A Changing Definition of Class

“Classes are groups of people of similar economic and social position; people who, for that reason, may share political attitudes, lifestyles, consumption patterns, cultural interests and opportunities to get ahead.” This definition of the class is directly from our honors article this week and I feel gives a fairly good definition in an uncertain society that struggles to define class. One thing that I am glad the honors article mentioned this week, which I found there was a definite lack of during the movie which we watched all week, was that class is extremely complex and that middle class nowadays means nothing. Class is so confusing and complex because is changes literally on a daily basis in so many different ways that we may not even think have anything to do with class. Although the honors article did address the idea that class is changing, it focused way too much on figuring out issues of class by using the past and did not change with the class changes. However, it was in no comparison to as bad and biased as the movie was which depicted (in my opinion) the upper class as always a snotty and uninformed level of class that doesn’t know anything about the lower classes. I disagree with this for the most part but I am forced to agree that yes there are some people that are way up there in the upper class that they are truly uninformed of the people even right below them. I feel that although there are people like that, which are the only upper class people they showed, that most of the upper class is not like this and instead are much more in touch with the classes below them (obviously more in touch with the classes that are closer in level first and then less in touch as you move down each class level). Another thing with the movie that bothered me about the changing ways of social classes was that the school in Texas was continually related to BHS. I will agree that some things between the two are fairly similar such as maybe the education or area. However, Mrs. Castelli even told us a story of how her daughter thought that everyone at BHS was very the same in how they acted and dressed while the students at the school seemed very diverse and different. Finally what bothered me the most about the movie was how fake the people became with their statements and thoughts to obviously just be able to get on camera. I feel that at BHS students would be less likely to talk about some of the things they mentioned in the movie and definitely would be less likely to express false ideas on how we may think class works. All in all I enjoyed the movie and especially the article just because it gave me a better sense of the true division of classes within our country, even though it was a few years out of date it still gave an overall sense.

Marx's Theory Today

Recently in 2^nd Hour Sociology with Mrs. Castelli, we have been learning about what some possible ideas are that determines our social class. The most interesting one to me by far was Karl Marx’s, but it wasn’t because he is the one that wrote the communist manifesto. His theory was interesting to me because he said that social class depends only on the relationship that people have with the means of production. However, that is not what amazes and interests me about his theory. What I find extremely fascinating is that Marx says that factors such as education, clothing, pay, and the material wealth you have are completely irrelevant. As I thought about how this could be possible I thought back to class and how Marx’s theory actually applies well when he created it, but even better nowadays. He noticed that there are really only two classes of people in society. One was the business or factory owner, which have the majority of the wealth and live in constant luxury which he called the bourgeoisie. On the other hand were the proletariats or the ones that work for the bourgeoisie and had very little to none of societies’ wealth even though they worked much harder than the bourgeoisie. All though I don’t necessarily agree with Marx from the standpoint of society only having two classes, I do agree somewhat with the idea that it depends on the person’s position in the means of production. This reminded me of a student at BHS named Emilio Baez who led a walkout last year, and eventually dropped out of school this year to protest with the “99% of America.” He is protesting that “We are the 99%” which says, like Marx’s theory, that only a small amount of the population (the 1%, aka bourgeoisie) own the country’s wealth while Emilio is part of the 99% of the US that is working for these bourgeoisie (aka proletariats). Like Marx predicted, the 99% realized that they are being oppressed by these owners and will eventually rebel against the owners to try to even everything back out because capitalism has created such a divide that is ever increasing, especially in our country and world today which is causing many different problems. These socioeconomic trends are causing these lower class people to be taken advantage of easily and unfortunately this is the case with human trafficking/slavery, which is the topic of our honors article this past week. The article exposes a terrible truth about what is going on around the world and although I feel much more aware than my peers about what’s going on, I am still in shock myself with how we are so ignorant to these things in this country. Much like how high class people like WASPs are ignorant to what’s going on in lower classes, our country’s population is mostly ignorant to other 3^rd world or poor countries and their very serious problems such as human trafficking. Although we have tried to help other countries and their slavery issues via legislation, at the same time we need to take a step back and consider the consequences of it. We have seen many times in history how the US has stepped into someone else’s problem and either made it worse or actually caused new or much more worse problems than there were before. I enjoyed the honors article not necessarily because it was about human trafficking but because of the thought that maybe my fellow classmates will be in shock and be motivated to help put an end to slavery and human trafficking for good.

