Chapter 2

Ethnocentrism – judgment of others ways against our own.

Cultural relativism – trying to understand a culture on its terms.

Everyone has the tendency to judge other cultures against what he or she considers to be the norm. The way life engraves into our being from early childhood and when those things begin to change we naturally try to resist them, not many people like change. However, the change should be embraced. It is how we evolve not only as human beings but also as individuals. I once heard that there is no such thing as perfection. Perfection means to be at the end with no change in sight, but life continues to evolve in infinite ways.

“I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”

However, always evolving.

Heaven is perfection or is it?

There are so many different cultures in our world it would be a shame not to experience at least just one. I would love to experience them all. Each one would provide a learning experience that could change me as a person and evolve me as an individual.

Imagine what it would be like to merge all the cultures of the world into one.

Would that be confusion, conflict, or absolution?

Language Barriers

The United States is behind those cultures of other nations when it comes to language barriers. Did you know that most countries teach English as a second language when a child enters early grade school? Many cultures not only teach English but also the languages of the border countries. It is not uncommon for those cultures to speak up to four different languages. Why doesn’t the United States follow suit?

Public education only teaches English during grade school. Our country can teach multiple languages to children at an early age because of the diversity of the social background that makes up our nation. We have African, Middle-Eastern, Japanese, European, Chinese, and Spanish speaking individuals are constantly immigrating to our country. There is no reason our nation should be a one language nation.

It is a “Known fact” that most children will learn anything from a peer faster than from an adult. Our school system could take advantage of this fact and promote acceptance of the new student immigrant by teaching our English to them while they teach their language to our students, which in turn would lower the language barrier that creates misgivings and isolation from a community.

I tried tirelessly to teach my children how to swim. However, when their friends came along and took over the swimming lessons they were swimming like pros in no time.

Belonging to Subcultures

I am a member of the romance writing subculture. We express our selves a bit more than most people in the form of writing while thinking about happy endings of love and romance. Some may consider romance writers to be a counterculture because they believe we write nothing but smut. No, we write stories that are about individuals that develop their characters into something other than what they were at the beginning of the story. Romance or love is an added element that requires the ending to be happy at the conclusion.

Many people, especially Americans, love to read Romances. They want to experience the success of the individual and the happiness associated with finding that one true love.

Chapter 3

The two agents of socialization that have influenced me most over the years were my high school years and the environment of my first employer – New England Business Service. The attitudes of North Middlesex taught me that education does matter. My education instilled strong beliefs and values that have remained with me to this day. The years of working for my first employer created the work ethics that I still follow which is that of respect, consciences attitude, and dependability.

“Proper” Relationships

My view of “proper” relationships of men and women are to each their own. Love knows no barriers and should not be discouraged. The original decree between men and women of the Bible was to populate the earth but, hello, we have enough people on our planet. We can stop populating anytime and still have enough people for the next 50 years. If our population grows too much, we might be reduced to eating each other to be able to provide food to sustain our species. Hmm – maybe that is how the zombie apocalypse starts.

Changing Life Course

My life course has changed multiple times over the years. I’ve been a student and a child; then I became an adult. When I became someone’s mom, my responsibility changed. I became responsible for someone other than me while earning a living. It appears that I have changed life course every ten or twenty years. Now that I am in my middle years I have once again changed my course toward bigger and better things that are looming on the horizon. Even the way I viewed my gender has changed multiple times. First just a girl and then a woman to a female and again a woman only this time a much stronger individual that is seeing equality for the first time in their life.

Part I

So begins my next topic adventure into that of Sociology. After week one I have decided that the topic does interest me more so than any of the other topics I have studied during my education.

I was a bit worried going into this class since I am using a Kindle version of the textbook to keep college costs down. In one sense, the book is easier to read because I can enlarge the text and change the font to my liking, but I am limited to reading the book on either my desktop or my kindle fire tablet.

Rating of the Kindle edition is at the moment a 4 star

Please note: These are my views after completing chapters 1-3 of:

Sociologists do a great job of studying society. The need for them to bring about reform is not required. Society will reform itself all on its own with different cultures integrating themselves into each other through immigration the world continues to change and evolve.

The studies of sociologists will help reform problem areas such as drug addiction. Results of the studies provide ideas and solutions of how to help individuals overcome their addiction problems thus bringing about a change in society by forming a cultural movement among drug users.

There are three theoretical perspectives for sociology. Symbolic interactionism is views of society to be composed of symbols that people use to establish meaning and develop views of the world. Those symbols are used to communicate with each other through language and gestures. Functional analysis is composed of many parts with functions that contribute to society’s balance also known as functionalism and structural functionalism which would be how external events can change the way society functions. At a time in history, before industrialism, women remained in the home cooking, cleaning, being a mother to many children and raising families while the men and boys cared for the larger farm animals and worked outside the home. In today’s times, families, for the most part, are smaller and both men and women are working outside the home in equality positions. Men can be nurses and Women can be construction workers.

Conflict theory claims that society is composed of groups that are competing for scarce resources a struggle between the capitalists and the workers.

If I were a sociologist, I probably would want to study all three theories. I believe they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and each one holds a clue about the dynamics of society. Without symbolism, the language barrier would not create conflict between cultures. Functional analysis will explain how society will evolve with each new technological advancement. The conflict theory studies how different groups affect each other within a culture, such as the wealthy and the have-nots, or the capitalists and the politicians.

Micro-level approaches to sociology explain social life more so than on the macro-level. The macro-level is concerned about language barriers that trouble the communication abilities of society while the micro-level looks at how overall society fits together like puzzle pieces. Groups in society fight to control the power over others while communities as a whole will function together in either a harmonious manner or dysfunctional such as crime or community services or the coming together for the greater good. Maybe language barriers have become a common sense rule that may never go away anytime soon.