Ways of Thinking...

Sonny had five fingers, but he only used 'tree'

2012-02-15T08:36:00.000-06:00

A Bronx Tale is based on a true story. Chazz Palmenteri (who plays Sonny) witnessed a murder growing up in an Italian neighborhood in NY. He wrote a one man play about it in 1989. A few years later it was made into a movie and Robert DeNiro directed it. When I first heard Palmenteri talk about the real life events, I couldn't believe it. If you get the chance, listen to this interview with Palmenteri about the story. Click listen now for the full story.
Also, in the spring of 2009, Palimenteri performed the story as a one-man play in Chicago. I got to see it live!

If you need reminders from the movie, click here for a list of important quotes from the movie.

There's a few ways that I like to think about the movie. One is the theme of love throughout the movie. I think the movie is really about love, especially the love of a father for his son. But it is also about love versus fear/violence. Sonny told C that "Fear lasts longer than love," but at the end of the movie, no one fears Sonny any more, but his C still loves him and still feels loved by him. Also, Carmine stops by and so does C's dad both to show that they care about Sonny and they still love him. Love transcends death, but fear does not. Fear on the other hand, leads to violence and violence begets more violence. We see this throughout the movie as violence starts small (throwing a stick at the bus) but then it grows and gets out of control (firebombing at the end, and even Sonny's fate). I also think the idea of art imitates life imitates art imitates life... is interesting. This movie was based on real life events of Chazz Palimentieri and then the movie influences real life when it thrusts Lillo Brancato into stardom and seals his fate.

Micro-Macro Dynamics
The racism throughout the film is obvious. What is often taken for granted is where the racism comes from. What are the micro and macro sociological forces that create this racism? Think in terms of the Abandon Ship exercise. How did micro and macro forces come together to influence who was saved and who was tossed? Apply this to the racism in the movie. Can you see any micro or macro sociological forces in your own life?

Groups
What are all the groups that Calogero belongs to? (Think in terms of the circles exercise we did in class.) Would you put him in Sonny’s crew, or would you put him and Sonny in their own group? What is Calogero’s Master Status? Why do you think so? Do you think his master status changes throughout the movie? What is your own master status? Has it changed throughout your life like it has for Calogero?

Social Construction of Reality
How is their reality in the neighborhood socially constructed? What are the unwritten rules that govern how you can or can’t act? How do you think this construction came about? Can you see their racist attitudes as a social construction? What are some socially constructed ideas that you believe?

Sociological Imagination
Use your imagination to think about the dynamics and social forces that created Calogero’s “world”. How did the neighborhood come to exist? How did the different groups within the neighborhood come together there? Clue: the movie doesn’t show this, you have to think about what the movie doesn’t show. Another way to put it is how are Calogero’s personal troubles (his biography) part of the bigger picture (his history and society)? How is this similar or different than the groups that have shaped your life?

Sociological Mindfulness
Who is sociologically mindful in the movie? How is this character sociologically mindful and how does this sociological mindfulness affect him? Do you think it makes a difference in his life? How might sociological mindfulness make a difference in your own life?

A Stereotype Or Just A Category?

2012-02-14T23:43:00.000-06:00

After reading Joel Charon's "Should We Generalize..." hopefully, you realize that yes we must generalize because it is what makes us intelligent human beings. But our great strength as humans can also be a horrible flaw. If we do not generalize and categorize accurately then we run the risk of stereotyping. We must realize that although individuals can be categorized into certain groups, it doesn't mean that all individuals fit that group's generalization. Toward the end of the reading, Charon says,

"If we are open-minded and reflective, we can even evaluate how good or how poor our generalizations are, and we can alter what we know as we move from situation to situation."

This is both the task and the promise of sociology. Sociology challenges us to think about our generalizations and assumptions about what we know and it promises us that with proper thought and care we can understand people better.

Here is an article in the Daily Herald about a motivational speaker who was born with no arms and no legs. We might categorize him as disabled, but we should be careful about the assumptions and stereotypes that go along with that category. Likewise, here is a link to Nick Vujicic's website. He is a motivational speaker who also has no limbs.

Here is a video about Aaron Fotheringham, an "extreme sitter." Aaron has been in a wheel chair his whole life, but he sees it as an opportunity. Again, we should be careful of our stereotypes. Aaron is way more rad than I will ever be, but he is in a wheel chair and I am not.

Happy Valentine's Day?

2012-02-14T19:51:00.000-06:00

My daughter on Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day?

What is this day really about? We like to talk about it being a day to celebrate love, but it is really a day to celebrate romance. So often, I think Americans (and Westerners in general) equate the word "love" with romance and passion. However, many cultures view love and marriage differently. They view it more as being a good team member. It is more of a partnership between two people who care about each other. There is a recent article in the Atlantic called "Marry Him" about how too many women are looking for the perfect man who looks perfect, acts perfect shares the right interests and has that spark that makes their heart flutter. This is creating unrealistic expectations. Here is an interview with the author of the article. How do you feel about this? Do you think that our vision of love is too romantic and not practical enough?

When I was in high school my school brought in this speaker/author to talk about the difference between love and infatuation. Here is his book. He explained that biologically, we have a rush of emotions when we "fall in love". This is romantic love and infatuation. But it isn't real love. It wears off. Biologically he said it will last for 6 months or so and then it wears off. After that, you see the other person more realistically and that means you have to make a conscious choice about being with this person. That is what real love is - it is a conscious choice to care about someone. Even when we are upset or angry with the other person we still choose to care about them and thus we still love them. The author of the book includes a list of a dozen or so key aspects of a relationship to examine. The book was really a good source for me to sort through all of these emotions when I was going through high school and college. You can get it used from amazon for like $4.

Service Step 2

2012-02-14T11:53:00.000-06:00

Before, during and after you have a service experience, try to be mindful of these questions: Things to record: How did you feel about the service before going? What were your expectations? Were there aspects that you were apprehensive about? Where did you have to go for the service? Had you been there before? If not, what was it like going to this place? Who were the people you came into contact with? What were they like? What was the interaction like? What was the actual job you did? What was it like? Was there anything that surprised you? What were you thinking as you did it? How long did your tasks last? What did you think as you went home? Also include: Name of organization you volunteered? Where was your experience (address)? Date(s) and time(s) of experience? Supervisor or person in charge and phone/email address?

After each service experience, you should write your observations down. These observations will be posted to your blog (in addition to your usual weekly posts). This should help you to remember the details about your experiences so that later in the semester you will be able to write a sociological reflection about your experiences. This also provides evidence of your participation in the service experience. Please fill out the information below or you may type and print it out, but be sure to include the information requested below. Post about your experience within 1 WEEK after you do the service.

In-n-out is not just for burgers!

2012-02-13T09:35:00.000-06:00

In and out is not just for burgers, it is also for groups! Sociologists use the terms ingroup and outgroup to refer to groups that you are either a member of or not a member of. It is much easier to feel attached to the groups you are a part of and feel judgmental about your outgroups.

To illustrate this, today we separated the class by those wearing black and those wearing colors. Each group made a list of reasons why the other group was wearing what they were wearing. Every time I do this lesson, the reasons break down into judgments against the other group. This was a lesson about in-groups and out-groups. In discussing the different groups that makeup society, we see that there are in-groups and out-groups. An in-group is a group that you are a part of. You have membership in it, and because of that, you feel aligned to the group and you have ownership in it. By contrast, it becomes easier to judge the out-groups, or the groups you are not a part of. As this semester goes on, be mindful of the groups that we talk about that you are not a part of. You must make a conscious effort to understand these groups. Try to become conscious of your judgments so that you can also consciously work against them. Watch this video clip about the famous "Angry Eye" classroom lesson done in the 1960s by teacher Jane Elliot. Think about how you may have judged out-groups in your own life. Also, think about how you become allied and bonded with your in-groups. Can you see how this happens in society? Can you think of examples in your own life? You can watch the whole video at Frontline's website.

When was the last time you were a cookie thief?

2012-02-13T09:01:00.000-06:00

There is a poem called "The Cookie Thief" by Valerie Cox. We are all cookie thieves sometimes in how we erroneously use the categories that Charon talks about. When was the last time you were too quick to categorize or judge someone? Have you ever been stereotyped or judged wrongly? There was a Washington Post experiment in which Joshua Bell, violin virtuoso, played some of the greatest classical pieces ever written on one of the most expensive violins ever made. And yet few people noticed because he was dressed like an average guy and he was playing in the subway.
Below is a video about a different type of street performer that challenges your assumptions about people and categories.

Another great piece of media about stereotypes is episode 362 from This American Life. Click here to listen to the episode where 5 people tell stories about stereotyping. Listen to the prologue about people with disabilities, and Act One about NY cops stereotyping people coming from Brooklyn.

Complex You

2012-02-10T09:30:00.000-06:00

Today, we listed all of the groups that make each one of us who we are. Students listed groups like family, friends, clubs, sports, gender, ethnicity, music, sexuality, school, age, and others. And then we listed our position or status(es) within each group. This is the social construction of our own lives-we are made up of socially-constructed groups.
I am always interested by all of the groups that students are influenced by and especially the unexpected groups that surprise me along the way. Sometimes it is someone who I never thought to be religious and they list a religion or sometimes it is someone who I never realized was British who lists her nationality as an important influence on her. All of these groups we belong to are the complex way we as individuals are made up and that is the way sociologists understand individuals; through their groups. For example, I am part of a family, a school, a group of friends and a neighborhood. In each of these groups I have a status (dad, teacher, friend) and each of these statuses comes with a role that is expected of me (make dinner, show up prepared for class, return a phone call, etc...).

These groups shape my life. For example after becoming a dad I will never be the same. I can't help looking at kids through the eyes of a parent; I think about music lyrics differently; I am overly critical and cognizant of my own behavior and manners etc... These groups can also come into conflict in an individual's daily life. For example, if I have to go home and cook dinner and my daughter demands attention, it is very difficult to get grading and lessons prepared for the next day, and if a friend calls to socialize or to get together, that becomes a third conflict. My roles as a parent, teacher and friend are all conflicting. This is called role conflict. There are also times when I experience what sociologists call role strain. That is when I am having difficulty meeting the expectations of one role. An example of this might be parenting. I have never been a parent before and so when my daughter is challenging me, I am not always certain how to react; do I give in, ignore or punish her? Some statuses we choose (achieved statuses) like those I already mentioned, but sometimes we are not given a choice (ascribed statuses) like that of a balding man. Don't get wrong - I thank goodness everyday that Michael Jordan
brought baldness back into fashion in the 90s and I hope it stays there, but I am definitely not choosing this 'do :-).
I hope students realize that although it is true we are all human and we are all more alike than different and we all should get along, we are also very different. We are shaped by different groups and sometimes we are shaped by the same group but in a different way. If you realize this dynamic, then you can start to understand how difficult it is sometimes to relate to others who superficially seem very much like you, but when you scratch the surface, you realize how different each of you is. Please keep this in mind as our class continues. Try hard to understand each other without judging each other. Keep your focus on ideas and on experiences and not on the individuals or the person.
Some ideas for posting on your own blog: Explain more thoroughly about the groups that make up who you are. What is your status in that group? Have you experienced role conflict or strain?

Service Op: Habitat for Humanity March 3rd 7:30-4

2012-02-09T11:36:00.004-06:00

If you are interested in helping with this renovation, we could use 6-10 students on March 3rd. Work begins at 8 am and usually goes till about 3-4 pm. If you are interested, please check your availability and dates and times and let me know. I will add you to the list. As of right now, you should expect to have to provide your own transportation there.

Here is a message from our friends at Spring of Life Habitat for Humanity:

In the past, we have had the please of working with students from Stevenson HS and it has always been such a pleasure. We have found the students to be hard-working, polite and fun! We look forward to another year of Stevenson HS student cooperation and have actually schedule time into our renovation plan for it. This home will again be in Elgin and is a renovation rather than a ground up build. With a renovation we face the challenge of accomplishing the goal yet ensuring that all have a positive volunteer experience. With limited space we have to employ fewer volunteers mainly for safety reasons but also so that we don't run out of work. We do not want people tripping over each other but rather working a full day knowing that they really made a difference.

Service Op: Misericordia Candy Days April 27 & 28

2012-02-08T09:42:00.003-06:00

Misericordia Candy Days

Friday & Saturday April 27 & 28, 2012

This is not your typical "tag day", this is
Misericordia Candy Days. Be part of the more
than 12,000 people who proudly walk the streets
and stand at the store fronts supporting Misericordia.
Volunteers are needed to work the streets, sidewalks
and store fronts of Chicago and the suburbs. Anyone can do this
you simply pass out candy and informational tags in exchange for
donations. Please Volunteer two hours of your time to
make a difference for more than 600 children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities.

When I was in high school I was lucky enough to have a job at a basketball gym connected to Misericordia. I only took the job for the basketball, but what a blessing to get to know Misericordia and all it does for the residents there. I also was able to do tag days for a number of years and it was a cool experience and at the very least eye opening.

Click here for more info or to volunteer.

Odd, you see?

2012-02-06T20:27:00.004-06:00

The special schedule for odyssey can be an odd-you-see experience because the days are so different; different groups of students mixed up doing different activities than they are used to. One of the levels of sociological analysis is called microsociology. That is how individuals interact in face-to-face situations. Sociologists pay attention to the amount of touching, eye contact, posture, who speaks up and how they talk. As you move about in your odd-you-see experience, think about the group dynamics. How does the size of your group and the type of art you are doing affect all of these group dynamics? You can compare this experience to the abandon ship experience we did in class.

He doesn't speak Spanish, but he probably speaks Mexican!

2012-02-06T09:16:00.000-06:00

Sudhir Venkatesh explores so much in his book Gang Leader for a Day. You can read an excerpt from the book and download Venkatesh reading and talking about his book from NPR. Any thoughts on the book? What does Venkatesh reveal about what/how sociologists study? Lastly, here is an interview at slate.com between Venkatesh and Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here). Kotlowitz explores the question of what do authors like Venkatesh owe their subjects. It is an interesting inquiry - Venkatesh has made a lot of money from this book and it is largely because of J.T. What does he owe J.T.? The importance though of this lesson is how and what do sociologists study? Do you see how a quantitative study (large number of surveys) may not tell the whole story? Another way for sociologists to understand something is in qualitative data (interviewing and observing). Any thoughts on the reading? Is it cool seeing how doing sociology research can actually be exciting? Can you see how both of these approaches are necessary to understanding his subject? What if I wanted to understand what our school is like and whether it is a school I would want to send my kid to? How should I study the school - both quantitatively and qualitatively? Who would be the different groups I should focus on?
Here is Venkatesh speaking on the Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Sudhir Venkatesh

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Religion

Abandon Ship!

2012-02-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

We just did an activity based on the real life events that were portrayed in the movie Abandon Ship! (1957). The activity helps to understand the different levels that sociologists study. On the macro level, sociologists look for the large-scale groups that people are a part of. For example, students in our class are Americans, teenagers, high-schoolers, from an upper-middle class suburb. All of these groups have an effect on an individual, so that even when an individual makes choices alone, he/she is still being influenced by these groups. On the microsociological level, sociologists study how groups interact in face-to-face conversation. That is who makes eye contact, how loud people speak, where they sit, who is the leader etc...So each class that does this activity is different based on how the group interacts. This can be true for any group you are a part of.

If we examined these two levels in high school, there are certain macrosociological values that one would expect to find no matter where the school is located: grades, learning, homework, rules etc... So as you move from one class to the next, you will see these macrosociological values present. On the other hand, every class is different because of the microsociological dynamics present in that class: some teachers are more casual, some teachers use rows vs. a horseshoe shape, some classes have a few loud boisterous individuals and other classes might be mostly girls or mostly guys etc...

Can you see these two levels at play in your own life? Perhaps in your family, your classes or with a group of friends, or at your job? Think about that lifeboat activity and how it is a metaphor for any of the groups we listed. There are macro forces like culture and social class that affect your group but there are also micro forces at play too such as the dynamic of how the group interacts. For example, because we live in America there are certain things expected of family. Even though we had a child under 2 months of age, my wife and I were expected to be at our jobs working (as opposed to other countries where they give 6 months or more of leave for new parents). But the micro forces are present too - because my wife makes more $ than I do, I work part time and spend the rest of my time being a daddy. Can you see how this plays out with your groups?

Are you going to eat that?

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000-06:00

There is no difference between spit or saliva except for how we think about each. This is called the social construction of reality. Our reality is how we experience the world. The social construction is that our society or the people around us influences how we experience the world. Hence our experiences(reality) are created (constructed) by others (society). Spitting in different cultures or different situations (baseball) can be experienced differently, i.e. more or less acceptably. For example, most of us have been to baseball games and watched players spit all throughout the game. We didn't get repulsed by that. During one World Series, Reggie Jackson averaged 19 spits per at-bat! Another example is when parents or siblings use their saliva to wipe off a baby's face. We don't find that repulsive, but if a teacher drops saliva onto a desk it becomes gross. This can be true for nearly all of our experiences; feelings of happiness, sorrow, stress, worry. Nearly all of these are created within us by the society we are in.
Here is an example that you might not realize. The Japanese would be grossed out by the typical American bathroom. In Japan, toilets are located in a different room than the shower and bath. And the Japanese shower is always separate from the bath. They see the shower for cleaning and the bath for soaking after you have cleaned. What are some moments in your own life where you experience these feelings, but when you stop and think about it, you realize that the feelings have been created for you by society?
Another way social construction can be illustrated is in our symbols and how they shape our reaction. For example, there is a feeling that you should not walk on the Patriot.There is no real reason why, but it is a social construct. Another example is the faculty restrooms. Some of the restrooms are for individual use, that is one person at a time. These rest rooms are exactly the same: one toilet and one sink. However, the rooms are labelled with "Men's" and "Women's" signs. That makes men feel weird if we use the "women's" room, even though the men's room is exactly the same. (and vice versa). The sign is a social construct that elicits that feeling.

