Five Sociological Journals - Essay Example

? 5 Sociological Journals Table of Contents Journal C. Wright Mills' 'The Promise' 3 Journal 2: England and Thomas' 'The Decline of the and the Rise of the College Hookup' 5 Journal 3: Annette Lareau's 'Invisible Inequality' 6 Journal 4: Betsy Lucal's 'What It Means to be Gendered Me' 7 Journal 5: D. Stanley Etizen's 'The Atrophy of Social Life' 9 Works Cited 11 Journal 1: C. Wright Mills' 'The Promise' Mills explores the notion of the social imagination as an adaptation mechanism, and as a means for contemporary men and women to situate their lives in larger, more expansive social contexts. Mills refers to this as an orientation, or a mind quality. It is a certain mental attitude that inverts the negative, victim attitude and mental disposition of men and women. This inversion happens when they shift their views from being the victim of massive, swift historical and social forces, to views that are in essence more positive, and in a way empowering. The so-called “sociological imagination”, as Mills asserts, allows for this inversion. Sociological imagination allows for a way to link the deeply interior aspects of the lives of people, and their most intimate and private joys, concerns and intuitions, with a larger, more expansive context. This context is sociology, the society, and the forces that prevail in society and history. Biology and personal history are linked to the larger historical contexts to which the person is born. Those are the contexts within which the person lives out his or her apportioned time in life. The sociological imagination, as Mills states it, is that which allows the person to forge this internal to external link, and make sense of his place within that. Biography, as personal history, is tied intimately to social history. Mills situates the discussion in the context of some vital questions. One is with regard to the structure of the society that the person finds himself in. Two is with regard to the standing of that particular society within the larger context of human history. Three is with regard to the characteristics of the people who thrive in that society, and judging from how society will evolve moving forward, the characteristics of the people who are likely to thrive in that society in the future. Tied to this, just by what social forces, and how, are such successful people formed, and what are the dynamics of that formation? (Mills). Mills demonstrates the kind of thinking that goes into the sociological imagination in the paper. This is through a discussion on the distinction that such imagination makes between troubles, which are in the private sphere, and issues, which are in the public, social sphere. When a few people are unemployed, then the dynamics of that fall within the realm of troubles, to be dealt according to that private context. On the other hand, where unemployment is chronic and widespread, then that begins to fall within the embrace of issues, and is dealt within the wider context of the society. Mills applies sociological imagination perspectives to war as well, and to metropolitan areas. For instance, Deep within the larger issues and problems of city infrastructure are the private concerns of people tied to their houses, private spaces. There is this separation between private and public city spaces, each with its own perspectives and issues. The person with the appropriate sociological imagination is able to thrive and operate sanely within this context, because of a mental attitude that allows for being able to live with the separation of spheres (Mills). The sociological imagination, according to Mills, basically provides a way for us to comprehend what it takes for people to adapt successfully within society. The way I see it, what Mills is saying is that the successful people in a society are those that are able to possess and internalize that society's way of working. It is social smarts in other words, but not in the sense of superficially being adept in social inter-person interactions. Though that is important in itself, social smarts is more about a sense of knowing how that society is situated within a larger context of man's general history. What makes society tick? What are the rules of the game? How one is to navigate through society? The sociological imagination allows a person to answer those successfully (Mills). Journal 2: England and Thomas' 'The Decline of the Date and the Rise of the College Hookup' The article examines college students and the college campus as making up a kind of subgroup within the rest of American society, and having its own subculture. Dating is an aspect of life in this subgroup, with its own dynamics defining it as different. The way couples pair and create relationships are a key aspect of that subculture. The thinking is that investigating this aspect of the subculture would yield insights into the workings of that subculture in general. On its own it is also a fascinating area of research. The methodology consisted of administering a survey online to 615 students, and supplementing that online survey with interviews of 270 students. The study took off from student observations with regard to the dying off of traditional modes of dating, to be supplanted by the hook up. This dying off, and the rise of the hook up, are vital aspects of that new reality in the subculture of college students under investigation (England and Thomas). The findings are that in place of dates, college students are hooking up, which are short, relatively ritual-lacking sexual encounters. These hookups have been found to happen