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.