When I enrolled in this course I expected to be academically challenged while furthering my ability to comprehend and relate to sociology in the modern world. Although attaining credit for this course is a devised component to earning my degree, the employing of such concepts in my immediate life is an unexpected achievement. This course has contributed to a self-evaluation which further developed my level of comprehension of not only who I am as an individual, but as an element of society. The concepts I have chosen to reflect upon have either reformed or influenced my thought process while further provoking critical thought.
The first concept that I had to process is sociological imagination. On a personal note, my ability to understand
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Unfortunately it is the tendency of groups to judge other groups. Whether judgment is passed based on morals, values, social norms, religion, sex or ethnicity it creates a division among society and further limits humanity. It seems as though it is considered socially acceptable or normal to judge people and deem groups superior and inferior. This concept influenced my views on racial minorities. I acquired knowledge during the duration of this course that provided an objective view on the vicious cycle of inequality in correlation to minority opportunity. Feeling ashamed I now acknowledge that I judged people and their ways of life, their culture without giving thought to underlying social issues that fuel such circumstances. In more recent news, the shootings, violence and crimes against fellow man has firmly reinforced that ethnocentrism bares hate and …show more content…
I need to socialize, and interact in a structured social group that support my class, beliefs, skills and geographic capabilities. This portion of social groups in sociology is still unfolding in my life. I have made leaps and bounds in establishing where I want to see myself in order to attain my ideal self-imagine, but participation in social groups that precisely promote the positive virtues I want to be evaluated by is more complex. Relationships built through social groups take time to evolve and I am working on finding my niche or group that adheres to commonalities I cleave to. This concept is also classified as stratification. The division of social groups by ranking and social value. I am a product of low level stratification. I was brought up in an environment without equal opportunities in education, money and social mobility. My father was a drug trafficker, who is now in prison, and my mother was a 16 year old woman who had no idea had to raise children. These conditions promoted low end sub- economic surroundings and limited my access to elements in society that are valued. I think my environmental upbringing and assigned label are primary drives for me to achieve a higher level of social mobility. It is not an easy
Brinkerhoff, David B., Rose Weitz, Suzanne T. Ortega. Essentials of Sociology Ninth Edition. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.
In this paper will be talking about the three sociological perspectives as it pertains to the fraternities and sororities in today’s world. I have chosen this topic because it can be easily understood in all three perspectives.
In the beginning of the year I entered this class with a very sheltered and ignorant view of current and past events. Through time and sociological evolution I have begun to see things in a different light. The development of my ability, to look at something or some kind of situation, lets me use the sociological terms in such a manner to relate them to micro and macro problems in society. This started with the assigned readings of the class; the aim was to decipher the messages the authors were presenting. The goal was then to dig deeper and use my experiences to help myself understand the concepts throughout the course. "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." Plutarch (46-120 CE--common era) I was no longer supposed to retain knowledge on a factual basis but to observe the problems and challenge my own thoughts, values, and beliefs. Challenging these aspects lights the fire that creates the ability to use working sociological terms in my analyses. Through my analyses of the authors in the course I developed questions about the particular readings that we were assigned. The questions I present from these authors are on the basis of learning and seeing the macro picture from micro events. The authors that we read from were: Allan G. Johnson, James W. Loewen, Jonathan Kozol, David Nibert, Arnold Arluke, Clinton R. Sanders, and Elie Wiesel. From each one of these authors we are able to relate a theme of sociology to what is happening in their books, which results in the discussion questions.
For centuries, racism has become the universal epitome of culture, despite the efforts of various civilizations, such as the Western and European to combat these indifferences among people. A race is specific social group that can be differentiated through various ways, from facial features and hair textures, to social norms and habits that constitutes to that group. These differences contribute to our uniqueness and humanity. Because people can be grouped by any number of differences, Man, lead by his ignorance, perpetuated the issue once social-hierarchies began to develop, splitting society to its various groups. As a result, social disparity from one’s upbringing became the common tendency to look down, or look up at people of other cultures, skin-colors, or nationalities. Discrimination and unjust social practices affect humanity today.
