socialization

The agent of socialization that has impacted me most is probably school because even though I am religious, I haven't always been surrounded by very religious people who have strict religious values. Even when I went to Catholic grade school, there were a lot of kids who were becoming socialized by media, and   they affected my socialization. I still say school, not peers, as my greatest agent of socialization because the students in my school have effect over me, but I think what teachers have taught me has been ingrained the most because during childhood is when most socialization takes place, and during that time I was more focused on what teachers taught me. Also, even though many kids at Stevenson are socialized to do drugs, I've been more socialized by what school has taught me: that drugs are harmful. School also has had the greatest impact because that's where I am for the majority of my day and if I didn't attend school, I wouldn't have learned to be organized, polite, obedient, studious, and all of the values schools teach you. I feel stressed out by grades and getting into a good college and completing all of my homework because school has taught me that I need to succeed in school in order to succeed in life. My family has also had enormous impact on my socialization, but I still would say school because it mostly teaches the same values but also includes those that are taught by other students I'm surrounded by. But if my family wasn't so involved in my socialization, I'd probably be socialized more by the students at school than the teachers. 

Consuming Kids

I was really surprised when I watched this video because when I told my mom I wanted to study psychology, she suggested I minor in marketing. After seeing this film, however, I don't think I'll be using psychology for marketing. I have always been really shocked at how kids are getting Ipods and cell phones at such young ages, and are wearing extremely expensive designer clothes, makeups, and simply trying to look and act older at such a young age. But after seeing this video, I realized that some the ways children are marketed to can be seen everywhere. When kids are kids, they should be interacting with each other, maintaining that childhood innocence that starts to fade in middle school when kids start separating into groups and judging each other. When I was a kid, everyone would play together and you could make a new friend by simply asking, but with media spreading consumerism and marketing to young kids, they think that in order to be "cool," succeed, and have friends, they need to buy whatever product is being promoted as "cool." Marketers also use TV shows and characters that they know children love in order to draw child consumerism, but this also causes cliques to occur and teaches kids that clothes define who you are. Even worse is when kids think that they need to wear skimpy clothing, as promoted by media, to define who they are. Not only is it expensive to dress kids in skimpy designer clothes with styled hair and makeup, but it also teaches kids to be obsessed with their self image. This is especially harmful for girls who have increasing pressure to look beautiful and sexy, and this can lead to low self esteem. Creating child consumers is also harmful because at such a young age, these kids are learning that money is everything, so their values become about making money so they can spend more to look "cool", even if they have to manipulate there friends, which was seen in the video with the creation of the GIA.

Interview with parents!

I don't know how many times I laughed during this conversation, but it was great to hear my parents' responses to some of these questions. When I asked them about what kind of expectations that had for me when I was born, my mom was most worried about carrying me to term because she had had a miscarriage the last time, and both parents were hoping for a healthy baby even though the prenatal test showed I was at risk. Also since they had had two boys before my my dad was expecting it to be much different to raise a girl and they had painted my room and gotten a pink carpet. My dad also expected to be able to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. My mom also had expectations of shopping with me because after having two boys, she was excited to shop for clothes for me and with me. The lessons, values and ideas they tried hardest to impart on me were faith, prayer, being a good sister, to be a caring person and a good listener, to be my own person and not just follow what everyone else does or says, and to work hard for the things I want. The traditions they said that were most important that I keep are going to Green Bay and celebrating holidays and birthdays with the whole family. We also have a nativity play with all of the family and the newest baby would play Jesus, or a baby doll if there were too old. They also want me to still go to the cottage with them and have family time and vacation with my parents and with my own family. When I was two years old, that was when my parents said that they struggled disciplining me, because I went through my "terrible twos" and would make the "Rachel" face, but after that I was pretty compliant. The habits and parts of my personality that my parents recognized as their own were my habit of whistling which comes from my mom and her dad, and that I'm a good listener which I get from my mom. I'm also even tempered and a mediator in fights and arguments like my dad. My sense of humor is definitely my moms, I laugh a lot just like her and when we get going, we cant stop. When I asked them what the most surprising thing about raising me was, my dad answered that he was surprised I enjoyed throwing the football around and "guy stuff like that." I was surprised at how concerned they were that I would be healthy because they were so worried after having a miscarriage, so there expectations were more about my health and just being excited to have a girl. I had always talked with my siblings and laughed about the different qualities we share and recognize in each other that are from our parents, but I had never actually asked my parents what qualities of theirs that they recognized in me, so that was a really fun question. I loved that my dad made the comment about me being even-tempered, because I always strive to have his patience, and I was happy that my mom thought I was a good listener, like her, even though I tend to talk a lot. Overall, it was a really great experience, and it was really cool to hear what my parents thought, because they were mostly a lot different than what I had expected!

