Final Sociology Course Post

This blog is the final posting that I will be doing in regards to my sociology class, in it I am going to be choosing one topic that I have found to be the most interesting through out the course and discuss it. The term that I chose to discuss a is sociological imagination. This term was coined by Charles Wright Mills, it basically means when the application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. Someone using the sociological imagination “thinks himself away” from the familiar routines of daily life. This is a very important idea as it has a direct effect on the rest of the terms that we learned in our sociology course. It allows us to think about when and where something may be applicable in the real world, or what consequences something someone does may have the world over. The course itself tought me a lot about society, something that I had almost no prior knowledge about before taking the course, it showed me how what people do in their given society or culture not only effects them, but everyone in that society and perhaps the world over. In reality we are all connected through our different cultures, and believe it or not our own cultures share one common trait or another. I had a bunch of misconceptions when I came into the classroom for the first time I will not attempt to deny that, one term that I was particularly wrong about was race. Race is determined by whomever is in that race. Race is not so much about skin colour or behaviour, it’s more about how people act in a given society, without there being a bunch of different societies in the world there really wouldn’t be any need for race. It’s only because the world has developed the way it has that there are different races in the world, if countries had never been shaped the way they had, or people weren’t as closed as they are we would be looking at a very different world right now. Coming into the class my attitude towards Africa was basically that they needed to sort their own stuff out, all I ever heard about was one government being over thrown, or massacres here and there. The only reason that’s what I believed is because when you think about it, what do you only ever hear about Africa? Exactly that, nothing but the bad. News stories about all the good being done in Africa wouldn’t be very popular, all people in the West want to hear is good things about where they live, or bad things about everywhere else in order to make them feel good about themselves. This class has almost opened my eyes, so to speak, to all the issues that there are in the world in regards to social justice and how there are people in the world so wrong in their ideals. Which they then pass on to their children and it continues for generations, only getting worse with time. That is why we may never be able to stop racism for good, but this class is certainly a good start, thank you Dr. Charles Quiste-Adade for an excellent class.

Journal Entry #3 of Package 3

The next video that we watched in my sociology class was one made by my professor, Dr. Charles Quist-Adade, and it is essentially telling the story of how a single cocoa bean can make the difference. In his life specifically a single cocoa bean was the gateway to greater things because in his home country of Ghana the main export is coca beans and as a child he was a cocoa farmer/harvester and as he was harvesting cocoa beans the company he worked for was building him an education fund. So when he was old enough he ended up going to a private school and eventually the University of Moscow in Russia, all because he worked hard and planted cocoa beans during his childhood, along with going to school. His story is actually quite inspiring because he came from, relatively small beginnings to having his doctorate and teaching at a university, doing all of the work himself and having to support himself along the way as well.

Journal Entry #2 of Package 3

Another video that we watched in our class was a short video of two experiments that sociologists conducted to see how people would respond to different pressures. For the first experiment there were three children in a room, sitting at a table (two girls and one boy) and only the boy had an ice cream cone. The two girls were told that they would be given an ice cream cone each after the adult got back from the other room, which turned out to be a 10 minute long wait for them. In that 10 minute period they had to wait and watch the boy eat his ice cream cone, as it turns out they tried many different methods to get the boy to give up his ice cream cone, any thing from telling on  him for not sharing to promising him that when they get their ice cream they will give him some of theirs. In the end they get about 3 quarters of the ice cream, and then when they get theirs they don’t give him any at all and laugh at him, it was really cute and funny to watch. I would almost say that it had more to do with psychology than sociology because it is playing into peer pressure and group mentality, I say group mentality because the two girls help each other get the boy’s ice cream so easily by both promising him things and saying that they will both tell on him, and that also plays into peer pressure as well. The second experiment was conducted in an elevator and all it basically consisted of was two or three experimenters riding the elevator as a random subject walked in and then the experimenters all turned around and faced the wrong direction and waited to see what the random person would do. Almost every single person did whatever the experimenters did, unless there was another random person in the elevator with them. Again this plays into the peer pressure aspect of social behaviour, if the majority of people are doing something then unless someone does what everyone else is, they are going to fell out of place, and no one wants to feel that way.

