Everyday Sociology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIE3IUkkp8

Bureaucracy is in all of our lives; actually it is even in our schools. How many times have you been asked to go from one room to another to fill out forms or to find out where the hell are you supposed to go to get your question solved. I know I had a lot of these situations. Today we think of bureaucracy as a negative thing, it is even an insult to call someone a bureaucrat.

The idea of a large amount of people being split up into their little tasks seems really good in paper, it makes it easier on the worker because he does not have to worry about everything and it also makes it easier for the people who go to that place for whatever reason they have. Sure it sound great but the reality is what it is, it sucks. The frustration of trying to get something resolved is immense that before I go get something done I have to mentally prepare myself for what is coming ahead.

I believe that Max Weber had the right idea of what would make for a good system but in reality it doesn’t work as well. It is the people who work there that make it a terrible experience. They are mostly undertrained, lazy and don’t know what they are talking about. It is easy to pass on the blame or the task when you got hundredths of other people working with you. The video I have picked shows what it feels like for us customers, it might be a bit exaggerated but it is accurate in showing how bureaucracy really looks. 

Bill Gates Biography: Sultan Of Software

This video is about Bill Gates’  biography, but today I do not want to  introduce how smart he is, how he built Microsoft, or how he made his business successful. What I want to say is that People always have chance to change his classes like Bill Gates who move from middle class to upper class.

The United States generally divided into people into four classes, Upper class which means a group of people who have income and prestige and who own vast amounts of property and other forms of wealth, such as owners of large corporations, top financiers, rich celebrities and politicians and members of prestigious families. Middle class, which is the social group between the upper and working classes. Working class, which is the social group consisting of people who are employed for wages, for example, in manual or industrial work, and the poor ,which is in society stratified by social class, a group of people who work for minimum wage or are chronically unemployed .However, in American, people are not simply stay in one class, they may move from one class to another through their own efforts which we can call it as social mobility ,or we can simply  call it as the American Dream.

People can be successful through their own hard work, courage, creativity and determination, which can help people from a particular social class upper level social class. The “American Dream” has inspired a lot of peooke create their own value. But in recent years, because of the the continued weakness of the U.S. economy and social issues, the hearts of many people of the “American dream” is being broken.

However, the story like Bill Gates, become a new idol of the “American dream”. By virtue of his own wisdom, he made billions of dollars. His story seems to indicate that as long as people are the wisdom and genius, they also can be successful in the United States.

Philanthropist Wants to Be Rid of His Last $1.5 Billion (NYT, Jim Dwyer)

How The Poor, The Middle Class, and The Rich Spend Their Money (NPR, Jacob Goldstein, Lam Vo) – An interesting infographic showing that the 99% and the 1% are not all that different

No, not the one from “Boy Meets World,” (though he is pretty awesome in his own right).

The Mr. Feeney that I speak of is an 81-year-old multi-billionaire philanthropist, who is trying to give away all his wealth before he passes on. For years he has kept his charity work a secret, but has recently come forward about his generosity. Mr. Feeney is pretty much the complete opposite of a rich person stereotype. Although many rich people give generously to various organizations that help the less fortunate or fund humanitarian projects, Mr. Feeney stands out because he lives an extremely modest life, rarely, if ever, showing any signs of his overflowing wealth.

He admits that he is a “shabby dresser,” often buying clothes off the rack (Dwyer). His TV set is almost as old as I am (never bothered to keep up with technology), and he prefers to mingle with commoners by flying coach and choosing to settled in Midtown Manhattan (though he could have easily afforded an Upper East Side apartment near others of his economic class).

His is a true rags-to-riches story – raised in a working-class family, joined the Air Force, attended Cornell through G.I. bill, worked as a merchant, started his own business, founded his own philanthropic foundation (Dwyer). In class we talked about social mobility and how it takes 5-6 generations on average to move up/down the socioeconomic. Mr. Feeney is one of the exceptions to the trend, but his story is interesting still — even though he became fairly rich (economically), he didn’t change that much in his lifestyle (socially). At the end of the article, Dwyer writes that Mr. Feeney’s five children will receive an inheritance, but it won’t be enough to continue a legacy of “old money.” His daughters and son could have had the all privileges of the upper class, but instead they have all experienced working through college as waiters, maids, and cashiers.

