Chapter 9: Social Stratification

The division of society into categories is called social stratification. Almost every society in history has divided it’s members into categories depending on their characteristics.Social stratification divides people into groups depending on their status, ethnicity and physical characteristics. During social stratification groups of people are made and called systems and classes. Many factors influence your class. Social stratification usually also involves a certain level and people that live in poverty, the standard of living that is below the minimum level considered adequate by society.

A system of social stratification is the caste system, a system where scarce resources and social rewards are distributed on the basis of ascribed resources. In this system you will have for all your life what you are born with. Exogamy, the marriage outside of one’s own social category, instead, they practice endogamy, where you are only allowed to marry someone from your own social category. There also exists the class system, here, the distribution of scarce resources and rewards are determined on the basis of achieved statuses.

Factors that influence social stratification are social class, this is the grouping of people with similar levels of wealth, power and prestige. Wealth is the addition of the persons assets (the value of everything that person owns) and his income (money earned through salaries etc…). Power is the ability to control the behavior of others, with or without their consent. Prestige is the respect, honor, recognition, or courtesy an individual receives from other members of society. Sociologists have come up with the term socioeconomic status, this is a rating that combines social factors such as educational level, occupational prestige, and places of residence with the economic factor of income.

We can see the different social classes since many years before and still we see it now.

Poverty is a very big issue in most countries today. In many countries, the minimum income a person can earn is called poverty level. 35% of people that live in poverty are children less than 18 years, about 57% of people that live in poverty are women, 22% of African Americans live under poverty level standards, being the minority with biggest poverty level, and of these 22%, 30% are kids with less than 18 years. That is how shocking poverty levels are today in America. Poverty is an issue we should be concerned of with no doubt, it has many effects on people. Poverty affects peoples life chances, the likelihood that individuals have of sharing in the opportunities and benefits of society. For example, health, length of life, housing, and education. People that live in poverty also tend to have shorter life expectancies than people than other members of society. Life expectancy is the average number of years that a person born a specific year is estimated to live. Fortunately the government is doing its job and is trying to fight poverty, which we can see has devastating effects.

History has taught us how no matter how hard we try to create a society where everyone is equal, bringing ideas such as communism, even though sounds very good, is practically impossible. Functionalists and Conflict perspective sociologists have many theories to why society is the way it is and why social stratification is unavoidable, and probably even necessary. But after all, we can’t do much to stop it, just to deal with the biggest problem of social stratification, which is that it makes poverty just as unavoidable as social stratification itself. 

Chapter 8: Deviance and Social Control

     Deviance is behavior that violates social norms. It is normal to think that deviance is a pretty bad thing and that no one should do deviant acts and we see deviant people differently than we see other people who have committed the same acts, but we all commit deviant acts. We know it is bad to do things that are against social norms, yet we still do these things. Many sociologists have come to the question of why, knowing that what we are doing or about to do is bad, why do we do it anyways, how do we even learn this behavior of going against social norms? There are many theories that explain what might cause people to have a deviant behavior, sociologist’s theories depend on their perspective, so there are three different theories that will try to find an answer to this question.

     Functionalist sociologists, who view sociologists from the Functionalists perspective, believe in the strain theory. The strain theory, mainly developed by Robert K. Merton, views deviance as the natural outgrowth of the values, norms, and structure of society. What does this mean? Some societies view economic status as extremely important, so individuals in this society must meet the society’s expectations but simply can’t get there, this person will then be pressured by himself to do whatever possible to reach the economic status expected, and the norms will become unclear and inapplicable now because he must break them to accomplish his goal. When these norms become unclear or inapplicable, it is called a anomie.

    Conflict perspective sociologists believe that competition and social inequality are what lead to deviance. According to this theory deviance surges from the struggle between the people who have power in a society and those who don’t. those who have power will commit deviant acts in order to maintain their power and position while those who don’t have any power will commit deviant acts either because they want to get to the power or because their self-esteem is low and they feel powerless. People with power make more emphasis on crimes or deviant acts that people with less power are more likely to commit so then the rest of societies view the un-powerful as more deviant simply because their deviant acts are more recognizable than those of the more powerful.

