Friday September 28

Today I read more of Chapter 5 and this is what I learned about Erik Erikson and the 8 stages of develpment

• Trust VS. Mistrust – Infants learn about basic trustworthiness of the environment. If they receive attention and affection -> they form a global impression of a trustworthy and secure world. If they receive pain and stress -> they believe life is unpredictable and untrustworthy.
• Autonomy VS. Shame and Doubt – Toddlers discover their own bodies and how to control them. If they succeed in doing things for themselves -> gain a sense of self-confidence and self-control. If they fail continuously -> feel shame and self-doubt.
• Initiative VS. Guilt – Children at age 4 or 5 explore beyond themselves. If exploration, projects and activities are effective -> learn to deal with people and things in constructive way and have strong sense of initiative. If they criticized or punished -> learn to feel guilty for many of their own actions.
• Industry VS. Inferiority – Children at ages 6 to 11 develop numerous skills.One’s sense of self is enriched by realistic development. A negative evolution is damaging at this time.
• Ego Identity VS. Ego Diffusion – Before adolescence, children learn a number of different roles. It is important to sort out and integrate these various roles into one constant identity. If a child fails to do this, the result is what Erikson calls ego diffusion.
• Intimacy VS. Isolation – In late adolescence and young adulthood, the central conflict is that of intimacy and isolation. This is the ability to share one’s self with another person of either sex without fear of losing one’s own identity.
• Generativity VS. Self-absorption – In adulthood, men and women are free to direct their attention more fully to the assistance of others. Individuals can direct energy without conflict to the solution of social issues.  Failure to resolve earlier conflicts -> results in preoccupation with one’s self.

• Integrity VS. Despair – In the last stages of life, individuals look back over their lives and judge them. If one looks back at life and is satisfied -> has sense of integrity. If one’s life seems to have misdirected energies and lost chances -> has sense of despair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdPPXGadRAU

Erik Erikson was a psychoanalyst who provided an alternative psychodynamic view in his theory of psychosocial development, which emphasizes our social interaction with other people. In Eriksons view, society and culture both challenge and shape us. Ericksons theory suggests that developmental change occurs throughout our lives in 8 distinct stages.

What can you do to benefit yourself and society:

Be humble, polite and have a smile on my face. Even though I may not think of this as a great act, it goes a long way in making a difference to the society. Negative emotions and bad attitude tend to create bad vibes that spreads around, which is picked up by other people. By improving my social skills, being friendly and approachable person, I can do a lot of good to my community.

What can you do to harm/disadvantage you and society

I could neglect my children

What can society do to benefit you and society itself

My government could use more tax dollars toward education

What can society do to harm/disadvantage you and society itself

My government could raise taxes for the poor

Tuesday September 25

Today I read Chapter 5 and I will tell you what I learned about Jean Piaget and the Stages of Cognitive Development.

Piaget's four stages of development occur in infancy, preschool, childhood, and adolescence. Each stage is characterized by a general cognitive structure that affects all of the child's thinking. Each stage represents the child's understanding of reality during that period, and each but the last is an inadequate approximation of reality. Development from one stage to the next is dependent upon the child's understanding of the environment in that particular stage. This phenomenon eventually causes such a degree of cognitive disequilibrium that thought structures require reorganizing.

Sensorimotor Development: Birth to 2 Years

According to Piaget, the most striking characteristics of children's behavior occur in the first 2 years
 of life.The child's world is in the here and now, because it cannot yet be represented mentally.  In a
 very literal sense, objects only exist when the child can actually sense them and interact with them.
When objects are not being sensed, then they cease to exist to the child. This shows the idea of object
permanence; a realization of the permanence of objects.

The Sensorimotor stage is characterized by the child experiencing their world through movement and
 senses.During this stage, the children's thoughts are exceptionally egocentric, meaning they cannot
 percieve the world from anothers perspective or viewpoint other than their own.

The sensorimotor stage is divided into 6 substages:
1.Simple reflexes (Birth - 1 Month Old) Characterized by reflexes such as rooting and sucking
2. Primary circular reactions (1-4 Months Old) Infants learn to coordination sensations. A primary
circular reaction is when the infant tries to reproduce an event that happened by accident (ex: sucking
 thumb)
3.Secondary circular reactions( 4-8 Months Old) Children become aware of things beyond their own
body and become more object oriented. (ex: accidentally shaking a rattle and continuing to do so for
the sake of satisfaction)
4. Coordination of secondary circular reactions(8-12 Months Old) Children start to show
intentionality (ex: using a stick to reach something)
5.Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 Months Old) They start to explore new possibilities of objects
6.Internalization of schemes(18-24 Months Old) A shift to symbolic thinking

Preoperational Thinking: 2 to 7 Years
This stage brings a marked improvement in the child's increased understanding of the world from the
sensorimotor stage. However, compared to an adults understanding the child's preoperational thinking
still exhibits serious shortcomings.

