Everyday Sociology

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http://career-advice.monster.com/job-interview/careers.aspx

In Chapter Six, we learned the “Presentation of Self.” In the beginning of the text, the sociologist Erving Goffman expresses a concept of “impression management”, which people tend to present a particular public image of them. This skill usually is used a lot for the job interviewers. If the person can use in the right way, it can help them to stand out among many candidates.  As we know, for most jobs, the interviewers prefer to know the dress code in advantage or dress suits in order to wear properly. It also makes interviewers have confidence on themselves, especially for forming a nice first impression, which works out. Otherwise, we never know that how important the first impression of dressing may affect judgment the interviewees. Sometimes, we’d rather than overdress in the first day of working, too.

In addition, the interviewers may prepare some answers those relatives to some general answers before the interview in order to quickly response properly. For the young cyber generation, youths may google some tips of the job interview online and practices as mock interview, such as how to act/react during the interview, how to answer some particular answers, how to use the body language to speak aloud for ourselves like above links, such as we need see the interviewee when we is answering the questions and show our confidence, etc. During the interview, the interviewee and interviewer can both be roles and switch to the audiences but the interviewer may be the role alone as an actor in the social stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDS-L05KRK8&feature=fvwrel

As the world becomes smaller, we meet the variety of cultures every day in our life and it becomes important that we understand cultural differences between one and another. To understand the differences, we should have an ability to interpret the cultural behaviors and people’s beliefs in terms of their own culture. However, it gets difficult to stand on relative position when you see a brutal culture that is against one of basic human rights and conflict with your own cultural values.

The video that is linked describes cultural practices of the Karen Long Neck Hill tribe. They’re well known as Pa Dong women. Women of the Karen Long Neck tribe wear heavy necklaces in order to extend their neck, because long neck is considered as beauty. These heavy necklaces not only extend their neck, but also fix their neck in one way, so that women cannot turn or look the other way. Looking straight is a way of maintaining chastity for them. They believe a woman should only look at one direction as a woman is supposed to serve one man only. Therefore, long neck fixed with heavy jewelry is not peculiar but righteous thing for them. However, this practice brings many issues and problems. When a woman takes off her jewelry, she will die right away because of collapsed airway due to absence of support from the jewelry. Do these women deserve to die as they take off their jewelry? What happens to their human rights then?

At this point, how should we look at this culture? Should this culture be respected just like other cultures or should this banned because it demolishes the basic human rights?

It is essential to have a perspective view of cultural relativism before interpreting or criticizing other cultures. One with ethnocentrism needs to be really cautious in order to examine the other cultures. How can one take an objective view when one believes he or she is better than the others? Nevertheless, there are also limits to cultural relativism. Human right, freedom, and justice are few examples of those limits. People are taught to respect other cultures and traditions, but they also need to be ready to criticize when the cultural practices or traditions infringe upon human rights or justice.

Gay Dads from JCPenney ad

According to last week’s chapter five, there are three main factors that play a huge role in person’s social identity: They are a person’s social class, their race and ethnicity, and their gender. Unfortunately much of society will tend to make quick judgments about an individual based on these three main elements. Discrimination is the unjust treatment of different categories of people especially on the grounds of race, sex and age. We would like to think that our modern generation is one of the most open-mindedness, accepting, and nondiscriminatory yet (because in fact we have come along way since the Civil Rights Movement) however discrimination is still very active in our society. Treatments of harsh inequality can now also be found in the gay and lesbian community.

This past month, in honor of Father’s day, JCPenney decided to run an ad featuring a same sex couple laughing and playing with their children. The two men in the photo are actually real life gay dads who won a contest by submitting a family picture of theirs. After the ad had been available to the public, a group by the name of  “One Million Moms” publically announced a boycott against the clothing department and urged others to do the same. Earlier this year, the same group made a fuss about Ellen DeGeneres being a JCPenney’s spokesperson. It seems as though a large part of our society in the United States wants to move forward and embrace homosexuality. JCPenney’s, Oreos, ABC Network, are just a few major companies willing to help lead the way however there are still many individuals and organizations who try and push us back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwkL0tyeee4

Many nationwide surveys have stated that four out of every five college students on campuses around America are indulging themselves into consumption of alcohol. Heavy consumption of periodical drinking is occurring with half of these, four out of five, students. Many schools throughout the country have drinking clubs within the campus, which are like fraternities and/or sororities. All they do is get together and drink until they cannot consume any more alcohol. Many schools, such as Princeton, have made this a ritual, for hundreds of years. There is a very high influence into this gargantuan culture of drinking. So much, that it forms this immaculate social norm to be a part of this club; to drink until you cannot anymore. There are many short term and long term consequences in alcohol bingeing, including injuries, unsafe sex, alcohol abuse, arrests and violence and much more. More than 1400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 rapes and sexual assaults are reported annually. There have been surveys conducted in which ninety-percent of students believe that they, personally, are not comfortable with the excessive binge drinking, that occurs throughout the weekends.  When they were asked what the other students thought, they answered that everyone loved it and was happy to pursue it. This cannot be possible, where almost everyone says that they are uncomfortable with it, but when asked how others would find it to be, everyone else enjoyed it. There is definitely a misperception of the actual social norm here. Misconception of this can also be found in very close friends. Slowly and slowly people’s beliefs follow in the path of what they thought at first was uncomfortable, but now is a social norm.