 

Journal Entry #1 of Package 3

For the next three journal blogs I am supposed to write about at least three articles that I have been shown, or have viewed myself, that relate to the field of Sociology in some manor. The first one that I will be responding to it entitled, “The Dangers of a Single Story” it’s a sort of short speech given by an African woman called, Chimamanda Adichie. It was quite a powerful speech and if anyone has some free time on a rainy day I would suggest that you go and Google it, it basically is the woman describing her upbringing in Nigeria and when she came to America to go to University, the various racist experiences she had to go through. Some of which are actually quite humorous, not in the racism of them, but how she was able to respond to them so quickly and in perfect English. It was used to illustrate just how ignorant people in the US, and the rest of the world actually are in regards to people of African decent. When I use the word ignorance, I am not using it in the  that most people think of when they think of ignorance, the true definition of ignorance is used to illustrate when people don’t understand something, or when they do, they ignore it. This really seemed to be the case for this woman as she was going through University. There was one really quite humerus experience she told us about when she first walked into her dorm room and the woman already in the room asked her if she was able to play the African drum (whatever that is) and she simply replied no. That just clearly illustrates how Americans and everyone has a stereotype of African people, when the continent itself is as large as North America and the people, just as diverse.

Blog on African Heritage/Black History Month Lecture at Kwantlen Poly-tech University on March 8th, 2012

Yesterday my Sociology 1100 professor organized a lecture at our university conference center and had a very well known African native talk to us about his work in bringing awareness to African problems and racism. He had one quote that I wrote down because it stood out to me, “If you want to know how heavy a bag of salt is, ask the one carrying it” which essentially translates to: Africans know what needs to be done in Africa, ask them and don’t just assume that you know what you’re doing is the right thing. The name of the speaker that I was able to hear was, George Dei; who is a professor at the University of Toronto. He raised multiple points that I found quite interesting, most of which were on the topic of how Africans and people of the world should go about changing it. He claims that there is a cultural crisis with black people because they acknowledge the fact that they are black, but that’s it, they don’t claim to be from Africa at some point. I don’t know if I completely agree with that idea but if it were the case it would certainly be a worrying point and something that needs to be fixed. He brought up the idea of gate-crashers and gate-keepers of knowledge, meaning that there are people in the world that don’t want the way the world thinks to change (gate-keepers) and the ones that try their hardest to make the world change the way that it thinks (gate-crashers). He then related this idea to his profession in Toronto and how the only thing that they teach in high schools there about Africa is slavery, they don’t teach any of the history while they talk about the history of other parts of the world in depth, which causes a lot of misunderstanding about Africa. He closed his discussion by saying that there were a few things that people could do to change their image of Africa: 1. people need to start reconceptualizing Africa. 2. start creating relevant knowledge towards the subject of Africa in school systems, 3. people need to start collaborating teaching, research and learning on the topic of Africa and racism, 4. instead of only teaching students about the bad things in Africa people should start teaching the success stories, 5. change the socio-political context of knowledge production (basically meaning that information is created to suit the political or social factors of the environment it is being made in). The lecture got a lot of claps and also a lot of questions at the end, one stood out to me because it was something that I was wanting to ask as well because professor Dei hadn’t talked about it at all. The question was along the lines of, “Africans can blame the Western colonial powers for eternity for enslaving them but it is essentially up to us to fix the problems in Africa.” I agree with this person completely, in terms of fixing Africa’s problems, not the way we look at Africa in the West. The professor agreed as well, not at first but after a little bit of discussion he came around and I thought it was just an interesting point to bring up.

