...Myths exist in all aspects of culture. In this Discussion, you will look at gender roles — generally accepted assumptions about males and females. Read more about Erving Goffman. Source: Erving Goffman. Retrieved from http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/goffmanbio.html Read more about Mary Pipher. Source: Mary Pipher, PhD. Retrieved from http://www.marypipher.net/ Sociologist Erving Goffman observed social expectations for males from American contemporary life. In 1963, he enumerated a list of characteristics that seemed to typify the ideal male during that time. Keep in mind that Goffman was recording observations of this time and not stating a personal opinion. In your response, consider whether the time period in which he made this statement (1963) is important. Why or why not? As you read these conclusions, consider if you still see these features as relevant and valued by American society. In The Goffman Reader (Lemert, 1997), Erving Goffman states, While some of these norms, such as sightedness and literacy, may be commonly sustained with complete adequacy by most persons in the society, there are other norms such as those associated with physical comeliness, which take the form of ideals and constitute standards against which almost everyone falls short at some stage in his life. For example, in an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of college education...
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...ZYM Sociology of Gender and Sex Instructor BAS Gender Display in Fashion Magazines Advertisements Introduction Images in advertising that depict stereotypical gender roles and displays have long been a major concern in the field of gender studies. Before beginning research of gender display in advertisements, it is imperative to understand that advertising is a significant agent of socialization in modern industrialized societies (Kang, 1997), and is often used as a tool to maintain certain social constructions, such as gender. According to Rohlinger, the bodies in advertisements represent an ideal that individuals seek to achieve, and thus create the foundation for a masochistic relationship with one’s own body (Rohlinger, 2002). This statement is confirmed by the increasing rate of body dissatisfaction, greater weight concern, the development of eating disorders and lower self-esteem. Moreover, gender is a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment that actually surfaces in everyday human interaction (West and Zimmerman, 1987), and gender relations are learned through these advertisements, which essentially serve as a distorted reflection of the real world. These sexualized and stereotypical gender images are teaching the viewers a vast array of social cues, a certain way to interpret social reality, and are eventually reconstructing the definition of femininity and masculinity. Various studies have been done regarding the covert ways that magazine advertisements...
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...addition to ‘talking to others’ we engage in talking to ourselves’, that is, engaging in internal conversations when we are making decisions. Mead (1863-1931) states that humans use symbols as a mean of interacting. Without these symbols there would be no human interaction and human society. Symbolic interaction is necessary since humans have no instincts to direct their behaviour. Mead recognized that people had the capacity to reflect on their own actions. This is because everyone has a self which consists of two parts: the ‘I’ is the reflective part that plans actions and evaluates our actions; the ‘Me’ is part of the self that exists for others in interactions such as roles. For people to engage in interaction, they must understand symbols and reflect on their own performance, but must also take on role of others. This is where an individual places themselves in the position of...
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...Review Chapter 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9 I. Gender roles A. Gender roles are sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female. However, there is much evidence showing that gender roles have more to do with social status then biology II. The Women Question A. What is the root of patriarchy? III. Patriarchy A. A nearly universal system involving the subordination of femininity to masculinity B. A wide range of theories and approaches have been applied to the study of gender, including structural functionalism, psychoanalytic theory, conflict theory C. Each perspective has contributed to our understanding of gender differences, gender roles, and this complex and fundamental social institution IV. Structural functionalism A. Theoretical tradition claiming that every society has certain structures(the family, the division of labor, or gender) which exist in order to fulfill some set of functions(Reproduction of the species, production of goods, etc). B. A structural functionalist approach to studying gender assumes that gender differences exist to fulfill necessary functions in society V. Sex role theory A. Talcott Parson’s theory that men and women perform their sex roles as breadwinners and wives/mothers, respectively, because the nuclear family is the ideal arrangement in modern societies, fulfilling the function of reproducing workers VI. Limitation A. Their theory doesn’t allow for the possibility...