The preoperational stage is divided into 2 substages: 
1. Preconceptual thinking (2-4 years)
This substage is characterized by the child's inability to understand all the properties of classes. The
child has acquired the ability to represent objects mentally and to identify them based on their
membership in classes, however this child now reacts to all similar objects as if they were identical.
This understanding is incomplete because they cannot yet distinguish between apparent identical
members of the same class.

Transductive reasoning is another feature of the child's thinking in the substage. Transductive reasoning
 is a faulty type of logic that involves making inferences from one specific to another. It can lead to
correct or accurate conclusions, but it is not guaranteed to do so.

2. Intuitive thinking (4-7 years)
By this age children have formed a more complete understanding of concepts and have mostly stopped
transductive reasoning. Their thinking has become more logical, although it is structured more about
perception than logic.

Conservation is the term used to to refer to the realization that certain quantitative attributes of objects
 remain unchaged unless something is added to or taking away from them. This includes mass, number,
 area, and volume are all capable of being conserved.

Example: Children are shown two identical beakers filled to the same level with water. The experimenter
 then pours the contents of one beaker into a tall thing tube. Participants who had previously said
 the amount in each beaker were equal are now asked whether there is as much, more or less water in the
 new container. At the intuitive stage, they will almost always say that there is more because the water
 level is much higher in the tube. This shows that they are misled by the appearance as well as by lack
of specific logical abilities.

Egocentrism is another type of thinking that is typical of the intuitive substage. Egocentrism is the inability
 to easily accept the point of view of other.

Concrete Operations: 7 to 11 Years

In this stage children begin to think logically but remain very concrete in their logic. This stage is centered
 around rules that now govern the child's logic and thinking - rules such as: reversibility, identity, and compensation.

The first, reversibility, emerges when the child realizes that an action could be reversed and certain consequences
will follow from doing so. 
Identity is the idea that for every action or operation there is another operation that leaves it unchanged. For example,
 adding or taking away nothing produces no change
Compensation is a property defined by the logical consequences of combining more than one operation or more than
 one dimension.

Classification is another achievement of this period. This means that children acquire the skills they lead to the ability
 to describe things by terms of classes, numbers, and series.

Seriating occurs when a child can order objects in a series because they have acquired knowledge of them through experience.
 The picture above is an example of seriating. This child has arranged her dolls by height which is a form of seriation.

Formal Operations: After 11 and 12 Years
In this stage children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind. Children
 directly apply their logic to real objects or imagine objects. Those who are in this stage also develop propositional
 thinking. This type of thinking is not restricted to the consideration of the concrete or the potentially real but instead
deals with hypothetics. Children in this stage can now reason from real to other possibilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7rYABS5np0
In this video we have discussed about piaget cognitive development theory. Key points of this video is: About Piaget, Basic components of Cognitive Theory, Stages of Cognitive Theory, Educational Implication , Critical Evaluation,

What can you do to benefit yourself and society & What can you do to harm myself and society
I will do the society a huge favor if I strictly follow the 3 R’s – reduce, re-use and recycle. Remind myself that I am contributing to the increasing pollution and destroying the environment by choosing disposable products, especially the carry bags. Use reusable products
 and save the environment. Recycle the products I can.

What can society do to benefit you and society itself
To have more trash can's in the public

What can society do to harm/disadvantage you and society itself.
To remove all public trash cans

Tuesday October 2nd 2018

In class today we watched Kuabs video on the five stages of grief. It used the example from a Simpsons episode of Homer finds out that he was going to die. homer continued to go through the five stages of grief within a minute. It was funny. People were also able to present their life map to the class and the theory they applied to their map. Chrystal covered the agents of socialization. The agents of socialization are family, schooling, peer groups and mass media. She talked about how each agent can have a positive or a negative effect o a person. We also talked about Resocialization: Total Institutions. Total Institutions are settings in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff. Their purpose is resocialization which is radically altering an inmates personality through deliberate control of the environment. This is broken down into a two stage process. First the staff breaks down the new inmates existing identity. Second the staff tries to build a new self. 

