What plays the most crucial role in resistance to social change? Economic factors or Cultural factors?

Chapter 16 Assignment

            I think that economic factors play more of a role in resistance to social change.  Cultural factors do play a big role in resistance to social change but I think the economic factors are more complex and will be the hardest to overcome.  For example, it can be expensive for manufacturers to meet high standards for the safety of products and workers, and for the protection of the environment (Richard T. Schaefer, Pg.424).  Conflict theorists argue that in a capitalist economic system, many firms are not willing to put out the money needed to meet strict safety and environmental standards.  These firms are more likely to resist social change by cutting corners or by pressuring the government to relieve regulations. 

For example, on 09/11/2001 the government just asked and told many people to go and help clean up the debris as soon as possible.  They did not take the time or use the money that should have been put into first testing the safety of the area.  They merely sent people out to clean up all of the debris without regard for their safety.  Now, ten years later many firemen and first responders are very sick and many have already died from breathing in the harmful debris from the terrorist attacks on 09/11/01.  If the government would have taken a little time out to investigate the safety and then stated which precautions that people should have been using we probably could have avoided the fact that so many people are sick today.  Social economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term “vested interests” to refer to those people who will suffer in the event of social change.  President Obama has stopped NASA’s constellation project and the people who worked for NASA are an example of “vested interests”.  The reason why social factors are so hard to overcome is because the problems are quite complex.  Both sides of the story need to be heard from policymakers and protesters.   

“NIMBY” stands for not in my backyard; these people protest landfills, prisons, nuclear power facilities, and even bike trails and group homes.  These people largely contribute to resistance of social change.  I think that they have good reason to protest some of these things because they are trying to protect their community and the environment from incinerators, landfills and hazardous waste dumps.  At the same time, policymakers do need to do their job because we need landfills and other locations to dispose of hazardous materials.  If we could brainstorm and come to a mutual agreement that will somewhat satisfy the needs and concerns of both policy makers and NIMBY protestors we could prosper and succeed in overcoming the major obstacles involved in resistance to social change.  I will play my part to the future generations by staying involved in the current events.  If I am given the chance to become fully informed on current issues that we are facing then I can play my part by helping and brainstorming to come up with the best possible solutions to the problems.  I will try my hardest to consider the factors and concerns of both sides and then I will help to make the best decision that will benefit our planet and the economy best.    

This Is How I Became Aware of my Social Class Position in Society

There are many different ways to become aware of your social class position in society.  Socioeconomic status (SES) is a measure of social class that is based on income, education, and occupation.  I became aware of my social class position when I was very young.  I was in elementary school when I learned of my social class position in society.  My social class position back then could be measured by my parent’s occupations, my neighborhood and my parent’s income.  I lived in an apartment building across the street from my school.  My mother is a nurse so this is a prestige occupation, meaning that nurses gain respect and admiration in society.  My father was working in a hospital doing maintenance on the building.  I remember always worrying about what I was going to wear to school because I did not want to get made fun of.  According to Richard T. Schaefer I am considered to be lower-middle class.  I could also be considered to be working class or Proletariat because both of my parents worked very hard to earn the small amounts of cash they earned throughout their lives.    

I realized that I was not rich and I didn’t come from a wealthy family.  I can remember my parents always having problems paying the rent and we ended up moving a lot because of my parent’s money problems.  I remember there being times that we had to collect public assistance because of both of my parents being out of work.  I had become aware of my social class by the reactions and feedback I received from my peers and my teachers in school.  I noticed that my teachers seemed to favor children that came from higher class.   Therefore, my social class has changed throughout my life and I will hopefully experience life chances throughout the next course in my life.  Life chances are opportunities to provide ourselves with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences.  Life chances are considered in measures such as housing, education and health.  My social class position in society now is that I am an individual striving for improvement within free societies that offer substantial mobility. 

I do not think I have ever been unaware of my true position in society.  I have experienced false consciousness.  False consciousness is an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect their objective position.  A worker with false consciousness may adopt an individualistic viewpoint toward capitalist exploitation.  At my old job I felt as if my boss was exploiting me.  Everyone working at the facility was being exploited but some got demoralized worse than others and some talked about the exploitation and some did not.  Those who spoke about the exploitation never actually did anything about it they just felt the need to talk about it I suppose.                   

Formal & Informal Social Control & Deviance

I used to work at a Nursing home in Clark New Jersey as a dietary aide.  I was employed there for a little over a year of my life and some days while I was working, I felt like I was in hell!  I have had many jobs in my life but none could compare to Clark.  This job was completely ridiculous and I have never experienced such harsh treatment in my entire life!  The Supervisor and assistant supervisor were the most ignorant people I had ever met and they treated their workers like they were beneath them.  I hate to even have to retrieve my negative memories of working at Clark but I chose to write my paper on Clark because I thought it would be more interesting than writing it on Kean for my readers.  I’ll start by saying that I was the new girl and I definitely got picked on and I was totally misunderstood. 

