Dissolving Gender Roles in the Family

I found these videos on youtube and thought they really pertained to what we talked about in class. They show how current economic struggles are affecting the family unit and gender roles.
Have you seen any of these gender roles changing among your own families or in families of people you know? Do you think some of these current changes will re-define how we view gender roles in the years to come? How does the redefining of gender roles contribute to positive or negative aspects in the family unit? Just wondering what everyone thinks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YlR0_pVyCI (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l51rxnKJRfk&feature=channel (Part 2)

Social Institutions

In preparation for Tuesday’s class, I did some reading of chapter 6 in the Korgan and White book, The Engaged Sociologist. And in this chapter, both Korgan and White covered a topic that we had been focusing on the past few weeks: family. But more importantly, how social institutions affected family and life in general. In the chapter, it was stated that, “The makeup of your family, the laws you must follow, your professional career, your schooling, and even whether or not you believe in a higher power (and, if so, what kind of higher power) are all based on the social institutions in your society” (Korgan and White 73). They also brought up the thought of what would happen if one of our rights were upheld (like freedom of speech). Since everyone is different, I wanted to know how social institutions (like government, religion, or the education system) have had an affect on you. How have these social institutions affected where you are today? How might these social institutions affect you later in life as you start your professional career? What challenges might you face? And how might future generations be affected by the many changes that are happening in our social institutions?

Media and the Missing

I was just on logging onto the internet and this was the first thing I saw. I read the article from news week and knew it related perfectly to what we have been talking about in class. It is a great article and I think it's something we do not see alot of in the media. Read it and post what you think!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218911?GT1=43002

This is awesome.

This video isn't really related to what we've been talking about in class, except I guess it brings up issues of class, but it is amazing and I am interested in what you all think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQmz6Rbpnu0

Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113974893

Why do you think different social groups tend to use different social networking sites? What does this tell us about our society "off line"? In what ways does it reinforce intragroup solidarity and perhaps prevent intergroup interaction? Is this a a troubling trend or simply a reflection of a class and racially segregated society?

Racism

Here are two videos that show racism in America today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNu-WZdHzaA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIVgMvuCM_k&NR=1

The first one has 3 white teenagers trashing a car in a park. The second one has 3 Black teenagers trashing a car in the same park.

The people at the park obviously see what is going on, and confront each set of boys. The people only call 911 once for the 3 white males trashing the car, while 10 people call 911 when the 3 black males are trashing the car.

Why don't both set of teenagers get the same kind of interactions with the people around them? Why don't people confront the white males as much as the black males? Why do they call the police 10 times as often with the black males than the white males?

Also, during the first clip, the black males were laying down in a car, and two people called 911 about them just laying in the car, afraid that they were waiting to rob someone. Why did they get more calls to 911 doing nothing than the white males who were actually doing something wrong?

How To Lie with Statistics

CNN Leaves It There

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

A humorous look at why we should fact check and rigorously look at the origins, sampling, accuracy, and potential bias of all statistics. What happens when, as a society, we rely on "experts" to define the numbers? Should our news organizations be more rigorous in their "fact checking" of important policy statistics? Should they be expected to ask critical questions? Should we think more critically as a citizenry? What will this require of us as students of sociology?

Concerted Cultivation Vs. Natural Growth

After the reading and discussions of the book Unequal Childhoods, I was curious how everyone felt about the two child-rearing practices discussed: concerted cultivation & natural growth. After reading this it really made me think about the way I was raised, and the effects it has had on me as an individual. So I was wondering what everyone else thought.

What do you think are some of the positives and negatives of each style? Are there any other factors besides a family's social class that contributes to which parenting style they choose? Can a child be raised somewhere in between the two ways?

I've often heard the elderly in my family talk about how youth "these days" aren't like they use to be (referring mostly to their sense of respect & entitlement) and it really made me think. Have children and teenagers really changed over the last fifty or one hundred years? And if so, do you think concerted cultivation or natural growth has contributed to this?

