In this video, the main topics are collective behavior and social movements. The video does briefly discuss what social change is. Their definition of social change is that it “refers to any significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and cultural values.” The video then gives a definition of what collective behavior means to them. The definition is that it “refers to events that suddenly emerge. These events do not conform to rules or laws but instead are shaped based on the issue at hand.” According to the video, there are four different types of collect behavior. The first type they discuss is a crowd, which is a large number of people gathered together and they’re typically disorganized. An example of a crowd that the video used was people waiting at a bus station. The second type is Mass Hysteria which is a widespread, intense fear of and concern for a danger that turns out to be false or exaggerated. The example that is used is the way people act during a earth quake or volcanic eruption. The third type is the Fads and Fashion, which is things or a person that trend or is new and can catch a great amount of interest. The example that the video used was the KPOP. The last type is Social Movements, which are large and informal groups of people or organizations that focus on specific political or social issues. According to the video, there are three types of Social Movements. The first one is Revitalization which is the organized conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture. The second type is Reform, which is a social movement that aims to make gradual change or change in certain aspects of society. The last one is Revolutionary which is social movement dedicated to carrying out a revolution and it is a movement advancing exclusive competing claims to control of the state. This is a great video because it ties into what we are learning about. In class we were learning about social change. Like the video, we discusses collective behavior and social movements. The definition we used to explain what social change is, was “transformation of culture overtime.” The difference between what we talked about and what the video talked about is that we talked about collective actions and we talked about the stages of social movements. Overall the video tied to the things we learned in class and it gave us a little more insight into what collective behavior and social movements are and what they do. WORD COUNT: 429
In this video, family is defined as “groups of people who are related by genetics, marriage or choice and who share material, emotional and economic resources.” She says that family is more like a social institution than a organization. She explains that they seem more like a social institution because there is a common goal in families and are organized based on the positions of social status like mother or daughter. The video then explains about how kinship is usually apart of families. Kinship is “a social bond based on common ancestry, marriage or adoption.” The girl in the video says that it’s important to realize that family is a matter of choice. Family is usually seen as brothers, sisters, father, mother, uncles, aunts, etc. When she says that family is seen as a choice she’s talking about marriage and considering close friends as family. When you get married, you’re choosing that other person to become your family. Some people consider close friends family more than actual blood family. She says that people consider close friends family because family is usually looked at as people who choose to care for each other, share resources and share parts or all of their lives together. The video then explains that there are many types of families. The common type is the nuclear family which is made up of two parents with biological and or adopted children. The other common type is the single parent family. That’s when a single parent is raising the children. There is also another type called extended family. Extended family includes everyone who isn’t your parents like your uncles, grandparents, great aunts, etc. This video is a great video to use because it gives us the information we learned in class and in the book. This video even gives us a little more information than what we learned. Our definition almost completely matches the definition given in the video. Just like the video we also brought up extended and nuclear family. We explained that extended family is the kin family. Meaning these are family members of common descent. We had basically the same definition for nuclear family but the video went a little more into depth than we did. We explained that families have their own roles, patterns and behaviors. We gave the functionalists view on family. They view family as “one of the basic institutions that keep society running smoothly by providing functions such as producing and socializing children, economic production, etc.” In conclusion, this video really does tie in with what we learned. WORD COUNT: 427
In this video, she says that in order to understand gender, we have to think of the three concepts of sociology. The three concepts are structural functional theory, symbolic interaction theory and social conflict theory. All three concepts have different reasons for why gender exists.When looking at Structural Functionalism, gender is “organizing society into distinct roles that compliment each other.” This goes with the idea that men are providers and women are the ones who take care of the house and the family. When looking at Symbolic Interventionists, they are more focused on how gender is part of the every day life. They look at gender as something that a person does not something that is “imposed but institutions.” When looking at the Social Conflict Theory, it is argued that gender is ” a structural system that distributes power and privilege to some and disadvantage to others.” This falls with when men are seen as more dominate than anything else. She points out that men are falsely seen as the best fit for leadership because women are seen as more emotional compared to men. She states that the social conflict theory would not be complete without discussing and bringing up feminism. She also points out the fact that gender isn’t the same to everyone. Some people base gender off of masculinity and femininity. While other cultures have three genders. Many people classify gender differently and that’s totally fine. I believe this video was perfect for describing gender and it’s perfect because it ties into class. The things that the video missed was the type of genders. In class we learned that there are many types of genders like cis-gender, non-conforming gender, and transgender. Many people look at gender as gender roles. As of today, people are starting to use pro-nouns, different words for gender and different definitions. I have heard the biggest arguments that people have is that gender and sex aren’t the same thing. Many people believe gender is basically based on the body parts that you are born with where as other people believe gender and sex are two different things. Gender is what you choose to be and sex is what’s given to you at birth. I don’t have a personal opinion about it but I just think it’s crazy how much stuff has changed through-out the years about gender. But like I said, this video was perfect for describing gender. WORD COUNT: 403