Goffman writes about the mortification of the self with in total institutions, it is the processes by which this “individual self” is slowly stripped of its connections to the outside world to the point where the self is given up to be defined by the social arrangements inside the total institution. The mortification of the self is taking away the identity of those who step into prison, if they were more focused on restorative justice they would not take their identity away. Prisoners self is taken away and in many cases they are dehumanized with in the walls of the prison. With in these walls they suffer dehumanizing treatment from guards. Prisoners are not being groomed to re-enter society a functioning member of society but as a criminal in society. Prisoners are released with no help in becoming a functioning member of society. They lose many rights when they are released and often are unable to get employment because they must disclose they have been in prison. Without employment they are already breaking their parole/probation, putting them at risk of being sent back into prison. The criminal justice system needs to be restructured in order to be more restorative, in order to work properly. Many are in prison and the U.S. is currently the number one in the world with the number of prisoners. Millions are in prison with no hope of re-entering society as a functioning member of society. The criminal justice system expects them to have their shit together when they take every government assistants away because they have been convicted of a crime. Many young people are losing their possibilities of going to college because they are unable to apply for financial aid because it is taken away because of their criminal record. They re-enter society broken and without a clue as to how to survive with a criminal record. Many find themselves becoming career criminals, seeing it as the only means to survive. Having no other way to support themselves are forced to commit crimes and reoffend. The system has many barriers that prevent you from being free and from following societies norms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_-KAkMIiM
people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault discussed total institutions in the language of complete and austere institutions.

What can you do to benefit yourself and society
I can donate blood and save lives. By donating blood, you are not only saving the life of the needy person, but also have the benefits of your own blood being screened for infections like HIV and Hepatitis C before being transfused to a patient. If any life threatening infection is seen, the donor will be informed by the doctors.

What can you do to harm/disadvantage you and society
By not donating blood

What can society do to benefit you and society itself
By offering free flu shots to everyone

What can society do to harm/disadvantage you and society
By not giving free immunizations to children

Friday September 21st 2018

In class today we watched a video about different cultures and we did an in class quiz. In the first video we watched was about the Australian Aboriginals. The Aboriginal people believe that the earth and everything in it was made by their ancestral spirits. They called this Dreamtime. It was a time when the rivers, mountains, rocks, deserts and plants were made. The Dreamtime stories are an important part of the Aboriginal culture. One thing I found particularly interesting was the food. The grub is the most important insect food of the desert and has historically been a staple in the diets of Aboriginal Australians. The different larvae are said to taste to taste similar they are edible either raw or lightly cooked in hot ashes. They are sought out as a high-protein food by the indigenous Australians. The Witchetty grub tastes similar to almonds, and when cooked, the skin becomes crisp like roast chicken, while the inside becomes light yellow, like a fried egg.

Part of our homework is to read chapter 5-socialization. Within the first part of the chapter they discussed childhood isolation. It was heartbreaking! The studies of childhood isolation teaches us that it is absolutely critical that a child socialized in order to grow and develop. Three terms that caught my attention are:

Self: a dimension of personality composed of an individual’s self-awareness and self-image.

Looking-glass self: the idea that self-image is based on how others respond to us.

Total institutions: settings in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff.

https://youtu.be/WbBm_YLwowc

 This video is about what makes you… you? How did you get to be that way? Today we’re talking about social development, starting with the role of nature and nurture in influencing a person’s development. We’ll discuss socialization, the importance of care & human interaction, as well as theories of development from a range of theorists.

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is to encourage my children to be more social on a physical note rather than on social media.

One thing that I could do to affect myself and society in a negative way would be to disregard the warnings of social media.

Society could affect me in a positive way if there were more opportunities for a single mom with kids to socialize.

Society could influence me in a negative way if I had to do online schooling.

Tuesday September 18th 2018

In class today we went over chapter 3-culture. We talked about how are culture differs on a large scale and also a small scale. Li-Chin brought up the Amish and a court case regarding fire alarms in the house. My parents live in Augusta and they also own a milk plant in Augusta that only receives milk from Amish patrons. I remember my parents talking about this in detail. Now I understand that the Amish don’t live off of electricity. But fire alarms work on batteries and the Amish use flashlights that also work on batteries…So what’s the big deal? The Amish also will use their neighbors phone but they won’t own their own. Again…what’s the big deal? So to me, none of it makes any logical sense. But they must have some reason that makes sense to them in order to make that decision. These are just a couple of examples of how are culture shapes our thinking.

