SumBlog 12

To start this off if you haven’t seen the “Going Native” episode of South Park, I recommend it. I say that because the expression (that’s also the title of the episode) is used as a descriptive term when talking about Dorothy Smith’s notion of Standpoint Approach. This idea came about from her recognition that if a society was to be studied it had to be from within, yet not so far within that you become a part of it, i.e. ‘going native’. This theory came as a result of another notion she termed “Bifurcated Consciousness” that she experienced first-hand from living life as a woman in a primarily male dominated world. To pull a quote from the reading; “As it is now, these strategies separate a sociologically constructed world from that of direct experience.” (p.295) In terms of a food chain, white men are at the top. They are the most privileged and experience the least amount of discrimination, mainly because they are the ones who have had the largest say in establishing societies. All others that belong to any other group are outside of this privilege and are apt to different experiences and situations. With the large majority of social theorists and professors being white males, Dorothy’s critique was of their lack of qualification to study and the validity of their works.  Returning to the standpoint approach, she suggested that they take a more inside means of studying the society that they have segregated. There are a lot more divisions than the two that Dorothy talks about simply between the men and the women. These divisions can stretch to across all characteristics of people because the more elemental differences between people, the more circumstantial differences as well. It’s an idea ahead of her time and because of the differences she herself recognized, her ideas weren’t more recognized.

Dave Chappelle has some of my all time favorite skits and stand ups, he exaggerates the realities of racial and gender differences (as he does here) but they all have root in societal truths. This bit makes fun of how whites are more or less 'above the law' than blacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbj7vx1Acps

SumBlog 11

Giddens compares the then current state of our society between the description of postmodernity and radicalized modernity. He uses some of Max Weber’s ideas in that as society advances “the bonds of rationality are drawn tighter and tighter, imprisoning us in a featureless cage of bureaucratic routine.” (p.367). I understand this because I can see the same thing happen as you grow up and advance through school. As a young kid you’re running wild but as you get older and move up in school; cliques and crowds and in groups form and there’s less individuality. Which actually while just writing that, helped me understand the next part of the reading I didn’t understand. Giddens said that Weber’s characterization of bureaucracy is inadequate and that “Rather than tending inevitably towards rigidity, organizations produce areas of autonomy and spontaneity – which are often less easy to achieve in smaller groups.” (p.368). I didn’t get this because I figured if you’re in a smaller group than it would be easier to keep tabs on each other. Using the same example of kids in school, for me I saw that when people found their smaller segregated groups that they were comfortable with, they could be more themselves because they felt safe around the ones they were with. I know my example isn’t a perfect match to what he’s talking about but it helps me relate. An uncommon relationship he mentioned later on was the one between intimacy and abstract systems, specifically “Money, for example, can be spent to purchase the expert services of a psychologist who guides the individual in an exploration of the inner universe of the intimate and the personal.” (p.369) and he brings this up in the mention of how we are encouraged more and more in a modernized society to exchange intimacy for impersonality.

 

 

Sum Blog 10

Thick and thin descriptions as an idea of Gilbert Ryle are the classifications of depth intended as a result of someone’s action to another person or nobody in particular. He uses an encompassing example of two boys winking their eyelids. To one boy the wink is voluntary but to the other, his wink is an involuntary twitch. The thin description is found easiest in the person’s perception who’s observing the two boys action by still frame. You cannot negotiate the motive of either action. This limited background gives us our thin description. As we know more about the situation we can start to thicken up our descriptions. Going further you can ask if they are “twitching, winking, parodying, rehearsing” (p.289) etc. Of society this example can be used to show “the piled up structures of inference and implication” (p.289) that we have created of our society.

Clifford Geertz states that to study a society you must look at “the first instance” (p.289). You have to understand the base that everything is built on before you can evaluate and start making assumptions for other actions. I think of this as a very large math problem. Say overall there are 20 steps between the start and finish, if you make a mistake on one number then not only will the final result be wrong but every step after will be skewed accordingly.

A favorite part of his explanation was a quote he included from Ward Goodenough that says a society’s culture “consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable by its members.” (p.290), this is where we get our understanding and motive for our winks. Whether they are voluntary to imply something to another person, to mock another person, to practice for when you see another person. It all contributes to the thicker description. When we can understand the definition of one action it helps us build the rest.

  A simple picture of figuring out what's behind it all.

Sum Blog Ocho

                 It’s all around us; it’s our daily life, our interactions. But how do we act? Why do we act that way? Would you argue your actions are independent of the situational norms and true to the very center of your being? Whether you think they are or aren’t, there are strong arguments expressed by Erving Goffman that says your actions are de facto influenced by the situation you’re in.

                “The individual as a character performed” (p.256) Erving holds the idea of individuals as performers that act in ways to maintain their reputation of however they desire to be perceived. But he says they are performing in a moral world and as performers they aren’t concerned with the moral issue of the realization of the action but only in the actions perception, depicting the intention of the performer. That the performer might act well enough to convince their audience, they too, share with society “a single definition of the situation” (p.257). Whether or not the action is credited or discredited, it is a concern to the performer because the requirement of a performance by a character is inorganic to the self. “Nothing real or actual can happen to the performer” (p.257) because the performer isn’t real, it all goes away with the specific situation that evoked it and the only thing left is the reputation that the self wants others to see it embodies, whether it does or doesn’t. It all comes down to how convincing the impression was/is.