after drinking alcohol in groups. The investigation yields valuable insights into the intricacies of the hookup as a means to create relationships, in place of old-style dating. The surprising finding is that while hookups have changed the rules, the results are the same in many areas. These include that double standards persist for women. These also include the disadvantages of the rules relating to women not finding the relationships that they want from hookups, because of the double standard. Hookups are largely about sex, even when there is no intercourse. The take is that far from changing the basic reality of relationships between men and women, the hookup as a social phenomenon among college students have basically the same end-results. As in traditional dating, hookups breed the same old gender dynamics that traditional dating fostered. The study's value lies in the understanding and the insights into the workings of that subculture that it brings to the table. The details that emerge from how and why college students have come to ditch traditional dating in favor of hook ups are also valuable (England and Thomas). Journal 3: Annette Lareau's 'Invisible Inequality' Lareau fills in what she perceives as gaps in our understanding of just how parents are able to pass on the advantages that they have or have gained on to their children. This is with regard to social, economic, and educational advantages. Moreover, from the design of the study, Lareau implicitly wanted to find out whether race or socio-economic class, or both, had bearings on the transmission mechanism involved. Also, what are the extents of the impact? The process involved, therefore, essentially looking at the interactions of parents and their children. The families come from either middle class or working class homes, and consisted of white and black families. The startling finding is that the invisible divide is not constructed along racial lines so much as along socioeconomic lines. The transmission modes and the resulting advantages and disadvantages occur along social lines, and not along race lines. For instance, there are marked differences in child rearing and communication between middle class and working class families. Black and white families are the same in those aspects along socioeconomic lines. Middle income parents used more reasoning, and used other child-rearing cues that essentially conditioned their children to live with a sense of entitlement. Such development was lacking in children from working families. Children from working class families were given free rein to use their leisure time as they wished, while children from middle class families had more structured leisure. Middle class parents engaged their children in reasoning in a more extensive fashion. They also make sure that the leisure is intentionally spent on the cultivation of those talents and abilities that confer social benefit. Working class families used less reasoning and employed relationship styles that were more direction giving based. Natural growth is the foundation of their child-rearing. Working class parents had little regard for the cultivation that middle class parents aspire for. The obvious social and educational advantages of middle class parents likewise allowed for a wider range of social interactions for their children. As a result, as children grow up, these cumulative differences lead to middle class children believing in their sense of entitlement. In contrast, the cumulative effects of the child rearing of working class children include the absence of that sense of entitlement. It is also marked by the absence of any gain in terms of the social and related advantages that their middle class counterparts grow up with (Lareau). Arguably, the distinction between natural growth and cultivation can be traced to the way the parents themselves differ in the aspects of their personal lives that are either cultivated or not cultivated. Education, for instance, is a form of conscious cultivation, and it can be safely said that where middle class families have parents that on average are better educated. This being so, it is natural for parents of these families to have an inclination to likewise cultivate their children. For working class families, on the other hand, where concerns are more tied to day to day survival, the conferring of advantages go as far as making sure that their children grow up naturally. This, and that working class families want to ensure that their more basic needs are taken care of. These attitudes translate to children likewise imbibing these differences and acting out their conditioning in the larger social contexts of school, for instance (Lareau). Journal 4: Betsy Lucal's 'What It Means to be Gendered Me' Lucal makes several assertions in this piece relating to gender, and critiques theorizing by Lorber, in particular. The Lorber critique is with regard to gender bending and how. Lucal asserts that contrary to assertions that gender bending challenges and expands our notions of gender beyond male and female, it actually reinforces mainstream conceptions of gender being chiefly a male-female affair. The objective of the piece is to explore just what the implications are for societies that rigidly adhere to a two-gender way of viewing the notion of gender. In a strictly male and female view of society, with no real room for gender definitions outside of those two, how is society shaped and affected? Lucal takes off from personal experience, as a female to which society attributes gender designations coming from a male-female view of society. This rigid