Culture Shock

This week in sociology, we discussed the idea of cultural shock. Basically this is the idea of which when you are exposed to a new/different culture it shocks you. It may not be a shock of weird but of disbelief, because of the differences a society has that yours may not. An example of this is in India (as well as other countries) many of their meals are eaten without the use of silverware.They just eat their meals in a different manner than us, Americans do. Another example is one that we talked about in class. This would be the different toilets around the world. To be honest, I never thought a toilet wouldn't be the same as the one I've been used to, until today. In Japan they have a very particular type of toilet. Culture shock is a very interesting concept and you don't have to go to another country to experience it. For example, if you slept over at your Chinese friend's house, you might be shocked to see them serving fish for breakfast. Culture shock can be found on much smaller scales as well.

In or Out?

This week in Sociology we talked about "In" and "Out" groups. When we got to class we were supposed to sit with a group of people wearing blue jeans if we were wearing blue jeans, and if we weren't wearing blue jeans we had to sit at a different table. Each table had to come up with different ideas on why the one group was or wasn't wearing blue jeans. Some responses were that they didn't have clean jeans, they didn't like jeans, they thought jeans were nice looking, etc.. This experiment reflected one done by Jane Eliott. Jane was a third grade teacher and one day she decided that everyone in her class with blue or green eyes was better than the people with brown eyes weren't as good. The children with the blue or green eyes were able to go to lunch first and were able to have five extra minutes for recess. One child took his authority to the next level and started calling one boy "brown eyes" just for the day. This experiment showed that once someone gives you just a bit of the upper hand, you take advantage of it. In today's society we see it with people stero-typing others or thinking they are better because they have something that the other person doesn't have. Even at school we see it, the Freshman at school always assume the Seniors are going to "penny" them because they are the new kids at school. It has always been what Freshman hear and it rarely happens (I've heard of it happening once) but Freshman are terrified to come to school. If you aren't a Senior you aren't on the "in" group and you could be looked down on just like in Jane's experiment the brown-eyed children weren't allowed to do the same things as the others.

Conflict Theory

This week in Sociology we learned about the Conflict Theory. Karl Marx studied how different classes have controlled society throughout history. To see how this theory effects others, in class we watched an episode of the TV show Freaks and Geeks. This show has a lot of different social groups in it. The "freaks" in the show are the burnouts who smoke during the school day and cut class when they feel like it. The "geeks" in the show are the guys who get good grades, aren't very athletic, and get bullied by the "jocks" in their grade. Throughout the episode Lindsay, who is one of the "geeks" sisters, steps up to help her brother who is being bullied by the bigger guys in the grade. She also asks this boy Eli to the homecoming dance because no one will say yes to him. This shows that even if you are from a different class of people, we are all human and know what is right to do in situations.