The Founders of Sociology: Freaks and Geeks?

2012-01-30T08:29:00.000-06:00

No the founders of sociology were not freaks and geeks, but the series Freaks and Geeks has some great sociological insights in it. In the Pilot episode, we see that the characters are part of a dynamic that is larger than who they are as individuals. To understand this is dynamic is to have a sociological imagination. We analyzed the episode for the three founding perspectives:
What are the groups and what functions do they serve? Are there negative influences from any of the groups (dysfunctions)? This is functional theory. It was developed by Emile Durkheim.

Who has power in the episode? How or why do they have power? How do they use it? This is conflict theory. It was first developed by Karl Marx.

What are the important symbols in the episode? Note that the symbols might be an object, but also might be an idea, an event or something else. How do the characters act based on the symbols they find important? This is symbolic interactionism. I like to connect symbolic interactionism to Max Weber.

Can you relate any of these theories to your own life? How can the things you do be interpreted through one of these theories? For example why do you wear what you wear or why are you going to college or why do you stress yourself out to get "good" grades?

Fired up and ready to go!

2012-01-29T07:34:00.001-06:00

Fired up? Ready to go!

This is a phrase I like to use with my class.

"One voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change a city; and if it can change a city it can change a state and if it can change a state, it can change a nation and if it can change a nation, it can change the world." (see the whole story by clicking on this link)

What do you want your voice to be? How do you you want to change the world? Think with sociological mindfulness about the impact you have on the world even though it is small.

Volunteer op Louder: Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival

2012-01-29T06:53:00.000-06:00

Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry FestivalLooking for something cool and different to do? Checkout this poetry slam fest held at different venues around the area.

And, yes you can volunteer thereTO VOLUNTEER
Email Volunteer Coordinator Mairead Case
mairead.case@gmail.com

Checkout this video which is from a poetry slam but is a great example of using a sociological imagination to think about the mindset that comes with current technology. You might even say the poet is being sociologically mindful. What do you think?

Service Op: Special Olympics Bocce on April 22

2012-01-28T09:51:00.001-06:00

This is a call for volunteers for the Special Olympics event on April 22. If you expressed interest, please be sure to leave this day free and plan on 7:30 - 3:30. Also there will be a short training session the week before - maybe wednesday 4/13 after school, but I'll let you know. Lastly, if you have friends who would like to do this, you can let them know - it will be open to everyone.

Service Op: Feeding the needy at St. Thomas February 28

2012-01-27T10:15:00.000-06:00

February 28th, We can take 4 students from each class to the ST. Thomas Soup Kitchen. If there is a large interest, I will have a lottery for students interested. However, you can always reserve a spot for yourself and friends or family on another day. See the instructions below.
There is a church in Chicago called St. Thomas of Canterbury. They generously and humbly serve hundreds of meals to those in need each year. From their website:

Our Soup Kitchen is open every Tuesday and Friday throughout the year, except on Christmas Day. We currently serve 175 to 200 people each time. The doors are open to guests from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Volunteer activities include the preparation of meals, setting the tables, serving the meals to our seated guests and, of course, cleaning up!

Jim Eder has been running the soup kitchen for years and he is a really great guy. If interested in volunteering, call Christine, the volunteer scheduler at 773-878-5507. Be sure to visit their volunteering link here for more info.

Volunteer Op: Habitat for Humanity

2012-01-26T22:12:00.001-06:00

Spring of Life Habitat for Humanity is beginning another project in Elgin. Volunteers will begin the early demolition for this renovation

1499 Erie Street,
Elgin IL

Sat 2/18

work begins at 8am

Get your sledge hammers ready.

This is a job for any skill level.

We are also in need of a lunch volunteer.

To sign up please contact: lreidelb@comcast.net

Service Opportunity: Special Olympics Polar Plunge Feb 26th

2012-01-26T19:32:00.008-06:00

Sunday, February 26th from (roughly 11-2) is the Special Olympics Polar Plunge. This is the biggest and most important fundraiser for the Special Olympics. To participate in this you simply need to logon to the webpage for the Fox Lake Polar Plunge. Then click on the snowflake (or click here) Then click on "Start Fundraising." Scroll down and select "Fox Lake" for the event. Then follow the instructions and when you get to "team" select "Stevenson High School Patriot Plungers". When you are finished registering, you will have your own unique webpage that you can email to family and friends. They can donate directly to you through that page. They can use a credit card and you won't even have to collect money. All you have to do is collect $75 or more and you get to participate in the polar plunge and you get a free hoodie! We are participating in this as a school too! Help bring the Lake County trophy home to SHS! Here is a flyer for the Fox Lake Plunge. Watch this video to get excited about being a part of this experience.

Blogging in sociology

2012-01-26T10:26:00.000-06:00

Here is some reminders about blogging:

Notes about blogging:
Remember, do NOT use your last name or our school's name.
Please use proper grammar and punctuation.
Please write mindfully because what you post to the internet can last even after you delete it.
Make your posts unique and authentic. Feel free to add pictures and links.

For your first post, simply try to answer the question below. Who are you? Write a blog entry that defines who you are. Explain to the class what makes up the person you are. What are the biggest influences in your life? What are your goals/purposes in life?

After that, check to see if you have a link to my page from your page.
Then, go to my page and see if I have your blog listed (on the right side).
Then, comment on 2 other students' posts. Comments should be short(1 to 2 sentences) but sweet (meaningful; leave feedback)

Grading the blogs:

After this first post each subsequent post will be assessed in these three areas:

Academic Standards
The assignment should be neat, well organized, and on-time. It should contain proper writing including proper prose and correct spelling.

Sociology Content
The student should demonstrate an understanding of sociological ideas and themes. Student should use sociological terms correctly. Each blog needs to incorporate specific content from the class using readings, class discussions, videos, activities and the posts on my blog page. It is necessary to convey your understanding of course content as it relates to sociology and your life.

Application
Student is able to fully apply the sociological ideas to his/her own experiences (a real life experience, something s/he watched or read, another class s/he had). Student gives an authentic example of the sociology. The example may include how s/he has been influenced as well as life experiences s/he has had. The post should demonstrate how you may feel differently now having learned a new perspective.

For each post, students will earn three grades (one for each area above), and the grade will be out of 4 points:

4 Includes all of the standards.
3 Includes most (more than half) of the standards.
2 Includes some (less than half) of the standards.
1 Student completes the assignment but does not complete any of the standards.
0 Student did not attempt the assignment.

Experiencing Sociology...(Community Service)

2012-01-25T10:05:00.001-06:00

Hopefully you are willing to try community service with an open mind. I think that most students who have done service experiences before will say that it was rewarding and an overall good experience. Maybe if you have done a service experience before, you can blog about it. What was it like? What went well? What advice would you have for those who have never done it? If you have never done something like that, what do you think about it? What are your concerns and questions?

I think the most challenging aspect of this is to get students to begin thinking about what experience they might want to do without constantly hounding them. I hope you are up for it. This is your homework - find some places that you might be interested and call them! Have at least 2 places in mind by the end of the third week of the semester. Here is the assignment that I call Step 1
. Please turn this in by the first progress report.

Some advice that I want to emphasize:
When you call places to volunteer, do NOT say "I have to do community service..." That makes a bad first impression. It sounds like you are being forced. Instead, say "I want to volunteer..." or "I heard it was a really cool experience so I want..." or you can even say, "My teacher told me about this experience so I wanted to try it..."

Be open minded and willing to feel a little uncomfortable. The best learning experiences of my life were when I was willing to put myself in that position.

Some of the more rewarding experiences have been PADS, the Uptown Cafe, and Clearbrook. Try to do these if you are interested, but you may have to do it with a parent or another adult.

Do not wait until the second half of the semester. These experiences take some time to setup. Sometimes the opportunities are filled, so don't wait! The sooner you set this up, the better chance you will have of finding something that is worthwhile and meaningful. If you wait, you will be rushing and you will only find some last-minute, not-so-great opportunity.

Finally, be patient but persistent when contacting these organizations. Many of the organizations are run by unpaid volunteers. Sometimes they do not work regular hours. If they don't get back to you right away, try calling at a different time of day or a different day of the week or try a different number, etc...

A Good Night's Sleep (Lake County PADS)

2012-01-25T09:04:00.000-06:00

For many residents in Lake county, IL, a good night's sleep simply means having a roof over their head. There are hundreds of homeless people living in Lake County. This may be surprising because most of us know Lake county as the home of Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Glencoe, Deerfield making the county the 31st richest county in the country by per-capita income, according to the 2000 United States Census. Being "sociologically mindful" as Schwalbe says, might make us think how the 31st richest county in the wealthiest country in the world can have homeless people living in it. Furthermore, Schwalbe might call us to think about how we can react to this. What could be done to help those who have no place to sleep at night? What small acts can you do that might make a difference? Look at the video posted here. Before this, were you aware of the homeless in Lake county? One of my service experiences is PADS which serves the homeless. It starts in October and usually goes until April. They are sometimes reluctant to have minors do the service alone, but maybe if you are 18 and you are mature and responsible over the phone, you can convince them to let you do it, or maybe you can convince a parent to do it with you.
Last fall I did PADS and I worked the clothes closet where all of the guests can get a new outfit or long underwear or socks, whatever. I met this guy who said he needed khaki pants. I thought to myself that's kind of picky for a homeless guy. I found a pair of brownish pants and he said "They're not right - it has to be khaki." He went on to tell me that he works at Kohl's and they demand khaki for the uniform. I was so surprised that he had a regular job but was homeless. I didn't ask about why he might be in this situation (substance abuse, divorce, an accident, it could be anything) but I did think with a sociological imagination that I had been wrong in my thoughts about homeless people and I was really glad that I was doing something to help him. And I slept better knowing that. Here is the link to Lake County PADS.

Sociological Mindfulness

2012-01-25T07:04:00.000-06:00

Schwalbe's "sociological mindfulness" can be a difficult idea to grasp and Schwalbe admits that. For a better understanding of his ideas, you click on the link to "sociological mindfulness" and see some of my posts about it.

But another way of thinking about it is in Schwalbe's reading,

Think of the people you love and the kind of life you wish for them...I hope you will consider the possibility that mindfulness may be useful as a way to create better lives for more people.

What kind of life would you wish for those whom you love? How can you affect the world to be more like this way of life? Can you see how humans impact society? How can you make an impact that supports the world you want to live in? I think by answering these questions, students can begin to think with sociological mindfulness.

If you are still having a hard time grasping sociological mindfulness think about the past and all the ways individuals with sociological mindfulness have impacted our world: think about Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, and think about the movements like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the women's rights movement, the civil rights movement, the elimination of polio etc... All of these people and movements are a product of those who had sociological mindfulness. In my personal life, it might be my parents sending me to college even though they themselves never went there and they didn't have the money. It might be my grandfather who came alone to America in 1916 at age 15. He wanted a better life for his future family...

Your (sociological) mindset

2012-01-24T09:07:00.002-06:00

The "sociological imagination" is an important theme throughout our semester. The idea of the sociological imagination was developed by C. Wright Mills who said that having a sociological imagination helps one to see the connection between history and biography. That is, who we are (our biography) is determined by where and when we live (history).

The Outliers reading provides an example of how the people of Roseto were affected by where and when they live. Because they lived in the town of Roseto at that time, they lived in a way that affected them (without even knowing it) so that they had a much lower chance of getting heart disease and living longer than the rest of the country.

Another way to examine the connection of biography to history is through the Beloit Mindset list. Every year, Beloit College publishes a list of how the current year's freshmen will experience and have experienced the world differently. A couple examples of this are from the NY Times: Here is an article about students not writing in cursive. And, this link is about the changing role of the wristwatch.

Watch this video about some French students as an example of sociological imagination.

Another example of the sociological imagination might be reflected in how different generations think differently about the world. You might remember this pepsi ad that shows the way different generations might think about the world differently.

Finally, for a bit of humor, watch this Louis CK video called Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy on youtube. He provides a funny look at how not having a sociological imagination can makes us really annoyed with our problems but really we should be thankful. Also the twitter feed #FirstWorldPains is a humorous example of this.

Immunity and Community

2012-01-24T07:30:00.000-06:00

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell uses a sociological imagination to understand extreme success stories (aka Outliers). Using the introduction to understand sociology we see a few important ideas.
First, sociologists study how people are affected by their social groups. People are influenced by the groups they are a part of, whether it is family, a church, a town, etc. This often contradicts the idea that people are the sum total of their own individual genes and decisions. An important sociologist, C Wright Mills, calls this having a sociological imagination. He says that one must understand the history and the biography of an individual to understand who they are. That is, people are influenced by when and where they live.
Second, we see that sociologists do not simply make opinions or philosophical ideas, rather they make claims based on research and data.
Lastly, understanding sociology can change how we think about the world and who we are. For example, in this excerpt, one might change how he thinks about good health.
Do you see how the excerpt highlights these three ideas? Can you use your sociological imagination to think about your own life or your own troubles?
The rest of Gladwell's book uses a sociological imagination to explain extreme success stories. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs tremendous success and wealth stemming from the development of computers:

Gladwell describes how being born in the mid 1950s was particularly fortuitous for those interested in computer programming development (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955). It also helped to be geographically near what were then called supercomputers, the gigantic predecessors to the thing on which you’re reading this post. Back in the 1960s, when Gates and Jobs were coming of age, a supercomputer took up a whole room and was not something most youngsters would have had a chance to see, let alone work on. But because of their proximity to actual computers, both Gates and Jobs had a leg up on others their age and had the chance to spend hours and hours (10,000 of them in Gladwell’s estimation) learning about programming.

We can apply this model to more than just financial success. Think about what opportunities your own biography and history have afforded you. How has when, where, and to whom you were born shaped your life today?

Blog info, Information Sheet, Annotating

2012-01-23T11:19:00.005-06:00

Today we were still getting acquainted with classroom norms.
Blogging Info: First, we checked the blog. Be sure that your blog has a link to my page and that your blog is listed on my page on the right side under "Ways of Learning."

Info Sheet: Second, we filled out an information sheet that is for me to get to know you. If you haven't filled it out, please print it here and fill it out.

Annotating: Lastly, we discussed annotating for this class. Anytime students are assigned readings in this class, they should assume that they must annotate. Annotating is a skill to help you remember what the reading was about and understand what the author's point is. You do not have to highlight the whole page and fill the margins with notes. Concise, informative notes that help you remember what the reading was about or that help you relate it to class are all you need. Another way to think about annotating is that you are having a conversation with the author and the annotations are your comments. Here is a guide for annotating.

Shhhh...

2012-01-18T08:36:00.000-06:00

We started day one with silence. Sitting in silence was awkward and unusual for most of us. Some students felt the need to fill the silence with a comment or a joke. I use this to show that most students already think sociologically. That is, they have already learned to analyze groups and their behaviors. That is sociology. Nearly every class you have been in has started with the teacher standing in front of you and saying this is what you should or shouldn't do, etc... From participating in all of these first classes, you have begun to expect certain things from them. That is, loosely, what sociologists do; analyze people in groups and look for patterns of behavior and then analyze how those patterns affect people.
Although the silence experience is an example of how sociologists think, I also use it as a critique of modern education. Much of this critique came to me from Bernard McGrane's Book The Un-TV and the 10MPH Car. McGrane makes the case that students have been trained to follow and become good at school - but not at learning. Their curiosity and excitement for learning has been squashed by a system that rewards docility and conformity. Rather than taking initiative for their own learning, students expect the teacher to provide them with exactly what they need - "Just tell me what to do," is the attitude.
Although I am a part of this modern institutional creation, I have worked hard to counter these forces. My class will ask students to engage in the learning; take part in the process. Sometimes we will do experiential lessons like the silence experience where students will be active participants in the class. Our service experience is another example of this. Students will also be asked to be active as teachers in the class through their blogging. Each student will create a blog that will not only be a source of displaying what a student has learned, it will also be a resource for teaching other students. We all learn from each other. We are all both teacher and student.
What do you think about the awkward silence? Do you see how we set expectations based on our experiences? Did you know what sociologists studied before taking this class? Do you realize that students expect the teacher to tell them what to do? Can you see how this crushes a love for learning? What do you think about the idea of blogging as a way of teaching others?

What would I do if I majored in sociology?

2012-01-18T07:05:00.000-06:00

There are lots of ways you can use a sociology major and of course, many people end up working in an area that has nothing to do with their major anyway. Sociology is great for anything having to do with people and statistics or different groups of people. Here are some resources. Email back if you need anything else. Are you a sociology major yet, or just considering?

