Sociology has made me think more about
society. I never thought that society was so vast and complex.
Sociology also made me see how societies and people interact. I knew
people and societies interacted but I never thought they interacted
all the time and that there are many different processes of
interaction. Sociology is not very interesting, especially when
compared with psychology, but I learned things that I may have not
without this class. The articles helped me remember the subjects we
learned in class but I did not like how, when we made a presentation
about a chapter we still had to write an article. I would have liked
to watch more documentaries or take some sort of sociological test
like we did in psychology. In psychology we took fun
psychological/brain tests, I would have liked to take fun tests like
that but sociology based. Sociology is not a fun subject to learn but
if we had more activities like last semester, it could have been more
fun than it was. I felt I learned a bunch of cool facts, like the age
of the youngest mom is five. Sociology taught me to endure classes
that were boring because it did not interest me. I was glad to have
taken the class though, so I know what I like and what I don't.
Sociology
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Documentary Reflection
One theory of collective behavior is
seen during this Arab Spring. The theory that I think is shown is the
resource-mobilization theory
which states that even the most ill-treated group with the most just
cause will be able to bring about change without resources. If the
Arabs had no internet access or phones with the technology to video
what was going on, it wouldn't have succeeded. The Arabs needed the
internet and technology in order to carry out their plan of
revolution. One theory of social change is shown aw well. I think
that the theory that is shown is the conflict theory of
social change which states
that change results from conflicts between groups with opposing
interests. The Arabs wouldn't have revolted if it wasn't for the
conflict between the people and the government. Without that
difference in beliefs, the revolution wouldn't have happened and
change wouldn't have been made.
So
as we can see, collective behavior and social change occur all the
time. It is a repeating process. So many times people revolt because
of conflict, sometimes for the better sometimes not. People want
change, even though change is sometimes hard, we secretly crave it.
Social change occurs constantly, that is why society, in most cases,
gets better.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Chapter 18: Social Change and Modernization
Social change occurs in any society that is willing to develop and
grow. Social change is very important for a society to become the
best they can be. Modernization goes along with social change for a
society must change to become modernized. As modernization occurs, so
does social change.
Sociologists
define social
change
as alterations in various aspects of a society over time. A cyclical
theory of social change
views change from a historical perspective; societies arise, go
through various stages o development, and then decline. Oswald
Spengler suggested that all societies pass through four stages –
childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. Pitirim Sorokin's view was
that all societies fluctuate between two extreme forms of culture. In
an ideational
culture,
truth and knowledge are sought through faith or religion. The other
extreme is a sensate
culture,
where people seek knowledge through science. Sometimes, societies
reach a middle point between those extremes, which he called the
idealistic
culture.
Sorokin referred to this natural tendency (of swinging back and forth
between ideational and sensate cultures) toward social change as the
principle
of immanent change.evolutionary
theory of social change
views change as a process that moves in one direction – toward
increasing complexity. Evolutionary theorists of the 1800s believed
that all societies progress through the same distinct stages of
social development. By the early 1920s, most social scientists had
rejected evolutionary theory. It did not remain out of favor for
long, however. Modern evolutionary theorists do not claim that all
societies pass through a single set of distinct stages of development
on their way toward some ideal of Western society, they hold that
societies have tendency to become more complex over time. Talcott
Parsons, a functionalist theorist, offered the equilibrium
theory of social change,
which argued that a change in one part of the system produces change
in all of the other parts of the system. According to the conflict
theory of social change,
change results from conflicts between groups groups with opposing
interests. Karl Marx saw violence as a necessary part of social
change. Ralf Dahrendorf believed, opposing Marx, that social conflict
can take many forms.
The
Modernization
is the process by which a society's social institutions become
increasingly complex as the society moves toward industrialization.
According to sociologists' view of modernization
theory,
the more-developed nations modernized because they were the first to
industrialize. Immanuel Wallerstein proposed the world-system
theory,
which views modernization in terms of the world economy. Core
nations
are the most powerful developed nations – the United States,
Canada, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe – that form the
center, or core, of the world economy. Peripheral
nations
are the poor countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Semiperipheral
nations
are somewhere in between core and peripheral nations. A country's
external
debt
is the amount it owes to foreign individuals, organizations,
companies, and governments. Modernization has both negative and
positive consequences for social life and the natural environment.
Modernization offers many benefits to developing countries.
