Night Lights: A Functionalist Approach

¶ … Night Lights: A Functionalist Approach to Popular Culture presents a detailed explanation of various important related phenomena in human societies. Specifically, it details the ways that rituals are important in society and it illustrates the extent to which popular culture shapes the perceptions and expectations of individuals through the socialization process and the many ways that popular culture teaches us to idolize certain types of individuals and certain attributes of individuals. While the chapter focuses substantially on the role of sports in American society, it touches upon a much broader sociological phenomenon: namely, that we come to perceive as normal whatever we are exposed to in our societies. Because of this phenomenon, it can be very difficult to maintain a more objective view. In his 2012 Time article, "The Party of No," Michael Grunwald details the story of the congressional Republican opposition to President Obama throughout his first presidential term. In my view, future historians will regard this period of American history as the tail end of the "era of political parties," precisely because the phenomenon of cultural relativism as expressed through rituals and functionalist sources of perceptions of reality make it seem "normal" to us that allegiance to political parties would dictate legislative and governing agendas in American society.

Reading Response #2

Chapter 2 of Friday Night Lights: A Functionalist Approach to Popular Culture explains how shared social perspectives propagate through human societies and maintain themselves over long periods of time through various rituals and other manifestations of functionalism. While it typically escapes our conscious realization, our attitudes, beliefs, and values, even about the most fundamental and obvious matters are dictated by the social environment in which we are socialized. The reading also touches upon the phenomenon of racial prejudice and includes a photograph of Jackie Robinson, in connection with what the text describes as his "historic" breakthrough of the color barrier that once existed in professional baseball. That particular element of the text reminded me of another reading, the 1928 story by Zora Neale Hurston, "How it Feels to Be Colored Me." Whereas the assigned text discusses the phenomenon of racism in American society during the pre-Civil Rights era, Hurston's account provides an important first-hand perspective from the point-of-view of someone who experienced it personally throughout her life. In my opinion, as important as it is to discuss these types of issues academically, the analytical perspective can never fully capture the human tragedy of second-class citizenship the same way as first-hand accounts such as Hurston's.