In this video, she describes race as a socially constructed category. The video says that race is “used to categorize people who share biological traits that a society thinks are important.” They also state the fact that even though the physical traits are usually used to identify a race, they aren’t always applied consistently. She uses the example that someone who has a black parent and a white parent isn’t usually considered white. The video defines ethnicity as “socially constructed categories based on cultural traits that a society finds important rather than strictly biological traits.” Usually is a group that has shared cultural heritage. This video also brings up the common mistake that most people make which is saying that “Hispanic” is a race when it’s actually an ethnicity. The video then explains the difference between Hispanic, Latino and Latin American. Hispanics were viewed as the people whose heritage originated in a Spanish speaking country. Mexican-American or Cuban-Americans were considered Latin-Americans and Latinos were the one whose heritage originated from nations in the Americas that are south of the United States like Mexico, all of South America and the Caribbean. Race is usually based on observable and physical traits whereas ethnicities aren’t. Two people with the same ethnicity can be different races. Race is more commonly used as a way to organize people and distribute power but both race and ethnicity play a huge role in how people are perceived. Peoples race can influence social outcomes like education, income and experiences with the criminal justice system. In this video, sociologists define minorities as “any category of people, who are distinguished by physical or cultural difference, that a society sets apart and subordinates.” I think this video was a good choice because in class we talked about how race and ethnicity are similar yet different. Like the video, we also defined race as a socially defined category that’s based on biological differences between people. We defined ethnicity as a socially defined category based on nationality, history and culture factor. We also pointed out that sociologists see race and ethnicity as social constructions. The one thing that the video failed to mention was that ethnicity can be displaced or hidden whereas with race, racial identities are always showing. We also defined minority groups and the video said how the sociologists would define a minority. Overall this video is the perfect video because it helps add on to what we learned in class. WORD COUNT: 410
In this video, she says that sociological research helps understand the patterns of society. She also defines a research method as “a systematic plan for gathering and analyzing observations about the world.” She also explains how research starts. It starts off with a question where you have to define your concepts. Then you have to state a hypothesis where you have to define which variable you want to use and how you will measure this said variable. She uses examples like measuring someones height, someones income and someones relationship status. The video also states that it doesn’t matter how many categories your variable has because that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is the way you define your categories has to be reliable and valid. The video also states that everyone with the same characteristics has to be assigned with the same value and for a measurement to be valid, it has to measure something that “directly reflects the concept” that you’re studying. After all the variables are measured, the hypothesis becomes an educated guess on how the variables connect together. Hypothesis usually have the if, then and because statements. The next step is collecting data. She says that there are four main ways that sociologists collect data themselves: Experiments, Surveys, Participant Observation and Existing Resources. The video then brings Ethnography. They define it as the results from participant observation. Participant observation is when researchers observe people by joining them in their daily routines. They also state that when researches do interviews, surveys or experiments they have to make sure they have to take the ethics of their research seriously. The final step is turning the data you collected into information that will help you answer your question of interest. I chose this video for this blog to explain chapter 2 because like we learned in class, there are many research methods. In class we talked about how to research things. The words we used were scientific method. We talked about the same exact steps the video did like collecting data, using a question, forming a hypothesis, etc. The one thing the video didn’t bring up was qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data is when sociologists use research like interviews and photos to understand the world. Whereas quantitative is when sociologists study the world in numeric ways. Overall the video goes along with what we learned about chapter two. WORD COUNT: 402