Entry 2 Journal #3

The article titled, “Who Will Liberate Liberia?” by Charles Quist-Adade is basically trying to illustrate how the world, specifically the US spends it’s money in the most bizarre ways, when it could be spent in more productive manors. The example that this article uses in how the US is under the influence of president Bush and in his mindset it is okay to spend millions and millions of dollars to seek out and kill any terrorists but when there is an actual need for the money in the country of Liberia there isn’t any money to spare. This begs the question, why do American presidents always put war and killing before the needs of millions of innocent people dying due to starvation and hunger everyday. The reason for this is that Americans have always been blind followers of their “elected” officials and are usually very naive in the way that they vote, not knowing what the people they are electing actually stand for. The billions of dollars that the US spent under Bush to try and end global terrorism was not spent wisely, pure and simple. There were multiple things going on around the world that the money could have gone towards instead, the civil war in Liberia was a prime example, even more obvious was the fact that Liberia had always been an ally of the US; just look at Liberia’s flag. The article then goes on to attempt to explain why this is the case, and in Iraq specifically I completely agree with the author, it was 100% about the oil in the country. If there wasn’t any oil in Iraq or if Saddam Hussein was favorable towards US-Iraqi relations there really wouldn’t have been a problem. If anyone really looks at a lot of the wars in the 21^st century a lot of the major ones have been either started by or finished by the US when they are in a country that is oil-rich.

Entry 2 Journal #2

The next article is entitled, “The Phantom of the Race: The Myth of Race and Reality of Racism” the author is Dr. Charles Quist-Adade the premise of this article is to illustrate that in terms of the scientific definition of race, they really isn’t any difference between humans, despite that, the problem of racism is real and ever prevalent in today’s society. The article then goes into talking how educators and instructors, especially those of young children, should go about trying to curb racism in society at that level. I didn’t actually agree with the position that this article took because I am not a fan of the humanistic view of society, I don’t think that people are naturally good at heart and because of that I don’t believe it’s possible to simply educate people in a certain way and that will be the end of racism in the world. I hope that the various methods illustrated in this article will be implemented however, and that they will erase the large pockets of racism. I do not, however, believe that racism in the world can ever truly be erased for good because humans as a species, not a “race,” are very unaccepting of others due to any differences, whether that is appearance or social. Humans are very simplistic creatures, we like the familiar and that can mean the same types of people as well, in this day and age one would certainly hope that people would be more unified than this, and maybe in the future they will be, but at this point in time we certainly aren’t.

Entry 2 Journal #1

The article, “Negotiation, Not Retribution” by Dr. Charles Quist-Adade is quite powerful in the way it is written. It begins by discussing the tragedy of September 11, 2001 and how many Americans and people around the world are shedding tears for the victims of the horrific event. The main premise of this article is to illustrate how the Western Powers of the world should be using negotiation as opposed to retribution, as the case turned out to be in the aftermath of the “war on terror.” It even goes as far as to claim that the United States is one of the main reasons that violence in countries such as the many African states, due to the large amount of weapons that are sold daily, Russia is mentioned as a main contributor as well. By the word contributor the author means they provide a lot of weapons to the countries mentioned and are not always selective as to which side is being given weapons. Another point that is brought up is how the US is able to fool it’s own people into going to war, a prime example of this is the US’s manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, despite the fact that when the Soviets were in power the US actually trained him to fight them. No one seems to remember that when he is portrayed by leaders as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Again, to further illustrate that point is the example of Nelson Mandela who is now considered a visionary and hero, despite a less than favorable past in Africa. All in all the article was well written and gave the reader (myself included) something to think about after finishing it.