This is from the American Sociology Association's website:

A Valuable Preparation

A degree in sociology is an excellent springboard for entering the world of business, industry, and organizations. The sociological perspective is crucial for working in today's multiethnic and multinational business environment

An undergraduate sociology major provides valuable insights into social factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, education, and social class that affect work and how organizations operate.

Also, Here check this out:

http://www.abacon.com/socsite/careers.html

http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/leftnav/careers_and_jobs/sociology_major_preparation_for_careers

http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?section=Careers+and+Jobs&name=Career+Preparation%3A+Making+the+Most+of+an+Undergraduate+Major

http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/leftnav/careers_and_jobs/careers_in_sociology

Growing Up Online

2012-01-17T21:35:00.000-06:00

The television show Frontline on PBS had an episode called "Growing Up Online". You can view the whole show over the internet at their website:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

Whether you get to view the show or not, the main focus of the episode was that adults had better learn to embrace technology and help kids navigate it because it is here for good and for better or worse. (http://thejournal.com/articles/17616_3)
What do you think of all this? I mean, not just the blogging, but the myspace, facebook, text messaging, IM-ing, etc... How is it shaping our culture and our world? What should my role be as a teacher? Do I encourage it's use? Is this technology making us all less personal and more detached from each other? Am I contributing to the problem? The first day of class I mentioned that I want all of us to be teachers to each other. Can this blog help us all be students and teachers of each other? If so, think about the mindset you must have to be a part of this. This technology can create new ways of thinking for us if we are willing to write and read seriously.

While thinking about all of this, it is worth considering how to blog responsibly. See what the website above says, but also try following some advice from Dave Taylor.
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/are_there_dangers_in_having_high_school_students_blog.html

The Pledge of Allegiance and now Silence?

2012-01-16T02:33:00.000-06:00

Rituals and habits are important parts of our lives. They create a mindset before beginning worthwhile ventures and they provide closure for journey’s end. Graduation day has its gowns and speeches and diploma handing. Birthdays have their cakes and singing. Our school day has the Pledge of Allegiance.

When I first started teaching at my high school, there was no saying of the Pledge. There was a flag in nearly every room, but each day started with the morning announcements and no reference to the flag hanging quietly and dignified in the corner of the room. Then came September 11, 2001 and America was searching for its identity in a time of crisis and uncertainty. Many Americans were feeling patriotic. And in July of 2003, Governor George Ryan signed Senate Bill 1634, which amends the state school code so that “students in secondary schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance on a daily basis.”

Besides not liking being forced (by a corrupt governor no less) to do this, there were other reasons I did not stand up and support this pledge immediately. The United States had invaded a sovereign nation in March of 2003. This was an invasion and war that I never supported, but I was surrounded by a whirlwind of patriotism that demanded military action was a necessary course of action. Indeed most of our Congressmen felt compelled to authorize this slaughter for fear of being considered unpatriotic. In brief, it was blind patriotism and I felt that forcing teachers and students to stand for the pledge was one more blinder for the patriotic horse.

And then I was reminded of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1892, in accordance with the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge as a salute to the original ideals of the American republic.
Dr. Mortimer Adler, American philosopher and last living founder of the Great Books program at Saint John's College, has analyzed these ideas in his book, The Six Great Ideas. He argues that the three great ideas of the American political tradition are 'equality, liberty and justice for all.' 'Justice' mediates between the often conflicting goals of 'liberty' and 'equality.'

His original Pledge read as follows: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' He considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans.
In 1923 and 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the 'leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge's words, 'my Flag,' to 'the Flag of the United States of America.' Bellamy disliked this change, but his protest was ignored.
In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.
Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.
What follows is Bellamy's own account of some of the thoughts that went through his mind in August, 1892, as he picked the words of his Pledge:
It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people...
The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which it stands.' ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity.' No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...
If the Pledge's historical pattern repeats, its words will be modified during this decade. Below are two possible changes.
Some pro-life advocates recite the following slightly revised Pledge: 'I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, born and unborn.'
A few liberals recite a slightly revised version of Bellamy's original Pledge: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.'
So, although the words in the Pledge have changed and the meaning has sometimes been forgotten, the importance remains. We are fortunate to live in a country that allows a certain degree of freedom. We are fortunate to be, at the very least, citizens striving for equality, justice and freedom. These ideals must be achieved through education. And we are also fortunate for that. Our well-being as individuals depends upon our education. Our ability to achieve happiness depends upon it. So whether you recite Bellemy’s original Pledge or you add God or equality to it, what matters is the ritual of giving thanks that you are about to embark on self-discovery that is only possible in an unoppressive country with public education. Let the Pledge be a time to reflect on that and get into the proper mindset for you to fully take advantage of that. I am grateful to be here with you today. I am happy that you are able to be here and I want you to feel thankful that you may achieve happiness through the quest for equality, justice and freedom.

Course Evaluation

2012-01-06T07:51:00.004-06:00

Please click on the following link and complete the course evaluation. All responses are anonymous and I would really appreciate your honest and thoughtful input. After everyone is finished with the survey, there will be sometime to share your input with me personally. Thanks so much!

Sociology Course Evaluation.

Moving forward...

2012-01-05T07:53:00.000-06:00

One of the main objectives of this class has been to give you some ideas for how to apply sociology to your own life. I hope that you will be influenced by our class and at times I hope you will return to this blog to look again at the ideas that we discussed in class. Just like the ringing of the bell, you are constantly changing, growing and developing. There will be times when you experience more development than others and there will be times of your life when you are more open to learning the lessons of our class.

Here is the Desiderata which is a great poem summarizing much of what we learned in class.

Here is the history of the Desiderata which explains the connection to Adlai Stevenson.

Here is the book This Book Is Not Required which we read from during our last lesson:

Finally, I hope that learning about the influence of society on the individual (sociological imagination) has helped you to see how you have been influenced by the world. And hopefully in seeing this, you can really understand who you are, love who you are and be forgiving of yourself. And then, you can begin to nurture the person you want to become and nurture loving relationships in your life. Here is a Ted Talk from Brene Brown that highlights the importance of letting ourselves be vulnerable and this vulnerability allows us to feel both love and pain. But in being open to these emotions, it allows love to grow in us if we have the mindset that we are worthy of love.

Final blog

2012-01-03T07:59:00.000-06:00

The last exercise of the year will ask you to examine yourself from your new sociological imagination. For the very first blog of the year, each student answered the question, “Who am I? Write a blog entry that defines who you are. Explain to the class what makes up the person you are. What are the biggest influences in your life? What are your goals/purposes in life?”

Now that we have finished the semester, I want you to re-examine your answer to that question. For the last blog of the year, amend your first answer in light of our sociology experience. How would you change that answer knowing what you know now about sociology? You can use your other blogs as reminders of the topics we learned about in class: culture, socialization, media, gender, teens, deviance, social class and race. How does sociology shape the way you think about yourself or your world? If you’d like, you can copy and paste your old blog entry into a new entry and highlight all the differences now in italics or another color, etc.

Crash

2011-12-12T10:35:00.002-06:00

Rather than tracing a main character throughout the movie, Crash traces the construction of race throughout the film. Try not to watch the movie literally, because it is obviously implausible that these characters are so interrelated. Instead, watch the movie and think about race metaphorically. There are many ways in which race shows up in the movie. Race is really what is interrelated to all the characters. Race is much more complex than the black and white way it is often portrayed. Race can be related to language, social class, religion, skin color, power, and other social constructs. Sometimes race divides people we would normally put in the same racial category. Sometimes race leads to explicit racism and sometimes it is implicit. The movie allows for viewers to interpret based on their own racialized ideas:
For example: Assumptions about the locksmith and robbing the store, or assumptions about the 2 young car thieves, or what was in the car thief’s pocket in the off duty cop’s car. Other moments when this happens:
What did you think Ludacris will do with the van and the people? Sell Them?
What did you think the business was that the Asian man was doing early in the movie before we saw the people in the van?

The movie looks at both explicit and implicit racism. But the question the movie implores us to explore is which is worse? The young cop tries really hard to not be explicitly racist, but he doesn’t realize the implicitly racist ways that he has been shaped. He assumes that the young black kid was not ice skating and is laughing at him and that he is reaching for a weapon.

The movie highlights that because we live in a society obsessed with race, our difficulties in our lives can be manifested into racism even though the real problem is social class, money and job opportunities, health problems, etc…

Another theme highlighted in the movie is that individuals might not be racist (or might be trying to overcome it) but they live in a larger society with racist dynamics. For example, the detective has to deal with his mom feeling that he left the family behind because he became a detective and got an education and moved out of the neighborhood. Another example is the tv director who has his own ideas about the show but he is forced to succumb to the will of the white producer who has his own ideas.

Here are some sociological questions to consider after watching the movie:
If race is not scientifically based, what is it based on?
What are some of the characteristics that our society uses to define race? What scenes/characters highlight differences that are not biological, but refer to “race”? Are there any moments in your life when you learned that race is not related to biology or science?
What are some stereotypes that are not true?
What are some of the stereotypes in the movie that characters hold that are not true? Which characters hold stereotyped beliefs about others in the movie and what were they? How were these stereotypes not true? Have you ever held a stereotype that you later found to be untrue? Have you ever felt stereotyped by someone?
Implicit vs. Explicit racism;What are some examples of explicit and implicit racism in the movie? Do you think that the hidden nature of implicit racism might make it just as volatile as explicit racism? Is it valuable to become aware of implicit racism and how our society shapes these attitudes? Thinking about the IAT test we did in class, how might implicit racism be a part of you? How does society shape us?
What can we do about racism?
Using the movie as an example, what can be done to help reduce the racism in society? How should some of the racist incidents be handled so as to minimize the racism in America? What can you do in your own life?
Race is more than a black and white issue…
What are some examples from the movie that show the idea of race is not just a black or white issue and instead race is much more complicated? What scenes/characters show this idea? Do you think that simplifying race to a black-white issue continues to create confusion over race issues in America?

Priviledged

2011-12-09T21:21:00.000-06:00

This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress. Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh? I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored.

Sociologist Peggy McIntosh writes about White Privilege in her essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Click on the link above to read her whole essay, but the idea is that because Americans live in a white-dominated society, whites have a host of little things that work in their favor. Here is an example from sociological images. Tim Wise, another sociologist, applied McIntosh's idea to the 2008 election. Read Tim Wise's White Priviledge, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election. Here is a brief excerpt,

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

Chicago Public Radio aired a story about Global Girls, an organization working to develop African-American girls’ self esteem. The girls at the organization know firsthand how difficult it is for their peers who are poor and black and pregnant. They developed a performance piece to help show their feelings and how white priviledge helps to favor white girls (especially wealthy) in the same predicament. Listen to the full story here. What do you think the reaction would be if one of Obama's girls was old enough and pregnant with a baby of her own? How does this priviledge affect you? How might it affect minorities in other ways? What is your reaction to Tim Wise's analysis of the 2008 election? Noting that this is a difficult challenge ahead of Palin, what are the advantages that she might have being who she is? How might pregnancy affect a poor person differently than a wealthy person? How might pregnancy affect someone with power like a governor's daughter or Vice-president's daughter differently than the daughter of someone with less power/clout?

Here is a humorous SNL clip that addresses white priviledge:

Implicit Racism

2011-12-09T10:40:00.000-06:00

Racism can often be hidden in our unconsciousness. Even though as individuals we might work consciously to not be racist, we live in a racist society with a racist legacy. From the moment we are born we are influenced subtly to think of white as good and black as bad. Look at these examples from various media. They are not trying to be racist, but the message they send reinforces racist ideology.

These pictures though very similar, are different in two important areas: the race of the people and the caption.

LeBron James is one of the few men to be on the cover of Vogue and yet, he is portrayed as an angry gorilla.

Harvard has been conducting an ongoing study of how we implicitly associate certain traits with being good or bad. You can take the survey here. Click on Demo first.

See how this implicit racism shows up even within the same minority groups that are being discriminated against.

Also, checkout the Chicago Tribune's series on race. It is a groundbreaking, honest discussion about race in America (with extensive blogging as a bonus!)

Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is. I think it is a motivating strong voice. Click the link and watch the video.

Explicit Racism

2011-12-09T10:05:00.000-06:00

Explicit racism is the overt racism against a group of people from a "race". The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies hate groups in America. This link will show you a map of all the hate groups in the United States. There is no shortage of explicit racism in America, though many assume that this sort of racism is a thing of the past. This article from the Mail Online, A British online newspaper:

And with Mr Obama reportedly receiving more death threats than any other American president - 400 per cent more than those against his predecessor George Bush, according to a new book...A black U.S. Congressman had a swastika painted over his office sign after he yelled at allegedly racist protesters at a Southern town hall meeting, it emerged today

.
Have you seen or heard any explicit racism in your own life?

Final Paper: Reflecting on Your Service Experience (Step3)

2011-12-08T07:50:00.002-06:00

Here is the prompt for your final paper.

Step 3: Final Paper
Reflecting On Your Experiences

Looking back at your experiences in community service, reflect on what you did and relate it to sociology. This paper should be about your experiences in general. Do not simply restate what you have already written in your journals. Instead, look at your journals to refresh your memory about what you experienced and then try to make some generalizations about the experience. Apply these generalizations to the three areas below. You do not need to respond to every prompt below, but you should have well-developed and authentic answers to each of the three areas: evaluation, sociology themes and sociology content. Each area should be written from your perspective as an individual. Your paper will be graded on the following components. This is due the last Wednesday before final exams.

Application of the Experience: Evaluate the importance and value of voluntarism. How has this and will it affect your life in the short term & long term? Do you think that being involved in community (through the service experience) gives you sense of belonging and a feeling of being necessary that teens often lack, and how? Can you see how volunteering and helping others can contribute to the happiness and well-being of the volunteers? In what ways do you think that you have benefited from the experience? Was the experience rewarding/fulfilling? What did you take away from this experience?

Sociological Themes: How might your experience reflect the idea of a sociological imagination? How are the private troubles of the people you served, a part of larger social forces? Use your sociological imagination to discuss why the people you served need volunteers. How are their lives (their reality) constructed by social forces? Has this experience helped you to become more sociological mindful? Why? Why not? Has this experience impacted the, “mark that you want to leave?” See Schwalbe’s Sociological Mindfulness for more on this idea. How might your service experience help to show the interconnectedness between people within society? Use examples from your own experiences. You might want to lookup what the organization you volunteered with does. Who do they help? Where does there money go?

Sociology Content: Relate your experiences to sociology content. What aspects of class (or our blog) does this encompass? What connections do you see between the content of our class and the community service? Use our class notes, readings, and your blog to review all the ways your service experience might relate. Some ideas might be: What stereotypes were there before starting? Did any of these change? Was there any relation to gender, age, social class, race or any other group we discussed in sociology? Think about how the people you helped (and perhaps yourself) are socialized to think about themselves. Does culture play a part in the service experience? Maybe American values can be used to analyze the service experience. Perhaps you can think of the group as a subculture. Is there deviance involved? Perhaps the group you are working with is considered deviant by society. How might that affect those people? Maybe you are considered deviant for volunteering. Use the suggestions on the back of this sheet for other ideas of how the service experience connects to sociology. Also use at least 4 references to class discussions, activities, readings and videos. If you need help remembering all of the specifics of what we did in class, use my blog. Go through it and refresh your memory.

Format: Write in proper format. Use a standard font type, size 10-12, margins .5-1.25, double space. Use proper prose and paragraphs, be cohesive and turn it in on time. Besides proper academic writing, your paper should be authentic. Do not fill your paper with generic clichés. Explain why and how from your unique perspective. Used detailed examples from your own experiences to support your answers.

Here are some ways to help you think about how your service experience relates to sociology content:

Culture:
Identify unique elements in your service experience, such as: material culture, norms, values and sanctions. Consider how these cultural elements aid in the functioning of the organization and how they contrast with mainstream elements of culture.

Socialization:
Analyze the modes of interaction that you engaged in during your service. Where there differences in the way that you acted towards the clients versus other volunteers versus members of the organization? Did you see any processes of socialization occurring with yourself or with the clients that you were working with?

Deviance:
Reflect on the whether the organization or clientele of the organization where you were volunteering bears any stigma from the larger community. Often times, community-service organizations have the primary goal of aiding individuals who carry a deviant identity. Whether it is poverty, substance abuse, illness, age, disability, etc. Observe how the clients manage their stigmatized identities. How do the workers at the organization treat the clients? Do the clients manage or reject the label of deviant? How does the work of the organization help change societal perceptions of the stigmatized?

Social Class:
What role does class inequality play in their organization? How is the organization funded? How do community service organizations in general generate enough interest for people to volunteer their time and donate their money to help others? How does charity fit into the American Dream ideology? Do you believe that most Americans are willing to sacrifice some of their own wealth to help those in need? Why? Why not?

Race/Ethnicity:
Reflect on the racial and ethnic dynamic of their organization. Is there a difference between the racial or ethnic composition of the staff, the volunteers, and the clientele? Did your experiences of the racial or ethnic composition at the organization parallel your everyday experiences? Have you gained any insight into a particular group? Explain.