Three terms that caught my attention in chapter 3-culture are

High Culture: cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite.

Popular Culture: cultural patterns that are widespread among society’s population.

Counterculture: cultural patters that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society.

https://youtu.be/RV50AV7-Iwc

This video shows what is culture? How do we define it and how does it change? We’ll explore different categories of culture, like low culture, high culture, and sub-cultures. We'll also revisit our founding theories to consider both a structural functionalist and a conflict theory perspective on what cultures mean for society.

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is to be willing to accept different cultures.

One thing that I could do to affect myself and society in a negative way is to be resistant to different cultures.

Society could affect me in a positive way if there were a more diverse population in my area.

Society could influence me in a negative way if racism becomes more prevalent.

Friday September 14th 2018

Today in class we watched a video about sociological investigation.

Li-Chin gave us these examples: In the academic research world, people with integrity want to make a issue or problem more objective. When you do research for example how are college students using social media? You can conduct a literature review, you go to a four year college your professor will tell you to do your literature review! Literature review is a very important step. When you go to find a job you research the company you are applying for what kind of reputation and what types of promotion do they have and what type of culture does the company have?

Three terms
Interpretive Sociology:The study of society that focuses on the meanings people attach to their social world.
Critical Sociology:The study of society that focuses on the need for social change.
Experiment:Research method for investigating cause and effect under highly controlled condition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwhK-iEyXYA
Today we’re talking about how we actually DO sociology. Nicole explains the research method: form a question and a hypothesis, collect data, and analyze that data to contribute to our theories about society.

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is to be more consciously aware of what I post on Facebook and what effect it may have.

One thing that I could do to affect myself and society in a negative way would be to promote or post things on Facebook that could have a negative on society such as fake news.

Society could affect me in a positive way if the news presented more positive stories.

Society could influence me in a negative way if the new stayed on track with its fear based stories.

Cultural Experience

In 2007 I went to Italy for the entire month of August. At the time I was dating a person that was born  and raised in Sicily. He moved to the united states when he was 19. He had a very heavy accent. There were many cultural differences. I loved it. The society there is very relaxed. They don’t take certain things so seriously such as working 40 hours a week. When I was there you would wake up and eat a small breakfast and you would go about your day until about 1 pm and you would go home and relax, maybe take a nap and then about 4pm you go back and continue your day. Everything is in military time so I got to learn that. The cars and the roads are tiny! Some of their roads look more like sidewalks! The society there is very rich in Catholicism and very family oriented.

Tuesday September 11th 2018

So today in class we talked more about social media. Being as though September is Suicide Awareness month I thought that it would be important to talk about cyber-bullying and how that can drive someone to end their own life. When I was in middle school or high school the internet didn’t exist yet and certainly Facebook was just a figment in someone’s mind. I remember times where I was bullied in school, on the playground or on the bus ride home but when I got home that bullying stopped. I mean yes the torment stuck with me but the person that bullied me was gone at least until the next day when school resumed. Now there is a whole wide world of social media that never stops, never shuts off and is ever relentless.

Here are some facts that I found interesting. 1/3 of young people between the ages of eleven and fifteen have been victims of cyber-bullying. A larger share of girls(41%) that boys (29%) report this experience. 15% of young people report engaging in this behavior.

81% of children under two currently have some kind of digital dossier of footprint, with images of them posted online.

In Canada, 34% of children have a digital footprint before they are born.

Children reach the age of “social media maturity “ at about age 11.

Should we teach our children as though they have two lives, or one?

The complexities of identity pose a serious threat to the well-being of our youth and there is little being done systematically to educate students around these topics.

Three terms
Androcentricity. Androcentricity (literally, “focus on the male”) refers to approaching an issue from a male perspective. 
Overgeneralizing. This problem occurs when researchers use data drawn from people of only one sex to support conclusions about “humanity” or “society.”
Gender blindness. Failing to consider gender at all is known as gender blindness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wFZ5Dbj8DA
How do the groups that you're part of affect you? How do you, in turn, affect those groups? Today we are talking about how people in society come together with a look at social groups. We’ll look at what social groups are, the different kinds of groups that exist, group dynamics, leadership, conformity, networks and mor

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is to be more consciously aware of what I post on Facebook and what effect it may have.

One thing that I could do to affect myself and society in a negative way would be to promote or post things on Facebook that could have a negative on society such as fake news.

Society could affect me in a positive way if the news presented more positive stories.

Society could influence me in a negative way if the new stayed on track with its fear based stories.