American Culture...or not?

Today in class, we had a discussion about America and whether we have our own unique, defined culture. Originally, on my outline, I said that American culture was not unique and that we borrowed from cultures all around the world which contributed to our diversity. And that still is true. America is a melting pot of all different ethnicities, races, religions, and cultures. America is so diverse, going from east to west or north to south you can see those differences. But this does not mean that America does not still have its own unique culture, that combines all of the other cultures that exist in America. In class, we determined that America focuses on success, efficiency, materials, competition to be the best, fairness, and freedom. Some of these are good, and others are not. Sometimes our focus on success and being the best gets out of control. We need to take a step back and work together and cooperate sometimes. Also the materialism isn't so great. We are way to focused on the durable goods and need to not expect to get everything we want. But, the freedom, efficiency and fairness are good qualities of America's unique culture. These aspects of American culture can be applied to my life. I'll admit it, I do sometimes get carried away in competitions. Even in intramural sports like flag football here at school can get very competitive. During my sophomore year, there was a very close game with another team, and we all got really into it when we could've just played for fun and not gotten competitive to avoid arguments. Also, I can relate to the freedom and fairness. We take for granted what we have without having to work for it or anything. We can basically do anything we want at anytime, not counting illegal activities. Not all countries and cultures have this, they make have much stricter laws preventing certain actions. All in all, even though America is a melting pot of many different cultures, all of those cultures come together to create America's unique culture.

Culture Shock...

The activity we did yesterday in class was really cool. I was so oblivious to the fact that there was going to be a twist, so it was really unexpected. But, as soon as the new group members were at our table, I understood. It was frustrating not being able to talk to them and explain the difference of rules of the game. I now see how this is a metaphor for all the cultures in the world. We all have different rules and social norms that are foreign and crazy to other cultures. I experienced this cultural difference when I traveled to Israel in the summer of 2008. It was the first time I was out of the country, except for Mexico and Canada. I completely felt culture shock, which is the immediate shock of a new and different culture. For example, Israelis are very fast-paced, fast talkers, and they are very blunt and straight-forward, but not in a bad way. Our tour guide was exactly like this. I was very shocked, surprised, and taken aback by their personalities and that someone would act like this. But, over time, I got used to him, and grew to understand him and enjoy his company. Through this understanding, I think I used cultural relativity. I believe that sociology would definitely help people become more aware of cultural differences and how different people live different lives. For example, in the incident with the Danish woman leaving her baby outside in New York City, I think that if the police who arrested her or the judge in the court were sociologists, the outcome would be very different. They would be able to understand that that is how they live in Denmark and that is common in Danish culture. Overall, the difference of cultures and way of life creates the diversity that we have in this world.

A Bronx Tale...

Even though I haven't finished watching the movie in class, I can already see the sociological forces and ideas present in the movie, A Bronx Tale. I think that the largest and most obvious one is the groups that Collogero belongs to. He has his friends, his family, his heritage/race and Sonny. Sonny represents his idol or the person that he looks up to. I think his master status would be a mix of his family and race. The Italian way of life governs how he lives. His parents, mostly his father, controls Collogero by telling him what to do. Those values that his parents have are those similar to many other Italians. He is known as Italian wherever he goes. The second prevalent sociological idea is the sociological imagination. As we have progressed through this semester, I have been able to see more of a sociologist's perspective. I can now see that there are larger forces acting on Collogero's life. His problems as a boy in his neighborhood represent problems that are universal and exist in many other neighborhoods. They are caused by racism, which is caused by differences in humans. By seeing and understanding these larger forces that play into Collogero's life, I can comprehend the idea of sociological imagination. The next idea is the social construction of reality. This also has to do a bit with racism. The "unwritten laws" in the neighborhood come from social status, which comes from race. I think this construction came from the racism. The last sociological idea is the macro and micro dynamics of sociology. The macro dynamics is the idea of the mobsters as a group in general. Collogero always watches them from afar and observes them. He doesn't have a one-on-one conversation with them, he just interacts with them from a group stage, in general. The micro dynamics of sociology are the one-on-one or face to face interaction Collogero has with Sonny. When they make eye contact or even exchange a few words, this the the micro sociological forces that shape who Collogero is and how he acts. Overall, this movie shows the sociological ideas of groups, sociological imagination, social construction of reality and micro and macro dynamics very well through these ways.

Abandon Ship...

During the boat activity in class, I was a sociologist. I was able to observe the group dynamics. After watching, listening and later discussing this activity, it is very easy to see the macro and micro sociological values, and apply  it to my life. The macro sociological values showed in the ship activity when we compared our class's choices of who to eliminate from the ship to past year class's choices. All of the students who participated in this activity were American, teenagers, and from the upper-middle class. The pattern emerges when similar characters were voted off the boat many times throughout the 54 times this activity has been done. We all made similar choices because we have similar values because of our common grounds, mainly because we are all American. The micro sociological values didn't show as much in the ship because everyone knew that this was just a game and not real life. But if it was real, and the people on the ship could see each other and really talk to each other, there would be more of the micro sociological values of the face to face basis and interactions. I can apply the two levels to view sociology to my life. When I worked as a camp counselor over the summer, the macro level of sociology was the large group of all the different camp sites and groups of counselors, when we all had orientation together. We were all teenagers or people in their 20s, camp counselors, from the upper-middle class, and American. We were all influenced by each other because of these similarities as part of macro sociological values. The value of the macro part that influenced us was age and experience. In general, the younger and less experienced people looked up to and listened to the older and more experienced people more. This interaction influenced the large or macro group dynamics. Then, the micro part of the sociology in this group was my smaller group of counselors. We were able to have a one on one conversation because it wasn't such a big group. My small counselor group demonstrated the micro sociological dynamics because we interacted with each other on a more personal level. Each small group of counselors was able to have this micro sociological dynamic when we were separated from the large group or macro part.