The Social Construction of Race

2011-12-07T20:05:00.000-06:00

Because race does not exist in any biological or scientific way that can be defined, each society is able to define it how they want.
Over the years, race has changed in America. The Irish were originally considered not white. Later, Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans faced discri mination because they were considered less desirable than Northern Europeans. In the 1920s, the Supreme Court Case Thind vs. U.S. determined that a man of Asian Indian descent was not white or caucasoid, even though he did not fit into the other categories of race at the time (Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black). Instead the court ruled that because most people would say that he is not white, then he is not white. This was just one case of many that shaped race throughout U.S. history. For more on how race has changed and can change, see Nell Irvin Painter's book called, "The History of White People." Here is a review on Salon. All of these are examples of how race has changed over the years in America. It can change, because there is no way to define it. It doesn't exist in any biological or empirical sense, it only exists as a social construction.
Watch this show making fun of how race is socially constructed.

Race and biology; Analyzing my spherical objects

2011-12-06T09:30:00.000-06:00

I asked students to classify these balls into different categories. Two things happen:
1)Some students pick a trait such as size or color to classify the balls or, 2)Students classify the balls based on the sport of each such as basketball, soccer, etc...
This is a metaphor for race and how we classify people. 1)First, we choose to use traits such as skin color to classify them, but the divisions between these traits are arbitrary divisions. If you lined up all of the people (or balls) in the world according to a trait, the divisions would be less obvious. It would look more like a spectrum that changes gradually blending into one another. 2)Second, when we categorize the balls into sports or people into races we are constructing a social category that only exists because we say it should. Race, like sports, are social constructions.

So why all the fuss about skin color? The article Skin Deep by Jablonski and Chaplin from Scientific American explains the science behind skin color and how around the world, skin color would look more like a spectrum than distinct groups.

What's the point? There is no way of biologically separating people into "races." Race doesn't exist in any scientific sense. Is this new information to you? Is it difficult to process? I think that race is a biological hegemony in America - that is, it is so accepted that we never question it. For more info you can checkout the April 22, 2005 episode of Odyssey, a radio program that used to air on Chicago Public Radio. This episode about the genetics of race and if you listen carefully to the caller segment, you can hear a very interesting high school sociology teacher commenting. [Listen the program here (the good part is after 35:26)]
Jefferson Fish also explains how race doesn't make sense in the article title Mixed Blood from Psychology Today, 1995.

Is Race Real? We all know that people look different. Anyone can tell a Czech from a Chinese. But are these differences racial? What does race mean? Find the answers to these and other questions by exploring different interactivities within this site.

Understanding Race - Skin Deep Why do some people have light skin and others have dark skin? How do scientists explain the broad spectrum of human skin color around the globe?

What are some assumptions you have had about race? Have you learned erroneous information regarding race? Why is this not a part of curriculum in American schools especially in light of the profound impact the idea of race has had on this country?

Race and Biology

2011-12-06T08:02:00.000-06:00

Race has been such a part of American culture that biological assumptions associated with race have become an accepted part of our culture (hegemony). However, there is no scientific data that allows for humans to separated into races, or biological groups associated with physical features. The following websites provide evidence for this ignorance:

Is Race Real? We all know that people look different. Anyone can tell a Czech from a Chinese. But are these differences racial? What does race mean? Find the answers to these and other questions by exploring different interactivities within this site.

Understanding Race - Skin Deep Why do some people have light skin and others have dark skin? How do scientists explain the broad spectrum of human skin color around the globe?

Poverty in the United States

2011-12-04T08:44:00.000-06:00

Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed is an experiment with what life is like for someone living at minimun wage (or at least low-wage). Here is an excerpt.

Morgan Spurlock's video 30 days at Minimum Wage is also an experiment at living at minimum wage.

What I want you to see are the effects of poverty on individuals:
Physical Health
- a lower class person has a higher chance of dying at any age than a wealthy person.
Environment: the poor are more likely to experience asthma, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes, heart disease, mental disorders, suicide, obesity, cancer, HIV
Lifestyle = fatty foods, smoke, drug abuse, exercise less, unsafe sex.
Medical Care = less access & poorer hospitals
Mental Health = higher stress

Some people will argue that there is a culture of poverty among those in the lowest income levels. This culture of poverty represents individuals making choices that create or worsen the impoverished situation they are in. But, it is important to understand how these choices come about. A life of deprivation, punctuated by emergencies creates a lack of “deferred gratification." In other words, it is difficult for these people to invest in their own future; many of the poor see the future as more of the same or even worse; enjoy what you can, because tomorrow may be worse; poverty influences attitude & behavior which leads to poverty, etc…

And it is important to note that 20% of the children in the US are growing up in poverty! That's 1 out of every 5 kids in the United States is living at the poverty level! This is another good reason why the cycle of poverty exists. These children grow up in these conditions and so it makes it easier to see how they become the adults who continue to be stuck in the cycle of poverty.

Choosing poverty?

2011-12-04T08:40:00.000-06:00

Who would choose poverty if there was another option? There is often a myth in America that people choose poverty. Okay, the choice isn't that simple, but many believe that people simply do not make choices that will lead them out of poverty. I understand that as humans our power comes in the form of consciousness and the ability to make conscious choices, but there still must be a choice in front of us for us to be able to make it. For example, there are parents that want so badly for their kids to avoid the pitfalls of inner city poverty: gangs, drugs, violence, the criminal justice system, poor education. These parents can want to choose the best for their kids, but if there is no real choice in front of them, then little will come of it. A radical experiment in New York is helping to highlight this. It is a school called The Harlem Children's Zone. Parents line up to get their kids into this revolutionary school. The school begins helping parents BEFORE BIRTH! That's right. It provides training from the beginning in how to be a parent. After years of molding students and parents, the school has done what few parents could do without it; it has equalled and surpassed test scores for white middle class students. Watch the CBS video below and see how the school is doing it and the success it has had. Realize that all of these parents wanted the best for their kids, but only the school made it happen. What do you think happend to the kids who weren't fortunate enough to get into the school? What about all of the impoverished students across America who do not have access to a school like that?

Watch CBS News Videos Online
An excerpt from the report:

"You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie,'" Canada told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

"So you're trying to level the playing field between kids here in Harlem and middle class kids in a suburb?" Cooper asked.

"That's exactly what we think we have to do," Canada said. "You know, if you grow up in a community where your schools are inferior, where the sounds of gunshots are a common thing, where you spend your time and energy not thinking about algebra or geometry, but about how not to get beat up, or not to get shot, or not to get raped, when you grow up like that, you don't have the same opportunity as other children growing up. And we're trying to change those odds."

Monopobility

2011-11-30T09:20:00.000-06:00

Playing monopoly according to the rules of the U.S.'s class structure should have some revealing insight about the state of mobility within the U.S.'s class structure.
From the Brookings Institute:

Recent studies suggest that there is less economic mobility in the United States than has long been presumed. The last thirty years has seen a considerable drop-off in median household income growth compared to earlier generations. And, by some measurements, we are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity.

Mobility in America tends to be within the middle classes (from working class to uppermiddle class). The wealthy class tends to stay wealthy and the impoverished class tends to stay in poverty. Another trend is for intergenerational mobility. Which means that it is more likely that the children of one group will move up than the parents themselves.

How has your family's mobility been? Are you growing up in the same social class as your parents? How about from your grandparents? Where do you see your future in terms of social class?

Preschool Privilege

2011-11-29T10:33:00.000-06:00

When the wealthy take steps to ensure their child be accepted into the upper-upper class, they begin early. A few recent articles and a documentary highlight this subculture. Wealthy parents in New York City hire consultants and special tutors to get their child into a handful of elite preschools and then they pay costly tuition ($15,000+) to send the child there. This article from Bloomberg News highlights the competition to get in,

...An average of 15 applicants vie for every spot in about 200 preschools, Uhry said. According to its Web site, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received 22,754 applications for the freshman class entering in last fall and admitted 2,124 -- 11 applications per admission.

From the New York Daily News,

Consultants charge $10,000 a pop to share their secrets of success. A nose-picking habit is considered special needs.
As the mother of an 11-month-old already bemused by Manhattan's hypercompetitive baby-rearing culture, I watched the film with amusement and dread.
If, like Moon, I want my child to attend one of these nurseries - popularly perceived as "Ivy League feeder schools" - finding the annual $20,000 tuition would apparently be the least of my worries.

An interesting contrast might be comparing this to my post on the Harlem Children's Zone, also a rigorous program, but for parents of low-income, at-risk students.
Watch the trailer for a documentary called Nursery University which reveals the intensity around getting into the "right" preschool.

High School and Social Class

2011-11-29T09:48:00.000-06:00

"Well, your CD collection looks shiny and costly.
How much did you pay for your bad Moto Guzi?
And how much did you spend on your black leather jacket?
Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?"
- Cake

How does class play itself out at our high school, or in high school in general? Does high school reinforce or prepare you for fitting into a social class? If so, how? Give some examples form Stevenson. Additionally, how do you think moving up or down would affect you? Which would be tougher? What if you married/dated someone working class or someone rich? What difficulty would this cause in your family and friends?

Blue Collar Stereotypes

2011-11-29T08:39:00.000-06:00

The movie People Like Us shows blue collar people being glamorized by middle classes. One example was the “Hun Fest” in Baltimore and another example is the Yuppies who go to working class bars in the city and they call them “dive bars.” Both groups claim to be romanticizing and appreciating the blue collar life. However, when it’s finished, they go back to their middle class lifestyle and do not interact with these blue collar people. Do you find this to be condescending? Are they really making fun of these people? Furthermore, one of the speakers in the movie said that although racial and religious stereotypes are no longer accepted publicly, class stereotypes are still acceptable. For example, you could freely use phrases like “You’re so ghetto” or “That’s so white trash” and you would not get into trouble. Why do you think class stereotypes and prejudices are still acceptable in America today?

For more blue collar stereotypes visit the blue collar TV website

or Jeff Foxworthy’s website.

Or, watch this video called "Class Dismissed; How TV Frames the Working Class" from mediaed:

Can you imagine a mainstream comedian getting away with these jokes in a racial or ethnic or religious way?

Tammy, Appalachia and poverty

2011-11-28T11:48:00.001-06:00

In the movie People Like Us we met Tammy and her sons from Pike County, Ohio. (Watch the video here.) They live in poverty. Tammy was from a family of 22 kids and she grew up in poverty. She wants to be a teacher. Her son wants to be an architect or a lawyer. Will they be able to achieve these goals? What are the factors that will hold them back? What will their life chances be? One of the ways that Tammy’s son copes with his situation is by trying to dress preppy and act preppy. He cleans the house so it looks better and he tries in school, winning awards and succeeding in sports. Can these actions move him up to a higher class or is he kidding himself? What are the chances he succeeds in the "American Dream"?
If you want to help Tammy and her family, here is a link to how you can help.

Tammy is just one of thousands of Americans living in poverty. Her story highlights many of the difficulties of life in poverty: poor health, few jobs, inadequate education, stressful family dynamics, all limit the chances of those living in poverty ever getting out of it. Diane Sawyer did a special report on Appalachia that highlighted the children affected by poverty. I think there is a tendency for us to blame the adults for their impoverished situation, but we forget that these adults were once children born into a world of difficulties and obstacles that led to an adulthood of poverty. You can hear Diane Sawyer talk about it here. Can you use your sociological imagination to see all of the social forces that limit those who are in poverty in America? Watch this excerpt from 20/20 to see the complicated life of the rural impoverished American.

Class Interaction

2011-11-23T10:04:00.000-06:00

In the movie, a few of the interviewees say that people from different social classes do not interact much on a daily basis. One person says that the last time he saw people from a different class was in high school and they didn’t get along much because the working class people felt that the upper middle class people were always looking down on them. He also said that the lower classes feel “invisible.” Another guy said that people from different classes might interact at a baseball game, but they don’t really understand each other.

The question is do you think that we separate ourselves from other classes? On a daily basis, when do you get to interact with people from different classes? Why do lower class people feel “invisible?” Do you think this is true? Visit the following website to see what kind of people live near you:
Claritas class finder by code.

Also, there is a short article about how uniforms separate us into classes. Click on the following link and then click on “Essays” then “Pride and Prejudice...”
Articles on Social Class

Also in the movie, they show a woman trying to act wealthy. She is given lessons on how to walk, talk, stand, think, dress etc.... What do you think of these techniques? Can someone learn to fit in? How are we encouraged to not let others into our class? Do you think that our parents encourage us to mix with people from a certain class? The following website provides evidence for one small way that classes tend to separate themselves. What do you think of it? Click on the link below and then visit the visitors section:
Ivy League Dating

How are you separated from other classes in your daily life?

Social class and your possessions

2011-11-22T08:10:00.001-06:00

In the movie People Like Us, they show many different things that people buy that represent their social class such as a Tuscan style kitchen, a 4 foot Mitsubishi TV, a Volvo. What possessions do you or your family own that represent your social class? Do you think that class is related to the things we own? Think about a possession that you own that could be much cheaper or much more expensive - why do you have the one that you have and not a cheaper/ more expensive one? You can go to the following website and take a quiz about how the things you prefer represent your class:
Chintz or shag

We also see a guy who goes into Williams & Sonoma and says that the store represents upper middle class because of the things it sells. Then we see Karen Hess (bread expert) who says the bread we eat reflects our class. We develop tastes that reflect our class. What stores do you shop at and what types of bread do you eat? How do your possessions reflect your own social class? You can visit the following website and take the quiz "Identify this" or "Name that class" and see if your values represent a class:
Identify this

Here's a quick example from W & S:
It is a set of wooden utensils - but not just any wooden utensils, "Canadian inventor and designer Tom Littledeer is known for his beautifully carved kitchen tools with fluid shapes inspired by canoe paddles. Each of the tools in this set is handcrafted from a single piece of North American maple..." $99.99 for a set of 5.

"The rules are there no rules..."

2011-11-21T10:38:00.006-06:00

The quote above is from the movie Grease, but it reflects the common thinking about the American class system. That is, most Americans believe that there are no rules in America and anything is possible. "Only in America" is a common myth. The reality is that there are rules to the class system, but few Americans see it (then again, few have a sociological imagination!). The rules are as follows:

Income: the highest earning Americans have continued to earn more and more over the last 50 years, while the lower earners have earned closer to about the same. The more money you have, the more you can earn. This video (though politicized) is an accurate portrayal of income inequality in America. This graph displays the inequality by occupation.
Checkout this post from Slate about income inequality. You can scroll down a bit and enter your zipcode and see where it stands by comparison.
This map shows the inequality present in countries around the world. The bluer countries are more equal and the more red are less equalNotice how many countries are more equal than the United States. Here is another blog's post about the growing inequality in the U.S.

Wealth: the wealthiest Americans have an enormous amount of wealth compared to the average American. The disparity is greater than that of income. Here is a visual representation of disparate wealth is.

Education: This link shows that on average, the higher a family's income, the higher the ACT score. And this link shows the higher one's educational level, the more he or she earns. Here is a post from sociological images that has a lot of info showing the connection between your degree and your income. This graph shows that the less education that parents have, the less education their children obtain.

Location: The price of a home depends on a lot more than the physical structure of the home.

Race: There is a much larger percentage of black and hispanic minorities in poverty than whites, although the actual number of whites is higher because there are that many more whites.

Here is a link to 15 statistics about inequality in America.

All of these combine to form a rough picture of social class. Here is one representation of how all of those components might work together:

Income around the world

2011-11-21T08:27:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are because the media is saturated with stories of the super wealthy. Here is a website that will rank you among the WORLD's population. That should provide some perspective as to how lucky we are.

If you are interested in how your community's income looks, click on the American Factfinder and search by zipcode. Then scroll down to "Economic Characteristics" and look next to median family income. It is in 1999 dollars in most cases, but that is still an accurate portrayal for comparison's sake.

Courtroom 302 Inhuman until proven guilty

2011-11-18T10:17:00.001-06:00

Courtroom 302 is a book about a year-in-the-life of the Cook County Courthouse which is the largest single site county courthouse or jail in the United States.
After reading the excerpt from Courtroom 302 by Steve Bogira, think about how the reading ties together the Saints and Roughnecks and the relativity of deviant drugs and the 30 Days in Prison video. all of the prisoners in the Courtrom 302 reading were still defendents - they were not convicted of any crime! Yet, their treatment would seem to indicate that not only were they guilty, they were deserving of inhumane treatment. The prisoners are an example of the roughnecks in today's society. They are mostly poor and minorities who have been labelled by the system as no-good troublemakers. Secondly, think about how many of the prisoners were there for drug-related offenses. The reading said that 37 of the 43 felonies were drug-related. The labelling of drugs as a deviant criminal problem instead of a medical problem has severely impacted our criminal justice system. And in a system that favors those with money every step of the way, we see a disproportionate number of poor drug users filling up the system. In the end, I think Bogira would not blame the guards or the lawyers or the judges, but I think he would say that the system is broken. Only responsible citizens can change this structure by voting and activism to make the system fair again. In fairness to the system, over the last few years, there has been some developments that both highlight the structural failures but also provide hope that things can change. A Chicago cop was convicted of torturing defendants who were being questioned by police. Also, a class-action lawsuit was settled in favor of thousands of defendants who went through the Cook County Courthouse and faced the awful conditions that Bogira wrote about.

jUStice

2011-11-17T08:35:00.000-06:00

The United States has one percent of its adult population locked up behind bars. One out of four prisoners IN THE WORLD is behind bars in the US. Over 50 percent of those incarcerated in a federal prison is convicted of a crime related to drugs. Approximately 16 percent of those incarcerated in America suffer from a mental illness. Here is an article from the International Herald last week detailing the shocking size of the US penal population. Are these statistics surprising? How does this affect our society? How should we begin working to change this dynamic, or is the system fine the way it is? Do you see how the relativity of deviance affects this? As attitudes change, laws change, and that affects who is incarcerated and how society deals with it.