This story was incredibly inspiring and I wish there were more Mr. Feeneys in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wABI2dwbQMQ

        McDonaldization is described a Phenomenon that speed up characteristics coming to dominate other areas of social life. Today, professor brought an interesting topic if the education McDonaldized. He gave an example that one professor in the 200 student huge classroom and just offered all multiple choices exams by using the contract sheet. We can imagine of how this kind of “McDonaldization” will worse declines the individual education quality and how could we expect them to increase personal value in this way? In this case, the whole education system treats various individuals standardized by grading them certain degree and evaluates them abilities with the same answers outputs.

There is a question popping up in my mind: if someone, just because he comes from the different country, can’t understand the questions very well, how can we objectively and fairly evaluate him? Few years ago, I read an article, named An Indian Father’s Plea (http://tracs.csun.edu/education/eed/holle/561F/Indian%20Father.pdf). In his article, he hopes the teacher doesn’t label his son with “slow learner” just because of the culture difference and language issue and so on. That disadvantage invisibly put his son into a position of slow action/reaction by his teachers. If that young child got education in the McDonaldization education system, he would be left far away behind his peers. As we know, once a label is setting on someone, unfortunately, that will stick him in the whole life. How could we expect that India boy to fully develop his talents in the efficient way and struggle the future competition? As we know, the advantage of American culture is encouraging student’s creative thinking. How could those children innovate something new if they were forcing study and memorizing the standard answers on a quickly running of production line? Besides this, government currently also needs to balance the budget cuts and the specific needs like that wild-wolf under global badly economic circumstance. All of above problem tell us the education system can’t become McDonaldization anyway but what is the best way going on here?

watch?v=IlJVG0Pbwbg

Vernhis Mata

Social Dilemma- Free Rider Problem

Social Dilemma occurs when individuals in a group are only out for their benefits or self interests regardless of the potential ruin of society in the long run because of individual’s tendency to pursue their own short term interest. There are two important types of social dilemmas tragedy of the commons & free- rider problem which will be the one discussed.

Free Rider problem is the tendency for people to refrain from contributing to the common goods when resources are available without requiring any personal cost.  So people don’t contribute because the resource is still available even if they contribute or not. The free rider problem mainly occurs with public goods. Public goods as stated in the video are non-rival and non-excludable goods or services. Non-rival where the consumption of one person doesn’t decrease someone else’s enjoyment of the good or service. Non-excludable you cannot prevent one person or another from using the good or service such as the ocean.

Examples of public goods that face the free rider problems are police, fire fighters, roads, national defense, fireworks, and other municipal or community services. Most of these public services are available to all even those who don’t even pay taxes. Also a person using one of the services doesn’t decrease the next person enjoyment of the service.  But public goods are usually misused or not taken care of because people don’t really take responsibility for them since it’s not really theirs.  In an effort to provide these services which we so much enjoy government have mandatory taxes. If taxes were voluntary we would most likely not have the funds to enjoy these services because we only think about our immediate benefits and interest.

Another example is a channel like PBS, most people who watch the channel dont really give any contribution because they feel like its always there regardless of their donation or not. But if everyone acted in the same way we would eventually loose the resource.

watch?v=aonxOw83Sm4

Vernhis Mata

Labeling Theory- Social Construction of Crime

Deviance refers to the act, ideas, or other attributes such as the way people look that some people in society find offensive, evil, immoral, or sinful. So deviance is a socially disapproved behavior or violation of agreed norms in communities or society at large. But who decides what makes an act deviant? There are three steps that go about it. One some expectation is expected & held. Two there must be a violation of the norm, & thirdly society’s reaction to the deviance makes it deviant.

In regards to crime how do we know when something is a crime? Should we make it a crime to jump on the train without paying thus the person is committing a deviance? What if it wasn’t a crime to get in the train without paying then that person would not be deviant anymore which leads to the labeling theory. This means that is not the act that is deviant but it is society’s reaction to the act that makes it deviant. What is good or bad is in the eyes of who sees it. Take for example 911 it the most terrible thing that could have happened to NYC. We see terrorist as deviant but who knows maybe to people who are part of their organization sees us as deviant.  Maybe to Bin Ladens groups these terrorist that day were fighting for an idea and thus doing what was correct for them. So even though murder is really wrong in my opinion they probably thought it was okay to do what they did.