Modernization is often accompanied by the arrival of electricity and
communication technology such as telephones. The very same
technological innovations that improve the standard of living and
prolong life in modern societies also give rise to problems. The
family and religion lose some of their traditional authority in
modern society. Modernization has brought with it the problems of
soil, water, and air pollution. Modern technology also gives rise to
moral and ethical questions.
As we can see social change is inevitable and important to a
developing society. Modernization plays a big role in the development
of nations from peripheral to core nations possibly in the future.
Modernization is great for a society to grow but sometimes the
growing of a society can cause damage to other societies or to the
environment around them.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Chapter 17: Collective Behavior and Social Movements
Collective
behavior includes all different types of groups interacting with each
other. This is important in sociology for sociology is all about the
interactions of people. So collective behavior and all that is
associated with it is very important to sociology as well as to a
society.
Social
movements are much more
deliberate and long-lasting forms of collective behavior. The main
goal of reactionary movements
is to reverse current social trends. Most conservative
movements try to protect what
they see as society's prevailing values from change that they
consider to be a threat to those values. The goal of revisionary
movements is to improve some
part of society through social change. The main goal of revolutionary
movements is a total and
radical change of the existing social structure. There is a life
cycle of social movements, starting with agitation, then comes
legitimation, then bureaucratization, it then ends with
institutionalization. Relative-deprivation theory,
people join social movements because they feel deprived relative to
other people or groups with whom they identify. Resource
mobilization is the
organization and effective use of resources. According to
resource-mobilization theory,
not even the most ill-treated group with the most just cause will be
able to bring about change without resources.
As we saw,
collective behavior is very important. We also saw that social
movements are important as well. Social movements are important for
they add to a growing society and even promote already grown
societies. In some cases, social movements can create damage to the
government but may be beneficial to the people.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Chapter 16: Population and Urbanization
Population is a very
important part of a society. Population can show whether a society is
increasing, decreasing or neutral. This is important because when a
society has more people, I is considered more powerful. Urbanization
is important also for it shows how developed a country or society is
based on their cities and their populations.
Urbanization
involves the concentration of the population to move towards cities.
A city is a
permanent concentration of a relatively large number of people who
are engaged mainly in non-farming activities. Most preindustrial
cities contained a few thousand people while some were considerably
larger. The industrial city covered a greater area and had a much
larger population. Overurbanization
is a situation in which more people live in a city than can be
supported in terms of jobs and facilities. Urban ecology
examines the relationship between people and the urban environment.
According to a concentric zone model
a typical industrial city spreads outward from the center, resulting
in a series of circles, or zones. In the sector model
growth occurs in wedge-shaped sectors outward from the center to the
edge of the city. In the multiple nuclei model
a city does not develop around one central core but around several
centers of activity, or “nuclei.” Urban sprawl
is characterized by poorly planned development on the edge of cities
and towns. According to the urban anomie theory
the city is an anonymous and unfriendly place, and living there
carries serious negative consequences for residents. Compositional
theory examined the ways in
which the composition of a city's population influences life in the
city. Subculture theory
was used to explain the nature of city life, the characteristics of
the city encourage rather than discourage the formation of primary
group relationships.
As
we can see population is very important for society. We saw that
three factors influence population. We also saw that urbanization can
bring about positive and negative effects. It is very important that
we understand these two major concepts in order to further understand
sociology.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Chapter 13: The Economy and Politics
The economy is what shows
neighboring countries what kind of country it is. Economy is what
shows people how developed and how powerful a nation is. Politics are
what all countries have in order to keep peace and to have authority
over the people. Politics are anything that has to do with the
government that contain power.
To satisfy people's needs
and wants, every society develops a system of roles and norms that
governs the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and
services. This is called the economic institution.
The factors of production
are resources needed to produce goods and services which include the
land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. The primary
sector deals wsecondary
sector concentrates on the
use of raw materials to manufacture goods. The tertiary
sector shifts to providing
services. In Preindustrial societies, there is very little
technological development. In Industrial societies, the main emphasis
in the economy shifts from the primary sector to secondary.
Postindustrial societies, the tertiary sector is the most important.
In capitalism the
factors of production are owned by the individuals rather than by the
government. Law of supply
states that producers will supply more products when they can charge
higher prices and fewer products when they must charge lower prices.
