Social Class in the United Sates

This week’s article “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide” identified the continuing issues with social class in the United States. Some things remain the same as they did years ago. Such as the fact that Americans believe they’re class system is a “meritocracy”. The article points out that while people think it is a “meritocracy”, it is growing much more difficult to have social mobility. The idea that many Americans have of this growing social mobility makes sense because as the article states, there are many more Supreme Court justices and CEO’s that come from diversified backgrounds. But when it comes to the definition of class many Americans differ in their understanding of the term. Some people believe it is your attitudes and assumptions based on where you were raised. Others believe it’s purely money. But is it really? Many people make a lot of money but they’re not necessarily considered to be part of the upper-class. The class system in America is growing much more complicated.

            In class this week we took a closer look at the class system in America. One of the terms we defined was “status inconsistency” where one’s income does not match up with the class society associates them with. In the video People Like Me we saw a plumber who made quite a bit of money, but he was still considered working class because of his prestige. Even for those who had seemingly worked their way into the upper class, like Ginie Polo Sayles, still didn’t fit in because she wasn’t raised in upper class culture and customs. Americans like to believe that there is no class system because they like to think we live in an “open” or “mobile system”. But as we saw in the video the class in which you’re born into is the class you’re probably going to stay in. In the case of the journalist, it was pressure from her family. In other cases like the family in Ohio, it may be because opportunities are few and far flung.

            In the last segment we took a look at a high school in the Hamptons and drew a connection between it and class systems. Much like in our high school, even if you dress nicer, if you sit at the wrong table or try to interact with a group higher than yours, it’s awkward and sometimes even frowned upon. In this way high schools are much like the class system in America. In a=America one can earn quite a bit of money, but since they’re not cultured in upper class way, it is difficult for them to be accepted.

In this image attempts to portray social class in terms of income. But as we've learned, social class is much more than that. : 

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Money, power, and prestige.

Money talks! Money brings power, and with power comes prestige. This week we began to look at social stratification and class systems. We focused mainly on the Caste System, Open systems, and Meritocracies. Everyone remembers the film Mean Girls. In this film, the new girl, Kady, starts off as disliked by the majority of the student body. In order to gain popularity she begins following a group of popular girls called the “Plastics”. This may seem like it has nothing to do with social stratification, but there is a striking resemblance. In this instance the different levels of popularity or lack there of, can be compared to the different social classes. To move up a level in popularity one must gain more appeal and admiration amongst their peers. In class systems, one must usually gain more money and prestige in order to move up a level. However, in most cultures it is either difficult or impossible to move up in the class system.

The United States is considered the land of dreams. In the United States one’s class is greatly based on their income. We believe that we’re meritocracy; however, the harsh reality is that it is extremely difficult to move up the social ladder in the United States. In the several graphs we saw in class we saw how the income disparity is growing in the U.S. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deviate from the social class one’s parents may have belonged to.  As we saw in the case of the Appalachian people, few of the children were able to finish high school or go to college because their parents hadn’t either.

 On the other hand, there’s the Caste System; a closed system in which people are born into their social class and remain there until they die. That may sound like a good thing at first, but what about those in the lowest caste: the “untouchables”? People can’t get a job or marry to get out of their caste. It’s permanent. The article for this week was on Human Trafficking and the sex-slave trade. This is another example of a closed system. It is obvious that countries like the United States are trying to take steps to end this, but the bigger issue, as the author points out, is the issue with socioeconomic status. Most of the countries where human trafficking takes place are countries with issues of extreme poverty. As long as poverty persists, there are human traffickers to take advantage. Why? People are desperate to move up a social class and selling their niece into slavery is the fastest way to get money, and well, money talks! Money brings power, and with power comes prestige.

