The Sociology Blog with Joseph Dahl

In this article, Philip Meyer talks about Stanley Milgram’s study to simulate the effects of the holocaust and obedience. Milgram was hoping to prove that Americans were less obedient than the German people and that the holocaust could never happen in the United States. Milgram’s experiment mimics the holocaust by placing people of an ordinary back round in a stressful situation. They would pay strangers $4.50 to be apart of the experiment. They make the subject believe they are shocking an individual, who is secretly an actor, for answering a list of questions incorrectly. The subject would have switches for each amount of voltage there was and every time the actor got the question wrong they would be asked by the instructor to give them a higher voltage. They were allowed to disobey the orders from the instructor at any time as that was the point of this experiment. Most subjects would electrocute the individual, and as the voltage got higher the actor would be screaming in pain and even claim that he is having a heart attack. The subject would still continue and obey the instructors requests even all the way to the highest voltage. 65 percent of the subjects who were ordinary people kept pushing those levers all the way to the highest voltage.

This article really made me think about whether or not i would have flipped any of those switches. I like to think that i would have i disobeyed any of the instructors demands but cant really know unless i were to be put in a situation like that. Reading this article made me feel really horrified that that many people would go through such lengths just for a few dollars which was worth a little more back then but is still not worth putting someone through that much misery. I kind of lost some hope in humanity because i like to thing that in nature, we are all good people. That we are capable of doing good deeds but i also see that we are capable of doing evil just as well. It seems that the holocaust can still very much happen today or sometime in the future of the united states. But i think we all hope that something like that where we test to see what kind of people we truly are never happens.

In down to earth sociology page 249-264, this section was about how people in the funeral industry try to reduce the social stigma of their profession, as they are often seen as cold, unfriendly, or unfeeling. to combat this stigma, embalmers and funeral directors use softer language in their line of work to be more respectful to the family’s of the deceased for example, instead of using words like “death” they will use “loss”. they also dont like to say that they sell “products” like how they sell caskets but instead they sell services. The people who wrote this article went to several morgues and funeral homes to interview people who work in this industry that comes with a lot of stereotypes.

people in this line of work try to find humor as a way of coping with their depressing job and i totally understand that mentality, sure it can seem mean spirited to joke about some dead persons genitals as you are working on them but i would find it very depressing to work on dead people as my line of work, if i had to do it, i would find humor in it so i would be able to get through the day. in order to be in this profession you have to emotionally detach yourself from the body that you have to work on. this is why me personally i wouldn’t be cut out for this line of work because i couldn’t be able to work on the 4 year old girl mentioned in the article or any other dead person for that matter. I would break down in tears and i would quit on the first day.

This chapter is about the sociology of consumption. The chapter talks about the many reasons why we shop or why we buy certain things and the social pressures that go along with it.

We shop for many different reasons like buying something we absolutely need like food or buying something we simply want out of pleasure. But through a sociological perspective it is a little more complex than that. Sometimes shopping can be seen as fine like buying the latest item that you’ve been waiting months for or just simply treating yourself as a way of relieving stress but as this chapter points out shopping comes with many negative associations like standing in long lines,credit card debts, social pressures, the hectic crowds on black Friday and financial stress. Many of times we shop to find the best deals on certain items. One example this book makes is when buying a mop, consumers tend to buy the cheapest mop that still does a good enough job. During times like during a recession where money is tight, consumers will have this type of behavior where they will try to get the best product for the lowest price, and that is partly why super shopping centers have dominated the business.

While we all want to buy the cheapest item and still get what we want out of it, saving money isn’t the only reason we decide to buy something. in fact, we are willing to send more on an item to boost our self confidence and make us feel more fashionable. Some brands are bought buy consumers because in our society they are seen as high priced and popular. That makes us think that if we wore those brands we would be respected more. They will purchase some of these brands because they want to fit in a particular social group. However we don’t buy items just for ourselves but we also buy items for our friends, family, and significant other.

In this chapter it asks us the question, Is shopping a social problem? we really see this antagonistic side of society on black Friday. In 2008, Jdimytai Damour, who was a temporary Walmart employee was trampled to death as a crowd of 2000 shoppers rushed into Walmart during the 5 am opening. While the chapter isn’t saying that shopping is bad it doesn’t glamorize it either. Events like black Friday does bring out the selfishness in people but shopping builds the national economy and creates jobs. In a sociological view, a social problem can be a problem for some groups but not for other groups. Its impossible to find out the truth about shopping through just one sociological story.

