culture

We started a new unit this week which was culture. We learned about ethnocentrism, cultural relativity and culture shock. Culture shock is when someone is surprised at how different something is  compared to your culture. When someone starts to think that their culture is doing it the right way and the other is wrong that is ethnocentrism. We were given three words on the board and they we had to see which ones didn't fit. The words were laundry, beer and clothing. Everyone said beer didn't belong because clothing is a form of laundry. Some cultures might say that clothing doesn't belong because beer and laundry are liquids. As americans we put things together that function rather than how they look.

I have been to Mexico a few times and it's always difficult to communicate because I don't' know their language that well. Once my family and I got on a bus and got off at the wrong stop because we didn't understand and it was very frustrating. We were in culture shock because everything around us was completely different.

A Bronx Tale

This week in sociology we watched a movie called "A Bronx Tale."In the movie the main character Calogero was in many groups during different times of his life. He was in a group with his school, family, friends and the people in his neighborhood. C's master status when he was younger was son. He used to ride the bus with his father frequently and shared a bond of baseball. When C got older he became very close with Sonny and he was like his second father. C's master status then changed to a friend. He was a friend to Sonny and everyone in the neighborhood.

My master status has been the same for most of my life. I am a daughter and a sister. My family means a lot to me and they are the ones that influence me the most.

This week in class we put our desks in a circle and had a discussion. We were to put our names in the middle of the paper and put all the the groups we were apart of. The group could be with one other person or with millions of others. We then had to pick our master status which is what is most important to you. I picked my family as my major status because they are very important to me and they impact a lot of the decisions I make. It was interesting to hear other person major statues and what was important to them

We also did an experiment by splitting up the class into people wearing blue jeans and people who are not. I was wearing jeans so we were given a white board to write down some reasons why they are not wearing jeans. At first some comments were generic like "they didn't want to" or "they were in the wash." Then as time went on the comments started to get meaner like "they didn't' fit anymore" or "they are ugly." This was to give an example of the video we later watched about a teacher who split her class up into kids with blue or brown eyes. She said the blue eyed kids were the best and it caused bullying between the kids. This showed "in groups" and "out groups."

Freaks and Geeks

This week in sociology we learned about the three perspectives of sociology. To get a better understanding of what exactly the perspectives are we watched Freaks and Geeks. One perspective is functional analysis founded by Emilie Durkheim. Each group in a persons life serves a function for the individuals. The freaks allow Lindsay to be rebellious. The mathlets let her be cool in school by being smart. Gym class allows for the ones that are not as intellectual but are athletic to feel accepted. Society created with people from experiences is called the social construction of reality. We do what is "socially acceptable" because that's what we are used to. The seniors feel like they have the power in the school because they are the oldest. Seniors are the only ones that order class shirts that is because each senior class before us has ordered them. If freshmen were to order class shirts the seniors wouldn't like that because they would be changing the tradition and it wouldn't be special anymore.