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When we break any one of the explicit social norms we pay, either by being criticized, ostracized, or penalized. Breaking a subtle social norm by standing around doing nothing is more difficult to target. No one can point a finger and say, "You shouldn't be doing that," even though some people might think I look funny.
The concept of the sociological imagination as well as Cooley's "looking glass self" illustrate how identity and self-image are sociological constructs. When standing around doing nothing, I felt like an outsider because I was not participating in the normative behavior of the crowd around me. Being alone is in itself not a problem but without at least appearing to have a purpose in standing around, I was isolating myself from others.
When I found myself feeling hostile I realized that I had been using the sociological...
Reflected in myself, for example, I saw curiosity. Sometimes other people made faces. I could detect concern or consternation from others. I became the looking glass self when doing this exercise because of how easy it was to notice strong emotional reactions from relatively meaningless behaviors.
On the other hand, many people seemed not to notice me at all. When they didn't I felt truly invisible, as if I was not reflected at all in my own looking glass. Because I was violating a key social norm by skulking around, I was an invisible person in the sociological imagination. I found myself wanting to shout out, "This is a school assignment! I'm not really this weird!" Amazingly, doing nothing made a strong impact on my self-image, bringing up feelings of social isolation and alienation.
Sociology: Changing Societies in a Diverse World (Fourth Edition) George J. Bryjak & Michael P. Soroka Chapter One Summary of Key Concepts Sociology is the field of study which seeks to "describe, explain, and predict human social patterns" from a scientific perspective. And though Sociology is part of the social sciences (such as psychology and anthropology), it is quite set apart from the other disciplines in social science; that is because it emphasizes
Relationships and Social Lives This is the hierarchical way in which large social groups based on their control over basic resources. A key characteristic of stratification systems is the extent to which the structure is flexible. Slavery, a form of stratification in which people are owned by others, is an extreme type. In a caste system, people's status is determined at birth based on their parents' position in society The class system,
Brewster Place in these stories thus stands at a point when change is taking place but has not yet been as thorough as it would be later. The African-Americans now living in Brewster Place have largely migrated from the South. Indeed, Mattie Michael and several other characters arrive in Brewster Place from her parents' home in the South. When Mattie leaves her parents' home, she is pregnant by a disreputable
(Huff, Social Work, 2000, Chapter 1, p.3) Private efforts were not enough to treat the ills caused by the unchecked capitalism of the Gilded Age, however, an age that brought tremendous wealth to some Americans and tremendous poverty to others. During the first depression occasioned by this split between the haves and the have-nots in 1890, private relief organizations could not cope. "In Mulberry Bend, the heart of the Italian
stood still by a large fountain in a public square and did nothing for ten minutes. I used as many senses as possible to intake information from the world around me as objectively as possible, letting go the temptation to judge or analyze what was going on. The sounds were the first thing I noticed: the occasional cry of a baby or high-pitched voice of a child; the subtle
Live Concert Analysis How Doing Good Makes Us Feel Powerful and Powerless at the Same Time Design Activism vs. Design for Social Change The Awakening Consciousness of Designers 1960's Manifesto There has been lukewarm interest in public service design, social impact and design activism. But in most conversations, all other designs work to enhance the standard of living of the people; some of it must be activism. The argument is seldom boosted by the notion