dichotomy, which does not take in the possibility of alternatives, is what Lucal means by “two and only two” as far as social gender construction is concerned. That conception of gender, according to Lucal, impacts and shapes her interactions with others. Lucal argues that it likewise has implications for the ways in which she views herself and her social identity (Lucal). Her appearances are the key to the way the gender distinctions are shaped by society, and projected unto her person. From her experiences she comes to challenge the Lorber formulations on how gender bending actually reinforce, rather than challenge, rigid social conventions and conceptions of gender. They do not really make room for an intelligent understanding of gray areas in the gender distinctions. From her personal experience and reflections on this, she goes on to provide new and fresh areas for research and theorizing on gender. This is so especially in those aspects that relate to how society constructs gender, and how that construction impacts identity, social interactions, and the lives of those who are neither male nor female in the traditional sense of the words (Lucal). This is the sense, it can be said, in which Lucal considers doing gender as not something that a person does, but something that is socially assigned from the outside, relying on traditional conceptions in order to make such assignments. Where social conventions and constructions of gender contradict personal experiences and conceptions, it is easy to see the possibility of immense conflict. This seems to be evident in Lucal's own struggles with gender, and the obvious passion behind the scholarly piece. Lucal takes off, after all, and is able to proceed very far with the piece, from her own experience. That experience is one of a profound disconnect between her own inner experience of gender and the social construction and assignment of gender. To her gender is something imposed from without and has nothing to do with her own experience of gender. That gender assignment based on looks, as when she is called 'Sir', for instance, are obvious examples of misattribution. The patriarchal gender constructions, where females are taken to be men in the absence of obvious feminine clues, is at the heart of these misattributions, according to Lucal (Lucal). Journal 5: D. Stanley Etizen's 'The Atrophy of Social Life' Etizen argues that some progress in society has led to the observed isolation in a social sense of larger and larger swaths of the American population. Such has also led to the thinning out of opportunities for social contact among people. The title gives an indication of the subject matter. It states directly that the social state of affairs in American society is one of progressive atrophy, or disintegration, owing to larger social forces and developments. The signs are evident from the divorce statistics, the loss of trust and loyalty between employers and workers and the resulting quick churn of workers across different jobs, and the growing number of Americans living alone, among other signs. Those have deep underlying dynamics leading to the social phenomena of isolation, and the growing profound disconnect among ordinary Americans. Other forces are at work and which reinforce this isolation. Technologies for media consumption, such as DVD's cut off people from others. They negate the community and social benefits of more public arenas for media consumption, such as movie houses for instance. Meanwhile, communication technologies such as computers and phones negate opportunities for face to face social interactions and reinforce isolation. People are geographically clustering along socio-economic lines, reinforcing the isolation of one social group and ethnicity from another. Parents and children, husband and wife, and children and their siblings isolate each other too, and tune out from each other. Architectures that favor large houses and suburban enclaves physically isolate their inhabitants from other people. The homogenization of consumption products robs them of their “somethingness” and replaces that with “nothingness”. Such also further isolates people from a more intimate link with their communities through the products they consume. There is a breakdown in community as a result of this isolation, as seen from people tuning out from people who are different; in minorities being marginalized further; in the breakdown of the civic spirit and sociability in the public sphere, to be replaced by less civil public relationships among people. The impact on individuals is dramatic, in terms of depression and other negative impacts of too much isolation. It is also seen in the way people resort to using alcohol and drugs to dull their suffering. Knowing all these, the author posits that a conscious effort at breaking down walls and going against the forces of isolation consciously are steps in the right direction (Etizen). Works Cited Lareau, Annette. “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childbearing in Black Families and White Families” Sociological Review 67 (5). 2002. 6 October 2012. C. Wright Mills. “Chapter 1: The Promise”. The Social Imagination. 1959. 6 October 2012. England, Thomas and Reuben Thomas. “The Decline of the Date and the Rise of the College Hook Up”. The Family in Transition. 2006. 6 October 2012. Etizen, D. Stanley. “The Atrophy of Social Life”. Society/Springer. September/October 2004. 6 October 2012. Lucal, Betsy, “What It Means To Be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System”. Gender and Society 1999 13(781). 1999. 6 October 2012. Read More