Sociology Illustration #1

The article that I chose to look at in the news is titled, “Plutocracy Will Ruin Democracy, ” it was written by Frank Goheen. I used this article to further illustrate a key idea that wasn’t exactly clear in class so I decided to look for an article to try and further my understanding. Plutocracy is basically a term used to describe when society is ruled by the rich, the article has good intentions, however in my opinion the world of “democracy” which we live in today is a democratic plutocracy. Especially in the US there are huge amounts of money being “donated” by big businesses to certain presidential campaigns, this isn’t because they like one candidate over the other, it’s because they want the laws that are enacted under that candidate to be beneficial to them, it’s essentially a bribe. Back to the article now, the author reminds us of an ancient saga about King Midas and how too much wealth can eventually kill you, as was the case with this king. Then Goheen goes into talking a bit more about the current presidential candidates and how they are all from money, then about how, despite all of their promises, they all look out for the interests of the rich population because they are one of them.  This article cleared up the definition of the word for me a lot as I was able to relate it to a story that I know from my childhood.

Journal Entry #3 of Package One

Chapter One – Religion and Homosexuality

This chapter sounded interesting to discuss, namely because individually they are hot button topics but together they are controversial and typically do not co-exist. They do have similarities however as they are both constantly being analyzed, then criticized or supported.

The chapter begins by giving several ways that religion gains power and legitimacy:

1. It’s relationship to a predecessor
2. Number of adherents to the movement
3.  The strength of its organizational structure
4.  Tenure of movement
5. Strength of ideology and opposition to dissent
6. It relationship to the state.

Religion has been used throughout mankind for both good and bad purposes. There have been many situations throughout history religious faith has enabled people to survive through tough times in their lives, especially throughout both world wars. However in my opinion, religion has more often been use as a way that people control others and get them to do their bidding. In some situations, state power and organized religion go hand in hand, specifically because the state can use religion to control the masses. In order for there to be law and order in society the state and organized religion need to both be perceived as legitimate and be able to use its power and influence to enforce its own laws/tenets. The only place where the state or organized religion allow dissent is when they can control it through compartmentalization, minimization of dissent and/or it ensures it has the means by which dissent can be quelled.

There are two different types of dissent, internal and external. External dissent is when the forces of dissent originate from outside the of the organization or religion but the state or established religion maintains advantage of the situation. Even Christianity, the largest religion in the world, can be seen originally as a form of external dissent against Judaism because it had something that it wanted to do differently and against the tenets of an established religion. Internal dissent is when the dissent comes from the religion or state itself, such as the was the case when the Church of England broke away from the Pope and Roman Catholicism, the main reason for this decision was that England as a country would gain a lot of legitimacy from the move.

Religion, and specifically Christianity, has played a major role in the creation of the Western Civilizations. Many colonies that were founded on a basis of religion. An obvious example of this can be found on American currency in the words, “In God We Trust”. Religion also has the ability to be a powerful cultural force as it clearly is in the Southern United States. These States contain some of the fiercest opposition to homosexual rights and lifestyle. As noted above, religion is playing out an old scenario of quelling dissent. There is a strong anti-gay rally amongst religious followers and their leaders because it is simply against their religious beliefs to be with a partner of the same sex. This does not fit their narrow view of appropriate or normal behavior as defined within their religion.

The chapter outlines four different types of social movements that are dependent on who is affected and the strength of change that is being done.

1. alternative social movements – those affecting specific individuals while limited in its strength of change.
2. redemptive social movements – those affecting individuals but is much more radical in the change they  bring about.
3. reformative social movements – those affecting large populations but don’t really have any lasting strength.
4. revolutionary movements – those affecting large numbers of people and have radical strength of change.

In conclusion to the chapter, the text expresses that the gay rights movement in America and abroad has had varying success. In the United States there are different feelings towards gay rights than others. The debate between religion and gay rights can be compared to the debate between religion and abortion in a sense because they are both ideas that threaten the tenets of many fundamental religious beliefs. The chapter ends by saying that the gay human rights movement is strategically moving away from the argument with religious beliefs in order to move towards the State. In this manner they hope to separate state from religion and alter long held rules of society regarding freedoms and lifestyle.