Often we see people on college campuses giving out “free hugs.” Most people love hugs, so why do they not jump at the opportunity of a free hug? The answer to this question is social norms. It is not normal to hug random people in the street.

When I see the free hug people on my college campus, I run away. The reason I do this, and why most other people do not readily accept free hugs is people have fears of personal space invasion or what might be wrong with the person giving free hugs. It is an awful and presumptuous thought, but what if that person has some sort of disease or is sick. Hugging them would inevitably lead to infecting myself. Thus, this could be called the fear of unknown. No one wants to let some stranger into their personal space.

This video shows how society reacts to free hugs. Most people tried to politely decline the free hug and found the proposition strange. Few readily accepted the hugs with open arms. The amount that readily accepted the hugs further declined when it was a male giving the hugs rather than a female. When one man was interviewed about whether or not he would take a free hug, he said he would to any female, but he would not, regardless of looks, to any male. Another woman said she would not receive a free hug because she finds it an invasion of personal space. Finally, another lady would not accept a free hug because of a fear of touching other people since her child got lice recently.

Most excuses show society’s unease with touching other people and how it is not seen as normal to hug strangers. As children we were always taught not to talk to strangers, for whatever reason, so why would we want to hug strangers?

Through the media in America, the issue of gender roles is still present. It feels as if it’s nonexistent because women have the same opportunities as men but despite this, the media continues to portray women as stereotypical house-wives.  This idea has stayed consistent. From a young age, children are exposed to commercials and television programs that emphasize gender roles. The media has continued to shape this idea and keep it in our society. Usually girls are shown playing house, as shown in the commercial above, or playing with dolls, and boys are associated with action figures and cars. The interview with children shows that they connect this image with what their roles should be in real life. When asked which barbie doll takes care of the baby and does the house work, every girl and boy answered the female doll. If commercials, for example, dealing with children’s toys, represented both girls and boys playing with the toy, there would be a larger possibility that children wouldn’t associate genders with specific toys which would hopefully lead to gender roles in society to come to an end. But unfortunately, gender roles portrayed in the media continues into adulthood. Commercials dealing with cleaning, such as the laundry commercial, a women is the one doing the work. Men are portrayed as strong individuals, who supply for his family, whereas women are typically the ones who take care of everything at home. This image has been burned into our brains.

Personally, when I moved to the states at age two, my mom was the one who was working and my dad took care of me. But when I would go to a friend’s house after a day of Kindergarten, it was always the child’s mom at home, doing the necessary work. It’s upsetting that although there are many more dads staying at home, taking care of the housework or children, people are still surprised at this idea. In my home, there isn’t a gender role. Both of my parents cook and clean. And I think that’s important to showcase to children because it shows them that it’s more than just a females duty or responsibility.

http://youtu.be/yl7evSLeABA

The premise in our last class was the education system in the United States.  As the video shows and what we see around us the education system in America is lacking.  The video states that out of the top 28 countries in education America is number 20, a huge decrease since the last several years.  In my opinion, I feel that this country focuses more on making a profit out of education than investing in education for the future of the country.  Standards in getting a job are getting higher and higher while efforts to get those standards keep lacking and lacking.

The heart of this issue is the educational institution itself.  Schools hire teachers with low qualifications and thus students are in the hands of those “professionals.”  Also, salaries for teachers are low and so teachers themselves have a low incentive to be effective.  Some states don’t even require teachers to have a master’s degree, so how effective can a teacher even be if they only have average academic qualifications?

One of the bigger issues in the education system in this country is the cost of higher education and the student loan debt problem.  The cost of higher education continues to rise and many students are unable to pay for those kind of tuitions.  With the way the job market is students are even reluctant to take out college loans and so the other way out is by not going to college thus leading to an unprogressive future for this country.

To remedy the issue of education I believe that higher education should at least be affordable, teachers should have higher qualifications and higher wages to establish a positive reinforcement for them, and the country as a whole should stop focusing on making such a profit out education and start investing more and more in it.

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I think about healthcare systems around the world when we learned the chapter 5 about different cultures. Different countries have different healthcare systems and different way to treat patients.

The health care in the United Stated is to expensive that people cannot afford. According to the film ” Sicko”, Nearly 50 Americans who do not have health insurance, Donna Smith’s family selling their house instead of to live in their daughter’s storage room to afford health care. A lot of people are not able to pay their hospitals fees, because every time people receive billd which a lot of fees are very expensive so that they cannot afford. On the contrary, in other countries, such as Canada, the UK and France, all legal residents are covered by public health insurance. For example, the movie shows Moore interview patient and inquires about in hospital expense incurred by patient in Canadian, only to be told that patients did not need to pay for anything. Most people have extra private insurance to cover aread that are eligible to pay for when they go to see a doctor.

The other point is quality of hospital care. In the United State, people have to wait for a long time when they go to hospitals. people who work in the hospital does not care about how long patients should wait and how many people are on the waiting list. They do not realize that patients really need help. On the contrarry, in the movie, Moore interviewed people waiting in the emergency room of a Canadian public hospital that they just need to wait about 10 minutes or littler longer, even if there wad crowd. People who work in the hospital really do an amazing job, they want patient to see a doctor as soon as possible.

Peolpe will have different ways to dealing with a lot of things, such as the movie shows about the service in the hospital,  just because the environment which we grow up are dissimiliar, and we have different cultures.