Monthly Archives: August 2012

In class we have discussed the presentation of self in everyday life. In this video we have a visionary interpretation of Erving Goffman’s theory of presentation of self. Everyday we choose how we will look like, how we will be acting to fit our inner social circle, and how we will be presenting ourself at school, work, family, friends and etc. Everyday when we socialize with people – we act. We act to be a lover, we act to fit the role of a daughter/son/wife/husband/sister/brother.

The image of self is created in our minds to fit the societal norms. The norms that are acceptable in the society. For example, if the man is not dressed in fancy clothes and didn’t get a proper haircut at the important event, most likely people will avoid to have a conversation with him, although he might be a very intelligent person. People expect others to look the same way they do. People expect others to speak the same way, and act the same way. If a person is completely different in clothing, interaction and not good looking, people will avoid at all cost.

For example, several weeks ago, me and my friend wanted to go to the Jonas Beach at Long Island. While we were driving in to the certain beach area. My friend asked the patrol, if we could drive in and go to the beach. The patrol said, it is only for surfers and didn’t let us go. Me and my friend decided to drive through the other beach entrances and realized there were crowded. We decided to drive to the same place where we wanted to go initially, but at this time, there were another patrol man. My friend just handed in the ticket, without asking if we could go or not. My friend acted cool and confident, the patrol man didn’t say anything and let us in. I believe this is a social acting. How we act plays a huge role in our everyday lives. It may cause us uplifting or down lifting effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35cOqZI067E&feature=related

Francis Galton had once said that “Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; Nurture is every influence that affects him after his birth.” The nature vs. nurture debate is over whether children develop their physiological attributes based on genetics, which is “Nature” or how they were raised, also known as “nurture”. This argument can be traced back a few millenniums, or at least as far back as someone can wonder. In 350 B.C., philosophers asked the same question on human behavior. Plato and Aristotle were both philosophers with two different views on the issue. Plato believed that knowledge and behavior were due to innate factors, but environmental factors still played a role in the equation. Aristotle believed differently though. He believed in the thought of “ tabula rasa,” which means blank state. This thought concluded that everyone is born mindless; you gain your own unique knowledge and behavior from your experiences. Things such as personality, intelligence, sexuality, phobias, shyness, gender identification, attitude and habits are all created new. Many children around the world are abused and abandoned by their parents and are grown up with little or no human interaction, sometimes along with animals. These children are called feral children. A widely known case of this was in the late 1970’s with a girl named Genie. Until she was thirteen years old, she lived in complete isolation. She had never learned to speak and was the size of a six year old, instead of the size of a teenager. When she recovered from her abusive father, she was believed to be autistic, because of her severe disability with social interaction, but it was the fact that she was isolated and abused her whole life that caused her to act this way.  His helps the nurture debate, because it proves that due to the fact that there was no interaction with humans, this child did not know any social characteristics. There are many cases around the world where there are children that grow up with animals and when they are found they mimic everything that the animals do. Francis Dalton had done many studies, which stated that many identical twins stay the same throughout their whole lives, but not only in appearance but also ailments, personalities, and interests. One pair of twins he studied suffered a severe toothache in the same tooth, in the same age. One pair of obviously similar twins who were separated at birth but reunited in 1979, both smoked and shared several interests along with dislikes. They both also had wives named Betty, ex-wives named Linda, had dogs named toy and also named their first-born child James Allen. This debate over nature vs. nurture will always have cases and thoughts that will help both sides of this argument, but it is very hard to exactly tell which one is right and which one is wrong.

“For Asian-American Couples, a Tie That Binds” (NYT article)

The video above, “Yellow Fever,” is about 6 years old, but I feel like the “issue” portrayed in it is one that won’t be going away any time soon. Yellow fever is a real disease, but the yellow fever that the guys at Wong Fu Productions speak of is more of a social epidemic. If you are unfamiliar, it refers to couples that are generally composed of a white man and an (East) Asian woman.

It’s not that rare to see an interracial couple these days, and it may not even consciously register in people’s minds (since it has become so common), but as an Asian-American, I always notice when a couple is white male and Asian female. I’ll be honest and say that I use to be one to think “Oh, that guy has an Asian fetish” or “She’s a mail-order bride.” However, that is not the case anymore and I do believe that people of different race backgrounds can make a relationship work if they put the work into it.

The video of course is satirical, but as with any piece of satire, there’s some truth to it. Earlier this summer I went to my cousin’s wedding and of all the young, unmarried couples, I would have to say that 90% of them were white man and Asian woman. I’ll have to take into consideration that my cousin’s friends were mostly from a small, farming town in western Massachusetts, but there’s no denying that yellow fever was running rampant.

The New York Times article actually points out that what I saw at the wedding was an exception – that “yellow fever” kind of relationships has been on the decline since 1980, even though Asian-Americans still hold the highest percentage of interracial marriages (Swarns, NYT). I can relate to what many of the interviewed couples shared in that there is an ease with marrying or being in a relationship with someone of the same or similar racial/cultural backgrounds. Although communication is necessary in any relationship, there’s sort of an unspoken understanding of what is expected from each other for Asian-American couples. For example, a female cousin of mine is currently dating a Jewish man. Whenever he comes over for family dinner, he asks what all the “weird” food is. I appreciate him wanting to know more about his girlfriend’s family and their cultures and traditions, but it can get a bit annoying/tiring to explain everything.