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...GENSOC CUSTOMS - values, beliefs, behavior and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life. VALUES - defined culturally as standards by which people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty. - also include truth, honesty, and justice. TRUTH - commands in us an inner commitment that in turn translates itself into our daily speech and action. FOURFOLD TEST OF ROBIN WILLIAMS: extensiveness, duration, intensity, and prestige of its carrier. EXTENSIVENESS – the extent to which the value is recognized by a representative number of people within the society. DURATION – when the value has been shared and practiced in common for some time. INTENSITY – is if the value involves the emotions and is taken seriously and sought after by many. PRESTIGE OF ITS CARRIER – refers to when the value provides ready-made means for judging the social worth of persons or groups who share or practice it. FILIPINOS ARE COSMOPOLITAN – both oriental and occidental COGNITIVE – something that one’s values should be chosen freely from alternatives after careful thought. AFFECTIVE – a person’s choice is prized and cherished, and the person publicly affirms it. BEHAVIORAL – if one values something, he or she shows this in his or her actions, acts positively about it, and does it habitually. FOUR BASIC FILIPINO VALUES: 1. Emotional closeness and security in a family, 2. Approval from authority and of society, 3. Economic and social betterment, 4. Patience, endurance and suffering. VALUES...
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...Encyclopedia.com -- Online dictionary and encyclopedia of facts, information, and biographies Research categories Symbolic Interactionism Home Social Sciences and the Law Sociology and Social Reform Sociology: General Terms and Concepts International Encyclopedia... A Dictionary of Sociology International Encyclopedia... Further reading TOOLS Symbolic Interactionism International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family | 2003 COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. Symbolic Interactionism Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective on self and society based on the ideas of George H. Mead (1934), Charles H. Cooley (1902), W. I. Thomas (1931), and other pragmatists associated, primarily, with the University of Chicago in the early twentieth century. The central theme of symbolic interactionism is that human life is lived in the symbolic domain. Symbols are culturally derived social objects having shared meanings that are created and maintained in social interaction. Through language and communication, symbols provide the means by which reality is constructed. Reality is primarily a social product, and all that is humanly consequential—self, mind, society, culture—emerges from and is dependent on symbolic interactions for its existence. Even the physical environment is relevant to human conduct mainly as it is interpreted through symbolic systems. Importance of Meanings The label symbolic interactionism was coined by Herbert Blumer (1969), one...
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...BARACK OBAMA'S SOUTH CAROLINA SPEECH Introduction In this paper, I shall analyze US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama's South Carolina victory speech from a particular pragmatic perspective. In particular, I shall explore the idea that this speech is constituted by many voices (in other words, it displays polyphony, to use an idea due to Bakhtin 1981, 1986) and that the audience is part of this speech event, adding and contributing to its text in a collaborative way (in particular, in constructing meaning). As many are aware (including the journalists who report day by day on Barack Obama's achievements), Obama uses the technique of 'personification' (The Economist, Dec 13th, 2007). When he voices an idea, he does not just expose it as if it came from himself, but gets another person (fictitious or, plausibly, real) to voice it. Since in an electoral speech, he cannot reasonably get people on stage to voice his ideas, he personifies ideas by narrating what people told him. His stories are his way of personifying his ideas. The discourse strategy he uses serves to reverse the direction of influence from the people in control to the people controlled (see van Dijk 2003). Duranti (2006b) writes that The language of politics has been presented and studied in terms of its ability to persuade an audience (of peers, subjects, and superiors) to go along with the speaker's view of the world and his or her proposal (Perrot 2000). In much of this literature, the successful political...
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...C H A P T E R 7 Gender and Advertising How Gender Shapes Meaning The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “It’s a girl.” —Shirley Chisholm Men are dogs and women are cats. Women are from Venus and men are from Mars. Writers, filmmakers, psychologists, and advertisers all have used the idea that men and women are different to develop stories, create conflict, and provide persuasive imagery. Not only do advertisers view men and women differently, but men and women also bring different perspectives to advertising. Thus, we can assume that men and women create dif-ferent meanings from the advertisements they see. Gender roles in our society have changed dramatically since the 1950s, and portrayals of men and women in advertising have been researched since nearly the same time. Researchers have consistently sought to evaluate these roles to examine whether advertising has kept up with societal changes. In this chapter, we examine the different ways men and women view advertising and mes-sages, as well as some of the ways that advertising portrays gender roles today. The last several decades have seen changes in the role of women in society, both as those who earn money and those who spend money. In 1940, women comprised about 20% of the workforce in the United States, while today that percentage reaches 50% (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000). In addition, the family structure in the United States has changed: smaller...