Social stratification has always been a part of every civilization. This image shows social stratification as early as the Mayan empire, with the king on top and farmers on the bottom:

Socialization in Disney Movies: Review

    We spent this week on the socializing messages in the Disney children's movies. There are many aspects of this project that I enjoyed, but there are certain parts of it that I thought were somewhat irritating.
    BeforeI make any other points, I must say that this project was enjoyable. It allowed me to take the information from the textbook and apply it to my life and childhood. I think it was enjoyable for the entire class because the Disney movies were such a integral part of all of our childhoods. Leading up to this project we several discussions/debates in class about whether the media still played a huge role in socialization today. Well, I think in this project we answered that. Now it makes sense why all the little girls in kindergarten wanted to be a princess. Speaking of questions, there were a few of them lingering during this project.
     However, there are certain aspects of the project that were vague that ended up confusing most of the class. For instance, were we supposed to talk about socialization of gender, in children, in society, or all of the above? I think most people thought it was supposed to be about gender. Another questionthat I had is if we had to talk about actual theories we spoke about in class like Charles Horton Cooley's "looking glass self". The final issue, and without a doubt the biggest was the timing. How long is too long? The besty  way to organize and fix these issues would be to create a clear rubric. Assign certain groups certain movies or certain aspects of socialization. Tell them what' expected as far as content goes; do you need to mention the theories we pointed out in class? Finally, create a time limit, so it doesn't take up four days of class time.

Gender vs Sex

This week in class we learned quite a bit about the differences between gender and sex. In the article Gauging Gender by Stephen Asma, Asma attempts to examine the changes in gender studies from his time in college until now, and furthermore he seeks the changes that we still need to make. The line between gender and sex was first drawn by feminists in the 80’s. Sex was used as a word in biology to describe humans, plants, and animals. Gender then became a studied by mainly social scientists and was used in describing behaviors and the constructed roles of females and males. Asma pointed out that a person who’s considered a man doesn’t necessarily have to perform the roles of a man and females do not necessarily have to perform the roles of a woman. From this statement onward, the article makes out several points that we also made in class. For instance, there is more than one gender and our culture is relatively unaccepting of people who don’t fit into the very strict definition of what it means to be a woman or man. We explored this concept in class as we examined how our culture constructs what it means to be a man or woman in comparison to other cultures.

            The short clip about Samoans and “Fa-fa-feenies” showed how some cultures are accepting of more than two genders. However, as we saw in other videos, in our culture we’re mean to people who don’t fit into our two distinct descriptions of gender. The videos Tough Guise and Killing Us Softly showed us how the media plays a role in showing us what it means to be either a man or woman. Masculinity was mostly associated with violence and strength, while being femininity was associated with beauty and vulnerability. Not very many people fit into this mold, but our society pushes a certain level of masculinity onto males and femininity on females. But most men and women don’t necessarily fit into these images. In fact according to the article there can be up to four or five different male and female psychological match ups, but mainstream society still pressures males and females to conform. Well what are the consequences of this form of thinking? In our society, many people bully others and put others down in order to make themselves feel better and move up the social latter. As a result of this emotional battering there are huge numbers of people who are anorexic, alcoholics, or depressed.

Even though our school is considered quite affluent, I have seen people succumb to depression because they don’t fit a certain mode. For instance, my freshman year there was a guy who would always dress in scarves and UGG boots. Girls were nice to him, but I would often hear other guys calling him names. He was fine for the most part, but it was obvious that he had low self-esteem in social climates like in class discussions or even at lunch. There’s nothing wrong with being different. People in our society would agree that it’s important to lower the number of people depressed or committing suicide. By widening the definition of what each gender means, or better yet, accepting more than two definitions of genders as a society we will be taking a huge step towards nation of more emotionally sound people.

Much like the story we read in class, this image depicts part of the image of masculinity and femininity that the media feeds us. 