One example of a mechanism showing informal social control on my old job were the fact that my old supervisor, (“Margaret”) would knit pick to find the most small problem and then she would be in attack mode and be very unprofessional by yelling at me.  Margaret would talk to me in a nasty, loud, disrespectful tone which would cause me to be embarrassed in front of my co-workers.  This supervisor would bully people who were too afraid to stand up to her and stick up for themselves.  Sometimes, I even had to prove to her that she was wrong about her assumptions involving my work.  For some reason she did not like me and she made sure that everyone in the building knew she didn’t like me.  I am not the only employee who has felt Margaret’s evil wrath, meaning that former and current employees were well aware of how nasty this woman was to certain people but no one had enough courage to complain about her.  Margaret yelling at me and causing embarrassment was an informal social control mechanism. 

Margaret used informal social control by giving me dirty looks, ridiculing me, slamming objects down in front of me, (including her fist on a steel counter-top), yelling in my face and saying goodnight to everyone except me.    

At my old job I would get in trouble for doing things how I was trained to do them and other employees did the same exact things I did but I was the only one who got written up for things.  The write ups I received were formal social control mechanisms.  For example, I got written up for sending plastic plate bottoms through the dishwasher doubled up.  I was trained to double them up and everyone else doubled them up but I was the one who got written up for doing it.  Suspension is also another form of formal social control.  For example, I was suspended because I needed my brake to take my inhaler for my asthma.  Many days I did not receive my brakes at all but this particular day, I was yelled at and told I could not take my brake.  I went and took my break anyway because by law I am entitled to it but ended up getting written up for it.

I think that informal social control is more effective because I felt worse when I was being yelled at and ridiculed by management.  Social control theory suggests we systematically conform to society’s norms.  This is true because while I was discriminated against at my old job, I just conformed like everyone else did and I did my work and shut my mouth.  “Deviance is exhibiting behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society” (Pg.165).  In the eyes of society I was being deviant by sending through two bottoms at a time through the dishwasher but I was not being deviant.  Management didn’t even want to hear what I had to say they just would write me up and suspend me.  I always did my job to the best of my ability and I am an extremely hard worker and did not deserve the harsh treatment and verbal abuse I received at my old job.   

According to society I guess I was deviant but according to me I was just doing my job as I was told to do it.  At one point, after a year of abuse, I typed a letter to the Human Resource Department exposing the harassment and the hostile work environment. The same day I submitted the letter exposing the abuse, I was terminated from Clark Nursing Home for no reason.  According to society I was deviant by speaking up for myself and typing a letter.  According to me Clark was deviant for terminating my employment simply because I stood up for my rights as an employee.  I’m kind of glad that I experienced the harsh treatment at Clark Nursing Home when I was working in the kitchen because it gave me the motivation to go back to College and get a Bachelors’ degree in Psychology.  I already have an Associates’ degree in Business Management but I still cannot find a job.

Mass Media and Our Views

Ralph and I on Fri. Oct. 7th @ 1:30pm, in the Nancy Thompson Library on Kean University Campus.  Ralph and I discussed our views on Mass Media.  It was pretty cool to get together and do such a diverse assignment that Professor Todman assigned to our Sociology class for our day off in observance of Christopher Columbus.  Ralph actually showed me a cool shortcut to uploading my pics from my digital camera to my laptop.  So, I was glad that Ralph showed me a really cool trick to save me time on uploading photo's in the future.  You learn something new every day!      

Mass Media

So, for my Sociology class I had to read about Mass Media and chose what view I agreed with most.  First, Mass Media is a term that refers to the print and electronic means of communication that carry messages to widespread audiences.  Both television and the net are forms of Mass Media.
I agree with the Functionalist view because one obvious purpose of mass media is to entertain.  Except for news or educational programs.  Television and Internet socialize us in many ways.  Mass Media desensitizes us to distressing events.
I also agree with the femnist view because women are portrayed as weak, needy and stupid in some t.v. shows.  One show for example is the hit T.V. show "Two and a Half Men".
On Friday Ralph and I met in the Kean University Library on Fri.Oct. 10th 2011 to discuss the Mass Media topic and I'll post the picture of us up on my blog.

Permanent Hair Removal-Would You Call & Buy?

