The office is the perfect example of multiple sociology concepts. It takes place in a american paper selling company’s office. The office is meant to be a satire comedy of the average corporate office. The first example of a social concept that I found in the show is in the second episode, titled “Diversity Day”. In this episode of the office a racist comedy routine that michael does got reported to corporate, so they send a counselor to do a diversity presentation. After the presentation, micheal feels that he has to do his own presentation. So he creates a exercise where everyone takes a card and sticks it to their head that has a certain race written on it, and the objective is to treat everyone like that certain race. These are examples
What is sociological imagination? Our textbook describes sociological imagination as the ability to see our private experiences, personal difficulties, and achievements as, in part, a reflection of the structural arrangements of society and the times in which we live. The movie entitled Forrest Gump is a great example of sociological imagination. In this paper, I will cite examples from the movie and tell how they correlate with sociological imagination. Sociological imagination allows us examine the events of our lives and see how they intersect with the wider context of history and tradition of the society in which we live. (Hughes/Kroehler, The Core, p. 7)
The Office is a documentary that mockingly looks into the humorous and somewhat realistic daily occurrences of the typical office life. Furthermore, I personally find that The Office is able to surface certain issues and stereotypes that exist in the workplace and society. The show mainly focuses on the delusional branch manager, Michael Scott. He believes that he is not only the best manager but also the coolest one there could be. Personally, I believe the directors of the show purposely made Michael Scott to represent the repressed hegemonic social issues in society.
This essay will be explaining the definition of sociology, the sociological factors of obesity using Symbolic Interactionism Theory and the Functionalism Theory and a description of the medical condition obesity and how it may affect individuals suffering from it.
In our modern world, sociology has a tremendous impact on our culture, mainly through the processes and decisions we make everyday. For movies and television shows especially, sociological references are incorporated throughout the storyline. A movie which includes many sociological examples is Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a movie based on the life of home-schooled teenage girl, Cady Heron, who moves to the United States from Africa and is placed in a public school for the first time. Cady finds herself in many uncomfortable scenarios and has to deal with the trials and tribulations pertaining to everyday high school issues. Her experiences involve interacting with high school cliques, such as ‘the plastics’, weird high school teachers, relationships,
This dark, alarming revelation of how disturbing the white collar workplace can be better illustrated in “Orientation.” In the short story, the workplace seems alien and the humans in the story seem to forced to be devoid of emotions. Everything in the economic work space has an order and a place, including who one can talk to and only after one has received permission from someone else. The representation of white collar work is almost haunting. The first few lines of the short story write, “This is your phone. Never answer your phone. There are no personal phone calls allowed. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first (Orozco).” In this piece of literature, the office space is portrayed at methodical and slightly
One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with people's level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed their conflict theory by telling the police officers to come. They must have felt embarrassed to have a woman of such lower class to be around them. They used their power of class to have the woman removed from their community. The woman wants to be there because she has no home and it is a good community to be in, but the people look at it as an embarrassment to them because it makes their area look bad for someone of such lower class to be around them. The conflict theory is unique to all other theories because it separates people into categories determined by their wealth and standards. Their status is the element that categorizes them, weather it is class, race, or gender. The conflict theory do not always use class, race, and gender all at once. In this situation race and gender is not a main issue, although gender could be a reason, but it would fall under the feminist theory. This story is mainly dealing with class. Through all this conflict the woman feels over powered and domina...
The purpose of this paper is to analyze a movie and list five sociological concepts outlined in our textbook, Sociology A Down-To-Earth Approach, 6th edition by James M. Henslin, which was published by Pearson Education, Inc in 2015, 2013, and 2011. I have chosen the movie, “The Breakfast Club.” This is a 1985 movie directed by John Hughes. It is about five high school students that have detention on a Saturday for nine hours. The five students are played by, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall. These five students are deviant in their own particular ways and have different stereotypes. Eventually the students share personal information about their
The movie “A Bug’s Life” shares the story of a colony of ants that are trapped in a vicious cycle of gathering food for the powerful grasshoppers year after year. The ants become wary of collecting food and soon realize a revolution is needed to free themselves from the grip of the grasshoppers. Throughout “A Bug’s Life”, a critical analysis of character interaction contributes to a greater understanding of the functionalist theory, conflict theory, and Marxism and how these sociological principles create a competitive society and inevitably lead to societal change.
Have you ever been watching a TV show and find yourself relating it to your life in some way? You might relate it to some problem that is going on in your life or some issue going on around your society. All of the sudden, I found myself thinking sociologically one day when I was watching the TV series Grey’s Anatomy. Almost seven series in, I started to realize similarities between Grey’s Anatomy and topics we have been learning about in class. I noticed ideas and concepts that related to sociology. From norms and agents to theories and structures, the series Grey’s Anatomy is a great analysis of sociology.