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 study of sociology enables us to understand the basis of human behaviour within different contexts, the interaction between different classes and social divisions, such as race, sex and age, and the factors that give rise to these different patterns of behaviour. Sociology is a study of human behaviour as constructed by the human race, as distinct from a study of those sciences which are dependent upon natural evolution. Although humans are basically similar, it helps us understand their behavioural attitudes towards any kind of situation, particularly where there are conflicts of interests such as those between the different classes, or communities of large cultural diversity. Sociologists believe that the way to adequately study and understand the behaviour and lives of individuals is to study the social contexts within which they live. It studies social patterns and trends and the phenomena that causes social change, how individuals adapt to that change and how that influences collective behaviour in groups: families, youth clubs and work places, as well as large-scale global problems such as poverty, helping to bringing forth solutions as a result. Sociology is not a precise science, and is dependent on outside influ...
Kendall, D. (2012). Sociology in Our Times, 9th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781285309682
Social theories provide us with a new perspective in the social world. With new perspectives, new opinions can be made. also, they can provide answers or explain a specific social spectacle. Social theories can help clarify and predict the way the social world works. The three major sociological perspectives are functionalism, the conflict theory, and the symbolic interaction theory. Each theory is different and can help answer many questions about human behavior in a social world.
When I First signed up for this class I can honestly say I had no idea what sociology was this was just one of those classes I had to take to get into Saint Martin’s. The first day of class I wasn’t sure what to except but as Carlos introduced the class to sociology I was excited to learn some new things but I had no idea what was in store. The information in this class has opened my eyes to so many different ideas of what today’s society truly is and how we are trained not to see it. I feel like a blindfold was removed from my eyes in the duration of this class and the events of this year have been perfect modern examples of what we were learning in class. I can’t imagine going through the past couple of months without being in this class
After reviewing the article titles given for this first assignment, I believe they indicate that Sociology, generally speaking, is not only a study of diversity or commonality in traits among people; it is also a science about factors in a person’s life and how these factors culminate responses. Interestingly enough, its topics of concern seem to be directly determined by current and common events of the world. Through the invention and expansion of new ideas, popular trends and fashions through time, Sociology adapts to responsibly to service the very subjects of interest it studies; for, even the slightest change of a person’s daily experience can have an insurmountable impact on attitude, personal growth, family dynamics and basic group behavior.
Murray, Jane Lothian, Linden, Rick and Kendall, Diane. (2011). SOCIOLOGY IN OUR TIMES, Fifth Canadian Edition by Nelson Education Limited, Published by Thomson Wadsworth, USA.
Imagination is another word for possibilities or a way to see things through the minds eye. It's vision that isn't accomplished through our senses. The sociological perspective adds society and it's overall purpose. Three of the main perspectives of sociological are the functionalist perspective, conflict perspective and the symboilc interactionist perspective. Each consist of theories on how society operates and believes the concept proves it.
Before I started taking the course of sociology I wasn’t really expecting to learn anything, it was just supposed to be an easy online class. However, that was not the case. It challenged my mind. I started to see sociology all around me, starting with family, then friends, and how I see things overall in general. The fact that we have an everyday life in which there are patterns in ways of living is what sets a platform for a sociological breakdown and for being a part in what we do. A better way of understanding ourselves. We use sociology in many ways every day. One central and important study of sociology is the study of everyday social life. Everyday life and sociology are definitely two different words and situations, but they tend to hold a close relationship. While sociology is the study of the human interaction, everyday life consists of everyday human interaction. Everyday life is filled by human beings interacting with one another, ideas, and emotions. Sociology studies the interactions with all of these and shows how mere interaction resulted in things such as ideas. For an example, race and ethnicity are important concepts in the field of sociology and are ones that are studied a great deal. Race plays a large role in everyday human interactions and sociologists want to study how, why, and what the outcomes are of these interactions. Current sociological theories focus mainly on how there are many different factors in our everyday items of life, like movies. We were assigned a final to write a review for a movie in sociological form. The movie that was on the list that also happened to be one of my favorite movies, Toy Story. When we were assigned the assignment, I never thought about how in-depth it was with sociol...
Marsh, I and Keating, M., eds. (1996) Sociology: Making sense of society., ed [2006], England: Pearson Education.
After taking this course, I see a bigger picture of the world and how it operates. Studying sociology has changed my attitudes towards other people and societies. I also see the importance of sociology in solving social problems of all magnitude. The knowledge will be useful for future decisions, because I understand there is much more to our world than what meets our eye.