As students enter class, please take out Just Mercy and look for examples of how the culture constructs the dynamics of the death penalty in the US.
For the Discussion, please keep in mind these criteria:
Just Mercy Chapters 3-4:
Thinking like a symbolic interactionist, how does the
language used by the police affect Walter?
How can the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis apply to the interaction between
Walter and the police?
The norms and subculture of death row.
Norms of death row
Norms of trials in deep south.
How institutions reproduce culture.
How institutions like Supreme Court can change culture.
Culture of death penalty in AL and the institution of
politics
Cultural values (usefulness, practicality, self-help,
individualism) create norms of intolerance
Real culture vs. ideal culture
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pg 90-91 “…we would
never think it was humane to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or
assault and abuse someone guilty of assault or abuse. Yet we are comfortable killing people who
kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that doesn’t implicate
our own humanity, the way that raping or abusing someone would. I couldn’t stop thinking that we don’t spend
much time contemplating the details of what killing someone actually involves.”
Review for Unit 2:
Identify the following reactions to culture:
Culture
Shock -
Ethnocentrism -
Cultural
Relativity –
How is culture like a fish bowl?
What is material
culture?
Why is it important?
What are examples of
symbolic culture?
Why is it necessary to
understand symbolic culture?
What
is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? What are examples of it in our culture?
“Social Time; The Heartbeat of a Culture” by Levine and Wolf.
Norms
Folkways
Mores
Taboos
Moral
holidays
Moral holiday places
Sanctions
What is a subculture?
What
is a counter culture?
Kohl’s
Values Americans Live By.
Why
are values important to a culture?
What
are the US values?
What
is ideal culture?
What
is real culture?
What
is a value cluster?
What
is a value contradiction?
Dan Buettner's Thrive.
