University of Central Florida Two Days Without the Media Paper i want someone to write this for me everything was explained in the pdf file and the materia

University of Central Florida Two Days Without the Media Paper i want someone to write this for me everything was explained in the pdf file and the materials you need is attached Writing Assignment
Instructions: Please answer each question below connecting YOUR experiences to the
textbook. That is, how do your observations or experiences demonstrate the sociological
concepts outlined in Chapter 2 and in other chapters we have covered since the start of class.
Two Days without the Media (see p. 47)
(1) Eliminate all use of the media, except for that required for work and school, for a fortyeight-hour period. Keep a log as you go of what happens, what you are thinking, what
others say, and how people interact with you.
Turn in your detailed log of the media blackout.
Warning: if you try the media blackout, be sure to have some plan in place for
having your family and/or friends contact you in case of an emergency!
(2) Think about the enormous influence that the mass media have in shaping everyday life,
including your self-concept and your relationship with other people. Describe in detail
these relationships. Use sociological concepts to make your connections.
(3) What does this exercise teach you about the role of mass media in shaping society?
Explain in detail using evidence from your logs as well as the sociological studies and
concepts from your textbook.
(4) How would each of the following theoretical frameworks explain what happened during
your media blackout. Be sure to define each theory and then apply this theoretical
approach to YOUR media blackout in your answer.
a.
b.
c.
d.
Functionalism,
Conflict theory,
Feminist theory, and
Symbolic Interaction.
The Sociological
Perspective
I
magine you had been switched with another infant at birth.
How different would your life be? What if your accidental
family was very poor … or very rich? How might this have
affected the schools you attended, the health care you
received, and the possibilities for your future career? If you
had been raised in a different religion, would this have affected
your beliefs, values, and attitudes? Taking a greater leap, what
if you had been born another sex or a different race? What
would you be like now?
We are talking about changing the basic facts of your
life—your family, social class, education, religion, sex, and
race. Each has major consequences for who you are and
how you will fare in life. These factors play a major part in
writing your life script. Your social location (meaning a person’s place in society) establishes the limits and possibilities
of a life.
What Is Sociology?
The Sociological Perspective
6
The Significance of Diversity
11
The Development of
Sociological Theory
14
Theoretical Frameworks
in Sociology 18
Chapter Summary
24
in this chapter, you will learn to:
??
Consider this:
?? The people least likely to attend college are those most
likely to benefit from it (Brand and Xie 2010).
?? In the past, marriages in which wives had more education
than their husbands were more likely than other marriages
to end in divorce. This is no longer true (Schwartz and
Han 2014).
?? Fourteen percent of households in the United States
(18 million households) are considered “food insecure,”
meaning that they do not have the money for an adequate
amount of food (Piontak and Schulman 2014).
?? Gender and racial diversity in for-profit business organizations is associated with increased sales revenues, more
customers, and higher profits (Herring 2009).
4
??
??
??
??
Illustrate what is meant
by saying that human
behavior is shaped by
social structure
Question individualistic
explanations of human
behavior
Describe the significance
of studying diversity in
contemporary society
Explain the origins of
sociological thought
Compare and contrast
the major frameworks
of sociological theory
These conclusions, drawn from current sociological
research, describe some consequences of particular social
locations in society. Although we may take our place in society for granted, our social location has a profound effect on
our chances in life. The power of sociology is that it teaches
us to see how society influences our lives and the lives of
3
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Warren Miller/The New Yorker Collection/Cartoonbank.com
others, and it helps us explain the consequences
of different social arrangements.
Sociology also has the power to help us
understand the influence of major changes on
people. Currently, rapidly developing technologies, increasing globalization, a more diverse
population in the United States, and changes in
women’s roles are affecting everyone, although
in different ways. How are these changes affecting your life? Perhaps you rely on social media to
keep in touch with friends. Maybe your community is witnessing an increase in immigrants from
other places. Perhaps you see women and men
trying hard to manage the demands of both work
and family life. All of these are issues that guide
sociological questions. Sociology explains some
of the causes and consequences of these changes.
Although society is always changing, it is also remarkably stable. People generally follow established
patterns of human behavior, and you can often anticipate how people will behave in certain situations.
You can even anticipate how different social conditions will affect different groups of people in society.
This is what sociologists find so interesting: Society is marked by both change and stability. Societies continually evolve, creating the need for people to adapt to change while still following generally established
patterns of behavior.
Sociology is the study of human behavior in society.
Sociologists are interested in the study of people and
have learned a fundamental lesson: Human behavior,
even when seemingly “natural” or taken for granted, is
shaped by social structures—structures that have their
origins beyond the immediately visible behaviors of
everyday life. In other words, all human behavior occurs
in a social context. That context—the institutions and
culture that surround us—shapes what people do and
think. In this book, we will examine the dimensions of
society and analyze the elements of social context that
influence human behavior.
