Semester Project
By: Tommy Dyer
Gender Roles
- Gender roles are a set of behavioral norms associated with males or females in a given system or social group.
- Early humans discovered that dividing labor by sex was efficient because men were able to take on the stronger and more dangerous tasks because women were more expendable than men.
- Even though men are still larger and stronger than women, the division of labor isn't necessary as women have shown they can work in more physical jobs.
- Women have also shown that they can be in leadership positions in different areas of public life.
- Even though women have made great progress in today's society, there are a lot of statistics that show men have an advantage in power and resources.
- Parents play an important role when teaching kids certain values and attitudes about how their gender should act or behave.
- Teens who act similar to positive gender role models, such as male football players or female cheerleader, are more accepted in society.
- Teens are encouraged by peer group pressure to conform and act like idealized role models.
Applicable to my Life: Gender roles are applicable to my life because I have been taught the way to act and what my behavior norms are. When I was born I was given a blue blanket, as I got older I liked playing with trucks and building blocks and followed the gender roles expected.
Social Norms
- Social norms are rules that define behavior that are accepted by society.
- Social norms explain why people of a certain group or society behave the same when they're put in similar circumstances.
- When social norms are learned, society guides their social behavior by using them, sometimes without even realizing it.
- Social Norms can change over time as society develops, for example, women in college today are much more interested in earning money than they were in the 1960s.
- Invention, the creation of new objects or ideas, can cause social norms to change throughout time.
- Discovery, gaining a better understanding of something already known, can also cause change to social norms.
- Diffusion, when parts of cultures spread between cultures, causes social norms to change as well.
- Social norms have a wide range, from minor norms such as applauding for a good performance, to larger, more important norms such as respecting laws against stealing.
Applicable to my Life: I follow social norms everyday without realizing it and I am also around people who follow these norms everyday as well. I stand in a line each day for lunch, behind everyone else who is also following that particular social norm.
Founders of Sociology
- Sociologists gain their knowledge from research and the following people had a positive impact on researching sociology.
- Auguste Comte coined the term sociology and said people should discover social laws and study social statistics.
- Herbert Spencer applied the theory of Darwin to sociology and believed some species were more fit than others to survive.
- Emile Durkheim viewed society as an organism and suggested that a vital point of society was solidarity, which is divided into mechanical solidarity and Organic solidarity.
- Karl Marx analyzed the effects of capitalism and studied them to improve society
- Harriet Martineau focused on the inequalities of the sexes and is known as one of the first feminists
- George Herbert Mead emphasized symbols as the key to society and dealt with symbolic interactionism.
- Max Weber believed that sociology should be value free and be able to understand what goes on in the lives of people from their perspective so that people can understand how things work
Applicable to my Life: The founders of sociology are applicable to my life because they came up with some ideas that are still being used today. For example women probably wouldn't be as far along in the process of becoming equal to men if it wasn't for Harriet Martineau.
Socialization
- Socialization is the important process of learning how to participate in group life and enables people to fit into all kinds of group life.
- There are five agents of socialization: Family, religion, schools, peer groups, and media.
- As a person grows up they go through the process of socialization and when change occurs in someone's life they are able to learn new behaviors and skills
- Desocialization is when people give up their social norms, values, attitudes and behaviors
- Resocialization is a process when people learn new social norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors
- Anticipatory socialization is the process of preparing in advance for new norms, values, attitudes and behaviors
- A reference group is where new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors are learned from and people use reference groups to evaluate themselves
- Socialization can be gained through the process of the life cycle. The life cycle starts in childhood and goes through adolescence, then adolescence and old age, and then ends at death and dying, where death is viewed as an process rather than an event.
Applicable to my Life: I have gone through the process of socialization and have learned new behaviors and skills throughout my life.
Sociology of Sports
- Sport teaches some values that are basic for society, encourages attachment to society and helps people realize connections with others in society
- Sports in America emphasize how important achievement is in America's society
- Sports in American society also reflect the male-dominated society in America even though progress has toward equality in sports has gotten better
- Women have faced gender-based stereotypes throughout history, but they are slowly becoming more popular
- Sport subcultures show the relationship between sport, society, and culture
- There are three main perspectives on the social implications of sport: Functionalists think that sport helps society work more smoothly, so it is important, Conflict Theorists believe that sport is a social institution where the more powerful people manipulate and exploit others, and Symbolic Interactionists are more concerned about the social relationships, personal meaning, and the symbols of sports
- Among collegiate athletes, sport has created to upward social mobility for them, however, there are few opportunities and sometimes can distract students from academic and business related skills needed for success
- Sport is a social institution that fills societal needs that are important
Applicable to my Life: Sociology of sports is applicable to my life because I enjoy playing sports and watching sports and neither would be the same if the sociology of sports would have stayed the same throughout the years.