God Grew Tired of Us

This week in class we watched the film God Grew Tired of Us. The film is a documentary of the lives of several african men that are refugees from Sudan. Many of them lost a lot of family members and endured great hardships to survive. Years later, many of them were given the chance to leave their hometown and go to America. Yes to you it might seem like adjusting to American life would be easy, but for these African men it was a hard struggle to get used to American society. One example was the whole concept of "time." In American society "time is money" and is how Americans fit so many things in their schedule at once. But when the African men were explaining their plans to leave Africa one of them said, "We will leave in the morning...or maybe not...but we will leave at some point." This shows how other cultures don't value time as much as American society does. I thought this was very interesting because I was not aware of this before watching this film. Another thing about the film I thought was interesting was the escalator scene. In our social construction of reality, riding an escalator is such a norm we don't even think twice about it. But the African men were so overwhelmed with the idea of it and were almost falling over when they were getting on and off of it. This film really showed how social construction of reality, sociological imagination and social mindfulness play a key role in our lives and we should be more aware of other cultures.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the principle of using one's own culture as a means or standard by which to evaluate another group or individual. This leads to the view that cultures other than one's own are abnormal. Some examples of ethnocentrism are talking about British drivers driving "on the wrong side" of the road. Why not just say "opposite side" or even "left hand side"? Another example is reading Hebrew. Instead of saying that reading hebrew is from "left to right" or "the opposite direction" we say "backwards." One time I personally was being ethnocentric was when I was eating at a chinese restaurant. I was looking through the menu and came across dog. Yes dog as in the furry, cute, little animals that Americans have as pets. I uncontrollably screamed out "DOG?" not realizing everyone was looking at me. The disgust on my face probably offended the owners of the restaurant because of my carelessness in accepting their culture. Ethnocentrism leads people to make false assumptions about cultural differences. People are ethnocentric when they use their cultural norms to make generalizations about other peoples' cultures and customs. Such generalizations can be way off base and cause people to misjudge other people. Ethnocentrism can lead to cultural misinterpretation and it often distorts communication between human beings. 

Gang Leader For A Day

This unit our class read a short part of the novel "Gang Leader For A Day." Sudhir Venkatesh, a young sociologist who studied in Chicago, tells his story through this award-winning novel. While living in Chicago, he always wondered why people were given maps of where to walk because what was marked as 'dangerous' seemed perfectly fine to him. Cottage Grove Park to Sudhir was a beautiful place to spend time but to the city it was dangerous and forbidden. One of his missions he got from his professor was to study how young blacks were affected by specific neighborhood factors. Sudhir was excited to do this assignment and learn why the black communities were considered dangerous and why they lived this way. One thing he didn't know though was how to talk to them. He asked questions like, "How do you like being black and poor?" and had choices of answers such as "Good, not so good, ok, fairly bad, bad." Sudhir in this case was not being very sociologically mindful of how the poor African Americans would react to these questions. Sociological mindfulness involves being attentive to your actions and realizing that your behavior has a collective impact on your community and society. People tend to think children are more sociologically more mindful than adults because they're seeing the world new perspectives all the time. To be more mindful Sudhir conducted his results by using ethnography instead of surveys. This meant that he actually hung out and got to understand the lives of these young black men instead of asking them questions. I think ethnography is a better way to get information than surveys because it gives you first hand experience to a whole new world. This causes you to be more mindful and understanding of your community and surroundings. Sudhir was able to get much better answers by gathering his information this way than by survey. Sociological mindfulness is very important to society today. It helps create more peace and understanding between people. I now understand why one should do things such as community service because if we help our surroundings and the people that are in our lives it benefits everyone, including ourselves. 


Appearance plays an important role in society today. Many girls are pressured to look skinny, pretty and even dress a certain way. This can lead to many eating disorders and a lost of self. Factors that contribute to this change in self is from classmates, bullying and the media. Sociological imagination is the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society. This explains society's contribution to this problem among young teen girls. 


Is there really a difference between spit and saliva? During class my teacher had a classmate of mine spit into a spoon. When she asked someone to hold the spoon or look at it everyone turned away in disgust. But isn't what was in the spoon the same as what is in everyone's mouth? The reason people make it such a big difference is because of their social construction of reality. Yet spit is just the same exact thing as saliva this social construction of reality causes us to think of them differently. 

Abandon Ship

This week my class did an activity called "Abandon Ship" based off an actual event that occured in the late 1800's. There were 16 people on board which included sailors, officers, Nobel Prize winners, poets, husbands & wives, medical students and more. What happened was their ship was sinking and a bad storm was approaching. The only lifeboat they had was designed for 9 and with 16 people on it they would have all died. Our job was to decide which 9 should be able to stay on the lifeboat. The thought of having to decide who should stay alive was a hard task and made me feel very uncomfortable. Everyone should be entitled to life and no one should have to choose for them. But unfortantley that is what happened. The ship's officer got to choose who stayed and who left. I don't know how people could do that kind of thing and not think of themselves as a killer. It was also sad to see how society views each other. The officer looked at everyone in a 'micro' view. As Americans there are many things we value such as education, youth, intelligence, etc. This was how people were picked to stay or not. Although they could have had such amazing qualities, if they didn't fit what the officer thought of as an 'ideal' American they were left behind. This activity showed me how judgemental and critical Americans are of each other. We like to judge before we get to know a person and make faulty assumptions. It is also sad how the Officer was so willing to choose people to leave behind and for the reasons he did. Americans also tend to have a sense of selfish-ness where they are willing to hurt others to get by in life. People should really step back and accept each other for who they are and learn to get along and help out their peers.