Here is a link to the prison in the episode of 30 Days in Prison. Why aren't more prisons providing the assistance to inmates to turn their life around? Wouldn't it benefit all of society and all of us if inmates received help to adjust to life on the outside of prison?

the relativity of deviance and drugs

2011-11-16T07:37:00.000-06:00

As one example of the relativity of deviance, one can examine drugs as deviance in a few different ways:
First, for many years, drug use was considered a medical problem. If you are using drugs and harming your body or those around you, you need help. If you are psychologically addicted to drugs, you need help. As detailed in the book Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser shows how Marijuana went from being a medical/social problem to being a criminal one. This change in the law shows how relative the law can be about marijuana. Furthermore, the laws criminalizing Marijuana are in many cases relative to where you are. Sometimes it depends on how the state handles the crime, sometimes it depends on how the local law enforcement handles the crime. An excerpt from Schlosser's writing:

Some states classify marijuana with drugs like mescaline and heroin, while others give it a separate legal category. In New York state possessing slightly less than an ounce of marijuana brings a $100 fine, rarely collected. In Nevada possessing any amount of marijuana is a felony. In Montana selling a pound of marijuana, first offense, could lead to a life sentence, whereas in New Mexico selling 10,000 pounds of marijuana, first offense, could be punished with a prison term of no more than three years. In some states it is against the law to be in a room where marijuana is being smoked, even if you don't smoke any. In some states you may be subject to criminal charges if someone else uses, distributes, or cultivates marijuana on your property. In Idaho selling water pipes could lead to a prison sentence of nine years. In Kentucky products made of hemp fibers, such as paper and clothing, not only are illegal but carry the same penalties associated with an equivalent weight of marijuana. In Arizona, where marijuana use is forbidden, the crime can be established by the failure of a urine test: a person could theoretically be prosecuted in Phoenix for a joint smoked in Philadelphia more than a week before.

So, what this is showing is that Marijuana laws (and drug laws in general) have changed over time and are still different from place to place; the relativity of deviance. For a more reliable understanding of drugs and their effects, checkout the book Buzzed by Kuhn et al.

A second way that we see this relativity in drugs depends on who is getting caught using them. In a landmark study, The Vicious Circle, the Chicago Urban League wrote about how a Chicago Police drug sting operation was handing out felonies to impoverished minorities busted near the projects, but upper middleclass white kids from Naperville who were being caught there (instead of being given a felony) were having their parents called by the cops, or in some cases having their license suspended, but then they were released with no felony on their record. Dr. Paul Street of the Chicago Urban League writes,

Perhaps nothing reveals more dramatically Illinois authorities’ penchant for waging the War on Drugs in…disparate ways than the state’s enforcement of two 1989 bills mandating that a 15 or 16 year-old youth automatically would be prosecuted as an adult if he or she was charged with selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school or a public housing project. Under the state’s Automatic Transfer laws…youth who have been convicted as adults can be transferred to adult prisons upon their 17th birthday and are automatically transferred on their 18th birthday….Of the 393 young people automatically transferred to adult facilities in Cook County from October 1999 to October 2000, 99.2 percent of them were minorities….
These findings are disturbing in light of evidence that white youth use illicit drugs at the same or higher rates as youth of color. They are doubly troublesome in light of recent reports on how local and state criminal justice authorities have chosen to deal with the rising number of ‘young [white] suburbanites’ purchasing heroin and other illegal narcotics on the city’s predominantly black West Side. In August 2001, The Chicago Tribune reported that city police and DuPage…drug cops… had selected a rather mild sanction for the suburban offenders. ‘Officers,’ the Tribune noted, ‘have seen teens make drug buys, traced the license plates of their cars and notified the registered owner, often a parent, where the vehicle has been.’
Last June…Cook County prosecuters and police had increased the level of punishment for the young suburbanites, threatening to impound their automobiles and suspend their driver’s licenses. William O’Brien, Chief of Narcotics for the State’s Attorney’s Office gave the following rationale for this ‘new crackdown,’ which contrasted sharply with the prison sentences faced by 15-year-old inner city youth caught selling narcotics next to a public housing project; when it comes to young and automobile centered suburban kids, O’Brien explained, ‘driving privileges may resonate more…than the threat of jail.’
The Vicious Circle by Dr. Paul Street, The Chicago Urban League, 2002. (pp.13-14)

Chicago Magazine published a story about the rapidly growing heroine problem in St. Charles claiming the lives of dozens of teens but the community was afraid too acknowledge this because of the stigma of drug use. This stigma lead to three teens dumping the body of their friend who had overdosed back into the poor Chicago neighborhood where they had bought the drugs.

Heads I win, tails you lose

2011-11-15T09:47:00.003-06:00

Today we wagered in class. The exercise was a metaphor for deviance and social class. The exercise had the appearance of being fair and equal - everyone had a 50% chance of winning. However, the way the rules are written, the money will flow to the top with just a few having most coins and most people having very little. Most U.S.citizens do not like the idea of social class. They will not acknowledge the rules that create the distribution of wealth that we see in the exercise. But the reality is that our wealth and even our income in the U.S. resembles that of the coin flip metaphor; a few individuals at the top with enormous wealth and income and most people at the bottom making very little (comparatively).
These rules can also be applied to what we have been talking about regarding deviance. Those with money are able to stay clear of the criminal justice system while the majority of those who are locked up in prisons are citizens with low income. Wealthy crimes are generally "white collar" crime, esp. corporate crime. Instead of white collar crime, our society tends to focus on street crime such as robberies, murders, rapes. The media contributes to this b/c it is action-packed, full of emotion (fear), and personalized (it tells a good story). On the other hand, white collar crime is boring (numbers & statistics). But the reality is that it is more costly ($400bil). One example is Sears which defrauded poor customers of over $100 million. They pled guilty and avoided a trial; other companies settled out of court for similar practices. Firestone executives let faulty tires remain on U.S. vehicles even though they had been recalled in other countries. About 200 people killed. Under federal law, causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor and punishable by up to six months in prison. Powerful people bypass the courts and are usually fined – no jail.

Deviance: Saints, Roughnecks and Patriots?

2011-11-14T21:55:00.004-06:00

Besides time and place, deviance is also relative to perception. Deviance must be perceived to be real. And in a capitalist society that values money, perceived deviance is related to social class. This is one revelation in William Chambliss's study called "The Saints and the Roughnecks" Chambliss argues that money was a key factor. If you have enough money it helps you cover up the deviance. Do you think this applies to kids at our school (no names please). Who is deviant? How do they hide it? Does money play a role? Is everyone at school a "saint"? Another important revelation in Chambliss's research is that the kids who accept the label of "deviant" then act upon that label. In other words, if I think that everyone expects me to be deviant, I may accept that as the truth and then I act deviant. Once you are labeled as "deviant", that becomes a stigma or a badge of disgrace that you carry with you. Sociologists who study this perspective call it the labeling theory.
Freaks and Geeks episode 13 is an example of Chambliss's thesis. Lindsay is experimenting with pot but she does not get caught, but her freek friends get caught. They are expected to be deviant. They may have even accepted the label of being deviant and they now see themselves as deviant and that influences their actions.

Deviance

2011-11-09T09:37:00.005-06:00

Deviance is either repeatedly or seriously violating the norms of a society. Deviance is relative to both time and place. In other words, depending on when you are some place or where you are, you might be considered deviant or might not. When I was in the Caribbean on this remote island, I was stunned to see a guy carrying a sack of mangoes on his head. I took his picture because to me, this was deviant. However, what I didn't realize was that taking a stranger's picture was deviant to them. We looked at many other examples of deviance from class:
continuously talking to oneself in public
having a tattoo
doing your homework
holding the hand of a significant other in public
listening to your radio loud enough for everyone around you hear.
dropping out of high school
using illegal drugs
growing your hair really long
cutting your hair really short
a man wearing a dress
a business person wearing jeans
balancing your groceries on your head in public
leaving your parent's home after getting married
driving 100 m.p.h. down Port Clinton Rd.
attacking another person with a weapon
two men kissing
women working in a factory or in construction
woman with shaved armpits
shopping on Sunday
getting divorced
All of these have instances when or where they would or wouldn't be considered deviant. It depends on where you are and when you are there.

Deviance also needs to be perceived. In the following video, think about who is considered deviant and why:

It doesn't matter that Jerry didn't actually picked his nose. If he is perceived as deviant (which he is) then he is considered deviant and he will be treated as such.

Deviance both positive and negative

2011-11-09T07:47:00.001-06:00

Deviance is the repeated or serious violation of society's expectations. What is expected by society varies depending on where you are and when you are there. For example, cell phones used to be unacceptable at any school function just a matter of years ago. Now, I see students wearing cell phones on their waists and they are not perceived as deviant. It should be noted though that deviance doesn't just have to be negative. Check out this story from NPR:

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"
READ THE WHOLE STORY OR LISTEN TO IT HERE.

What a crazy story. What do you think about that?

So this brings me to the idea that deviance doesn't have to be negative; you can violate the norms of society by doing something positive, such as paying for the toll of a stranger, giving away money (even just a dollar) to someone who doesn't ask for it, offering to carry a fellow student's books/bag for no reason, etc... For your next experiment try violating a norm in a positive way. Try an act of positive deviance. How does it make it you feel? How hard was it to do? How did others react to you? Here are some suggestions from the Randomn Acts of Kindness(RAK) Foundation for RAK at school (yes this is a real organization). And here are some suggestions for individuals doing RAK in the community.

"You must unlearn what you have learned..."

2011-11-08T11:25:00.000-06:00

In Empire Strikes Back, when Yoda tells Luke that he must "unlearn what he has learned," he is talking about resocializing him. This means learning a new way of thinking and acting. Alcoholics Anonymous or weight watchers are good examples of groups that help resocialize individuals. Another way individuals are transformed by resocializing is through total institutions, such as a monastery, a prison or bootcamp.

Bootcamp must be especially powerful because, on a basic level, individuals are learning to not run or hide when being shot at and they are learning to shoot at others.

Another example of this from my own life is training in aikido. The image at the right is my dojo from Japan (I am in the back left...with hair :-) Aikido is a martial art that means the way of harmony of energy. It is a different concept of martial arts. It is not fighting, it is not even competitive. It is not, however, like Tai Chi. Aikido is practical and applicable to the world. But it requires training and a new way of thinking about the world, a resocialization.
Here is a link to a story about aikido in action (non-physically).
Here is a video of physical aikido:

Real men

2011-11-04T08:18:00.000-05:00

In another post I blogged a little more seriously about the violent masculinity that is socially constructed in America. (see Mask You linity). This video is humorous because A.it's my life, but B.because it is still so different and uncool to think of stay-at-home dads as being a exciting and meaningful in our society.

If you like that video, there are lots more very funny videoes by that artist (Lajoie), but especially related to this post is another video called everyday guy, which is a humorous rap about being a regular guy - the average guy that the media neglects. Why is being a stay-at-home dad or a "regular guy" so funny? Because our notions of what is acceptable to be a "real man" is so messed up. So, what is your definition of a real man? Let me give some examples of what I think a real man should be:
A real man...
is able to wake up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying baby
restrains emotions of anger
allows someone else to save face even if it makes him look bad
is not concerned with who gets the credit
is able to empathize
says sorry when he is at fault
can ask for help when he needs it
forgives someone who wrongs him
is not afraid to say is hurt, vulnerable, or that he cares

Mask You (Linity)

2011-11-03T07:43:00.001-05:00

We have been watching a video about how males learn to think about what it means to be a man. This video is called Tough Guise. In other words, the disguise to seem tough that guys put on.
This disguise put males at risk for being the perpetrators of violence:

1 in 3 High School students have been or will be in an abusive relationship.
40% of teenage girls 14-17yrs say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.
1 of 5 college females will experience some form of dating violence.
Zacariah Foundation
http://www.zcenter.org/index.htm

And it puts them at risk in school:
There is a disconnect between school and masculinity; masculinity is constructed as “active” while school is constructed to be passive; sit-down, pay attention, take notes are docile, passive and feminine.
Boys are 30% more likely to flunk.
Boys are 2.5 times more likely to be suspended.
Boys are 3 times more likely to have learning & emotional disabilities

After carefully examining violence in America, I hope you see the larger dynamic of what is going on here. Masculinity is a mask that many men wear in America. It is a way of validating their self worth. Men in America are shaped by a culture that reinforces the idea that toughness, violence and aggression are normal ways of being male. This creates a culture where overwhelmingly males are violent compared to females. Have you experienced this mask of masculinity? How? What are some other ways our culture should be constructing masculinity to provide validation for guys who are not violent? Are there examples out there that you know about? Here is one small way that our culture creates this mask:

Killing Us Softly 4

2011-11-02T08:34:00.004-05:00

Here is a video that highlights the dangerous influence that media has had on our culture - especially how women are socialized to think about themselves, but also men too. I think it's shocking, but true. And it is especially dangerous because in everyday life, you don't pay enough attention to these adds to notice their influence. But, I think the video puts it all together and it really highlights how destructive these images are. And research shows that we see about 300 adds per day, everyday! Look for some ways that you are influenced to think about femininity in your life. Maybe the socialization comes from friends, family or ads/commercials. Post about them. Do you see how we are shaped to think about women? Do you see how harmful it can be? Do you know any examples of this personally?

The Average Girl...

2011-11-01T08:05:00.001-05:00

"I'm not the average girl from your video
and I ain't built like a supermodel
But, I learned to love myself unconditionally
Because I am a queen
I'm not the average girl from your video
My worth is not determined by the price of my clothes
No matter what I'm wearing I will always be the india arie"
- India Arie

The average girl in your video, on your magazine cover, or in your advertisement, is far from average. We live in a media age and are bombarded with information. Much of this information is about how we are supposed to view ourselves. For females, the difficulty is especially tricky. Females are under siege with advertisements, movies, toys and magazine ads that all create an unrealistic, unnatural and unhealthy body image. This can lead to self-esteem problems, unhappiness, eating disorders and a desire to seek self-worth in material possessions. Here are some websites worth exploring:

These pictures show the digital enhancement of models like Britney Spears. The picture you see in the magazine is not of a real person.

Love your body from the NOW foundation
Includes offensive ads, positive ads, a presentation of sex and stereotypes

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty
Includes some short films and articles and online workshops for girls and their families.

Here are examples of offensive ads from the NOW Foundation. These ads generally objectify women as sex objects.

Commonsense Media
a compilation of the latest articles on self image and resources to combat it.

Here is a list of many of the negative effects that media has had on teens, especially young girls and their body image.

"I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am not your expectations (no)
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am the soul that lives within"
- India Arie

Do you know Amy?

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

This video shows Amy not feeling like hanging out. There are numerous studies showing that this is true for significant numbers of young women. Look at the research below and think about whether this has been true in your life. Do you know girls who struggle with self-esteem, body image and eating/dieting disorders? If you don't, can you at least see how the media is constructing a reality for girls?

Thin Ads + Low Body Image = Stress?
Ads Showing Skinny Models Might Hurt Self-Worth In Vulnerable Young Women Viewing ads of super-skinny models may make young women feel worse about themselves, especially if they have body image problems, according to a new study. Researcher Gayle Bessenoff, Ph.D., reports the findings in Psychology of Women Quarterly. Bessenoff is an assistant professor in the University of Connecticut's psychology department.

What Studies Show: Links Between Media and Self Esteem in Girls Many studies conclude that there is clearly a link between young women’s self esteem and the media. *The Journal of Research on Adolesence, in a study of body image and self esteem (Daniel Clay, Vivian L. Vignoles, Helga Dittmar - 2005), imparts that the the declining self esteem that girls often experience entering into adolescence is in part due to social comparison with media models. In a 2006 study of girls' body satisfaction and self esteem from the American Psychological Association (Hayley Dohnt,, Marika Tiggemann), research also illustrates that media creates a negative influence on girls' body images and self-esteem – particularly in regard to acceptable levels of thinness.

A particularly alarming media trend is the sexualization of women at younger and younger ages. Medical News Today discusses how suggestive images of young women negatively affect girls self-esteem, playing a role in onset of depression, eating disorders, and low-self-esteem.

Sexualization Of Girls Is Linked To Common Mental Health Problems In Girls And Women
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2007) — A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development.