Review of Sociological Themes in Disney Movies

The project that we recently just completed on the sociological themes in disney movies was very different and new to me. It was not the sociological ideas that were new to me but the idea of the project. Initially i was skeptical of it because we were confused as to what exactly to do, we did not have that strict of guidelines in other words. The project itself was not hard, but it was just very time consuming. In the future I would say that there should be 1-2 more days in the lab. Even though we had around 2.5 days in the lab to work on it, it still wasnt enough to do what we wanted to do. However the biggest criticism i have is that we did not have any constraints for the project or guidelines to follow. I understand it was the first time that its been done just to test it out but it still proved much harder than it should have been for us to complete it. All in all I was indifferent to the project but I think I would have really enjoyed it if we had been given some more guidelines on what exactly we had to do and present.

Gauging Gender and Sex

Many people consider gender and sex the same thing, however they are very different. One must understand that sex is the physical sex of a person as in which type of genitals they have, male or female. Gender is what the person’s brain chemicals make them feel like and what makes them either think like a male or female. In the article, the scientists say that it is not necessarily our genes that define our sex or gender but also the society and our culture in which we are raised. For example, the Samoan culture may raise a male boy to become a Fafafini. A Fafafini is a person with male genitals who dresses and acts like a woman, has sex with other males, and takes on a woman’s tasks. All of this is done without being considered gay and is not frowned upon in the Samoan culture because it is socially acceptable. Why is it socially acceptable one may ask? In Samoan culture if someone acts like a woman, even though they have male genitals, then they are considered a woman. So these Fafafini are considered “women” so it is not frowned upon. I put women in quotes because the Fafafini are actually considered to be a third gender in Samoan culture because they take on the manly and tough tasks that males have to normally do but also are the women within a household. There are many ways that the article says how scientists decided how sex and gender are determined. Many believe that the society and culture in which we are raised is what determines what gender we will likely take on. On the other hand, many believe that the genes we are born with determine from the start what gender we will feel like. Personally, I believe it is actually a combination of both because I do not think one of those possibilities by itself can determine how someone will likely feel in there lives. It is hard to decide on which one is correct because there is so much research that supports both sides, so for now I will settle on a mutual agreement. In one part of the article it talked about how men have to “detach twice” from their mother in the womb when they are born while women have to “detach once” from their mother. Personally I feel like you can say that this may be the cause for some of the differences between men and women. Although I feel that men act the way the act mostly because society and culture teach them to be that way, I think you can also say that because they have to detach twice, they are probably a little bit different because of it. It is a little bit of a stretch however, one will understand when they think about how much influence culture has and how this may aid in that.

Bullying in Your Genes

               This week’s article “The Politics of the Gene: Social Status and Beliefs about Genetics for Individual Outcomes” discusses the topic of our genes which give us our traits and helps us determine which characteristics we adopt in the end. The article discusses how there is the possibility that the genetics in races determine say how good someone is at math, athletics, tendency for violence, or their motivation. In class this week we also discussed cyber bullying and slightly touched on bullying in general. With the article in mind, you could say that a bully is determined by their genetics. However in class we discussed cyber bullying and some videos (and from my own personal experience) we were able to see how everyone is a bully in some form or another in their life and/or online. Personally I do not believe that genetics are a determining factor on whether or not someone will become a bully. I believe this because I have seen how people who are raised in a very positive and non hostile environment whose parents and grandparents seem like the most kind people around and how those people still have the possibility to tear someone down and be a bully. If one were to argue that being a bully is already in our genes then that person would also have to say that we all have that gene already because I have seen most everyone in some form or another be a bully.