“Office Space” is a comedy movie of a man who desperately hates his job and his boss. The movie begins with Peter Gibbon’s daily life story at Initech. At work, Peter has to deal with his indifferent boss, Bill Lumbergh, who doesn’t want to listen to his employee’s feedbacks. Lumbergh seems to be an ignorant and arrogant man who dictates his employee and doesn’t want to be blamed at all. Moreover, Lumbergh asks his employee to come to work on weekend. The atmosphere in the office is getting more intense after Lumbergh announced that Initech is bringing in consultants to increase the efficiency of the company. Peter was very frustrated with everything in the office and he felt that his life even more miserable with each passing day at work. The following day, he decided to come to see a hypnotherapist in order to help him to have more positive outlook on life. Before the hypnotherapist finishes his hypnotic therapy on Peter, he has a heart attack unexpectedly and then dies. However, Peter was still under the influence of hypnosis and fails to come back to his normal state. The next day, Peter sleeps all day long – he actually supposed to come to work – and ignores all calls from his boss. On Monday, Peter comes to the office to have an interview with the consultants. Here, still under the influence of hypnosis, Peter blatantly tells everything he felt about the company. He even tells the interviewers that he only stare at his desk – looks like he is working – for hours to spend his time at work. In the end of the interview, Peter says that actually he is not lazy, but he has a problem with motivation. Peter has eight different bosses who will come by if Peter makes mistakes, so the only motivation that Peter has is not to be hassle...
In an ever changing world, sociology as a discipline works to keep up with the shifting climate of today's world and how people fit into it. A key way sociologists organize research is by looking at it from varied levels and standpoints. The major perspectives sociologists focus on are interactionism, conflict theory and functionalism. Each of these perspectives helps explain the influence people have on society and vice versa. Every one of these perspectives hones in on a scaled view of different groups; these views go from looking at individual relationships of families, all the way to analyzing an entire population within a big city.
Office politics can have advantages that may motivate certain employees and cliques. It can be very productive, as they usually know each other well and can utilize each person’s talent in a team setting. How a supervisor or manger deals with office politics can ultimately lead to his or her success or demise. It can also be the most unproductive and destructive problem in the workplace; which can derail the best laid business plans. It can eventually take down what was once a profitable smooth running business if it is allowed to continue or if upper management is a participant.
Working in today’s society has changed in the last few decades. The economy and technology are the main reasons for this change. The type of job and environment where one works has also changed. The fact that many people work from home via the internet has drastically changed the workforce and the environment surrounding it. With this change have come new demands, expectations, and opportunities for employers. Everyone deals with these demands differently, affecting the employee’s quality of life and job satisfaction. Though the job and office types and locations have changed over the years the need for job satisfaction has not. In today’s economy the job is not as stable as it used to be. One must be prepared for changes in the future.
The movie Office Space is a comedy satire about the nature of work, mostly in corporate office occupations. It is set against the backdrop of Initech Corporation, a software company, and follows the day-to-day life of Peter Gibbons, who hates his job. Peter goes to work every day in frustrating traffic and stares at a computer screen without doing very much actual work. He feels belittled by multiple bosses, especially Bill Lumberg, for making seemingly innocent mistakes, and he expresses a desire to quit working and do nothing at all. He commiserates with his coworkers and friends Samir and Michael, who are also frustrated with their jobs and their other coworkers. When Peter is hypnotized by his therapist, he stops caring about work, despite the fact that his office has just hired two consultants, presumably to facilitate company lay-offs. Samir, Michael, and Peter’s other coworkers are full of anxiety and cautious in their evaluations with the consultants, but Peter shows up late and is brutally honest about his lack of work ethic and motivation, as well as his opinions on upper management. Surprisingly, Peter is promoted and told about the impending lay-offs of his hardworking friends Samir and Michael, which leads them to plant a computer virus which will steal fractions of a cent from the company’s accounts every day and deposit them into another bank account owned by the three men. When a miscalculation in the virus causes them to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of fractions of pennies, Peter, Michael, and Samir worry about the consequences, and Peter ends up writing a letter to take the blame for the theft. Luckily for them all, Milton, a strange employee who has been taken advantage of for years by I...
As far back as history can be told mankind has struggled between balancing culture, power and politics. Many wars have been fought and many people have placed their lives on the line in order to stand up for what they believe in. The combinations of culture, power and politics have spilled over into the workplace. In today’s business environment individuals have much more to worry about than just completing their assigned tasks. Organizational culture, power and office politics influence day to day operations as well as govern the atmosphere within the organization. The amount of impact that power and politics have in the workplace, directly reflect the organization’s culture formally as well as informally.