person, Nicole, Julie, pile of organized bricks put together in a shape to create areas for learning sociology. It would make taking in senses and recounting my day and figuring out what is important very difficult.

Having categories is good for determining what is important in a situation. In the grocery store, if you are looking for Fritos, you would look for similar things, (such as other chips) to help locate them. In this case, finding dairy products is unimportant and requires no attention. Without the categorizing, someone might end up searching though the dairy products and every other aisle until they find Fritos wherever they happen to be. If I’m headed to class, categorizing what I see is helpful when I recognize someone I know; if they are in my sorority I know what to say to them, what to talk to them about. It is also helpful when I see different types of people, so I can easily figure out how to respond to them. For example, if I see someone who looks like a professor, then I know to be more respectful and professional. This is one reason for stereotypes: people are mentally categorized so that we can generally figure out how to act towards them, as with the teacher instead of a fellow student. That is, stereotypes aren’t always correct, just as not all types of cheese are located in the dairy section. Categorizing is just helpful, not always right. When we start to associate negative meanings and feelings with stereotypes is when we begin to have problems.

We learn to associate meanings with the different senses and categories. We first learn what is categorized as trash: old food, uneaten scraps, used napkins, food wrappers, torn paper, banana peels, and broken items. This is important when we are looking to clean up our rooms or after lunch because we have lumped and split items to know what should be thrown away. We have learned what trash looks like, and what it smells like! It takes time and habit forming to know that when we smell a certain smell, we must take the trash out. Some (like Groucho on Sesame Street or dogs) might like the smell of trash, but most people have been socialized and taught that trash has a bad smell and have attributed meaning to it. As kids, we don’t automatically react to the smell of trash by going over to the trash can holding our breath and carrying it elsewhere. It is through social experience that we learn that that is what we should do, that trash has a bad smell (we give the smell value) and to associate that smell with something. Garbage seems bad to a lot of people, but to some (like animals) it seems good. Or for some people, it may be the source of their next meal if they don’t have the means to get it elsewhere. The example given in class is that roses have a certain smell and we have been taught to associate that smell with romance, love, Valentine’s Day, and nice gestures, and that it is good. Not everyone likes roses, but because we associate it with something and categorize it with other things (such as love, hearts, and Valentine’s Day) it is thought of as good. One of my favorite smells is Old Spice because it reminds me of my brother. If it weren’t for that association, I wouldn’t care about it. The same thing goes for a lot of colognes and perfumes. There are many that I don’t like, but that, because certain people use them, they smell good to me. I don’t like the perfume my aunt uses, but when my aunt sends a birthday card or something and I can smell her perfume on it, it is nice. Same thing goes for my grandma—she once gave me a Bible, and though it is big and heavy, it is my favorite because it smells like her.

Week 2: Nature and the Social and Socialization

C&S: Berger and Luckmann 7-14; C&S: Sandstrom 15-22, BB: Handel, Cahill and Elkin; C&S: Fields 126-136, BB: Becker #2

I have always wondered how what I see, think, do, and say is interpreted by others. I also wonder if others know what I mean when I say something. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann give some insight to these questions as they discuss how reality is constructed by individuals and by society. It is by socialization that we all learn what different things mean and what our shared reality is. People are “inducted” into society though socialization. It is though language and conversation that people share experiences and define and construct reality.

If this theory is applied, then that would mean that, without language, no one else would be able to understand what I mean. In my life, I see this in action as I socialize with different types of people and different groups. Because I spend more time with my sorority sisters, there are different words, phrases, and symbols I have picked up and come to understand. However, when I use them around people who are not in my sorority, they don’t know what I mean. This is also an example of the symbolic insteractionist perspective as discussed by Sandstrom, in that the meanings associated with different words come from our social interaction with others. As I interact with my sisters, I learn the meanings of different things, but because other people do not interact with them they do not understand those things. I also see a real disconnect between the ‘realities’ of the two groups; what seems important to one group and what has meaning to another is quite different. The two groups have different values. Though both are groups of people in college, around their 20s, most are single, and are students, there are still differences because one group has gone through a specific type of secondary socialization. A sorority is an institution and a “sub-world” of college in which there are specific expectations, roles, and behaviors, most of which are taught by being in constant conversation with other members of the group. Because the two groups are not in constant conversation, they often don’t understand parts of the other group and they differ in their subjective realities and identities. The people in the different groups identify themselves by the group(s) that they are a part of, and their values, attitudes, language, and appearance exemplify this. Their social environments help shape the individuals. Because I belong to both groups, I often go through alternations, even on several occasions in the course of one day. It is quite interesting when the two combine and interact with each other, though on rare occasions, and I find myself explaining a lot of things about one group to the other. I once tried explaining what pomping was to a friend outside of my sorority, and had to go into lengthy detail about how it is a type of decorating with tissue paper that we use for house decorations for homecoming, but that led to lengthy explanations of house dec's and what we do for homecoming and homecoming traditions, which led to questions of whether or not it was fun, how much time it took, why we do it, and what it looks like. I eventually gave up and told him he would just have to wait until homecoming to try to get an idea, though he will never understand all of the feelings and nuances and jokes associated with pomping that my sorority sisters understand. Because the two don’t interact with each other, they perceive homecoming and pomping differently, and their perceived realities of pomping differ.

Week 1: Introducing Sociological Psychology and Research Methods

C&S: Shwalbe 3-6; BB: Becker #1

Shwalbe talks about how people should be sociologically mindful, meaning they should be ‘conscious of the patterns, conditions, processes, and relationships that constitute and characterize our social world’. He introduces the subject by touching on and explaining C. Wright Mills’ theory of the sociological imaginiation, which “enables its possessors to grasp the intersections of history, society, and personal biography.”

Shwalbe says that sociological mindfulness is rare. However, this is exactly why I want to study sociology. I want to know how the social world works. I want to know what causes people to interact in different ways, why people do what they do, and how I can improve a situation just by being aware. I love people’s stories and listening to their joys and their hardships, and using that to better understand why they might interpret things differently than how I would, and why their reactions to (and in) situations might differ from mine. I want to know what people’s tendencies are in general. I want to be aware of how what I say and do can elicit both negative and positive responses from others, and thus avoid offending people or hurting them. If I am mindful, as Shwalbe describes, I can better understand how I might accidentally offend someone with my words or actions when I don’t intend to.

I enjoy talking to people and spending time with lots of people. I have many friends, especially in a couple of large organizations I am involved in. Thus, I have a tendency to float around and talk to many people when I am doing activities with these organizations. However, I understand that we also have a lot of new people and visitors in both of these organizations and if I am not mindful of people’s feelings and situations, then it would be easy for me to seemingly act like I don’t care about the new people who don’t feel as intertwined in the group. They may see my mingling, floating, and talking to different people as leaving them because I don’t want to talk to them. I need to be mindful that because they don’t know everyone like I do, it would be more beneficial for me to stay and talk with them longer or take them with me when I go to talk to others so that they don’t feel like they have been ditched or left out.