In this video, she states that the definition that we may use for social class all depends on what society we’re interested in. The video explains Marx’s definition. He says that we have two classes: bourgeoisie (production of labor) and proletariat (people who do the labor). They say that it may be too simplistic and they use the example of if you own a store but you work at that same store, Marx would put you in the bourgeoisie because you’re the business owner and because you’re the one who hires people. The video also brings up Max Webers definition. Weber was more focused on what opportunities people have through their classes. The owner of a store that’s super big will have better opportunities than the one who owns a smaller shop. The video defines social class as “a group that’s daily similar in terms of income, education, power, and prestige in society.” American society is split into five classes: Upper class, Upper middle class, Average middle class, Working class and Lower class. The upper class can be tied with Marx’s system because it is the top of the income and wealth distribution (people who earn at least $250,000/year) This groups tends to have a lot of political and social power. There is a huge amount of people who lives in the middle class so sociologist split them up into three groups. This group has a college degree or post college degree. They’re mostly doctors, lawyers, etc. Average middle class make $50,000-$115,000 and they make up 35%. Half of this group is college educated and probably attended public instead of private schools. Their jobs consist of office workers, teachers, middle-managers. Lower middle class (working class) are less likely to own their own house and aren’t as wealthy as the others. They have jobs like manual labor like construction, manufacturing, maintenance work, factory work, etc. Don’t really have a college degree. Lower class makes less than $25,000/ year and work part-time with no set schedule and no benefits. I chose this video because it definitely ties into what we learned in class. In class we also learned Marx’s had two types of classes. He also believed that the classes are going to be more separated and un-equal. We also took the time to learn that Max Weber said there was three components: wealth, power and prestige. Both the video and in class talked about the five types of social class. We found that social reproduction plays a big part in social class. Pierre Bourdieu says that social reproduction is when social class is passed down from generation to generation. This video basically explained everything that we learned in class and from the book. WORD COUNT: 452
In this video, George Cooley’s looking-glass theory is explained. It is explained as “persons self grows out of societies interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.” The video also states that our view of ourselves comes from the impressions of how others see us. It also comes from the contemplation of personal qualities. We also base it off the social interactions that we have with other people. The video points out that there are three concepts. The three concepts are one, we imagine how we present ourselves to others. Two, we imagine how we imagine how we others evaluate us. Three, we develop feelings about ourselves. The video helps the viewers understand by offering an example. The example was about a girl who wears the prettiest dress she has and she thinks it looks beautiful with heels and as she walks down the halls people stare at her. Because people are staring at her, she thinks that they think she looks beautiful and pretty too. So she’s happy but the video says in reality, the girl doesn’t actually know what people think of her or why they were actually staring. The video says that our self esteem really does correlate with what we perceive others think of us. This video ends with tips on how to boost our self-esteem. To boost it, we need to think positive and stop and don’t over think. I believe this video is very helpful because it gives viewers the definition and even goes more into depth. It also gives examples to help people understand better. I would recommend this video to people who want to learn more about the theory. I chose this video because I believe it goes along with what we learned in class. In chapter 4, George Cooley theory is explained in the same way the video explains it to the viewers. The definition that was given to us is the “notion that the self develops through our perception of others’ evaluation and appraisals of us.” Chapter 4 also brought up that the sense of self depends on seeing oneself reflected on the interactions with others. The video also explained that. Chapter 4 goes on about how George Mead expanded his theory. George Mead talks about how this theory is created through social interaction and how it starts at a super early age in life like childhood. I personally think this theory sucks because we shouldn’t care or base how we feel about ourselves on what we think others think of us. We should be able to just be ourselves because we like ourselves. But that’s one of the hardest things to do in life. WORD COUNT: 444
In this video, sociology is explained as a study of society and human behavior. It also gives the definition of a society, which is a group of people who share the same culture. It says that we all share the same exact culture and although societies can be big, they are actually pretty small. They use examples to make sure that the viewer understands the point that is being given. The example was a girl singing in her room alone except that she wasn’t alone because she learned the song from a friend. She was influenced by the environment around her. The video then brings up the disciplines of sociology like economics and psychology. All these disciplines are aiming to understand the social world “through controlled and repeated observation.” The video then brings up sociological perspective. It points out that it can mean two things, seeing the general as particular and seeing the strange as familiar. The first one means that sociology understand behavior in a wider context. The second ones means looking at things like if it were the first time you have seen it and if you were from another world. These perspectives help us understand problems like women not being able to vote, slavery, etc. The video says that it helps us see the key concepts in society like marginalization, inequality, power, etc. This video ties into what we learned in class and to the reading. It ties in because we were learning what sociology meant and how we use it in the real world. Our definition that we used in class was that is is one of the social sciences disciplines that study the the human of the social world. We added two examples, an actor and a social analyst. This ties in with video about the two types of sociological perspectives. An actor is a person who sees the world with knowledge on what is already practical. A social analyst looks at the world with deeper insights and uses questions or reasoning to understand the world. The video and the reading both believe that sociology can help us develop that sociological lens. The other thing we mentioned were the different types of discipline. The video mentioned two of the seven that we listed, economics and psychology. We talked about how the disciplines help us shape the way we look at the world. The video I chose gave the same information that the book and the lecture did. It also gave out more information and examples that were helpful. Word Count: 423
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