It seems like a trend of “returning to your roots,” but I’m sure some subconsciously racist grandparents out there are glad that their grandchildren are choosing mates from within their own group.

Most of us think that a family is made up of the mother, the father and the siblings and in some cases the grandparents as well. And we live in a society that is commonly practiced. Most of us live in a society where monogamy is practiced, were “one person is married to only one person at a time” page 90. That is how we are raised to believe that it should be and that is how we see it as being normal and accepted in our society. But there is another type of marriage that is completely opposite to monogamy which is practiced in many countries including the United States. It is called polygamy, where “one individual is married to several husbands or wives at the same time” page 90. Families are made up of one father and many mothers or the other way around and the families are very big. Polygamy in the United States is illegal if they announce it publically, for example on national TV or radio and they can be imprisoned.

To me polygamy is unacceptable. Even thought I watched the whole episode on TV explaining the practices of polygamy and how people should accept it as being normal, and I did learn a lot, to me it is still unacceptable. On the other hand, I don’t believe that people should be imprisoned for practicing polygamy because people can make their own decisions on how to live their life. As you can see on the video, If the father gets imprisoned the little children are going be affected in two ways, economically and psychologically. Imagine growing up without your father, it would be very hard. The mothers would have a tough time raising the children as well. The little children shouldn’t be punished because of what their father has done or what the state thinks is wrong to do. The thing that bothered me is when one of the wives said that she is doing this, practicing polygamy because it brings her closer to God. They are not doing it because that is what that makes them happy but to please someone else. And I think they should change their point of view.

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/30/free-plastic-surgery-for-bullied-kids/?iref=allsearch

In Chapter six of “Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life,” the author discusses managing impressions and how we form impressions of others. The way we first view a person is usually by physical appearance. By the way someone looks, we assume how their personality is and if we like them or not. How we appear to other people has become extremely important to us, that we tend to shape and alter our image in order to impress other individuals. I believe that the media, standards of society, and the opinions of others has made people obsessive over physical appearance to the point where it isn’t healthy. One way individuals, mainly woman, alter their looks is through plastic surgery. The increase of plastic surgery being used to change how we look proves that many of us aren’t content with how we appear to others. Society’s standards of what beauty is tends to be what causes us to feel insecure about our looks and change our image to seem physically pleasant to another person’s eyes.

In this video, it shows a young adult that faces bullying based on her physical appearance and her desire to get her ears fixed due to the name calling. The video mentions that there is a cosmetic surgery firm that is willing to perform plastic surgery for kids that suffer from bullying. I think that allowing kids to change their appearance gives them the idea that in the situation of the bullied and the one bullying, the one being bullied is at fault for what is happening. Before changing a child’s appearance it’s important to encourage them that we all have our imperfections that make us who we are.  This video represents the fact that we are all wrapped up with society’s standards and that we should change ourselves based on other people’s opinions. Personally, I feel as if getting plastic surgery under the age of twenty-one is too soon because a lot of us don’t grow into our features until our later teenage years or even early twenties. By allowing these children to get plastic surgery, we’re giving into society’s standards of what is considered beauty and letting the eyes’ of other individuals control how we look or how we are meant to look. Although, the young adult in the video says she is much happier, I believe it’s too much, too soon.

Deaf Family Finds Themselves Torn Between Deaf and Hearing Worlds (Part 1)

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there are nearly twenty eight million Americans who consider themselves deaf or “hard of hearing”.  Deaf or H.O.H people are incapable of hearing what most humans take for granted, such as their loved ones’ voices, a dog’s bark, music and more. However, a surgically implanted electronic device was created in the late 1970s. The cochlear implant, otherwise known as the bionic ear, helps to provide a sense of sound to someone who is severely deaf. The cochlear implant seems like an easy fix for those who qualify, but, oddly enough, not everyone is on board with the device.

Large portions of the deaf population consider themselves as being part of a proud lifestyle. Many deaf people feel the same pride in their community as one would feel of his or her Hispanic or Asian community, for example. Although they may remain proud, plenty of people who are deaf feel almost threatened by the hearing majority. To them the cochlear implant can be seen as a way to annihilate sign language and their sense of community.

The innovative cochlear implant does not guarantee restoration of normal hearing but it does allow a person to identify sounds in his or her environment as well as another person’s voice. Eventually, an individual with a cochlear implant will most likely be able to learn to how to speak and converse in person. To outsiders (hearing people a.k.a most of the population) the rejection of what appears to be a gift of hearing will most likely remain puzzling. A deaf person really doesn’t want to gain the ability to hear? From our (hearing) perspective, this may even be considered a social deviance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38XOStSIgII&feature=related

In this week, we learned the chapter 7 which talked about divorce.  Divorve becomes more common and acceptable in today’s society and rate of divorce still increase. From the book, it states that divorce rate be associated with socioeconomic development. such as developing countries has lower divorce rate than developed countires. American has the highest rate of divorce in the world, but China and Indina have lower rate. It seems that countries where people have religious and relate their marriage to the God, the rate of divorce will be less. Another reason that women role in the developing countries are very family oriented, they will stay with their marriage no matter what happen. they usually be a housewife which is take care of their families. But women in developed countries has more right to choose their life and they are allow to leave their marriage if they are no satisafied.