Sociology is a scientific way of thinking about soci­
ety and its influence on human groups. Observation,
reasoning, and logical analysis are the tools of sociolo­
gists. Sociology is inspired by the fascination people
have for observing people, but it goes far beyond casual
observations. It builds from objective analyses that oth­
ers can validate as reliable.
Every day, the media in their various forms (televi­
sion, film, video, digital, and print) bombard us with so­­
cial commentary. Media commentators provide endless
4
David Grossman/Alamy
What Is Sociology?
Sociology is the study of human behavior. What social
behaviors do you see here?
CHapter 1
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Key Sociological Concepts
As you build your sociological perspective, you must learn
certain key concepts to begin understanding how sociolo­
gists view human behavior. Social structure, social institu­
tions, social change, and social interaction are not the only
sociological concepts, but they are fundamental to grasping
the sociological perspective.
Social Interaction. Sociologists see social interaction as
behavior between two or more people that is given mean­
ing. Through social interaction, people react and change,
depending on the actions and reactions of others. Because
society changes as new forms of human behavior emerge,
change is always in the works.
Social Structure. We define social structure as the orga­
nized pattern of social relationships and social institutions
that together constitute society. Social structure is not a
“thing,” but refers to the fact that social forces not always
visible to the human eye guide and shape human behav­
ior. Acknowledging that social structure exists does not
mean that humans have no choice in how they behave,
opinion about the various and sometimes bizarre forms
of behavior in society. Sociology is different. Sociologists
often appear in the media, and they study some of the
same subjects that the media examine, such as crime,
violence, or income inequality, but sociologists use spe­
cific research techniques and well-tested theories to
explain social issues. Indeed, sociology can provide the
tools for testing whether the things we hear about society
are actually true. Much of what we hear in the media and
elsewhere about society, although delivered with per­
fect earnestness, is misstated and sometimes completely
wrong, as you will see in some of the “Debunking Soci­
ety’s Myths” examples featured throughout this book.
? Thinking Sociologically
Q: What do the following people have in common?
First Lady Michelle Obama
Robin Williams (actor, comedian)
Ronald Reagan (former president)
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Regis Philbin (TV personality)
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Saul Bellow (novelist; Nobel Prize recipient)
Joe Theismann (former football player
and TV personality)
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (from California)
Senator Barbara Mikulski (from Maryland)
A: They were all sociology majors!
Source: Compiled by Peter Dreier, Occidental College.
only that those choices are largely conditioned by one’s
location in society.
Social Institutions. In this book, you will also learn about the
significance of social institutions, defined as established and
organized systems of social behavior with a particular and rec­
ognized purpose. Family, religion, marriage, government, and
the economy are examples of major social institutions. Social
institutions confront individuals at birth and transcend indi­
vidual experience, but they still influence individual behavior.
Social Change. As you can tell, sociologists are also interested
in the process of social change, the alteration of society
over time. As much as sociologists see society as producing
certain outcomes, they do not see society as fixed, nor do
they see humans as passive recipients of social expectations.
Sociologists view society as stable but constantly changing.
As you read this book, you will see that these key con­
cepts—social interaction, social structure, social institu­
tions, and social change—are central to the sociological
imagination.
The subject matter of sociology is everywhere.
This is why people sometimes wrongly believe that
sociology just explains the obvious. Sociologists bring
a unique perspective to understanding social behav­
ior and social change. Even though sociologists often
do research on familiar topics, such as youth cul­
tures or racial inequality, they do so using particular
research tools and specific frames of analysis (known
as sociological theory). Psychologists, anthropolo­
gists, political scientists, economists, social workers,
and others also study social behavior, although each
has a different perspective or “angle” on people in
society.
Students often wonder what makes sociology dif­
ferent from psychology. After all, both study people
and both identify some of the social forces that shape
our lives. There is, however, a difference. Psycholo­
gists study groups. Research in psychology can inform
some sociological analyses, but the focus in psychol­
ogy is more on individuals—what makes individuals
do what they do and how individual minds and emo­
tions work. Increasingly, psychology is also influ­
enced by the studies of the brain that are emerging
from the techniques of neuroscience. Sociology, on
the other hand, though it can learn from psychologi­
cal research, is more interested in the broader social
forces that shape society as a whole and the people
within it. (See the box “What Would a Sociologist
Say?” for an example.) Together, these various social
sciences provide compelling, though different, views
of human behavior.
The Sociological Perspective
5
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
what would a sociologist say?