Dying to Fit In- Literally! Learning to Love Our Bodies and Ourselves By Christine Hartline, MAIn the United States approximately 10% of girls and women (numbering up to 10 million) are suffering from diagnosed eating disorders. Of these at least 50,000 will die as a direct result! Recent data reported by the American Psychiatric Association suggests that of all psychiatric disorders, the greatest excess of patient mortality due to natural and unnatural causes is associated with eating disorders and substance abuse.

Teen Body ImageMedia images have a strong effect on people's body image, particularly for women, because the ideals the media presents for women are farther from the average woman's body. The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) reports that in 1972, the ideal woman shown in the media (models, movie stars, etc.) weighed less than the average woman, yes, but only by 8%. By the late 90s, the difference had become 23%....In one study from Harvard University reported by (SIRC), it was found that by age 17, 7 out of 10 teens have been on a diet and as many as 80% of teens may have a negative body image....The onset of eating disorders for 86% of people is before they finish their teens.

Here is an introduction of the video Killing Us Softly 3. There are 4 parts on youtube if you are interested in more.

Halloween - holiday for Freaks and Geeks?

2011-10-31T10:35:00.005-05:00

Episode 3 of Freaks and Geeks highlights some different aspects of sociology and socialization. Look at how Lindsay and her brother are influenced by their mom to think about the holiday. We also see the peer pressure from their friends take them into two different directions: Sam influences his friends to dress up and embrace the holiday while Lindsay is influenced by her friends to go out with them and cause trouble instead of hanging out with her mom. With a careful analysis we also see the influence of religion, the media and school.

Another interesting dynamic in the episode is what sociologists call socialization through the lifecourse; that is, how people are influenced differently throughout their life. For example, when you are a kid you are influenced to dress up and trick or treat and then when you are an adult you are supposed to act differently. What we see in the episode is the difficulty in being a teen and not really being a kid who can embrace Halloween but not yet being considered a mature adult. This unknowing of what is expected of you is called role strain. We see this most obviously in the teen years. Are you supposed to be a kid or a mature adult?

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-29T10:37:00.005-05:00

There are many ways to look at Halloween sociologically. One way is simply as an American holiday, how interesting and different it is. When I was in Japan it was clear how different it was. As an American, I wanted to celebrate this holiday, but imagine being in a different culture dressed up as some creature or character - how strange that would look. And then to think of handing out candy and/or asking strangers for candy - how odd this would seem to a non-American. So, a few other Americans and myself found an American restaurant where they were hosting a Halloween party and we limited our celebrating to within that establishment where it would not be "weird".

Another way sociologists look at Halloween is through the costumes Americans wear and what they represent about our culture. Notice all of the costumes that promote sexism and misogony. There are so many costumes that seem to be accepted just for the day but they are sexy _____(fill in the blank). The message is that here is something that you want to be, but normally isn't acceptable but today you have permission to be sexy (slutty) nurse, police officer, whatever...And this is even happening for young kids. Here is a humorous video (Warning: Some Foul Language) making fun of this phenomenon. Costumes can also promote racial stereotypes as in this post. Checkout these people being sociologically mindful by posting pictures that are against racially stereotyped costumes.

Over the last few decades America has transitioned from a producer country to a consumer country. Both industrially and locally, we were a country that produced things. When we needed something, we made it, whether it was a car in a factory or a tomato in our garden or a Halloween costume at home. Now we have become a culture of consumers as typified in Halloween. Kids pick out their costume and then parents buy it. So when the trick or treaters come by, sometimes you'll see 4 or 5 of the same costume whether it's batman or a princess. I remember growing up and my mom struggling to find a way to make a costume for me. Sometimes it involved sewing, makeup, or creative use of materials. But it was always unique, creative and authentic; it was productive. I think that the contemporary thinking would be that if a costume is homemade, it doesn't look as good or as polished as a store bought one. And the assumption might also be that a homemade one is cheap. And so the value becomes consume; buy one at the store. So, culturally we are becoming as bland as our industrially produced tomatoes; a whole lot of us buying things exactly the same rather than growing our own tomatoes or making our own costumes.

Do you remember hearing, "Be careful of unwrapped candy and have parents check the candy before you eat it?" These ideas were popularized through the mass media as detailed in Barry Glasner's book Culture of Fear. But it took a sociologist, Joel Best, to research and publish that this was a myth propagated through the popular culture. See this post about with the sociologist who discovered this urban legend.

gender

2011-10-28T07:55:00.001-05:00

Gender is one of the social constructs we learn from an early age and we often take it for granted. Nearly everyone is born biologically with a sex (that is male or female) and a sexuality (that is a sexual attraction such as heterosexual or homosexual). Most researchers who study people such as doctors, biologists, psychologists, sociologists will say that all of the research shows that people are born with their sex and sexuality. These are part of our biological makeup, our nature. However, gender is learned. Gender is how you react to your sex and sexuality. So, for example, if I am a heterosexual male, how should I act? What colors should I like, what clothes should I wear, how should I talk, what sports should I play is it okay for me to cry to be rough to like violence to be sensitive etc...These are all our gender and they are all learned reactions. From a young age, we treat people differently based on whether they are girls or boys. All of the agents of socialization are a part of this:
family: See this essay

toys: See this post from the Society Pages, or this page from the feministgal blog, and this redundant post from the Society Pages And see this post about other products that are pointlessly gendered thus reifying the idea of traditonal gender traits.

peers: see the book from Patricia and Peter Adler on preadolescent peer pressure.

school See this post.

media

The Un-TV and Consuming Kids

2011-10-27T08:24:00.002-05:00

Hopefully you were really able to experience this experiment. If you did, you may have noticed the mindless trance that TV creates. You may also have seen that TV is in its essence quite boring and so it uses technical events as well as tv's own message that you should believe it is entertaining and exciting. Furthermore, the news is there to give you a sense that it is important. Here is a video making fun of the typical news magazine story. Isn't that funny? How true is that? Another one that is pretty funny, though politically charged is comedian Lewis Black's critique of Glenn Beck.
All of this is interspersed with a message to you to be a consumer and a conformer and don't question what you are doing, certainly not while you are watching the TV. The TV is in many ways like a good friend of ours waiting for us in our living room. It's there with us giving us the feeling that we are connected and engaged to society, when the reality is exactly the opposite. Hopefully, the Consuming Kids video helped illustrate the socialization messages that TV has for us and the reality that it is more like a two-faced back stabber than a friend. Below is the trailer for Consuming Kids. But you can see the whole video in parts at youtube and find more info on the Media Ed website.

98% of American homes have TV (that’s more than have phones 94%)
- the average American household has at least one set turned on for 7 hours per day.
-the average American child watches 20,000 commercials per year.
- TV watching is a routine that children learn before learning to read.
- many children spend as much time watching TV as they do interacting with parents.
- Sex, violence and wealth are more prevalent in mass media than in real life.
- Minorities watch 40% more TV than those in the majority, but they are not involved in the shows.

42% of children under 8 years old have a television in their bedroom.
Half (52%) of all 0- to 8-year-olds have access to a new mobile device, such as a smartphone, video iPod, or iPad/tablet.
More than a third (38%) of children this age have used one of these devices, including 10% of 0-to 1-year-olds, 39% of 2- to 4-year-olds, and more than half (52%) of 5- to 8-year-olds.
In a typical day, one in 10 (11%) 0- to 8-year-olds uses a smartphone, video iPod, iPad, or similar device to play games, watch videos, or use other apps. Those who do such activities spend an average of 43 minutes a day doing so.
In addition to the traditional digital divide, a new "app gap" has developed, with only 14% of lower-income parents having downloaded new media apps for their kids to use, compared to 47% of upper-income parents.

Our Panel

2011-10-26T19:51:00.002-05:00

Today we were fortunate to have a panel of glbt students and a parent who shared their experiences with those of us willing to listen. Thanks to all who attended. Whether you were able to make it or not, the message was to be mindful about other people. Using language like "That's so gay," or "You're a fag" is hurtful to those who are gay. Secondly, realize that all people are different and this includes those who are glbt. They might be categorized as such but be careful that you don't turn that category into a stereotype. Each person is an individual with his/her own preferences about how to act, talk etc... Try to see each person as individuals and do not make assumptions about how they are. Besides those two main points, I also think it was revealing how strong family was to their development. In some cases, their family had them convinced that they were not gay. But in the end, they did not have a choice about their sexuality, it just comes with who they are.

Dweck's Mindset

2011-10-26T09:28:00.005-05:00

Speaking of agents of socialization and family, we learned that sometimes we are influenced in unintended, hidden ways. That is called latent socialization. Another example of latent family messages is from a book by Carolyn Dweck called Mindset. Here is an excerpt. In the book, Dweck explains that unintentionally many of us sabotage our own learning because we have "fixed mindsets". That is we believe that either we know something or we don't and thats it. For example, either I am good at math or not. But Dweck explains that some people have a "growth mindset" meaning that they understand that whatever they learn, they have worked hard to learn and when something is difficult, they change how they learn it. These people are excited about the learning and are open to new ideas and they enjoy the challenge of learning. Often times, those with fixed mindsets learned to be that way because they were overly praised by parents and teachers. For example, "You are so smart," or "You are so good at math." Then when these students have difficulty, they think, "Well I guess I am not good at that," rather than "I have to try something different or try harder to learn that." Do you see how the fixed mindset can sabotage learning? Do you think that you have been socialized by parents or school to have one mindset or another? What are some other ways that you may have been latently socialized?

Agent S

2011-10-26T08:01:00.001-05:00

Agents of socialization are groups that we are a part of that shape us significantly throughout our life. Often, the influence these groups have are taken-for-granted so we don't realize the significant impact they have on us; in this way I think of them as "secret agents" nudging us here or there.

Some significant finds regarding agents of socialization are:

Family - the first agent that has often the greatest impact on a person. Families intentionally teach skills, values and beliefs (manifest lessons), but they also can teach unintentional (latent) lessons. When I was growing up, besides teaching, I considered being a cop or working for the FBI. Both of these were jobs my parents did. It is funny that with so much opportunity in America, how often students pursue careers related to what their parents do. Is this true for you? How are you shaped by parents or friends? Check out this post about 7 things good parents do that screw up their kids. Humorous, but based on real research.

Neighborhoods

Religion - important even if you are not religiously involved yourself.

Day Care - significant findings that there is less of a bond with mothers if child attends daycare, but daycare kids develop more language skills.

School - also teaches both manifest lessons like reading and writing and latent lessons like patriotism, consumption and obedience. Obedience as in Beavis vs. Barbie. Consumption in schools is illustrated by Murray J. Milner,

Peer Groups - Starts esp. because of school and cohort groups, becomes significant.

Sports Teaches things like hard work, achievement, teamwork and competitiveness.

Work Work affects adults so much that it becomes a part of their identity. For example, "What do you do?" Is a popular greeting when you meet someone new. When adults retire, they often have trouble adjusting to a new life without work because there is a loss in identity.

Media
Checkout how much the big media companies own; you can download a chart here. This allows them to cross-market and create a sense that their shows/products are important. Another resource on media ownership is from the Columbia Journalism Review. Checkout how much Disney owns, but then you can see what other media conglomerates own. Merchants of Cool, though a little older, highlights the media's impact on teens. And if you are skeptical that you have been socialized by the media, try playing one of the corporate logo games here. See how much you have been influenced.

Socialization, Nurture and Love

2011-10-24T10:15:00.000-05:00

I am convinced of the overwhelming power of love in the world. As a sociologist, my interest is in the effects that people's environments have on each other. Below I will outline the research that has lead me to believe in the power that loving each other has on our being. To learn to love each other and allow ourselves to love should be our ultimate cause. This may sound corny or anecdotal, however, there is research that supports this. From Henslin's Sociology; A Down To Earth Approach, we read about Skeels and Dye's study of institutionalized children (1939) and Skeels follow-up study in 1966. The research found that children given love, affection, stimulation and intimacy are able to be more independent, socially-attached, more successful adults later in life. There is a power in our interaction with other people that is difficult to measure.
Dean Ornish M.D. writes about this force in his book, Love and Survival. Checkout the excerpt below:

Love and survival.
What do they have to do with each other?
This book is based on a simple but powerful idea: Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy, and relationships. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species....I have no intention of diminishing the power of diet and exercise or, for that matter, of drugs and surgery....As important as these are, I have found that perhaps the most powerful intervention-and the most meaningful for me and for most of the people with whom I work, including staff and patients--is the healing power of love and intimacy, and the emotional and spiritual transformation that often result from these.

In this book, I describe the increasing scientific evidence from my own research and from the studies of others that cause me to believe that love and intimacy are among the most powerful factors in health and illness, even though these ideas are largely ignored by the medical profession. As I review the extensive scientific literature that supports these ideas, I will describe the limitations of science to document and understand the full range of these implications--not only in our health and illness, but also in what often brings the most joy, value, and meaning to our lives. I give examples from my life and from the lives of friends, colleagues, and patients.

Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic: drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. I am not aware of any other factor in medicine--not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes.

Cholesterol, for example, is clearly related to the incidence of illness and premature death from heart disease and stroke. Those with the highest blood cholesterol levels may have a risk of heart attack several times greater than those with the lowest levels and lowering cholesterol levels will reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. However, cholesterol levels are not related to such diseases as complications during pregnancy and childbirth, the incidence of illness and premature death from infectious diseases, arthritis, ulcers, and so on, whereas loneliness and isolation may significantly increase the risk of all these. Something else is going on.

Smoking, diet, and exercise affect a wide variety of illnesses, but no one has shown that quitting smoking, exercising, or changing diet can double the length of survival in women with metastatic breast cancer, whereas the enhanced love and intimacy provided by weekly group support sessions has been shown to do just that, as I will describe in chapter 2. While genetics plays a role in most illnesses, the number of diseases in which our genes play a primary, causative role is relatively small. Genetic factors--even when combined with cholesterol levels and all of the known risk factors--account for no more than one-half the risk of heart disease.

Love and intimacy are at a root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for their patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it--yet, with few exceptions, we doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training. Rather, these ideas are often ignored or even denigrated.

It has become increasingly clear to even the most skeptical physicians why diet is important. Why exercise is important. Why stopping smoking is important. But love and intimacy? Opening your heart? And what is emotional and spiritual transformation?

I am a scientist. I believe in the value of science as a powerful means of gaining greater understanding of the world we live in. Science can help us sort out truth from fiction, hype from reality, what works from, what doesn't work, for whom, and under what circumstances. Although I respect the ways and power of science, I also understand its limitations as well. What is most meaningful often cannot be measured. What is verifiable may not necessarily be what is most important. As the British scientist Denis Burkitt once wrote, "Not everything that counts can be counted."

We may not yet have the tools to measure what is most meaningful to people, but the value of those experiences is not diminished by our inability to quantify them. We can listen, we can learn, and we can benefit greatly from those who have had these experiences. When we gather together to tell and listen to each other's stories, the sense of community and the recognition of shared experiences can be profoundly healing.

I have just started reading another book about the psychology of love and it's impact on our lives. The book is A General Theory of Love by Amini, Lannon and Lewis and here is a review:

Drawing on new scientific discoveries and seventy years of collective clinical experience, three psychiatrists unravel life's most elemental mystery: the nature of love.

A primordial area of the brain, far older than reason or thinking, creates both the capacity and the need for emotional intimacy that all humans share. A General Theory of Love describes the workings of this ancient, pivotal urge and reveals that our nervous systems are not self-contained. Instead, our brains link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that makes up the very life force of the body. These wordless and powerful ties determine our moods, stabilize and maintain our health and well-being, and change the structure of our brains. In consequence, who we are and who we become depend, in great part, on whom we love.

A General Theory of Love applies these and other extraordinary insights to some of the most crucial issues we face in our lives. Its authors explain how relationships function and where love goes wrong, how parents shape a child's developing self, how psychotherapy really works, what curbs and what fosters violent aggression in our children, and how modern society regularly courts disaster by flouting emotional laws it does not yet recognize.

A work of rare originality, passion, and eloquence, A General Theory of Love will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.

Human Nurture

2011-10-24T09:10:00.001-05:00

We have been talking about how humans are affected by their environment. It is amazing to me that so much of what we take for granted as being human (part of our nature) is actually learned from our environment (nurture). This video about a girl that was locked in a bedroom alone for 12 years of her life is one small piece of evidence of the power of social experiences on individuals. You can also check out this website for examples of feral children. This website, though sad, provides further evidence for the importance of human nurturing in socializing individuals to their full human potential. How have you been shaped by the experiences of your life?

nature AND nurture

2011-10-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

In our discussion of nature and nurture, I have been emphasizing the importance of seeing these two as playing off each other and not being mutually exclusive. There is new evidence that they affect each other more than we realize. Here is a trailer for a show on NOVA that explores the connections between genes and social experiences. The researchers theorize that social experiences can affect the genes of a person and, more amazingly, these genes can be passed down to a generation or two. So the grandchildren may experience the effects of their grandparents' lives on their genes. How crazy is that? They call it the "ghost in your genes".