Society of Consumption

I've been thinking alot lately about capitalism. There are not many things in the world that I hate, but capitalism is definitely one of them. I'm a junior and currently broke as hell. I've realized in my life that the one and only thing that streses me out is money. Work, I can do. Homework - I may procrastinate alot - but it gets done. But money you can't automatially get or control. We all (or most of us) have things we have to pay for, and as college students we have a huge time commitment to go to our classes and do all our homework, and along with that some of us have rent and school we have to pay for too. When there is a possibility that you might not be able to pay for something because you don't have the money, nor the time to make the money - that is when things get stressful.

Anyways, the way this connects to capitalism is that we have to pay for this education. The purpose of government is to protect its citizens. How can the government claim to be protecting its citizens if there are people starving on the streets and college students going thousands of dollars into debt to pay for an education?

We talked about this in class a little bit, with the income disparity and the graphs that we looked at. Why is this disparity so huge? Why does our society place such a huge emphasis on having material things and producing stuff when there are so many problems in the world that need to be fixed? We, as a society, need to reevaluate our values and focus on the things that are important in life - our loved ones, feeding the people, education, etc. My question to you is how do we change this? How do we implement a paradigm shift that takes our government's priorities and our societies values off of "national security" and producing material goods that eventually go into huge piles of garbage, and onto things that actually matter?

http://www.storyofstuff.com

This is a sweet little video about our stuff. It really makes you think. It's twenty minutes long but worth it.

The WASPs

On Tuesday and Thursday of last week, we watched a clip from a film called "People Like Us." And in this film, a man by the name of Thomas Langhorne Phipps talked about the culture he grew up in, known as the WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants). In America's history, this group has always been composed of upper class white citizens. But in describing the WASPs, Phipps states, "We stand better, we walk better, we speak better, we dress better, we eat better, we're smarter, we're more cultured, and we treat people better . . . ". He also addresses that you cannot get into the WASPs, you have to be born into the group. From his views, I looked for an article online and found one which was called, "The Way of the WASP: How It Made America, and How It Can Save It, So to Speak" by Laurence Auster. In this article, Auster interviews many people, one including a man by the name of Richard Brookhiser, who claims this about the WASPs, "It is the mold, the template, the archetype, the set of axis along which the crystal has grown. Without the WASP, it would be another country altogether. Without the continuing influence of its values, [America] is sure to lose its way." So what I want to know is what you think about each of these attitudes portrayed about the group known as the WASPs. Do you believe that what Thomas Phipps conveys about the WASPs is accurate? And as for Brookhiser, do you think that the WASPs have had such an impact on America as he says they have? If so, what kind of impact? The address for the article is http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_1282/is_n1_v43/ai_9363794/?tag=content;col1

CHanging climate of HS Reunions

We spoke in class on Friday about high school reunions and people's efforts to maintain or reconnect with their high school identity. Additionally, the lengths individuals will go to to protect themselves from the potential embarrassment that may be initiated at a high school reunion.

I was curious whether the fairly recent development of social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. will change the climate of high school reunions. Will as many people even attend their reunions? Will we have the desire to catch up face to face with old classmates when we can simply "facebook stalk" their profiles?

What effect, if any, will the internet have on the future of high school reunions? Will people be more or less apt to attend? Will reunions be more or less a tradition of the past? Since we are the first generation to fully take advantage of facebook, I was thinking we might have thoughts about the future?

Who Rules America: Concentration of Weath in the US

Examining the charts below (click on them for full view), what explains the growing concentration of wealth among members of the upper class? Do you feel that this distribution of wealth is justified? why or why not? After reading "Who Rules America" in your reader, what perspective does Domhoff offer? What, if anything, should be done about these trends?



Percentile Wealth in $ % of total wealth
99% $10,203,700 34.0%
95% $1,441,200 57.4%
90% $623,500 68.8%
80% $344,900 84.6%
60% $161,300
40% $61,000
20% $11,000
1% -$8,900