  The interactions perspective is the third perspective. See deviance as a natural occurrence, and they created the control theory. According to the control theory, people that are very conformed with their society and have strong bonds with their societies are less likely to commit any deviant act than people who are less conformed and have weaker bonds with their societies. Interactionalists sociologists also believe that people learn deviance, they made the cultural transmission theory that states that deviance is a learned behavior we learn with the interaction of others. The main part of the cultural transmission theory is a term called differential association, if you hang out mainly with deviant people, then you are more likely to commit deviant acts than if you hanged out with non-deviant people. In the interaction perspective, there also exists a term called techniques of neutralization, this is what people do in order to leave aside all their moral and ethic beliefs and are able to commit deviant acts. Labeling theory says that deviant people are commonly label as such, people who commonly commit deviant acts will be labeled as deviant. 

   Population of people in prison in the United States has grown nearly 300 thousand more people in only 5 years. Three out of every hundred Americans are in jail. If I had to choose a perspective which I find more accurate, even though I usually go for the conflict perspective, would be the interactionist perspective, not the control theory but the cultural transmission theory. If we see our parents spanking the dog all the time, or shouting out unacceptable words constantly, you are going to think that this is a totally acceptable and normal behavior. I also find the differential association very accurate since I have personally experienced it before. If you are always around deviant people, you will adapt to the way they live, how they act, and incorporate their ways of thinking to yourself. But it is very important to me to understand that you always have the opportunity to choose whether you really want to do something before you do something, you always get your chance to think on what you are doing, even if you don’t use that chance to think about what you are doing, that opportunity will always be the same no matter whom you are with, the difference is that in an environment with deviant people, opportunities to commit deviant acts are more common, constant, and normal.

People who commit deviance acts, which are considered crimes, they are end to the prison.

Chapter 6: Adolescence vs. Chapter 7: Aulthood

     Adolescence is a unique stage in life as well as adulthood. In this article I’m going to describe these two different stages of life adulthood and adolescence. Adolescence can be defined as the period between the normal onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood. One of the processes that will mark this change and becoming an adolescent is the puberty. Puberty is a physical maturing that makes and individual capable of sexual reproduction. Adolescents simply do exist as concept in many parts of the world. However, puberty occurs in all humans. In America, adolescents are considered from the ages 12 to 19.

      An adolescent doesn't have the same experience as other adolescent, and with this they are 5 different characteristics as biological growth and development, that is as I mention before puberty.  Puberty is universal because is a biological rather than cultural in origin, the height and weight also changes in body proportions of an adolescent. The second characteristic is undefined status, because different adults treat adolescents are if they were adults or children’s. Different people have different attitudes about adolescents. The third characteristic is the increased decision making, is about adolescents making their own decision. The forth characteristic is the increase pressure, adolescents have pressure in school and in other social groups if they are accepted or not. And the last characteristic is the search of self this is how an adolescent think about themselves and it is mature enough to know what they want in life. Teenagers begin dating to meet new people and get involved in more profound romance relationships. This adds to the amount of pressure of the adolescent as well. Dating is usually more common in places where individuals can actually choose whom they want to marry, there are places in the middle east, for example, where dating is not a common thing since usually people tend to see their couple the day of their marriage.

      Major issues with changes in adolescence are drug use and sexual behavior. This is probably one of the most notable changes one undergoes during adolescence after the biological changes. When you are just a kid there are things, such as drugs and sexual relationships, which don’t even come to mind, but it is impressive to see how percentages of adolescents that do get influenced and engaged in these kind of activities, is increasing at a very high rate. Birth rates from unmarried women over 15 years have boomed from 8% in 1940 to over 40% in year 2000. This has led to a rapid increase in the amount of adolescent mothers, at least in the Us, this leads to an unhealthy child and mother, parents might not finish high school do to having the baby, parents have a smaller economical income, risk that the child might end up just as bad as the parents. Those are all the problems associated with early pregnancy, which has become a great deal in the past few years. Just as important and just as impressive is the rate of drug use on adolescents. 80% of all seniors in the US have taken alcohol before, over 60% have done cigarettes and 50% have already taken marijuana, that’s how big this issue is. These are all changes that adolescents might experience, and most actually do.

 The major issues that we experience as been an adolescent.

     Adulthood is the last stage of everyone’s life, and many people think that by adulthood you have already undergone all the changes that you had to do and therefore you don’t change during adulthood, well that is a lie. 

