IHSS Blog 2019-2020

Alex Karni Mr. Roddy 9th In 1897, a book called " Le Suicide " was published by a man named Émile Durkheim, a French Sociologist. Nowadays his text is tough to psychology students. He was able to publish the first book that was capable of presenting psychological study of suicide, rather than having it due to someones temperament. At the time, it was totally new concept but one that was groundbreaking. Basically, his text went like this.   The  content  of Suicide  advertised  an examination of how suicide rates at the time  varied  by religion.  Particularly , Durkheim analyzed  contrasts  between Protestants and Catholics. He found a lower rate of suicide among Catholics and theorized that this was due to  more grounded   shapes  of social control and cohesion among them than among Protestants. Durkheim also found out that Suicide was less common between women than men, more common among single than partnered,...

Cidette Rice Mr.Roddy IHSS 9/26/19  The Asch Conformity Experiment ‘If all your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you?’  I’m sure many can remember a time in their life where they have been asked this, typically as a response for wanting trendy clothes or the newest IPhone. It’s used to brush off the asker, saying that conformity is a bad thing, that it could have consequences. If this is so, why do so many people conform? Why would people participate in conformity if it’s viewed negatively? The Asch Conformity Experiment was a sociological test on various groups of college students. All but one student in the group knew what was going on, and they were playing the role of unassuming student. The students who were on the inside were called ‘the confederates’. During the experiment, confederates and outlier alike would be shown two pieces of paper, the first having line ‘A’ drawn on it, and the second showing lines ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’, with two of the lines ...

Isabelle Saxon 9/29/2019 The Sociology of Education For my Sociology Blog I read “The Sociology of Education” by Ashley Crossman. The article describes how education effects society and how society effects education. Crossman describes how education is thought of as “a pathway to personal development, success, and social mobility.” Sociologist Emile Durkheim in particular believed that “education was necessary for society to exist” and this way of thinking founded the Functionalist Perspective on Education or Functionalism. Functionalism states that “an institution only exists because it serves a vital role in the functioning of society.” However sociologist have found that schools produce more than just homework. Recent studies suggest that educational institutions have become breeding grounds for gender, class, and racial hierarchies. One way this happens is through the “teacher expectancy effect.” This happens when a teacher expects certain behavior from stude...

Fabricio Guerra Mr. Roddy IHSS 30 September 2019 Poor Wages and Working Conditions      Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, products have been way easier to produce, transport, and refine. This means that (in a capitalist society) you needed people to run factories and people to work in them. The workers, who frankly had very little rights and horrible working conditions, were paid dirt poor wages which made it very hard to get by. After the start of the Industrial Revolution, industry began to spread from simple things such as electricity production to more complicated things such as refined oil, especially during the outbreak of the First World War. During the booming 20s and the Great Depression, the gap between rich and and poor began to grow exponentially. During the 20s you had rich businessmen taking advantage of workers to produce as many products as possible so they could make boatloads of cash, and during the Great Depression in the 30s...

Edison Moudry Ihss Mr Roddy 30 September 2019 Fear These days fear is everywhere it spreads like wildfire and kills like attila the hun. The media has a large part in spreading the fear. Every time there is a report on something about people dying for example a plane crash or the attack on the twin towers during 9/11. The media spreads the news and hence the fear. This is what my article talked about the aspect of fear in our modern society and how there are many ways that we see fear. The article talks about how the news media covers threats that are not important thoroughly and they will make them sound a lot worse than they actually are. Then they will take serious threats and make them sound like they arn’t so serious and that can be deceiving. This makes things like everyday incidents like accidents and plane crashes sound like the endo of the world. Don't get me wrong you can definitely die in those events but they arn’t as serious as the 9/11 tragedy. The way the media...

I chose the article “The Communist Manifesto” which is originally a book by Karl Marx, the founder of communism. Throughout the article, it addresses what communism is, how it was created, as well as how it’s still being used today through the ideas of others. The book is used as a way to help cope with some of the critiques of our new era capitalistic society. In the book, Karl Marx writes that the system itself would collapse on itself due to the fact of how peoples’ minds work; people would end up revolting. Karl Marx personally believes that the goal of communism is for people to work together in unity while getting the same pay or goal. In some countries today, communism is still in use such as China and North Korea. However, even in capitalistic societies, people still have a belief in such communist ways. Such as in the example provided which states people revolting through the wages needed in Chicago which aren’t equal to everyone else’s wages in other states or cities. Karl Ma...