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

“Mirror mirror on the wall whose the fairest of them all?” The famous line from SnowWhite encompasses much of what we learned this week in sociology. We learned about the “looking-glass self”, a part of socialization in which people form their personality and who they are based on what people think of them or tell them. As a result people try to edit that image or create a better image for themselves. The witch in Snow White is told by this mirror that she is not the most beautiful. She internalizes it and then proceeds to kill Snow White, which is her way of creating a better image for herself. Although we probably don’t go to that extent we do edit our image, and as we pointed out in class social networking sites without a doubt is the most popular way.

            We watched a video in class about the growing importance of “Myspace” in the lives of adolescents today. We pointed out that several parts of the video were invalid or outdated, but we also the aspects of the film that carried over into today. For instance we pointed out how it’s not possible to recreate you’re image online but it’s still possible to keep people from seeing any bad images. In this way we are still creating a self-image, and that personality or self image would not be the same if we were raised somewhere else.

            One of the 1^st lessons we learned about socialization is that it is how we are taught how to act and think as human beings. In the article we read this week we read about how people thought genetics played into success and who they came out to be. People who were members of a lower socioeconomic class thought that it had a larger affect than people in higher socioeconomic classes. Part of the reason the reason that the researchers believed that they believed that is because people in lower socioeconomic classes hadn’t had nearly as much higher education. College and Universities are major places  of socialization in the dominant beliefs for the reasons in the outcomes of social success. Even though both groups thought it had little to do with how one’s personality ends up or how successful they are, it is obvious that even in our society there are different levels of socialization.

Time=Money?

“Time is money and money is time.” This is just one of the many American values that we discovered this week in class as we began observing our culture with a more critical eye. Values are defined as socially shared ideas of what is right. Some American values include achievement and success, freedom, material comfort, and democracy. One of our first assignments was to identify some of these cultural values and how they were presented in advertisements and commercials. It never struck me how most, if not all of our advertisements are built around these values. For instance, in the “Five Hour Energy” commercials I watched they had several people with different occupations and all of them were people who had gone through eight hour work days, but still had to take care of their children or do other work. After watching this commercial from a sociological perspective, I realize how much stress our society places on achievement. Achievement is measured in our day to day live; it doesn’t necessarily have to be measured in terms of one’s life. In the “Five Hour Energy” commercial one woman had the pressure of successfully completing several things in one day: an eight hour work day, a workout, and making dinner for her family every night.

Values are supposed to be a good aspect of culture, but they can have negative effects. For example, our country places such a high level of importance on achievement that we put necessities like rest and time with family on the back burner. There are millions of people in America who have weak relations with their family because they are always working. In that way precisely I see our values affecting my day to day life. I’m a busy person; between my extracurricular activities, community service, honors and A.P. classes, and college applications I rarely have time for family or rest. However, I can’t just stop partaking all of those activities because then what would I have achieved in high school? Such a situation seems like the ultimate paradox. Which is more important achievement or leisure time and family? This question continues to follow many Americans. We are not sure of the the answer, so I guess in the mean time we’ll all just drink our “Five Hour Energy”.

Culture Shock

            This week as we continued to follow the documentary film  the Lost Boys  where we saw the boys go through culture shock.  Culture shock is when someone enters into a different culture and they have to deal with the trauma of everything being different from what they had grown up with and learned. A great example of this was when Santino complained about time being money in America. In Sudan there was no such thing because time didn’t really matter in the first place and they were never lonely because they always had someone close by to speak to or visit; in America we’re  always busy and concerned with ourselves that no we don’t have much time to make friends and visit.