     The first big change for an adult is leaving home, because of college, getting an employment, the reason doesn't matter, and leaving home is the first big physical and psychological change of an adult.  This occurs usually in the “Novice stage” of adulthood, the first years, when you are bigger around the age of 23, there are two main tasks that you are expected to accomplish, begin to try getting a job in your career and to become a adult that has a socially structured life. Probably most of the changes occur during the age 30 transitions, when you are around this age; you begin to think about all your past decisions and is the period of life when people might decide to have a change in their life. The next part of adulthood is to successfully settle down, have accomplished a job, a home, a family. You might as well go to older people for advice during this age. The last stage of adulthood is realizing that your dreams might have been far beyond the accomplished and begins to have more dreams that are more realistic. These are the changes that men undergo throughout their adulthood, its different for women though.

     Women’s development through adulthood can be divided into three phases. Phase one is leaving the family, women’s adulthood begins when they leave their home, either because of their career or marriage. The next phase of women’s adulthood is how women have children; most women don’t work again after having their children. The last phase, phase three, in women adulthood development is once the children reach school age, women tend to return to their jobs, this would be the third and final stage of women adulthood.

           Adolescence and adulthood are very different from each other, even though in both stages of life the individual undergoes constant change, the ways in which the individual changes are very different. It is very important to undergo these changes, they are what prepare us for the future, changes we do in adulthood prepare us for those that we will live in our adulthood that is why this stage is so important. Probably right now the most concerning and most alarming issue would be the increasing rates of sexual and drug activities on adolescents, it is simply unexplained how rates have simply boomed and increased at such a high rate in the past few years.
     
  

Chapter 5: The Socialization of the Individual

     The personality for each individual is different depending on the society they are found on. You probably think of someone social skill or social appeal by how their personality is on a society. Personality is the sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristic of an individual. Our personality traits are determined how we adjust to our environment and how we react in specific situations. People’s personalities continue to develop throughout their lifetime. Specific traits change at different rates and to different degrees. Once people reach adulthood, personality traits change at a slower rate. Personality development varies from individual to individual. For many years sociologist have debated what determines personality and social behavior. One idea was the heredity, the transmission of genetic characteristics from parent to children. Another point of view is the instinct, is an unchanging, biologically inherited behavior pattern. There are also three theories of how socialization happens, we can also relate socialization to the nature vs. nurture debate, and finally there are also some agents of socialization, which enable socialization to happen. 

             Personality are the the total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values in a social environment.

     There were three main sociologists that created theories on how socialization works. Even though there are three main theories, this does not necessarily mean that these theories are totally different and we should choose the one we find more accurate, actually, each theory is kind of like a continuation to the previous theory. John Locke established the theory of “The Tabula Rasa”. In the “Tabula Rasa” theory, kids are not born with a personality, they actually create their personality during their childhood and then this personality develops and changes throughout the kid’s life. Locke believed that you could shape the new born’s personality to be however you want it to be, he even thought that if you took him a new born, he himself could shape the kid’s personality to be however he wants it to be. Charles Horton Cooley developed his own theory as well, “The Looking-Glass Self” theory. According to Cooley, people create a self image, or a sense of self, based on how others see them. By definition, this theory means, “the interactive process by which we develop an image of ourselves based on how we imagine we appear to others.” According to Cooley, there are three steps that take us to this, first of all, we imagine how we appear to others, then, based on their reactions to us, we try to compare how others see us to how we see ourselves, finally, we develop feelings about us based on how we interpret the way in which others judge us. George Mead is the last of the three sociologists we named, Mead believed that Cooley was right, that we do see ourselves as others see us, but he mentioned that that’s only the beginning of the process, he created the term role-taking, and described it as, not only do we see ourselves as others see us, but we eventually begin to act based on how others expect us to do so.

     It is clear how socialization occurs, but it would never happen though if we didn’t have the agents of socialization. The agents of socialization are, by definition, “the specific individuals, groups, and institutions that enable socialization to take place.” There are a variety of socialization agents, the most common are the family, the peer group, the school, and the mass media. We can see a correlation between all these groups, we are in continuous exposure to each, the average kid goes to school 8 hours a day for 5 days a week until they are past adolescence, and then they get into college, the average person is around peers or family basically all the time, and even though we might not be aware of this, we are in continual exposure to mass media every day of our lives.

The age in which you are usually socialized is extremely critical. The only reason why humanity has succeeded is because we have been able to master the socialization system that will prepare little kids for the future, because we have been able to identify and understand the process of socialization. It is amazing how important socialization or finding the sense of self is to any individual. Socialization not only is an important issue to handle, but it is also a clue, in a way, that gives us a reason to believe that nurture might be the actual reason to a nature nurture debate that has gotten thousands of sociologists in history to try to find the unfound answer to what actually influences the human being`s behavior.