Yesterday, I watched a segment on a laser hair removal tool that claims to remove all hair on the body permanently.  I started watching this segment because I was flicking through the channels and it just caught my attention.  I was drawn to it because I would love to never have to shave again.  Shaving takes time and money and it would be really nice to just permanently remove my unwanted body hair for good.  The thought of never having to shave again is really good!  This segment really made me want to buy their product.  It showed actual people who were using the product and it looked really simple to use.  The segment stated that it only felt like a slight pinching feeling when they applied the laser device to their skin. 

It claimed that it only took twenty to thirty minutes to apply the laser treatment to your legs and only ten minutes to apply it to your underarms and bikini area.  The segment stated that I would only have to use the laser treatment once every two weeks for four to six months.  The segment claimed that after six continuous months of use then my hair would never even grow back again.  This information sounded really great to me!  The segment showed me how expensive getting professional laser hair removal in a doctor’s office would be and stated that if I bought their product I would save lots of money in the future.  The only problem I had with it was that it never disclosed a price.  I cannot even consider buying something unless I know how much it costs.  I was a little disappointed when the segment ended without telling me how much their product would cost.  The television segment showed me a website address at the end and stated that if I wanted more information to go to their site and get it from there.  

Now if the Segment had given me a price I might have bought it.  I don't think it's worth my time to go onto the site cause it's probably a really expensive product.  

Culture Shock and Ethnocentrism

Culture shock is “a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation,” (culture shock).  I have experienced a little taste of culture shock when I went to Mexico on vacation last summer.  It was my first vacation and my first time out of the country.  I had never even flown on a plane until I went to Mexico.  The first thing I noticed when I stepped off of the plane was the difference in the humidity and the temperature.  It was extremely muggy and hot.  In New Jersey it gets muggy and hot but not to the extreme that it is in Mexico.  It was so hot that all you had to do is just breathe and you would start sweating.  This was very uncomfortable for me because I have asthma and it made it hard to breathe. 

On our drive from the airport to the resort, my friends and I got into a van that was pretty packed with people and this was uncomfortable.  I was sandwiched in the middle of the driver and my friend in the front seat.  The Mexican van driver was playing music that I could not understand.  The signs on the side of the road posted the speed limits in kilometers instead of miles per hour.  This made me a little anxious because I felt like the driver was driving a little fast and I wanted to check and make sure he wasn’t speeding but I couldn’t because I could not understand the signs that were posted up.  I also noticed that on the side of the road there were abandoned cars and beat up half torn down houses.  This was very different then what I was used to seeing in New Jersey.  I actually had seen a house that was missing one of the four walls on it and I could see people sitting at a table inside of the house.  When I got to the resort and checked into the hotel it was hard to understand the receptionist because her accent was so heavy.  She spoke broken English and pronounced her words in a different way then I was used to.  This made the hotel check in a little harder than it should have been and it became frustrating at times.  Some people at the resort did not speak a lick of English, which created a language barrier and added to my small taste of culture shock. 

My friends and I spent five days and four nights in Mexico.  Culture shock can happen when someone moves to a foreign country and culture shock can happen in five different stages.  My mini culture shock experience was over a short period of time and didn’t necessarily happen in five stages.  Thankfully, the time difference from New Jersey to Mexico was only an hour long, therefore; there was no insomnia or major adjustment to the time.  I was walking from my room to the pool when I noticed an iguana just hanging out and walking on the walkway directly in my path. This way really surprising and took me a while to accept.  I am used to seeing squirrels or alley cat’s not reptiles.  This experience was part of the environmental culture shock.  I also saw something that really freaked me out.  I was driving and this weird creature started to crawl across the street.  I had to stop the rental car I was driving to let the strange animal cross the street.  I still do not know what type of animal that I saw crossing the street but it looked like a big crawling crab with a round head and big beady eyes.

Ethnocentrism did not really play a role in my vacation mini culture shock experience.  I am very used to seeing different cultures here in America.  I am half Spanish and my dad speaks Spanish and English.  I live in Elizabeth and everyone also speaks Spanish around where I live.  Therefore, I am kind of getting accustomed to hearing people talking in different languages.  For example, I worked in a kitchen and majority of the people that I worked with spoke in Creole.  I grew accustomed to people talking in a different language around me.  Even though at first I was very uncomfortable hearing people talk in different languages in my presence because I didn't know what people could be saying about me.  Meaning that people could have been talking negative about me and I may not have even known it.  Or they could have been talking positive it works both ways.  Although if they were talking positive about me I would venture to say that they would have spoke the positive things in English so I could understand what they were saying.  I have basically learned that I just have to get used to hearing people speak in different languages because this is America, a free country and it is never going to change so I better get used to it.