The village people who seek out the witch doctor for the appearance ritual varies from villager to villager. usually men who wish to maintain their normal image would seek out this priest once every one or two moon cycles while the maidens rarely ever get the ritual done during the four seasons.

For me, a typical village male will walk into the temple of appearance and speak to the witch doctor of style. usually the priest is busy performing a ritual on another guest who came before so i would have to wait before it is my turn for the ritual. When it is my turn the priest will summon me and i will sit in the throne of cosmetology as the priest gathers the sacred artifacts needed for the ritual. The priest will then ask me how i want my ritual to be done and i tell him the right measurements for my satisfaction. the priest wraps my body in a holy clothe neck down so that my clothes are not tainted during the ceremony. The priest would start by dressing my head with sacred holy water then use the holy snippers to trim the demons more easily. The priest then would use the advanced yet sacred buzzer to trim the sides shorter than the top of my scalp as that was my request. When the demons are the measurements i desired the witch doctor would then get the holy dagger to slice the edge of my demons so that it is in the desired shape. After the trimming was complete the witch doctor would use sacred oils to rub so that i would look shiny and my demons would stay in place. after the ritual was complete . I would compensate the witch doctor for the ritual in gold and give a little more for his troubles. It would be another two moon cycles before my demons would grow too long so that i would need the ritual performed again.

thanksgiving is an old american tradition that most american family’s (including mine) participate in every November. every thanksgiving we have turkey as the main course for our feast and it never changes in our family or most other american family’s who celebrate the holiday. i feel like you cant enjoy a thanksgiving dinner with the family without the turkey. through our perspective we dont really think about all of the resources and labor it takes to make our traditional meal. through Marxist perspectives, it explains that the effort to how turkeys are raised and how they are prepared for consumption is kept secret as a way of exploiting the consumer. through Durkheim perspective, he explains how food brings us together as a whole through tradition and culture. what defines the foods we have in our culture is the region that we are in and the history of the people in that region. For example spiders are enjoyed by people in Cambodia because during the pol pot regime there was widespread famine so the locals resorted to eating tarantulas to survive. overtime the people of Cambodia developed a taste for them so now its become apart of their culture.

I cant exactly remember the first thing i bought but the earliest thing that i remember that i bought was something that i really wanted was a wild west video game called red dead redemption. As a kid i saw the trailers for the game and i immediately wanted it. As a 10 year old kid i loved wild west films such as 3:10 to Yuma, back to the future part 3, a fistful of dollars etc. i saved up my Christmas and birthday money to purchase it myself. because i was 10 and it was a rated M video game. it took some convincing to my mom to get her permission. but when i purchased it i was so excited to finally get to play it. The game itself was as good as i imagined and i was satisfied with every cent i purchased.

men tend to enjoy violence in entertainment. as a kid i loved violent video games and films, but why do we? over the past several decades, movies have seemed to have gotten more and more violent with less censorship. back then with movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s “psycho” people in theaters were horrified of the shower scene. today something like that is nothing compared to what you’ll see in today entertainment. of coarse people like their movies to have a good story where the hero faces obstacles to achieve his/her goal. but us audiences like to see them overcome these challenges in a fun and creative way. the way we see it is less violence makes the story more boring. there needs to be weight and tension. we need to think that their is a possibility that the hero wont make it back and there isn’t a happy ending. have someone kill a bunch of bad guys is Hollywood way of showing how the hero gets through obstacles in the hero’s journey. we pay lots of money to watch these movies and play these types of video games and that is why Hollywood and the gaming industry keep making this type of content.

In this first chapter they talk about blue jeans and use this subject to introduce the concept of sociological imagination like why is something like this in our society and how does it affect us? The book talks about blue jeans, why they are so popular in today’s culture and what effect they have on our economic consumer culture. jeans are so popular in fact that on average humans wear jeans 3.5 days a week and that 62% of people claim that they enjoy wearing jeans. when jeans were first invented they were used as work pants for miners, factory workers, farmers and cattlemen.

In my life jeans are pretty much the only pants that i wear. When i was in school it was important to dress a certain way to be accepted in some social groups. the beauty with jeans is that pretty much all groups of people in high school wore them. no matter what type of person you were in high school the chances were, you owned a pair of jeans. this chapter mentions that in our society we are pressured into wearing whats popular and i couldn’t agree more. People really can tell what kind of person you are by judging your clothes. It depends on what your wearing that will make more likely or less likely to be accepted in certain social groups. For example: if you were to wear a shirt of an anime show, your more likely to start up a conversation and maybe even befriend someone who likes anime. clothes can help everyone gravitate towards other people who have the same interests as they do and this is how social groups in our society are formed.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton