Rosa: Sociology and Values Essay

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Prejudice v Discrimination

Prejudice: a rigid unfair generalization about an entire category of people and is based on one's attitude

Discrimination: unequal treatment of various categories of people and is based one's actions
Matriarchy v Patriarchy

Matriarchy: "rule by mother" a form of social organization in which females dominate males which has only been rarely documented

Patriarchy: "rule by father" a form of social organization in which makes dominate females
What is a stereotype? example.

Simplified description applied to every person in some category

Sociology studies the daily interactions and life adjustments of culture and socialisation, how the billions of people who live on this planet get through each day living with each other. How we learn to conform, acclimatise and transform.

We look at the complicated relations between our bodies, our feelings and our ways of behaving with others in the living of everyday life so that social worlds can proceed in a fairly intelligible and orderly fashion most of the time. It will of course also be subject to serious conflict and breakdown, and sociology looks at this too.(Plummer 2010, p. 2)

To understand the sociological perception or perspective you must first gain an understanding of the interaction of culture and people, their socialisation, and how it affects their lives. “Yet culture’s significance is profound; it touches almost every aspect of who and what we are.” (Henslin, Possamai & Possamai-Indesedy 2011, p. 77) After all we started off without ideas, ideals, values, morals etc. These types of information, values, ideas were a development as a result of culture and its associate socialisation, and your immersement into it from birth.

Once we learn through sociology, what are the good, bad, beautiful and ugly of the values which a group hold with their culture, you are now aware of their ‘norms’, and you can now effectively work within these norms. These ‘norms’ are ‘expectations’, developed by the group which are a form of control, dictating the right and wrong way for acceptable and inacceptable behaviours. Sociologists have named the reaction to breaking of such rules as ‘sanctions’. Obviously, if you cross the line in a negative way you would receive a ‘negative sanction’, and a positive way would lead to a ‘positive sanction’.

Positive sanctions can be material, such as a prize, a trophy or money, but in everyday life they usually consist of hugs, smiles, a pat on the back or even handshakes and ‘high fives’. Negative sanctions can also be material – being fined in court is one example – but they, too, are more likely to be symbolic: harsh words or gestures such as frowns, stares, clenched jaws or raised fists.( Henslin, Possamai & Possamai-Indesedy 2011, p. 80)

Norms can vary widely between groups, for example with indigenous people of Australia most have little personal space, this means that when you are mixing with indigenous people you will often find that they encroach upon your personal space if you are not from their cultural background, and you might find it somewhat confronting. Also, you might have heard of not looking people in the eye which varies in cultures, this can be considered not just rude but an offence, depending upon the cultural group. It is necessary for a person within a culture to conform to that groups norms, so as to be accepted.

There are also, norms which are taken much more seriously such as MORES. These are essential to the core values and are required to be conformed within the community. To violate a ‘mores’ is violation of one of society’s most important rules. There is no flexibility in these core values, the community insists on total conformity. “For example a person who steals, rapes or kills has violated some of society’s most important mores.” (Henslin, Possamai & Possamai-Indesedy 2011, p. 80) As sociologist Ian Robertson (1987, p. 62) put it;

A man who walks down a
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