Getting Pregnant: A Very Social Act
When does a woman get pregnant?
Simple, you might think—it’s biological.
Of course, you can think of pregnancy
from a biological perspective, explaining the process of fertilization. Or,
you might think of pregnancy from a
psychological perspective, analyzing
the desire to have a child as deeply
rooted in emotion and individual
decision-making processes. You might
even think about pregnancy from a
cross-cultural or historical perspective,
analyzing childbirth in different cultural contexts or analyzing historical
changes in how pregnancy is managed
by the medical profession. But, what
would a sociologist say about getting
pregnant?
From a sociological perspective,
pregnancy is deeply social behavior.
There would be many sociological angles
for studying pregnancy. An example
from recent research reveals the power
of sociological thinking. Sociological
The Sociological
Perspective
Think back to the chapter opening where we asked you
to imagine yourself growing up under different circum­
stances. Our goal in that passage was to make you feel
the stirring of the sociological perspective—the ability to
see societal patterns that influence individual and group
life. The beginnings of the sociological perspective can
be as simple as the pleasures of watching people or won­
dering how society influences people’s lives. Indeed,
many students begin their study of sociology because
they are “interested in people.” Sociologists convert this
curiosity into the systematic study of how society influ­
ences different people’s experiences within it.
C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was one of the first to
write about the sociological perspective in his classic
book, The Sociological Imagination (1959). He wrote
that the task of sociology was to understand the rela­
tionship between individuals and the society in which
they live. He defined the sociological imagination as
the ability to see the societal patterns that influence
the individual as well as groups of individuals. Soci­
ology should be used, Mills argued, to reveal how the
context of society shapes our lives. He thought that to
understand the experience of a given person or group
of people, one had to have knowledge of the social and
historical context in which people lived.
Think, for example, about the time and effort that
many people put into their appearance. You might ordi­
narily think of this as merely personal grooming or an
individual attempt to “look good,” but this behavior has
significant social origins. When you stand in front of a
mirror, you are probably not thinking about how soci­
ety is present in your reflection. As you look in the mir­
ror, though, you are seeing how others see you and are
6
researchers have found that the likelihood of becoming pregnant increases
significantly in the two years following
a friend’s having had a child. As the
researchers conclude, even such personal decisions as the decision to have a
child result from the web of social relationships in which people are embedded
(Balbo and Barban 2014). Pregnancy
may seem like a very personal decision,
but it is fertile ground for sociological
study. What other social forces do you
think might influence the likelihood of
getting pregnant?
very likely adjusting your appearance with that in mind,
even if not consciously.
This seemingly individual behavior is actually a
very social act. If you are trying to achieve a particular
look, you are likely doing so because of social forces that
establish particular ideals. These ideals are produced
by industries that profit enormously from the prod­
ucts and services that people buy, even when people
do so believing they are making an individual choice.
Some industries suggest that you should be thinner or
curvier, your pants should be baggy or straight, your
breasts should be minimized or maximized—either
way, you need more products. Maybe you should have
a complete makeover! Many people go to great lengths
to try to achieve a constantly changing beauty ideal, one
that is probably not even attainable (such as flawless
skin, hair always in place, perfectly proportioned body
parts). Sometimes trying to meet these ideals can even
be hazardous to your physical and mental health.
The point is that the alleged standards of beauty
are produced by social forces that extend far beyond an
individual’s concern with personal appearance. Beauty
ideals, like other socially established beliefs and prac­
tices, are produced in particular social and historical
contexts. People may come up with all kinds of per­
sonal strategies for achieving these ideals: They may
buy more products, try to lose more weight, get a Botox
treatment, or even become extremely depressed and
anxious if they think their efforts are failing. These per­
sonal behaviors may seem to be only individual issues,
but they have basic social causes. The sociological
imagination permits us to see that something as seem­
ingly personal as how you look arises from a social con­
text, not just individual behavior.
Sociologists are certainly concerned about indi­
viduals, but they are attuned to the social and historical
CHapter 1
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Sociologists know that unemployment causes per­
sonal troubles, but understanding unemployment is
more than understanding one person’s experience. It
requires understanding the social structural conditions
that influence people’s lives.
Personal troubles are felt by individuals who are experiencing problems; social issues arise when large numbers of
people experience problems that are rooted in the social
structure of society.
context that shapes individual and group experiences.
The sociological imagination distinguishes between
troubles and issues. Troubles are privately felt problems
that spring from events or feelings in a person’s life.
Issues affect large numbers of people and have their
origins in the institutional arrangements and history of
a society (Mills 1959). This distinction is the crux of the
difference between individual experience and social
structure, defined as the organized pattern of social rela­
tionships and social institutions that together constitute
society. Issues sha…
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