Once labeled it is really hard to get rid of the label. Take for example rapist, drug dealers, killers even when they do their time people would never look at them in the same way. But there are always ways to resist labeling although not totally, power is one of them. Clinton was able to resist it even when he was under oath. The country was running on a surplus like never before he had power &  people liked him and didn’t care if he lied or not. His act was not deviant just because society’s reaction didn’t make it deviant.

Not everyone is labeled the same take for example the teacher from the book who seduced the young boy. After being caught with a boy whom she married and then 10 years later arrested for another boy she still wasn’t fired, instead she was given an early retirement. It would have been a whole different case if it would have been a man seducing a young girl. In all, crime is what most of the time people with power decide that is wrong, other times is due to morality cause we can all agree across the board that murder is a crime. So acts are only deviant when labeled by society in that way & from the reaction it forms.

Medicated America

In the video above, we can see that Mind Medication of America has become a huge industrial system. Doctors prescribe strong “mind stabilizing” drugs such as Prozac, Effexor etc etc. The big pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson and Johnson is in a multibillion business. Some drugs are not even FDA approved, and medications are prescribed by the doctors who have to prescribe the patients since the business is linked to big pharmaceuticals.

Nowadays, the negative media, the war, the divorce, the lack of finances cause depression in human minds. In fact, the prescribed drugs don’t solve these problems. These drugs are highly addictive and cause mind disruptions. A doctor may even play a role of a caring person, who is willing to fix the problem of the patient, but in fact, he/she may just be playing a role of “caring”.

The medications are highly advertised through the media. In fact, kids that are prescribed to the antipsychotic drugs, never become regular kids. They will never live the life they could live without these drugs. In my opinion, the body can heal itself without interruptions of these drugs. The great healing can go through the process of eating healthy food, having healthy communication with parents and friends, meditation and being closer to the nature is in fact, the healthiest way to live the life.

In conclusion, the America is becoming a nation where the use of alcohol, drugs, and explicit media is a growing problem. The society is going somewhere far then in the earlier ages. I think we need to change the way we eat, what we eat, the way we interact with each other, and increase respect to the nature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvZxCH2wOQM

As technology advances, more and more people are tempted to have plastic surgery. This is a new social trend in the modern society where people believe physical appearance is directly related to forming impression. Because today people tend to judge other’s characteristic by the way they look at first, many people in these days believe appearance is one of the most important abilities in success, spending a lot of time and money on taking care of their appearance.

The video I linked is one of a cosmetic plastic surgery commercial.  A doctor first says good looking people have more fun, make more money, and have more looking good friends. And People ultimately look your face and determine if you are ugly. Then, with a lively music playing, two female patients describe how amazingly their life changed after the operations. One got a new job and boyfriend and another got the confidence to live good life now. It sounds like their life has completely changed since they underwent the surgeries and it seems like it can even change everyone’s life positively if we have better look.

People today believe physical appearance enormously influences their life over the relationship with others, marriage, job, promotion, and so on. Physical attractiveness becomes an effective means to express their personality traits and identities. For these reasons, people are easily forced to lose weight and even to go on surgery table in order to form good impressions and to survive in theses tough society.  I personally believe better looking will give you more opportunities to success in life. It’s not a key, but it’s important. It’s not everything, but it’s necessary in this society.

Gender as a spectrum

Inequality originates from a divide or separation between people as different members of society. Before one is able to develop their own specific personality, they are already given an ascribed status. For example, if you are a white male from an upper-class family you are already distinguished as unequal to someone who is perhaps a lower-class African American individual. Society seeks for equality but there is so much about us that completely stops us from truly feeling equal.

Society’s idea of equality is that everyone has a right to vote, everyone has the same resources as everyone else, and that everyone is treated equally. Imagine if society reaches its goals of equality. Will everyone actually see other people as equal or will the population just treat everyone equally because of the laws that have been passed to enforce it? In my opinion, the only way to reach true societal equality is if there were no ascribed statuses that are immediately given to you after birth. This seems quite impossible since, as humans, we are able to see people’s appearances and distinguish differences based on those.

Even though my solution to true equality is quite impossible, Navajo traditions show a step closer to the removal of ascribed status in gender. Their traditions are remarkable to say the least – their idea of gender not as a divide between people but as a spectrum, is an amazing way to break down the walls between gender discrimination. The festival wherein all the males and females of the village exchange clothing really expresses the culture’s idea that there should not be such a difference between men and women. Cultures like these give me hope that society will successfully end discrimination based on our differences.