Post #3

In class, we have spent the last couple weeks learning more about the different levels of study that sociologists focus on that delve deeper into the ideas of sociological imagination and mindfulness.  We have began to explore the concepts of macro and micro sociology, that is, influences that come from being a part of a large group, and those that come from smaller, face-to-face interactions.  In class, we did a activity called Abandon Ship!, inspired by the movie from the fifties.  In the exercise, we were given the scenario that there were 16 survivors of a ship crash aboard a life boat.  They were:

1. Able-bodied Sailor
2. Ship's Officer
3. Quarter Master 
4. Self-Made Millionaire 
5. College Student
6. Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
7. Nobel Prize Winner in Physics 
8. Football Player
9. Football Player's Pregnant Wife
10. Army Captain
11. Draft Evader
12. Peace Corp Volunteer
13. Medical Student
14. Elderly Man
15. Elderly Woman
16. and a Traveling Poet

Our job as sociologists was to observe as the group decided which 7 of them would be kicked overboard to accommodate the boats 9 person capacity.  This is were we saw the effects of macro and micro sociology on the passengers of the boat.  

They immediately began to kick people off that they deemed to be useless, like the elderly couple, the overweight millionaire, the injured quarter master, etc.  The fact that these were the kinds of people they kicked off first, the weak or powerless, demonstrates the effects of macro sociology first and foremost.  Each person on the boat comes from similar backgrounds: they were all upper-middle class, suburban, American teenagers.  This means that they all shared similar core values based simply of their culture and upbringings.  Being as they were all Americans specifically, they all prioritize practicality and usefulness.  If the passengers had been instead, for example, Japanese, they may have instead valued age as the deciding factor and kicked off the 7 youngest people, since Japanese culture places an emphasis on respecting the elderly.  

The second kind of interaction we saw within the group was a demonstration of micro sociology.  This took place in the individual interactions between passengers.  For example, the drug dealing draft evader knew that he had very little to offer the group and that he was at danger of being one of the first kicked off, so his plan was to become the leader of the group, so that people would ignore the fact that he wasn't useful and just listen to him as a leader.  A different strategy was used by the epileptic college student, as she decided that the best strategy was to sit off unnoticed, so as to not call attention to her disability and uselessness.  Other passengers, like the Nobel Prize winner in literature, were desperate to convey to others their own usefulness so as to avoid being thrown overboard.  She kept saying things like "I can write a book about this!" to try and convince the others to keep her on board.  These are all examples of micro sociology, as they all look past the ideas implanted in us by our being a part of the same culture, and made us rely on face to face interactions to make decisions.  

These ideas of macro and micro sociology were also evident in our class's case study-the film A Bronx Tale.  The film follows the true story of a boy named Calogero("C") who is growing up in an exclusively Italian neighborhood in the Bronx in New York.  "C" is growing up in a very segregated community during the 1960's, so one of the most predominant aspects of the culture he lives in is the intense racism of most of the residents of the neighborhood.  This influence of the macro sociology of the racist culture of "C"'s upbringing are evidenced when he gets into an argument with his African American girlfriend's brother and calls him an offensive racial slur.  While it is obvious throughout the film that "C" is not at all racist, the influence of the macro sociology surrounding his life causes him to say something he didn't mean.  While the casual use of racial slurs demonstrates the macro sociology, the fact that "C" decides that he likes an African American girl and his decision to date her prove that the face-to-face interaction with this girl causes him to ignore his culture and make decisions based on what he decides is good for him.  

A second idea we have discussed in class is the idea of categorizing verses stereotyping.  In Joel Charon's article "Should We Generalize About People?", Charon discusses the belief that categorizing people is a very useful tool that sociologists can use to gather ideas about certain groups of people.  Charon also goes further to explain that, while categorizing is a useful tool, the act of stereotyping and applying these generalizations to individuals within a group is not at all accurate, and can be very offensive.  For example, sociologists can make the generalization that people who make more than $500,000 a year more often than not vote Republican.  That is an example of categorizing that is useful for the organization of people.  But, if one were to go up to an individual that made $550,000 a year and say "Well, you must vote Republican," then that person would be stereotyping.  Just because a trend is found within a group doesn't mean that it is 100% true for all people within a category, and to assume so would be false.    

An example of the idea of the inaccuracies of stereotyping are evident in the video "My Fellow American" that we watched in class. In the video, there can be heard real radio broadcasts that were aired shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.  In the broadcasts, outspoken members of the media were making ridiculous and completely false accusations that, just because a few people who identified as being Muslim performed these terrible acts, that all Muslim people are violent and untrustworthy.  This is a very blatant example of the inaccuracies and horrible slander that can befall certain groups, like Muslim people, because of certain people thinking it is appropriate to stereotype them.  

Within my own life, I can see the flaws of the practice of stereotyping just by using myself as an example.  For instance, I identify myself as being apart of the group "teenage girl from the upper-class suburbs."  An I, personally, love certain things.  For example, I love One Direction.  I think they are amazing.  But, I cannot assume that everyone else that identifies as a "teenage girl from the upper-class suburbs" like me loves One Direction too, because if I did, I would absolutely be wrong.  

A final idea we discussed in class was the different methods through which sociologists are capable of gathering the information they need to do things like form different generalizations about different categories of people.  For class, we read an excerpt from the book Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh.  In the passage, Venkatesh describes his experience working as a research assistant for a professor of sociology during his time as University of Chicago.  He tells about his experiences of attempting to go door to door in the projects of the South Side of Chicago to try and gather information about the residents through the use of a general, "rank your feelings" survey.  When Venkatesh ultimately is unable to gather any data through the use of the survey, and he finally realizes that it is impossible to gather any useful information with these general, impersonal questions, he finds the real way to get what he wants to know.  He realizes that the way to gather the most quality, and useful data is to just hang out with the gang whose leader he befriends.  Venkatesh realizes that if you really want to understand the feelings of people living in certain conditions, you just have to talk to them about it.  The true feelings cannot described by a survey.  In his story, Venkatesh is able to describe the two types of data gathered by sociologists: quantitative(like the surgery), and qualitative(like what he learns by just talking to people).