The Growing Man

2011-10-20T10:52:00.001-05:00

The metaphor that I use for the unit on socialization is called The Growing Man Metaphor. I developed the metaphor after being inspired by Richard Strozzi-Heckler's book Holding the Center; Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion. The idea is that to go from being a baby ruled by emotions, instincts and training to being a fully human adult (conscious & aware), we need other people. As humans we were made to be social. Our brains, our language, our dependency all make us social beings. And it is through other people that we become human and that we develop our potential. The process of this influence in sociology is called "socialization."

Thrive

2011-10-18T11:12:00.001-05:00

Checkout this review of the book Thrive. Here is the Thrive website. And you can read an excerpt and also take a happiness test. Try the happiness test - it will measure your satisfaction and make recommendations. Here is link to an interview with the author on the radio.

Don't just do something, stand there!

2011-10-18T09:49:00.000-05:00

Bernard McGrane's experiment explores the idea of doing nothing in American culture. In his book, The Un-Tv and the 10mph Car he explores doing nothing as a way of being able to detach and see all that is actually going on - both in others and in ourselves. By detaching from the social world, can you see the ways the world controls who you are? We go about our daily lives without question drifting along doing the things that we do. We never have to stop and think about why we are doing what we do and whether we want to do that. Some of the questions McGrane addresses are: How did you react and what occurred to you in being unoccupied? How did the world around you react to doing nothing? How does this relate to our work identity? Here is a funny video of a group that appears to do nothing, but they are actually doing "freezing". For the purposes of McGrane's experiment, they are not detached, but it is funny nonetheless to watch.

$ = :-(

2011-10-17T09:58:00.000-05:00

A growing field of research has been exploring happiness and why it is so elusive. What could be more important than real happiness - true happiness, contentment with our lives? This research reveals that although we are vastly wealthier than a few decades ago we are less happy as a nation. Sociology, psychology and economics all have been exploring happiness and I think it relates to our culture and how we live our lives.
A 2008 sociology study found that happiness is more difficult for parents :-( me! But our culture thinks that it is taboo to talk about how difficult raising children is. Other sociologists have written about how we as Americans try to consume happiness through our spending power. Sociologist Karen Sternheimer writes

You are no doubt familiar with the cliché that “money can’t buy happiness.” Yet so many of us presume that if we just had a little more money (according to Easterlin’s research, 20% more) we would be happier. Maybe we could buy more, pay off some bills, and feel less stressed about money.
But Easterlin found that this just isn’t the case. In fact, he says many of us buy into the “money illusion”, which guides how we spend our time as we focus on trying to get more money. Of course, this is a very American pursuit: our capitalist economy is based on the constant striving for more.

On the psychology of happiness, Tal Ben-Shahar teaches the most popular class at Harvard, The Psychology of Happiness. His book, Happier, is a psychological understanding of how to live a happier life. He also maintains this website with articles and tips on being happier. You can also see Shahar on John Stewart's Daily Show.
Economists have been discussing happiness at great lengths lately. The most interesting to me so far is Richard Layard who wrote Happiness. Here is an excerpt from Layard's book:

There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. We all want more money, but as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not speculation: It's the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled.

The central question the great economist Richard Layard asks in Happiness is this: If we really wanted to be happier, what would we do differently? First we'd have to see clearly what conditions generate happiness and then bend all our efforts toward producing them. That is what this book is about-the causes of happiness and the means we have to effect it.

Until recently there was too little evidence to give a good answer to this essential question, but, Layard shows us, thanks to the integrated insights of psychology, sociology, applied economics, and other fields, we can now reach some firm conclusions, conclusions that will surprise you. Happiness is an illuminating road map, grounded in hard research, to a better, happier life for us all.

On death and dying

2011-10-17T08:52:00.000-05:00

There is a whole division of sociology that studies death and dying. We don't have room for that in our schedule, but it comes up as part of our discussion of American culture and Tuesdays With Morrie so I wanted to post about it.

The first aspect of death and dying that comes out is the idea of it being sad. Our culture trains us how to think about death. While we are living, it is a taboo topic and when it happens we don't know exactly what to think about it - all we have is sadness. It is important to note that this is a cultural norm that varies in other cultures around the world. One book that examines this is called Dancing on the Grave, by Nigel Barley. You can read an excerpt here, but the important point that Barley makes is that grief and mourning are different. All cultures mourn death, that is they have rituals for dealing with death, but grieving is an emotion and is not part of all cultures. Grief is a fairly modern concept and is tied into the development of individualism and (in my opinion) materialism. We see each individual as separate and less connected to other individuals than our ancestors did. So death represents the loss of an individual. And because our modern culture is so wrapped up in material things, it is hard to get by the loss of the physical individual. Instead we could see that person in all of us - we are all impacted by one another. The love we share is a part of us. Like Morrie said, "Death ends a life, not a relationship." We have trouble with that.

The second aspect of death and dying that I find interesting is the social construction of religion and our notions about God. Karen Armstrong explores how different religions' ideas (and even atheists' ideas) about God have changed and evolved. Armstrong has helped give me perspective about the social construction of religion and she has helped me sift through what I find meaningful and what I find shallow about religion. Similar to Nigel's book, Armstrong makes the case that much of what I find difficult to understand about religion is more of a modern creation and a product of individualism and the humanism of the post-Renaissance. Click here for a review of Armstrong's book in the NY Times.

Lastly, The Evolution of God by Robert Wright helps to reconcile the idea of science and religion. Wright provides ways of making sense of both.

Tuesdays With Morrie

2011-10-14T08:31:00.000-05:00

Below are some ideas for posting about Tuesdays With Morrie. Each one relates the movie to American culture. What do you think? Here is a link to a list of quotes from the book.

Tuesdays with Morrie - Love
Do you think that Americans are afraid to love each other, or show that they love each other? If we are afraid to love, why might that be? How can we overcome this? What is the difference between the value of “romantic love” and real love - the love Morrie talks about?

Tuesdays with Morrie - Work
What are some ways that Mitch values hard work, achievement, success? Is this true for you or your parents? Does this start in high school or even sooner? What ways? Is it possible to obtain a different type of success?

Tuesdays with Morrie - Death
Are Americans afraid of death? Is death a taboo topic? Why do you think this is the case? How might our feelings about death be related to our materialism?

Tuesdays with Morrie - Dependency
In what ways are Americans afraid of being dependent on others? Do you think that this is related to our value of independence and freedom? In what ways do you depend on other people? Does this bother you?

Volunteer Op: This Saturday!

2011-10-12T20:37:00.001-05:00

Habitat for Humanity is so excited to volunteer to Paint The Town sponsored by Delilah and 93.9 Lite Fm. They will be in town THIS SATURDAY to transform Genesee Street! If you have an hour or the whole day we would love to see you out there to volunteer! Julie Donovan invited you to join her at 8:00 am at Jack Benny Plaza in Waukegan for the Habitat for Humanity crew to Paint the Town!

Here is their link.

When I realized I was an American...

2011-10-12T12:20:00.000-05:00

When I was in Italy, I felt like I was returning home. I had always thought that because my Grandfather emmigrated from Italy, that I was Italian too. I looked Italian. I had an Italian surname. So when I went to Italy I met Italians and I told them that I was Italian too.

They said, "Where were you born?"
"In Chicago," I answered.
[LAUGHS] "You are not Italian!"
"But my grandfather was born in Italy."
"Ohh, your grandfather is Italian, but YOU are American."
"Really?"
"Look at you - blue jeans, baseball cap, gym shoes...you are American!"

This was such a revelation for me. I had always thought of myself as Italian, but bow I realize that my heritage was Italian, but my nationality was American.

Although it is difficult to define at times, Americans do have their own unique culture. There are reasons that this culture is difficult to understand. Some of the difficulties in understanding American culture are:
Real vs. Ideal Culture
Value Contradiction
Value Cluster
Globalization and cultural leveling

But those who study culture have identified values that Americans hold that make them unique. Kohl's "Values Americans Live By" is a really succinct explanation of American values.
American Values vs.Other Cultures’ Values
Personal control over the environment/responsibility vs Fate/destiny
Change seen as natural and positive/Progress vs. Stability/tradition
Time and its control vs. Human Interaction
Equality/fairness vs. Hierarchy/rank/status
Individualism/independence vs. Group welfare/dependence
Self-Help/initiative/freedom vs. Birthright/inheritance
Competition vs. Cooperation
Future orientation vs. Past orientation
Action/work vs. “Being”
Informality vs. Formality
Directness/openness/Honesty vs. Indirectness/ritual/”face”
Practicality/efficiency vs. Idealism/theory
Materialism/Acquisitiveness vs. Spiritualism/detachment
Achievement/Success vs. Acceptance/Status Quo
Morality/judgement vs.Consequentialism/situational ethics

Robin Williams (The sociologist, not the actor), studied American culture in the 1970s and came up with his own list of values, which is largely still applicable today.

Can you apply any of these American values to your own life? Perhaps you can show how these values pervade your experience at school?

Our SHSubculture

2011-10-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

Today's lesson was about what makes a subculture. A subculture is part of a larger culture, but it has its own unique cultural aspects. To illustrate how this works, we used our school as an example. Why do so many visitors come here to see us? What makes us so different? Is our school a subculture? To examine this, we looked at:

Material Culture; all the physical stuff unique to our school: the buildings, uniforms, guidebook
Mores: really serious norms that would disrupt the culture if violated: fighting, using drugs at school, dropping out all disrupt the norms at our school, walking on the right side of the halls and stairwells, not stopping in the middle of the link. These actions all violate the norms.
Folkways: norms that do not have serious moral implications; being late to class, saying the pledge, no drinks or snacks outside the commons and not wearing green & gold on spirit days all are norms that are frequently violated without serious disruption to the school culture.
Taboos; Norms that are so accepted, they are not even talked about: pregnancy & sex, use of drugs outside of school; these are activities that are embarrassing to even talk about.
Language: BOSS, link, traveller, FMP, LOP, Glass commons, wood commons,
Symbols: the Patriot (six fingers :-), the SHS seal, the statue, green and gold,
Values: going to college, grades, competitiveness; These values are the most important in shaping our school culture. They pervade every part of the school culture and they are a part of students, teachers, parents and administrators, but this is the hardest aspect of culture to see.

Do you see how the values we have here might separate us from other schools? Do you see how they shape so much of what we do here? I do not know if it counts as a "subculture" by sociology standards, but I think these values are what many of those visitors are searching for in their own schools. For your own thoughts, what subculture(s) are you a part of? What are the traits that make your subculture unique?

How did the chicken cross the road?

2011-10-05T08:03:00.002-05:00

When traveling to different cultures, 'how' the chicken crossed the road seems to be more relevant than 'why'. When I was in Italy, it took me six days to figure out how to cross the street. There were scooters and cars swerving everywhere and honking. Everytime I tried to cross the street, cars would screech to a stop and swear at me in Italian. Then I figured out how to do it. Just walk a steady pace across the street and let them avoid you - and it worked! This knowledge of how to cross the street is an important norm, what sociologists call a more. Mores are important to the order of a society. If you violate them, it will cause a disruption in the social setting. Other norms that are less important are called folkways. Folkways are not crucial to the order of society and if you were to violate a folkway people would not necessarily judge you. The more of how to cross a street can be found in lots of videos on youtube. Watch this video from India. Note how the person crossing the street is aware of the norms of traffic and so the pedestrian successfully crosses without getting hit. It is worth noting that these mores, although very important to the society, are not necessarily laws. Similar to the ideas of time being a social construct, they are just the way that people operate and even though they are not written into laws, they are important to the function of society. Watch this video of an intersection in India and think about who has the right of way? There may not be a law about it, but those drivers know what they are doing, but would an American?
Have you experienced a different set of norms from another culture either by traveling somewhere or by meeting a foreigner here in America? What was it like? Were there misunderstandings? Something else that you might want to blog about is google another culture where you would like to travel. Findout what unique norms exist in their culture. Here is a link to cultural etiquette around the world.

It's funny because we are ethnocentric!

2011-10-04T07:52:00.002-05:00

Norms vary around the world. One example of this is the norms centered around time. How do people from different cultures think about time differently? What do they consider late or early? These are norms. This article helps us see how time is socially constructed. It is important to recognize these norms in cross-cultural communication. If we fail to acknowledge these differences we run the risk of offending someone or worse, a whole culture of people. This video is set to music for comic effect, but it is funny because in America, the norm is that men do not hold hands or kiss in public. However, this is expected in many Middle Eastern cultures. In order to show solidarity The President must hold the hand of the King of Saudi Arabia.

Also for more humor on cultural differences, checkout these HSBC adds: Eels, personal space, wrong flower,

Cultural Differences

2011-09-30T08:25:00.008-05:00

We watched a bit of the movie "God Grew Tired of Us." My mom happened to meet and talk to one of the lost boys in the film and she recommended it to us for sociology. I'm so thankful to her for that. Anyway, in the movie we see numerous cultural differences. Here is a website dedicated to the Lost Boys of Sudan in Chicago.
To speak about culture in a more measured way, think in terms of the way sociologists might break down culture. Culture is made up of material culture as well as the nonmaterial: gestures, language, norms, values. Did you see aspects of these cultural components in the movie? Have you ever met anyone from a different country? Did you notice or discuss any cultural differences? What component of culture (from the terms above) did those differences fall under?

I also like the theme in the movie about communal society versus individualistic society. We see the Lost Boys in the United States have food, shelter, jobs and schooling but they feel lonely. They miss their culture because they are so used to communal culture. That is being together with their friends and family, rather than living nearly alone in an apartment. This is an important revelation that our culture sometimes de-emphasizes to a fault; we need other people. Humans are social and communal beings. Do you see how this individualist way of living and thinking shapes our lives? How can we work to change that and satisfy our inherent needs for connecting with other people?

Finally, I like watching the movie with our community service in mind. We have so much to be thankful for in our culture. We live in a culture of abundance. We must be mindful of our bounty and mindful of those who have so much less than us. One way to create this mindfulness is through community service. By finding ways to serve others we become grateful for what we have rather than ignoring those who need help and taking for granted all of our bounty. Perhaps you know someone who is able and willing to help them find a job or donate to their cause - here is a list of ways to help.

Okay? You called me a what?!

2011-09-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

We have been examining the components of culture. The non-material aspects of culture are often the most important but we are often unaware of them. One type of non-material culture is symbolic culture, or gestures and language. Here is a link to a list of some single hand gestures from around the world.

Language is important too as it affects how we think. When we think about something, we are using language inside of our heads so if we use certain words or do not have certain words, it may affect how think about things especially how we categorize something. This was first studied by Saphir and Whorf. Sapir-Whorf has been critically contested in recent years, but the NY Times ran a story about how there is still some merit to the idea of language affecting our thoughts. See that article here. Here is a book that highlights untranslatable words from around the world.
Here is a study explaining that with out language, numbers do not make sense.

Our culture is in the toilet

2011-09-28T08:04:00.000-05:00

When understanding culture, sociologists examine material culture (things) and non-material culture (gestures, language, norms, values). Material culture often reflects non-material culture. We explored this idea in the Japanese toilet. At first, the experience can be a culture shock as the traditional Japanese toilet is very different from ours. As we examine this toilet as well as other cultural components we must remember to be culturally relative. In other words, try not to be ethnocentric, but in stead understand each culture from its own perspective. In the case of the Japanese toilet, not only does it look and function differently from ours, but it also represents fundamentally different non-material culture. The Japanese are very germ conscious and they try hard not to spread germs. They also do not have a lot of furniture - they do not sit on furniture in their houses, why would they in a bathroom? And finally, they are used to sitting and squatting in positions difficult for westerners.

Culture can be tricky...

2011-09-26T09:51:00.000-05:00

Today in class we examined how people react when they come into contact with different cultures. Culture is essentially all the rules we learn about how to live our lives. We played a card game that illustrated this. When we are exposed to other cultures and we see such different rules, we are sometimes in shock of how different the other culture is (culture shock). If this shock results in our judging a culture based on the rules we have learned that is called ethnocentrism. Instead, sociologists try to use cultural relativity when examining a culture. So when a Danish mom left her child outside in a baby bugger for over an hour while she ate dinner in a restaurant, it created quite a stir among New Yorkers. American culture, especially New Yorkers do not accept this. But this is very accepted in many Scandanavian cultures. Could sociology have helped all of the participants to be more understanding of each other? Have you ever been to a foreign culture and experienced culture shock?

9/11 Ten Years Later

2011-09-15T14:30:00.010-05:00

There has been more interest around 9/11 lately than I thought there would be so I am going to post about it. One of the most direct ways that I think sociologically about 9/11 is in the discussion of stereotypes and categories. I posted about this here too. The attackers on 9/11 fell into the category of Muslim but that should not be turned into a stereotype about Muslims. There is a powerful video that illustrates how Muslims were stereotyped after 9/11 and the video also shows how these stereotypes are shattered when you see the full spectrum of Muslims in America.
The speech in that video illustrates the same type of racist, intolerance that led to the attacks on 9/11. I think that September 11 can be a day to remember that we are all connected and we all share this world, and this can be done in peace and tolerance, even if we are not all in agreement. Don't let the hurt and anger give way to stereotypes, injustice and hatred.