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...Social networking powerful tool to promote good health (NaturalNews) The power of social networking to connect friends and help businesses connect with existing and potential clientele continues to be a driving force in today's world because of its incredible success. But how can social networking work to promote better health? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) believes that if people promote healthy lifestyles within their social networks, public health as a whole will significantly improve. Recent studies have shown that people's behaviors rub off onto their friends. Bad habits like smoking and overeating are contagious, say many researchers. But so are good behaviors like eating healthy, exercising and getting good rest, which is why NIH is offering funding to scientists willing to work on improving public health through social networking. "We've come to realize more and more that how people live and function in social networks is really important to health," explained Deborah Olster, acting director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at NIH. Several researchers have already come up with creative ideas to promote better health through social networks. Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School believes that creating artificial social groups around things like losing weight or eating better will help to encourage unhealthy people to improve their lifestyles. Christakis also suggests using social group "leaders" to influence their...
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...CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER ANSWER KEY CHAPTER 1 ANSWERS FOR THE MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS 1. b The sociological perspective is an approach to understanding human behavior by placing it within its broader social context. (4) 2 . d Sociologists consider occupation, income, education, gender, age, and race as dimensions of social location.(4) 3. d All three statements reflect ways in which the social sciences are like the natural sciences. Both attempt to study and understand their subjects objectively; both attempt to undercover the relationships that create order in their respective worlds through controlled observation; and both are divided into many specialized fields. (5-7) 4. c Generalization is one of the goals of scientific inquiry. It involves going beyond individual cases by making statements that apply to broader groups or situations. (7) 5. b The Industrial Revolution, imperialism, and the development of the scientific method all contributed to the development of sociology. The fourth influence was the political revolutions in America and France — there was no political revolution in Britain at that time. (8-9) 6. d Positivism is the application of the scientific approach to the social world. (9) 7. d Of the four statements, the one that best reflects Herbert Spencer’s views on charity is “The poor are the weakest members of society and if society intervenes to help them, it is interrupting the natural process of social evolution.” While many contemporaries of Spencer’s were...
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...CHAPTER 7 DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL Deviance 171 Social Policy and Social Control: Illicit Drug Use in Canada and Worldwide 193 What Is Deviance? 171 Explaining Deviance 175 Social Control 182 Conformity and Obedience 182 Informal and Formal Social Control Law and Society 186 Crime 185 187 Types of Crime 188 Crime Statistics 190 The Issue 193 The Setting 193 Sociological Insights 193 Policy Initiatives 193 Boxes RESEARCH IN ACTION: Street Kids 183 sOCIOLOGY IN THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY: Singapore: A Nation of Campaigns 186 TAKING SOCIOLOGY TO WORK: Holly Johnson, Chief of Research, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada 192 Cigarette smoking has become stigmatized in Canada. This newspaper advertisement, sponsored by Health Canada, reverses the typical advertising strategy of equating smoking with sexiness. 169 H eidi Fleiss was in her late twenties when she was arrested for operating a call girl service. At the time, her pediatrician father had reacted flippantly, “I guess I didn’t do such a good job on Heidi after all.” Later, he would be convicted of conspiring to hide profits from his daughter’s call girl ring. Fleiss had dropped out of school when she was sixteen and established a liaison with a playboyfinancier who gave her a Rolls-Royce for her twenty-first birthday. In her early twenties, Fleiss interned in the world of prostitution by working for Madame Alex (Elizabeth Adams)...
