Essay Topics on Sociology
- Factors that contributed to the rise and development of sociology
- Social Science Disciplines
- Human Behaviour In Organization
- Where Am I Now – Why I Want to be A Nurse
- Advantages And Disadvantages Of Official Statistics In Sociological Research
- Strengths and weaknesses of the functionalist approach to society
- Sociology Reflection Paper
- Functionalism, Marxism, and Symbolic Interactionism
- SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION ON UNEMPLOYMENT
- Aint No Making It Chapter Summaries
- My Sociological Imagination
- Fliptop Battle: the Modern Balagtasan
- The role and importance of Sociology
- Hillton’s Transformation
- Behavior: Sociology and Psychological Core
- What does it mean to “think sociologically”?
- Article Critique on Sikolohiyang Filipino
Society That Practices Discrimination Fails
Throughout this course, racial and ethnic inequality has to do with many parts that contribute to sociology and my life. Race and ethnicity affect society today and Arnold Rose described four of the main issues that are related to racism. His first one included that “A society that practices discrimination fails to use the resources of all individuals”(Schaefer). Meaning that even though people might be of a different race or ethnicity doesn’t mean they are any different from what is considered “normal,” everyone has something great that they can contribute to society or even their community. The second dysfunction described that discrimination will most likely raise the rates of social issues in society. Number three stated that “Society must invest a good deal of time and money to defend its barriers to the full participation of all members”(Schaefer).
White Privilege Issue
In a lighter version, this would mean that society should spend the same amount of effort and money on everyone so that everyone in that society can show their greatest potential. And lastly, the fourth dysfunction contributed to racism is that racism at often times will decrease the alliances between other countries. Although it isn’t as much of a problem today, the term“white privilege” can still play a big role in those of the lives who are white. Many of those who aren’t in the white race will still use that term today in bigger cities, with more differentiated races. I used to live in a big city in Florida and a majority of the time when a white person got something first or better than an African American (without the thought of being racist), some African American’s would still get offended and use the terms “white privilege” or “that’s racist.” Which a big majority of the time, there was no racism involved, it was used to get their way, and that is terrible. “Whiteness does carry privileges to a much greater extent than most white people realize”(Schaefer). These types of comments don’t occur much in the Upper Peninsula because around eighty-percent of the Upper Peninsula is of the white race.
Another factor that has a great effect on society is religion and the different kinds that people practice. Emile Durkheim had a great influence on the sociological impact on religion.
Emile Durkheim defined religion as an “ununified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things”(Schaefer). Durkheim projected three functions of religion for members of society/ The functions of religion for society members was that it provides social control to uphold religious-based morals and standards to help keep up conformity and control in society, it gives social unity to maintain social solidarity through shared ceremonies, beliefs, and worships. One last function is that it offers reason and meaning in reply to any existing questions. Religion has a great effect on societies and communities and how they function as a whole. The town I live in is quite small and throughout the community, everyone is either Christian or Catholic (both religions are quite similar), so there isn’t much religious diversity and that helps keeps our community together as a whole. Although, in bigger cities, there is much ethnic, racial and religious diversity. For example, in the town that I lived in, in Florida, there was a church of Scientology (which is much like a cult) that ended up taking up a majority of the downtown area and that made some individuals angry. I remember there were many riots and marches to remove that church and move all the members of it to a different area because it was affecting tourist attractions. Diversity like this can completely destroy society.
Community
At the end of this course, I have found myself looking at other’s lives through a different perspective. I’ve also looked at my community from a different perspective as well. It has taught me to better understand my community with how groups of people from all over interact with each other and act the certain way that they do. Additionally, sociology has taught me how different backgrounds either bring society together or breaks it apart, and this has a lot to do with their racial, ethnic and religious background. One of the main concepts of this class that I found most useful to me were the different sociological perspectives, which were the Conflict Theory, Structural functionalism, and Symbolic interactionalism. Breaking them down into macro and micro levels of each perspective, where Structural functionalism and Conflict Theory were on the larger scale of things, or the macro level, which were perspectives more on society. Whereas, Symbolic interactionalism was in the micro-level or smaller scale of things, where one would look at groups or behavior.
Why Learning Sociology is Important
These perspectives helped me better-understand each lesson and which perspective I should understand them through, or even think about which perspectives others would look at scenarios through. Furthermore, I have learned so much about different people and societies. It has reinforced and broadened my knowledge about the diversity in not only my community but this entire world. This was influenced mainly by the multiple perspectives that people have on societies and others. Besides the perspectives, learning about religion, culture, beliefs, family, ad education has also played a big factor in how much my knowledge was reinforced. Most of the information from taking this course plays along with the psychology class that I took through LSSU last year. This being that psychology is a science on the mind and sociology is a science on society, which are both social sciences. That course taught me the different ways that a human’s mind works and develops over time and this course taught me how different people fit into society today. Overall, I am satisfied with the knowledge that I gained from taking this class and I know that it will help me understand people for the rest of my life, and it gives me an interest in a future in social science and work.