                The self is you, as you were born, but as you grow up you grow up as a product. A product of all the experiences and interactions you’ve had throughout your life to date. You grow up developing your ideal-self; you base this off of everything you’ve seen/felt/experienced etc. everything you’ve liked and disliked about all of it.  “The machinery of self-production sometimes breaks down, exposing its components.” (p.257). This simply recognizes and exhibits how people try to adapt to norms. They hatch what they think to be adequate productions, but as it falls apart the performer’s insecurities are revealed consequently revealing the synthetic natured performance of response.

                So returning to the question of whether or not you consider your actions to be truly idiosyncratic, think about the times you feel insecure. Are there a few or many? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5xo4NFRaS0

@1:12- those names aren't real (first or last is made up with first or last of real name)

@1:35- that's not a real trick and they only have 5 rounds before the finals.

I think the couple at :50 is joking the whole thing but they're pretty funny.

Sum 7

               W.E. B. Du Bois ideas of the veil and double consciousness or twoness can be represented by just about everyone in one way or another I’m sure. Everyone would have their own circumstances and conditions pertaining to their situation. Are there ever any situations where there’s a positive veil? I was thinking earlier of an attractive girl interviewing and receiving a job that she’s under qualified for, where would that be in relation to this concept? Then I got to thinking about how the military jury (in the video we watched for class) got to be there, which was probably an easy journey if they had connections through the family or just an advantage because they’re of a middle or higher class and their white.  So I’ll take that as an answer to my question.

                To make sure I have this stuff straight, I understand the veil as the characteristics of a person that most often negatively, but can sometimes positively, affect them. I believe the double consciousness to be the recognition of the characteristics that give you your veil. Du Bois, being a black man with an English education was able to see, very clearly, the differences in how he was treated in his environment compared to the white men around him and the privileges that weren’t offered to him.

                He had good ideas and concepts that I bet helped other people realize that they were in a similar situation and gave them motivation and the support to back their argument up. The Tuskegee Airmen could’ve even been some of the few that he’s helped lay foundations for.

Sum Blog 6

               Never before have I considered the concept of a sociologist making observations on their studies from the outside until reading Dorothy Smith’s piece. She explains it best, here; ‘Even to be a stranger is to enter a world constituted from within as strange. The strangeness itself is the mode in which it is experienced.’ At the time I found this idea very strange in itself because I couldn’t relate to her understanding and claim of how people were studying societies from outside them when at the same time, they were living as a part of them. Reading along further I could identify more with what she was saying because she focuses on the very specific and individual intricacies of society. She uses the example of passing a family of Indians while riding the train as she sees them through the window and how it was all relative to her perspective from her life’s experiences up to that point. Being that she hasn’t lived a lifestyle similar to theirs, she doesn’t believe that it is possible for her to fully understand their society.

                I especially loved her idea of educators in our society teaching girls as they grew up how they would be at a disadvantage and why, by our construction of society as they were growing up. What a world that would be. Maybe I’m putting words in her mouth but she put it as; ‘A sociology for women would offer a knowledge of the social organization and determinations of the properties and events of our directly experienced world.’ And that’s how I took it.

                Sociologists have been suggested to change how they study. To not ‘impose a conceptual framework that extracts from [other societal modes] what fits with ours’, to live amongst them and develop and understanding from the inside out rather than the outside in. This is not the ultimate solution though, because these interactions are only yet the product of our past societal constructions. Dorothy explains how women’s experiences allow them the ability to see the concern of how modern sociologist’s claim they are about the world when they display an ambiguous understanding of women’s experiences. 

Sum Blog 5

                A full night of drinking in a dirty city, filling your lungs with smoke and smog, disoriented, swimming in soiled sheets with someone who’ll give you the reason for your next prescription, then waking up and being flown away to a utopian valley set a top a mountain summit with nothing more on your mind than the warm breeze coming across the lake as you walk along the soft shore.  Harriet Martineau’s reading was revitalizing. Maybe not quite as extensive as that but I definitely enjoyed that very much.

                The fact that such wonderfully fresh ideas were ignored soon after she died, even with the great impression she made was a sure sign of the time, what a bummer. She had it all figured out, happiness, that’s all. If everybody’s happy what could possibly be the matter? Eliminate all created inequalities and be kind. Rationally, it’s a far out idea but it’s the blueprint to societal perfection. Her four anomalies of slavery, unequal status of women, pursuit of wealth, and fear of public opinion are wonderful. Everybody should be able to at least have an understanding for how these are “misalignments of societal morals and manners”. For me, as I’m sure for you, one sticks out more than the other. The most prominent for me is fear of public opinion. Growing up I was always concerned about others perceptions, it dictated my mannerisms, values, opinions, everything. It sucked, and in short I got sick of it and snapped. It wasn’t overnight but roughly the course of a year or two I had spun all the way around, and let me tell you what a breath of fresh air that was. I think if everyone could honestly be unapologetically themselves it would make the world a marvelous place (unless you’re a murderer or a rapist or some kind of screw up).