Smoking is Just as Bad as Fast Food

Social norms are, and always will be, evolving to fit what the society and that culture wants at that time. Smoking used to be one of the largest agriculture products in the United States at one time, and it has chronically declined with the invention of better healthcare techniques and the realization that smoking is actually bad for you. While flipping through one of my Mom’s old high school year books, I saw someone smoking on almost every single page and I questioned if smoking really was that big back then. She told me how every magazine had an advertisement in it and many tobacco brands advertised to young children. I thought about how I really have never truly seen an advertisement for smoking and came to the realization that it was because of my generation had put a bad rep on smoking which basically has almost wiped it out (compared to what it used to be). My mom then questioned how smoking was so common only 20-30, or even less years ago, and how it had came to being such a disgusting and socially unacceptable habit. I then again realized that there will never be a situation where a previous generation is not confused or shocked by a new set of social parameters introduced by the following generation.

            We put ourselves with our social norms so that we can basically defy our previous or parental generations and then when the time comes to rethink these social norms and to open up to new norms it is extremely difficult, no matter what the case. Although smoking may have gone downward when the generation just before me had questioned it, almost all of the generations before had questioned it. Now comes a time that I can directly relate a generation adjusting to a new social norm because the generation just above me is currently trying to readjust to the evolving social norm of eating healthier. For the past 20 years it has been the norm that it was okay to eat fast food in large quantities and to “pig out” on whatever we want. Now the social norms are shifting, just like how the norms of smoking had too around 20 years ago. My generation is now in the position that the generation just above me was with smoking; we are trying to change the social norms of eating extremely unhealthy not necessarily for our own benefit, but to actually defy the generations above us who have been eating extremely unhealthy foods. All in all I believe that our social norms are every changing and each generation seems to want to "one up" the previous.

I thought this was a good depiction of how a social norm has changed. This 100 lady is shown lighting her cigarette up, which would have been the social norm when she was younger. However in the past 20 years it has changed to which it is looked down upon if you smoke.


-Tommy Harvey

I will be turning in a Castelli Coupon tomorrow before class, again I apologize for my blogs being so late. I followed the rubrics and the stuff you wrote out for me when I have came in early directly as you have put it so I can achieve all if not as many of the points as possible.

Culture Shocked by the Yanomamo

In the beginning of this article there was a very strong display of ethnocentrism by the author who gave a harshly critical description of the Yanomamo value system when he first arrived. I think that the Yanomamo provided a very good example of a culture that was very primitive which helped show extremely clear effects of culture shock and the value system of a culture that has barely even been touched by the ever evolving outside world’s influence. For me, I found that the author’s experience of culture shock was actually not that surprising. Normally one would think that being an anthropologist, you would be able to expect things and not be that affected if not at all affected by a culture shock. However the author was not immune from it and I don’t think that anyone who has lived in a non-primitive culture like the Yanomamo will ever be immune from it either.

            Another thing that I was fascinated by was how the Yanomamo’s culture was much more based on respect, NOT violence, although at times I could see how one may see it as violence. I was fascinated by this because it made me think of how our culture was once based on respect, or at least more so based on respect than it is now. As time moves on, our culture has moved away from respect (not necessarily respect through violence) towards one that is based on the trust with others and our honesty we have with others on the hierarchy of social values.

            In class we watched a film on Peter and Santino, two boys who moved from Africa to the United States where they tried to start up a new life. Peter and Santino experienced the culture shock that I was previously talking about that comes from the respect that we have inherently gotten and give to each other. With their culture, they were used to respecting their elders, neighbors, and all people as family while when they came to the United States they experienced a great culture shock because we do not treat strangers or even some of our closer neighbors as family. Instead we treat out neighbors and others with a respect that we have inherently gotten.  The connection between culture shock and ethnocentrism are very close and it is clear that the more ethnocentric you are, then the more of a culture shock you will experience.

I thought that this picture was a funny example of different people experiencing culture shock.

-Tommy Harvey

I apologize for this blog and my next blog being so late, I have been having trouble with how to write this and the next blog because I wanted to do as good as I possibly could on both. I will turn in two "Castelli Coupons" when I turn these blogs in tomorrow.