Law of demand
states that consumers will demand more of a product as the price of
the product decreases. If government interference is kept to a
minimum and if competition is restricted, the invisible hand of
market forces will keep the economy in balance, sometimes known as
laissez-faire capitalism.
The commitment to limited government control of business operations
has resulted in the labeling of capitalist economies as
free-enterprise systems.
In socialism, the
factors of production are owned by the government, which regulates
economic activity. Communism
is a political and economic system in which property is communally
owned. Totalitarianism:
those in power exercise complete authority over the lives of
individual citizens. Both have changed over time; capitalism has
changed for the USA is capitalist but it uses programs that are
socialist in nature and socialism collapsed. Corporation
is a business organization that is owned by stockholders and is
treated by law as if it were an individual person. Oligopoly
is the market situation in which a few large companies control an
industry. Protectionism
is the use of trade barriers to protect domestic manufacturers from
foreign competition. Free-trade
is trade that is not restricted by trade barriers between countries.
Multinational is
any corporation that has factories and offices in several countries.
The nature of work has shifted from an industrial base to a service
base. E-commerce is
business conducted over the internet. Recently in the USA the economy
has gone down considerably, the national debt is worse than it has
ever been in the past and this is because of the current president.
$16,805,913,562,515.19 is the debt now in the USA.
ith the
extraction of raw materials from the environment. The
Power is the
ability to control the behavior of others with or without their
consent. State is
the primarily political authority in society. Political
Institution is the system of
roles and norms that govern the distribution and exercise the power
of society. Functionalist view is to analyze political institutions
in terms of functions of the state, creation of laws, settling
conflicts with individuals and relations with other countries.
Conflict theorist view is how the political institution brings social
change. Different groups in society compete for power. Legitimacy
is whether those in power have the right to govern others. Max Weber
referred to legitimate power as authority. Coercion
is power that is considered illegitimate by the people governed.
Traditional authority
is power based on a long standing custom. Rational legal
authorities are rules and
regulations that outline the rights and obligations of those in
power. Charismatic authority
is based on the personal characteristics of the individual in power.
Political Parties
are organizations that seek to gain power through legitimate means.
Proportional representation
ensures that minority parties receive a voice in the government.
Interest Group is
an organization that attempts to influence the political decision
making process. Voter participation
is the heart of the democratic process. Voter Participation varies
among different groups of Americans. Race, education, employment and
age are factors that affect voting. The
Power-elite model was
first presented by C. Wright Mills and states that political power is
exercised by and for the privileged few in society. The
Pluralist model states that
the political process is controlled by interest groups that compete
one another for power.
As
we can see economy is a huge factor for societies. If the economy is
down, this shows that the country is not well, if it is high the
country appears high. Politics can range from well behaved people to
lesser behaved people. Some politics are good and others are bad. But
a society needs politics in order to thrive.
Chapter 15: Science and Mass Media
Science
and mass media are two major things that influence society today.
Science keeps getting better and smarter. And because science gets
better so does the mass media. The mass media grows based off of the
growth of scientific discovery.
Mass
media is the method to communicate that reaches multiple
individuals. Writing and paper was used as mass media by the
Sumerians with writing, Egyptians with papyrus. The printing press
in Europe was invented in 1400AD. The industrial age
multiplied the speed of the printing press and soon after the news
paper, radios, and movies. Computer and information society,
the invention of the internet caused the creation of digital
society that exchanges information and social economic activities.
Mass media in USA includes the print media
which are news papers books and magazines Audio
includes sound records, and radio. Visual media
like movies, television, CD’s, and videocassettes. Online
media is anything that is found online. Convergence is
when areas with “media convergence” that is where to areas of
media collide and combine. Functionalist perspective is that
society runs smoother because individuals know what is happening.
Conflict perspective is that the mass media distracts
individuals with merchandise reducing the possibility that
individuals notice and do something about the inequality.
Knowledge-gap is caused by the economic difference this is
know known as digital divide. Children have access to violence now.
They also have less contact with others. And there is a decrease in
social capital. The power of the media includes brain washing, and it
can create spiral of silence, were a group silences those with
different opinions. Gatekeepers that select only a part of the
information to be released.
As we
can see both science and mass media have changed over the past
centuries. Mass media is very important in developed countries, as
well as in some developing countries. Science keeps discovering knew
things and improving. And because of this the media can grow too.
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