            Similarly, in Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamo Napoleon Chagnon experiences culture shock repeatedly throughout his stay. For instance, the villagers always wanted him to eat with them and share his food, but he constantly sought privacy. The culture of the Indians was to share food but Chagnon is used to not having the obligation of sharing with others at meal time. Both scenarios are related to ethnocentrism, because the Lost Boys as well as Chagnon were judging othe cultures in comparison to their own. We learned that culture is the basis of our reality, and if that reality is shaken like in the case of the Lost Bpys or Chagnon, it can be extremely difficult emotionally. We can see this as Chagnon, Peter, and Santino frequently mention their loneliness. I have been through cultural shock to a certain extent. Although I ethnically consider myself Nigerian, I have been raised in America. As a freshman my family took a three week vacation in Nigeria. While we were in Nigeria, there was virtually no garbage system and I had to get used to throwing the garbage out into the back yard. It was really hard for me to do at first because as a student here in America I had learned quite a bit about the negative effects of pollution. However, in Nigeria they have little to no care for how much pollution happens. In fact, nobody understood my refusal at first. I would have to explain myself, but in the end I had no choice but to throw it out in the yard like everyone else.

We also mentioned how foreign exchange students may experience culture shock. I found this image interesting in that it showed what may go on in the mind of a foreign exchange student while they’re here as well as when they return home.

How Culture Changes Perception

How Culture Molds Habits of Thought was the article for this week. The author starts off by describing how many social scientists have always believed that logic plays the different roles in different cultures. The article followed Dr. Nisbett as he carries out experiments to examine how people of different cultures think differently. The experiment that I found most striking was the experiment about describing the fishes in the tank. Whereas the Japanese tended to point out the fish compared to other objects, Americans would point out the largest fish or the shiniest rock. I know that our culture place stress on being the biggest or the best, but I never realized how something like that could affect how we describe a setting. Another experiment that stood out to me was experiment where the argument between mother and daughter were presented. Americans tended to choose a side quickly, but Chinese subjects took into both arguments consideration and decided that both sides had misunderstandings. This also made me realize how opinionated Americans are. Once we’ve developed our beliefs it’s substantially difficult to persuade us otherwise. Reading this article heightened my awareness of how much our culture influences our perception of the world around us.

Similarly, in class we talked about our perception of other cultures and how they may perceive us. We read about the “Nacerima” and “ Racs”. When our class began to talk about these cultures we pointed out how peculiar the different aspects of their cultures were in comparison to ours. We didn’t realize it at the time but not only were we being ethnocentric, the article was actually a description of American culture from an ethnocentric stand point. In retrospect it seems as though the culture of the author of the Nacerima may have put a stress on religion or the supernatural because they continually described different aspects of the culture in respect to religion. For instance, the author describes bathing as a shrine that humans must got to daily. On the other hand, we thought it was strange that the people of this tribe had to go through so many strange religious rituals because our culture doesn’t necessarily place that much stress on religion. In all this, one can see how cultural background plays a huge role in our perception of the world around us. Ethnocentrism can be seen on a day to day basis. For instance, a few days ago I was talking to one of my Nigerian guy friends about attractive guys. He was giving his opinion on which ones were attractive and which ones weren’t. However, later when I asked one of my American guy friends he said he didn’t know and that judging another guys appearance would be “really gay”. Both guys were heterosexual, the only thing that changed was their perception due to cultural differences.

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Eating Your Friends is the Hardest

    
    This week our article was Eating Your Friends is the Hardest: The Survivors of the F-227. The article presented the story of how the starvation of the survivors of a plane crash drove them to the point of cannibalism. The story really emphasizes the idea of social construction of reality. It allows the reader to see how the behavior of the survivors went from being what we consider normal to what we consider barbaric.  As Henslin points out, our society gives different objects arbitrary definitions through social construction of reality, but we're very capable of changing these definitions. Usually changes in the circumstance make our society more accepting of changes in the definition of these objects. This is precisely what happened to these survivors. A critical point in the story is when the survivors hear on the radio that the search for them has stopped. Before this point many of the people thought the Canessa's idea of eating the corpses as purely wrong, but as they grew weaker and weaker the meaning of the human body changed from a being a person that deserves respect to being a means of survival and food.
   There are several less extreme examples of this in our day to day lives. This week in class we talked about social construction of reality and we witnessed a few examples of it in Freaks and Geeks. For instance, when Sidney gave Sam his jacket his friends began to construct meanings from him receiving the jacket. They arrived at the conclusion that the jacket must mean she likes him. This was on a much smaller scale than what happened in the Andes, but the three geeks constructed a pretty arbitrary meaning to a simple act. Another example of social construction of reality is demonstrated by the growing number of people in the senior class who ditch class. Though many seniors previously considered skipping class as something only lazy students who care little about their education do, circumstances have changed as we've become seniors. Most members of the senior class are taking several honors or advanced classes, participating in extra-curricular activities, working a job, and trying to finish college applications. For many this has already become too difficult to handle, so they sleep in and skip a class or two. The meaning of skipping class has therefore transformed from a bad thing to a good thing. Skipping is justified because it's viewed more as an important factor in maintaining good health than pure laziness.