Reflection from 9/26-9/30

• When we watched the movie God Grew Tired of Us, I realized how different our material culture, or the tangible items that make up a culture, is from the rest of the world. We take for granted that people have the "essentials," such a computer, TV, hair dryer, refrigerator, cans and boxes of food, a microwave. These items were completely unfamiliar to the Sudanese boys. Our symbolic culture, or nonmaterial culture, is different as well. When the Sudanese boys celebrated Christmas in Sudan, they danced and sang and celebrated as a community. They had no idea who Santa Claus was when they came to the US. Christmas in the US is centered around material goods. Kids get excited to tell Santa what they want for Christmas, not to dance and sing and celebrate the birth of Jesus. When I witnessed the culture the Sudanese boys were used to, I was amazed. The boys were shocked when they saw that strangers don't open their doors for everyone to walk in and don't greet each other in the street. In Africa, strangers live together as a community and always have their doors open to everyone. Our culture is so much more focused on the individual, and I think that's really sad because it causes competition.
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Ethnocentricity

Freshman year, I was really focused on trying to fit in, having came from a small school and knowing nobody. I was so focused on societal standards and conformity, that when I was sitting at lunch one day, and a new kid sat down, I judged him immediately. He had a bit of an Israeli accent, and he was loud and different. Something about him was just unusual, and I couldn't place it. He was very forward about his thoughts and opinions and his sense of humor was so unfitting at our table, and I began to dislike him without even getting to know him. I grew frustrated when he would try to make a joke, because it just didn't make sense and was nothing like anything I was used to. I categorized him as "cocky" and began giving him attitude. I didn't know at the time how extreme my cultural relativism was, but I realize now that I wanted him to understand that his jokes and actions weren't funny to us. But what I did to show that was to give him attitude, whereas he directly told me his thoughts and feelings. Somehow it developed into a fight, and by the end of the fight, he apologized to me. I couldn't believe he did that, because it was my fault that any of this had even started. Just because I was being ethnocentric, and judging him because he was different, I started to pick fights with him, yet he apologized to me! And it hit me that he was an incredibly nice person, and one of the most real and genuine people I had ever met. We became friends and by sophomore year, he was my best friend. I learned so much from meeting him; the scariest was that sometimes judgement comes subconsciously and that I need to be really careful to be sociologically mindful of others. 

blog for Fri 9/16

This week, our class learned about the different advantages and disadvantages of using a survey vs. an ethnography in order to answer a sociological question. I think that based on Sudhir Venkatesh's results when he tried to answer his question about being black and poor, an ethnography will give more feedback. But my group was interested in people as a whole, and if we were to do an ethnography based off of observations at Stevenson High School, our results would probably differ a lot from observations at other high schools in poorer areas or of a different culture, because they would have different sociological imaginations. For some cultures, women have a much lower standing in their society because that's just how it has always been and has never changed, so they might have responded a lot differently to the questions, maybe seeing "sex without monogamy" as an okay thing, while our culture's social construction of reality is that both people need to be loyal in a relationship. However, because our results were mostly taken from Stevenson High School, they only told us about the students at Stevenson rather than society as a whole. Still, I found the results from our survey very interesting. We found that whether or not a person is male or female hardly influences the response to whether a person would wait until they have sex or whether they have or would involve him/herself in "sex without monogamy." It was also interesting to see that even though a person might decide to wait to have sex, never has said "I love you" to gain sexual relief, and never entered a relationship for sexual support, they a lot of times still considered having "sex without monogamy." It made me think that people don't really take relationships seriously if so many people are willing to have sex with another person while with being involved with someone else. I think that in this scenario, we probably would have been better off to simply talk to a variety of people because the questions may have confused some people, and since they were posted on facebook, there may have only been a certain group of people interested in taking the survey. It also would be better to have talked to people for the sake of having social mindfulness because they might feel really justified in their responses in a way I can't understand because Stevenson is so culturally diverse, and I don't know all of the beliefs of every culture in the school.

sociology applied to my life

When I reflected this week about sociological mindfulness, I started thinking about the books I had to read over the summer for English. They were both very cultural, but at the time, I didn't really acknowledge the open window those books provided. When I was reading, however, about how being sociologically mindful, I realized that it meant being truly open-minded to other people's cultures and beliefs, rather than judging them or comparing them with my own. After when I decided to think back to The Life of Pi, I realized how open Pi was and how his religious practices were really fascinating. He wasn't blindly believing in Hinduism just because he was Indian. He had learned about other faiths with an open mind and practiced not only Hinduism, but Christianity, and Islam. His culture alone was extremely interesting, but because I was able to read about his life, I was able to get an understanding of why he chose to practice all of those faiths. I think that being sociologically mindful is to be able to really place yourself in another person's shoes and to try and understand them without judgment.