Another way I think about 9/11 is through all of the love and heroism that was displayed during that traumatic day. There are so many stories of strangers helping each other and displaying unbelievable acts of courage and love - from the Port Authority of NY to the police, fire and other first responders to those who just happened to be at work that day and found themselves in a situation to help others. It was an incredible illustration that when life seems senseless and unbearable, we can ask ourselves, "How can I serve?" In other words, what can I do to help my fellow people and how can I make this world a bit better. That gives meaning to our life just as it did to those people on 9/11. Sociologically, humans were made to need each other. Here is a video displaying some of this heroism and caring in the largest water evacuation in history. It is our nature to love one another and be cooperative. We often lose sight of that in our individualistic culture. Here is a quote from two survivors of 9/11:

On a personal level, Mel and Lisa learned several lessons from that day. “Be patient, be tolerant and above all tell people you love them every single day,” Lisa said. “Hate drove that day. The lesson is to never hate. Hate does damage. People didn’t need to die that day.”

Here is another example about the people living in the small town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada and how they came to the aid of hundreds of people. One example from my own life this day was my mom who worked at O'Hare Airport as a ticket agent. After the attacks, O'Hare was closed down and all the employees and passengers were being forced to evacuate. As this was going on, an elderly woman who had trouble seeing approached my mom and asked what she should do. My mom said that the airlines would get a hotel room for her. The woman said that the nearest available rooms were in a far suburb away from the airport. So, my mom said, "You know what? You come home with me." And she did. This total stranger lived with my parents for four days! It was that kind of caring that these horrible events brought out. I hope to be mindful and let that light shine without a horrific switch turning it on.

Read more: http://rapidcityjournal.com/thechadronnews/latest/couple-say-lessons-are-patience-tolerance-love/article_ef9e8656-d8ca-11e0-8657-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Y3NoAXGC

One of the heroes of that day was Rick Rescorla. Rick was a war veteran who was working as head of security for Morgan Stanly Dean Witter. He anticipated the terrible attacks on the Towers and that caused him to force the employees of MSDW to undergo evacuation drills regularly. It is my understanding that these were not popular within the company, but it was his conviction and willingness to take an unpopular stance that prepared so many for the events of that day. What a model Rescorla is for standing up for our beliefs and doing a job the best that we can while thinking of our fellow men.
From the NY Times

HAVING coined the phrase “the banality of evil,” Hannah Arendt went on to suggest that the most heinous crimes have often been committed by morally desensitized ordinary people. The inverse may be equally true: that “ordinary” heroes like Rick Rescorla, who saved almost 2,700 lives on Sept. 11, 2001, only to lose his own, are the yang to Arendt’s yin, demonstrating what you might call the profundity of virtue.

Volunteer Op: Equestrian Connection

2011-09-12T11:24:00.003-05:00

I wanted to post this opportunity which some students have done in the past. It's the "Equestrian Connection." It is located right in Lake Forest. They provide horse therapy for individuals who have special needs. They have flexible hours including after school and on weekends. Here is their location and contact info:
Equestrian Connection
Location: 600 N. Bradley Rd. Lake Forest , IL 60045
Phone: 847-615-8696
Email for volunteers: volunteeratec@hotmail.com
Click here for the volunteer webpage.

The volunteer coordinator is named "MJ". She is familiar with SHS. If you contact her please be polite and professional. If you volunteer please work hard and enjoy yourself there. They are a nice connection for SHS students and we want to keep that relationship going!

The Ladder of Social Class

2011-05-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

This image of social class is from Henslin's A Down To Earth Approach and available here. The ladder shows one model for how sociologists view class in the United States. This model is not set in stone it is fluid and dynamic. People do not necessarily fit neatly into each class, but the model gives us a sense of how the US is divided by class. And the model shows that there is more to class than income/money. It is also about wealth, power, prestige, education among other things as illustrated in my other post.

Independence & Education

2011-04-12T09:10:00.000-05:00

I'm 15... for a moment
caught in between 10 and 20
and I'm just dreamin'
countin' the ways to where you are

I'm 22... for a moment
and she feels better than ever
and we're on fire
making our way back from mars

[chorus]
15 there's still time for you
time to buy and time to lose
15... there's never a wish
better than this
when you've only got a hundred years
to live
- Five For Fighting

After reading about teens, we discussed what makes you an "adult". Legally you are considered an adult at age 18, but then you go to college and it is not the "real" world, and then after college, most students are financially and emotionally still reliant on their families. For example, you might have an apartment in the city, but you have to share the rent and/or mom and dad help pay the rent, or pay for a car etc... So some sociologists have said the age of real independence/adulthood is going up to the late 20s. Here is a link to an article in Governing magazine about what the real age of responsibility is.

Practically from puberty, young people are bombarded with mixed signals about the scope of their rights and the depth of their responsibilities. And most of those mixed signals come from the laws of state and local governments. In most respects, people are considered adults at 18. That’s when they can vote and enter into legal contracts—including the purchase, if not rental, of a car. But a 20-year-old Marine, just back from patrolling the streets of Baghdad, would have to turn 21 before he could join a local police force in most cities in the United States. A 20-year-old college junior, far more educated than the average American, cannot buy alcohol or enter a casino. In 10 states, a single 20-year-old cannot legally have sex with a 17-year old. But in nearly every state, a 16-year-old can marry—if he has his parents’ permission. (A handful of states allow girls to marry before boys.)
The most glaring examples lie within the criminal justice system. A spike in juvenile violence two decades ago spurred state legislators to adopt the mantra “adult time for adult crimes.” Consequently, in most states, a 10-year-old charged with murder can be tried as an adult.

You can listen to a discussion of the article on the radio program Talk of the Nation here.

The sociologist Ruth Benedict surmised that American culture is discontinuous. Americans learn from a young age through their teens that they are expected to be irresponsible, submissive and asexual and then as adults they are expected to be the opposite.
Many see the ability to get married and have your own family with kids as the age of independence. What do you think? Can you see how our society makes it difficult for teens?

Post Spring Break Service Op: Volunteer Center NW Suburbs

2011-03-31T09:51:00.004-05:00

With Spring Break finishing up, this is a reminder to get serious (if you haven't already) about your community service experience. YOU SHOULD HAVE SOMETHING SETUP BY NOW FOR ALL 10 OF YOUR HOURS. Time is running out and sometimes it takes awhile to setup the service and do it, so if you don't have anything lined up, you should start to panic and find something quickly.

Here is a call for volunteers from today's Daily Herald:

If interested, contact the Volunteer Center of NW Suburbs:

Spring Break Safety Tips

2011-03-25T08:24:00.003-05:00

If you are going on a spring break to another culture or subculture, remember to be mindful of the culture you are travelling to. Do not be ethnocentric, instead try for cultural relativism. Pay attention to little details and appreciate the culture you are immersed in. Be weary of touristy culture. Often, this is an inauthentic version of the culture you are going to that is just setup for the purpose of taking tourists money. Instead try to get off the beaten path or at the very least, see through the touristy facade and try to see the real culture.

I also am posting a few spring break related studies to help you be safe:

From http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/03/prweb2230874.htm:

New York, NY (PRWEB) March 14, 2009
Spring break time is here for countless college students across the country. Dreams of fun in the sun can provide much needed motivation to push through the grind of mid-terms. A few critical yet common-sense precautions can help prevent spring break dreams from becoming nightmares.
According to Steven Crimando, Managing Director of Extreme Behavioral Risk Management in New York, managing behavior is the main risk for students.
Excessive risk taking is pervasive among both genders. According to a University of Wisconsin study, 75% of college males and 44% of females reported being intoxicated on a daily basis during spring break. Nearly 50 percent of the males and more than 40 percent of the females also said they were drunk to the point of vomiting or passing out at least once during break.
Crimando says, "This is the kind of binge drinking that is the major cause of alcohol poisoning. Everyone who goes on spring break plans to have plenty of fun but no one is planning on getting sick, hurt, or in real life-changing trouble."
He adds that much of the risk associated with spring break is created by reckless behavior and that risk is compounded when students may be far from home, on someone else's turf and extremely vulnerable.
Crimando offers 7 tips for spring break survival:

1. Stay together: Crime prevention research concludes the probability of being victimized drops substantially if you are with at least one other person. Staying together in a group of three or more decreases the likelihood of trouble even further. Never leave a bar, club or party with a stranger. Arrange a buddy system and watch out for your friends.
2. Don't go looking for trouble: Stay out of areas known for drugs, violence or prostitution. Stay close to the hubs of spring break activity and resist exploring areas far from your hotel or friends. Become familiar with your street names, and landmarks which can be important if you get lost or separated from your group.
3. File a Flight Plan: Always let friends or relatives at home know your whereabouts. Leave your general itinerary with someone who is not traveling with you.
4. Watch that Drink: Don't accept a drink from anyone if you did not see it being prepared yourself. Also, don't leave your drink unattended for any period of time. If you have to, dump it and get a fresh one.
5. Have a Plan B: When entering a hotel, bar or club, always know where emergency exits are located in case of a fire or other urgent situation. In an emergency; don't just run from danger, run towards safety.
6. Carry a cell phone: If you're heading out of the country, check with your wireless service provider about coverage or add-ons to your plan that will allow your phone to work smoothly while away. Keep your phone charged, keep it on and learn the local emergency number if it is anything other than 9-1-1. Your cell phone can be a lifeline if you get in trouble.
7. Always carry cab fare: Don't rely on others, especially strangers, to get you from point A to B. If your friends have been drinking or there's a change of plans, make sure to have enough cash to get back to your home base.

Another study by the American Medical Association suggested that females be extra careful:

Study Warns Women About Spring Break
Mar 8, 7:11 AM (ET)

By LINDSEY TANNER

CHICAGO (AP) - The American Medical Association is warning girls not to go wild during spring break. All but confirming what goes on in those "Girls Gone Wild" videos, 83 percent of college women and graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in increased sexual activity.

The women's answers were based both on firsthand experience and the experiences of friends and acquaintances.

Sizable numbers reported getting sick from drinking, and blacking out and engaging in unprotected sex or sex with more than one partner, activities that increase their risks for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

The AMA is trying to call attention to underage drinking among women because their bodies process alcohol differently and put them at greater risk for health problems, Dr. J. Edward Hill, AMA's president, said Tuesday.

The AMA-commissioned online survey queried a nationwide random sample of 644 college women or graduates ages 17 to 35 last week.

Kathleen Fitzgerald, a 21-year-old junior at Illinois State University, said the AMA's effort to raise awareness is a good idea, but probably won't do much to curb drinking during spring break.

"I think a lot of students wouldn't really pay that much attention to it," Fitzgerald said. "They would just be like, 'Duh, that's why we do it.'"

About 30 percent of women surveyed said spring break trips with sun and alcohol are an essential part of college life.

Also, 74 percent said women use spring break drinking as an excuse for "outrageous" behavior that the AMA said could include public nudity and dancing on tables.

Of the 27 percent who said they had attended a college spring break trip:

_More than half said they regretted getting sick from drinking on the trip.

_About 40 percent said they regretted passing out or not remembering what they did.

_13 percent said they had sexual activity with more than one partner.

_10 percent said they regretted engaging in public or group sexual activity.

_More than half were underage when they first drank alcohol on a spring break trip.

The AMA said the findings highlight the need for alternative spring break activities. For example, the University of Nebraska, Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and the University of Wisconsin offer spring break "service" trips.

Gemma Kite, a 21-year-old Lehigh junior, is in Brunswick, Ga., for spring break this week, helping build a house for Habitat for Humanity.

"It's so much fun. We're working outside in the sun," Kite said.

She said many students see spring break as "your chance to go wild and crazy in a different country where no one's going to know you." Kite admitted those trips have a certain appeal, and she hopes to take a more party-oriented vacation next year.

"I like to have my fun," Kite said.

Another study printed in Time Magazine from the American Journal of Sociology highlights the risk of sexual activity:

Kids complain that there's nothing to do in the Midwestern town scientists are calling "Jefferson City." For fun, teenagers drive to the outskirts of this largely white, working-class community and get wasted. Another favorite activity? Sex. A little more than half the 1,000 students in the only high school are sexually active; the average age of initiation: 15 1/2.

Shocked? Actually, it makes Jefferson's kids typical American teens. But in one way the town is highly unusual: it was the site of a unique study in which researchers tried to document every romantic and sexual liaison among high school students over an 18-month period. The purpose of the research--part of the huge National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health--was to learn how sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) travel through teen populations. But what is most remarkable about the study, published recently in the American Journal of Sociology, is the accompanying chart-- the first to map the sexual geography of a U.S. high school.

The map took researchers by surprise. Overall, 573 out of 832 surveyed students reported at least one relationship during the previous 18 months. The majority probably involved an "exchange of fluids," say the authors. There were 63 couples who had no outside partners, but an astonishing 288 students were linked together in an elaborate network of liaisons. Many students had just one or two romances, but they were at risk of contracting STDs from everyone in the chain. This, wrote the authors, is "the worst-case scenario for potential disease diffusion."

Adult sexual networks look very different and usually involve clusters of wanton individuals known to public-health experts as "core transmitters." (Think prostitutes, NBA stars.) Another surprise was the absence of tightly closed loops in which a foursome trades partners--what co-author Peter Bearman calls the Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice phenomenon, after the 1969 film. Teenagers seem to shy from such post-breakup swaps. Bearman, who heads the sociology department at Columbia University, suggests that dating the former boyfriend of your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend may involve a loss of status or cross a line of loyalty. "It's an incest taboo of sorts," suggests co-author James Moody, an Ohio State sociologist. The behavior is a big factor in creating the long chains that spread germs.

Though girls tended to date older boys, the study found few behavioral differences between the sexes. There are promiscuous boys who prey on less experienced girls, says Bearman, "and girls who are predators of boys." Most relationships were "romantic"; only about 5% were sex-only "hookups."

Just 1% of the relationships were homosexual; nationally, says Moody, the figure is about 2.5% for teens, whose sexual identities are still emerging. The data were collected in the kids' homes back in 1995 using a secure, computerized survey. Says Bearman: "There was no incentive to lie."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1022618,00.html#ixzz1HcMdPmBp

Could you live without money? Meet a guy who does.

2011-03-13T08:44:00.000-05:00

One of the assumptions of American culture is that money equals success and happiness. There is a hegemonic assumption that we should all be pursuing money and we can't live without it. Here is a story about a man who gave up all money. He is educated and happy and he has a website and he even blogs about it! Although this story is an extreme one, it sure is interesting. Maybe we all won't give up our pursuit of money, but maybe we can work on giving up some of our assumptions about it.

Volunteer Op: Habitat for humanity, Spring of Life in Elgin

2011-03-07T20:34:00.001-06:00

Please check out our website for information about the current build, the volunteer schedule and our partnership in general. The following are Work Days so we'll need at least 6 volunteers...mark your calendar: 3/12 4/9 4/30 5/14 5/28
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to email either myself: lreidelb@comcast.net or Larry Buettner: larrybuettner@comcast.net

This Saturday, March 12th is a work day. Please register on the website if you will be attending or email myself. If all the slots fill, our volunteer requirements for the day will be complete.

We will be hanging drywall and putting up siding outside. Dress warmly and bring work gloves.

From our newsletter…
This week at Habitat…Volunteers have begun to put up drywall in the 95-year-old cottage the Spring of Life Partnership is rehabbing in Elgin; on the outside of the house volunteers continue to install siding Work begins at 8 a.m.; lunch is provided. Volunteers are urged to sign-up online at www.springoflifehabitat.org, follow the links on the Volunteer tab.

Grading the blogs

2011-03-07T20:24:00.003-06:00

Below is the rubric for the blogs. Each blog will get three grades; one for each of the following categories: Academic Standards, Sociology Content, Application.

Academic Standards
3
Student turns in assignment on time. Assignment is properly written using correct prose, punctuation and capitalization.

2
Turned in on time, but student may have a small number of spelling or writing mistakes but these do not distract from the overall understanding of the student’s ideas.

1
Student turns in the assignment late. Student writing is difficult to understand. There are many spelling and grammatical mistakes. The writing is unprofessional and not in proper prose.

0
Student did not turn in assignment at all.

Content
3
Student demonstrates an understanding of the sociological content. Student illustrates a grasp of the ideas and concepts as well as the vocabulary that students use.

Student use readings, videos, activities to support their knowledge of the sociological themes/concepts discussed in class.

2
Student is able to show an understanding of some concept and ideas, but just makes reference to some of the other concepts and vocabulary without demonstrating a grasp of them.

Students discuss their views on the assigned themes/concepts without referencing specific class materials as evidence of their knowledge.

1
Student might mention some sociology terms and ideas, but does not demonstrate an understanding of the sociological ideas, terms, concepts. Student may demonstrate a misunderstanding of the ideas.

Students are not discussing the proper themes/concepts mentioned throughout the course and are not referring to course materials.

0
Student did not attempt to do the assignment.

Application
3
Student is able to fully apply the sociological ideas to his/her own experiences (a real life experience, something s/he watched or read, another class s/he had). Student gives an authentic example of the sociology.

2
Student relates the sociology slightly to an experience s/he has had. Student gives an example but it is not a genuinely authentic example.

Student attempts to identify how concepts might be influential by relating it to society in general rather than their own particular thoughts.

1
Student does not use any example from his/her own life. Student does not apply the sociology at all.

0
Student does not attempt to do the assignment.