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What's Sociology?

   The article What is Sociology? dealt with the difficulties in pinpointing the definition of sociology. THe author described natural sciences and social sciences before further exploring the different types of social sciences. The article presented other types of social sciences in order to help the reader understand how sociology was similar as well as different from other social sciences.
         One of the main sections of the article that stood out to me was the section describing juvenile delinquency. By describing how the different types of social scientists would conduct their studies and what they would focus on, I grasped a stringer understanding for the definition of sociology. For instance, a psychologist would try to to explore the characteristics within the delinquent  whereas a sociologist would focus on something such as social class and routines of the police. I thought it was interesting that the article further went into describing how sociologists would push the study of juvenile delinquency to tho point that they would be asking what being a juvenile delinquent is. Our definitions and preconceptions of delinquents are very different from people who were born and raised in earlier generations. Our definition of delinquency can even differ from state to state. I also learned that there are also two types of sociology: structural/interactional and quantitative/qualitative. Structural/interactional studies are done more through interviews, while quantitative/qualitative studies read deeper into the meaning of peoples behavior. In all of sociology, however, the question remains "What external forces push people to behave the way they do and why?".

Week of 8/29-9/2

   This week we further explored the differences between sociology and psychology and what the definition of sociology is. The most interesting activity we did this week was the story of Ted and Zelda. The story somewhat solidified the definition of what sociology was by portraying how the couple's external issues led to their depression. As we talked about in class, the amount of people depressed in an area have as much to do with the sociological characteristics as it does the psychological issues of the individual. Ted and Zelda's end was mostly the outcome of several negative sociological affects such as not being able to pay the bills and being in an abusive workplace.

    After talking about suicidal rates in class, I believe that suicides are much more of a result of sociological issues. We identified the most important indicator of suicidal rates as the level of human/family connections. So, it only made sense that an urban area such as California would have a higher suicidal rate than Iowa. Historically speaking the suicide rate in America has risen and continues to rise. I think the continued push for urbanization has everything to do with it. However, as I began to read more about the psychological vs. the sociological factors I began to realize that some studies say that people in rural areas commit suicide just as often, if not more. Nevertheless, I think this still has a great deal to do with urbanization as children growing up in rural areas idolize living in urban areas. But many may not be able to do so because of their economic class or their parents being farmers.

 Is there a rural mental health crisis?

Who's Chinelo?

 Hello everyone! I'm Chinelo! I would describe myself as open minded, athletic, and pretty hardworking. I'm not a very talkative person, but I always love to hear what other people have to say on just about any topic. Sports  have always been a big part of my life, and I'm currently a three year member of the cross country and track & field team here at BHS. Another huge part of my life is music; I'll listen to almost anything whether it's Hip-hop, rock, an American artist, or a foreign artist.
    The biggest influence in my life is probably my older sister. She's a student at U of I but her positive attitude and her sense of humor are infectious. She always goes the extra mile just to try to make someone else's day better. My goal is to be the exact same way. Whether it's one person or a  group of people, I want to to make a difference in their day.