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...The Filipino Seafarer A Life between Sacrifice and Shopping by Gunnar M. Lamvik Dept. of Social Anthropology Norwegian University of Science and Technology Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirment for the Dr. Art. degree 2002 Contents Acknowledgements Part I Part II Introduction Migration – a Philippine specialty 2.1 Different perspectives on migration 2.2 The Filipinos – a people in motion 1 8 9 14 Part III Why do people go and who are actually leaving? 3.1 Inducements for migration 3.1.1 The “explorer” and the “escapist” 3.1.2 Migration seen as sacrifice 3.2 Preconditions for migration 3.2.1 Preconditions for migration on a structural level 3.2.2 Preconditions for migration at a family level 19 20 21 23 31 32 34 Part IV How they actually go – the broker 4.1 The patron and the compadre 4.2 The returned migrant 4.3 The private recruiter 4.4 The broker – some general and concluding remarks 38 40 43 45 52 Part V Life at sea 5.1 What characterizes a ship in the merchant marines? 5.2 The seafaring experience 5.2.1 The ship seen as a prison 5.2.2 The total institution 55 57 66 67 72 5.2.2.1 A total institution is a secluded place 75 5.2.2.2 A total institution follow a certain pace 77 5.2.2.3 Some running themes in the inmate culture 86 ii Part VI Cultural repercussions caused by the life at sea 6.1 The seafarer sees as a local, technical expert 6.2 The seafarer sees as a local cosmopolitan 100 101...
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...Biased Evaluation of Ambiguous and Inconsistent Data 9 29 49 PART TWO Motivational and Social Determinants of Questionable Beliefs 5. Seeing What We Want to See: Motivational Determinants of Belief 6. Believing What We are Told: The Biasing Effects of Secondhand Information 7. The Imagined Agreement of Others: Exaggerated Impressions of Social Support 75 88 112 Contents PART THREE Examples of Questionable and Erroneous Beliefs 8. Belief in Ineffective "Alternative" Health Practices 9. Belief in the Effectiveness of Questionable Interpersonal Strategies 10. Belief in ESP 125 146 Acknowledgments 156 PART FOUR Where Do We Go from Here? 11. Challenging Dubious Beliefs: The Role of Social Science Notes Index 185 195 214 Four people made unusually significant contributions to this work and deserve special thanks. Lee Ross commented on drafts of many of the chapters and provided a number of his uniquely illuminating insights on the phenomena at hand. Beyond that, I would like to thank Lee simply for being Lee—for being the most interesting "intuitive psychologist" I know, and for making the discussion of people and their commerce through everyday life so enjoyable. Karen Dashiff Gilovich read every word of this book and at times seemed to have something to say about nearly every...
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...Theories of Communication – MCM 511 VU LESSON 01 COMMUNICATION Defining communication Communication is seen as central to our everyday ideas about what makes life worth living. It is not surprising that academicians have attempted to unravel the secrets of the communication process. In this section of the study we will examine the theorizing and theories of this discipline of communication. To understand communication theory we need to understand the nature of communication. Nature of communication People define terms in different ways, and those differences in definition can have a profound impact on the extent to which we understand each other and the way we move forward with both academic and everyday pursuits. Given the variety of ways in which words are used and understood, we are often ill-served to search for the single, so-called correct definition of a term. In other words, it is better to evaluate definition in terms of their utility rather than in terms of their correctness. So we should not assume that there is always a single right way to define a concept. There is a great deal of variation in the definitions. Some are very abstract and some are extremely specific. Few definitions are cited below. Communication is the process by which an individual (the communicator) transmits stimuli (usually verbal) to modify the behavior of other individuals (the audience). (Hovland Janis and Kelly in 1953) Communication is the process by which we understand others and in turn...
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.... Organization Theory Challenges and Perspectives John McAuley, Joanne Duberley and Phil Johnson . This book is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive and reliable guide to organisational theory currently available. What is needed is a text that will give a good idea of the breadth and complexity of this important subject, and this is precisely what McAuley, Duberley and Johnson have provided. They have done some sterling service in bringing together the very diverse strands of work that today qualify as constituting the subject of organisational theory. Whilst their writing is accessible and engaging, their approach is scholarly and serious. It is so easy for students (and indeed others who should know better) to trivialize this very problematic and challenging subject. This is not the case with the present book. This is a book that deserves to achieve a wide readership. Professor Stephen Ackroyd, Lancaster University, UK This new textbook usefully situates organization theory within the scholarly debates on modernism and postmodernism, and provides an advanced introduction to the heterogeneous study of organizations, including chapters on phenomenology, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Like all good textbooks, the book is accessible, well researched and readers are encouraged to view chapters as a starting point for getting to grips with the field of organization theory. Dr Martin Brigham, Lancaster University, UK McAuley et al. provide a highly readable account...
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