From the video, Dr. Drew’s Lifechanger/Master Matchmaker Steve Ward has his own take on why a lot of couples are getting divorced today. This Lifechanger thinks it’s easy to walk away from marriage these days and the social stigma attached to divorce has disappeared. In fact, Steve says that people almost feel cool to get deivorced and they had divorce parties. Steve is disgusted by divorce parties, and believes ending a marriage means failure no matter how you slice it.

Nowadays, it is commonly believed that 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce, but on the 50, 60 and 70 century, divorce was relatively uncommon and difficult to get. because of religious, economic and social role, etc. As result, a lot of reasons will cause divorce, but if couples can have an understanding of themselves, they should learn how to handle things by themselves and try to understand the relationship of marriage, I believe the rate of divorce will decrease.

Jillian Michaels ruins their First Impression

We’ve all attempted to create the finest first impressions on those who we feel are imperative to our benefit. However, whether or not we thrive or fail are determined by those we try to make an impression on. Whether it’s the first day of class, the first day at work, the first date, or the first encounter we have with anyone where we feel our best vitally needs to be shown. Needless to say, though we may feel we look our absolute best and having the greatest conversation, the significant other may feel the complete opposite and can read through our “true colors.” Likewise on the first day of work or class, we may think we performing to or best abilities or and showing how studious and attentive we are, however our employer or professor may be able to read directly through our false impression, as a result doing far more harm than good.

Hence, though we may feel our first impression is indeed the best impression we can create, it is ultimately determined by those we’ve trying to induce. Depending on whom they are or the situation, either things that have worked successfully on others in the past may not be as charming, or similar to David Newman’s example in chapter six –try to impress in sister-in-law to be by playing basketball- where things can also go complete wrong and what you may have intended to do may have been perceived completely opposite to the other.

In the above video, a group of men who are marketing Jillian Michaels (a successful personal trainer who is famously known as a trainer on the Biggest Loser) GoDaddy.com profile when unexpectedly Jillian Michaels herself walks into the room. As shown and to say the very least, this group of middle aged men are not in the best shape of their life, hence with a woman who is known for being proactive about health and fitness, the first thought that occurred to them in order to impress her was to seem as if they were in some decent shape.  However, as most people we try to impress, Jillian wasn’t buying their front stage impression and comically barged into the room shortly after the group of men entered their back stage impression catching them in the act.  Thus, our first impression can sometimes be our worst impression.

http://youtu.be/9pvvVzaplDU

Deviance is the act of behaving in an unacceptable manner.  Deviant behavior is frowned upon and even shunned but it happens all the time and even in front of us.  The video I posted is a group of teenagers who are acting up in the mall.  As shown, people are trying to avoid them, look at them the wrong way, and probably even comment about how stupid they are behaving.

I believe we can all say that at certain times in our lives we’ve all shown deviant behavior.  I remember back when I was in high school, after dismissal we would all get together and commute together and the things we would do were outrageous.  In the train we would all wrestle and box in front of other passengers and just behave reckless all around.  At times the passengers would switch to another train cart but most of the time they would just stay there and mind their own business, that was the fascinating part.

That last point goes back to the title of the blog post.  Deviant behavior is so common in our society that it is naturally accepted.  In the video, the two girls were clearly disrupting the public area in front of a security guard and he didn’t even make an effort to stop them.  Deviant behavior is so common that instead of trying to stop it or just make a big fuss about it, the public eye just turns the other way and continue on with what their agenda has in store for them as if nothing ever happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDPGzjalQ&feature=related

In chapter 8, we discussed the idea of defining deviance. Deviance refers to socially disapproved behavior.  We are taught growing up how to act in a “proper” manner in order to not be viewed as a deviant. For example we are taught how to properly eat, act, and walk in a private and public setting and how to differentiate from the two. Growing up all these different mannerisms are thrown at us and we are suppose to accept them and put them into effect.

I chose the video posted above because I thought it was interesting. Looking at this video now, must of us may view it as ridiculous. Young girls in the 50s-60s were shown this video, not only in order to make them act a certain way, but also to make them feel bad for not doing so in the first place. The idea of this video is not all that ridiculous. Today we are not shown videos that directly tell us how to act. But we are shown things on TV and see things from the people around us that tell us how we should act. We are also shown that if we don’t act in a certain way we will be socially rejected or even reprimanded by the law.

The idea of deviance is very controversial. It is difficult to know whether to do certain things and if they will be considered deviant. I think that as long as you follow what YOU believe is right and have inner peace, it shouldn’t matter what society says. But of course that’s easier said then done.