               Another thing I loved was how she said “the sociologist must try to develop a sympathetic understanding as a strategy for discovering the meanings of an activity for the actors.” Aristotle had said; “It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That’s the first thing I thought of after I finished reading her sentence. I love talking to people that understand (or at least try to) what you’re saying before they blurt something back. I feel like I recognized, after reading Martineau’s paper, that a few of the previous sociologists had more or less of a “my way or the highway” type of attitude. Anyway, I like what she had to say a lot, my favorite so far. 

Sum Blog 4

Weber’s “Bureaucratic Machine” illustrates the consequences of bureaucracy, one of them being that it limits our human potential. This type of system requires high specialization of an individual’s duty in order to complete a task most efficiently. I hear this and think of horse blinds, you become assigned to one task only and you complete it to their standard, that’s it. They are reducing a person’s full potential. I think it comes back to the efficiency of the company or organization, if somebody leaves that job for whatever reason; they want to be able to fill it as fast as they can and don’t want to have anything uncovered.

Another thing with this is that everything becomes predictable. In a way it’s nice because there are fewer problematic surprises and the few that do come up generally have a simple solution. Though on the other hand it’s very slow to adapting change, and with the size of the business directly correlating to the time it takes to implement the change, it’s no surprise that it can become a large problem to move things around after a certain point, that certain point is a 12 ton snow ball with a boulder in the middle, zooming down a hill that only a massive catastrophic event can stop.

           There’s one other little thing that I couldn’t quite understand, how Weber said that bureaucratic organizations come into power on the basis of leveling economic and social differences. Isn’t it a system based on levels? It seems that both democratic and bureaucratic systems have founding rules that contradict a majority of what they are today.

 

Sum Blog 2

I chose religion because as I completed the assigned reading and worksheet in class the following day I feel like there were some strings left untied as I was walking out the door. Now it’s damn hard not to turn this into a piece on why I believe in God so I’m going to try to abandon all defensive criticism.

BUT

I would absolutely love to hear what Marx would’ve said if he had a shred of faith in any god, haha. I can’t help but wonder was it the time period he lived in that he saw it used for control and personal profit, that he had such contempt. Or any other reasons, but that isn’t exactly the focus I’d like this to address.

Religion itself is powerful (and call me bias because I have faith in God) but no one can mistake the power of faith. Whether you believe because you understand it, or scared/suckered into it, it’s the feeling of security and peace of mind in a hard time, guidance and advice. I think Marx’s points address a real issue with religion and could prove them (to this day true as well) because he recognized the person/people behind it all. People want to know things are going to be alright, they’ll do what they feel they have to, to be comforted.

Marx quotes; ‘It is the ghostly realization of the human essence, ghostly because the human essence possesses no true reality.” If you don’t have any guidelines, what do you believe in? Who do you obey? Who do you disobey? Who do you praise and who do you blame? People fell obedient to religion because it gave them a sense of purpose, a purpose not posed by man.

I’d like to end this by saying religion has boundless power, it’s just the direction it’s given and took that determine the culmination. I have my side and you have yours. It’d be a fun topic over a beer.

 

Saw this movie a while ago, it stuck out like a sore thumb after last class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar_s7w18Z_I

Sum Blog 1

Alexis De Tocqueville was a unique minded man who held great sustainable foresight, contributing several visions of outcome toward the future as he lived his life among the transitional period, late in the French Revolution while also watching a young United States develop their democratic legs. This has been a particularly difficult reading to understand for me in regard to all of the smaller ideas he uses in contribution to those on the larger scale. For example, Egoism; a doctrine that individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action, then Individualism; the belief that the needs of each person are more important than the needs of the whole society or group. These two characteristics were used to support his skepticism of a democratic society. Coming from an Aristocratic age where “people are almost always closely involved with something outside themselves” (Tocqueville, 1835-40/1969:507) to the Democratic age where “the duties of each to all are much clearer but devoted service to any individual much rarer” (Tocqueville, 1835-40/1969:507). I think that he has all the bases covered, and to have predicted the consequences of producing introverted societies from way back then is pretty outstanding. “I fear that the mind may keep folding itself up in a narrower compass forever without producing new ideas, that men will wear themselves out in trivial, lonely, futile activity, and that for all its constant agitation humanity will take no advance.” (Tocqueville, 1835-40/1969:645) Now whether or not this shift would be a sole result of a Democratic society, I believe is debatable. I do think that it holds some truth though. If a group of people are spoken for by one person as a representation of common interest, after a while wouldn’t it be easier for people to follow rather than being active as they previously were? Though Democracy can be helpful to encourage and grow support for new ideas on a small stage, it is a very large uphill climb to carry those ideas/movements etc. to a grander place of recognition facing opposition from those in power already. Change is good, what good is a society that cultivates stagnation?

 

 

Every part has its purpose but when complete, will it help us or hurt us?

 

"Egoism." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/egoism>.

"Individualism." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/individualism>.