The blog I chose was "The Social Transformation of American Medicine" by Paul Star though I read the summary by Ashley Crossman. She tells us that the book was two parts with the first regarding the rise of professional sovereignty but the second built on the transformation of medicine into an industry. She goes on to write that early on the medical field received hostility as it was seen to be built on privilege. Later though, as licenses and codes of conduct were introduced the field became more acceptable. The social class also came in in the first book as he states that there was originally a large amount of inequality as their class was more based on their families status. Another interesting topic was the development of the hospitals throughout different stages as they started out being for particular things then changed to be the all around care we know today. With the changes of the hospital came the changes/evolution of different roles in the hospital as well. The ar...

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , a book written by sociologist Erving Goffman in 1959 uses the imagery of theater to show the significance of face-to-face social interaction. He uses a theory of social interaction that he refers to as the dramaturgical model of social life - the theory that the self is made up of various parts that people play and is not meant to analyze people's behavior but the context behind it. Anyways, Goffman thought that social interaction was similar to theater as people in everyday life had roles to play just like the actors on a stage while others (audience members) are people who observe these roles and react to them. Central to the book and theory is the idea that people are constantly in a process of "impression management" in which everyone tries to present themselves in a way that prevents embarrassment of themselves and others. Goffman used the term 'performance' to refer to all activity of a person in front of a particu...

Not Getting by in America A journalist named Barbara Ehrenreich conducted a study on what it’s like to be a low-wage worker in the United States. To become more immersed in her research she worked low-wage jobs in order to understand workers better. She gave herself three rules to follow. “First, in her search for jobs, she cannot fall back on any skills derived from her education or usual work. Second, she had to take the highest-paying job that was offered to her and do her best to keep it. Third, she had to take the cheapest accommodations she could find, with an acceptable level of safety and privacy.” She went to three different states to perform her study. They are Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. In Florida, she starts as a waitress making $2.43 an hour. After a while, she soon realizes that she needs another job but working two jobs is so demanding that she ends up quitting one. In Florida, she realized that having no health insurance causes high costs for health care when...

Dangerous Conformity      When I was scrolling through the articles listed on the link that I found on PowerSchool, the one about "The Asch Conformity Experiments" caught my eye immediately. Specifically, the word "conformity" caught my eye, because conformity happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves. It annoys me so much when someone goes against their true beliefs and mindlessly agrees with the group just to fit in. So, this article intrigued me. I read it over and was interested in what I saw. The article explained that in the Asch conformity experiments, there was a test done on a group of 5-6 people, all but one of the people being in on the experiment, leaving one person out of it. They pretended like they were testing random people on their "perception of lines," and they showed the group one line, and then they revealed line A, line B, and line C. Either line A, B, or C matched the line they showed the group, and the group had to choose which ...

Andres Yengle Mr. Roddy IHSS September 29, 2019 The Asch Conformity Experiments  Conformity is in "compliance with standards, rules, or laws". Several experiments have been done to test conformity within humans. These experiments were meant to test if humans would conform to certain ideas that were obviously wrong. Specifically, the Asch conformity experiments tested if subjects would say the same answers as participants in front of them would say even if they were objectively wrong. The Asch experiment would place a person in a room with other people that knew about the experiment but the subject had no idea. They would put two pieces of paper in front of the participants. One would have a single line and the other would have three lines with varying lengths. One line on the second sheet would be the same length as a line on the first sheet. The three lines would be labeled "A", "B", and "C". The instructors would tell the par...

Sofi Savarese Mr. Roddy IHSS September 30, 2019 The Study of Suicide  Émil Durkheim was a sociologist that studied and analyzed data on suicides. He analyzed the data by putting the people who caused suicide into different groups, such as what their religion was, what their gender was, what political scenes were occurring at that time, etc. He found that there were higher suicide rates in Protestants than Catholics, that it was more common for men to commit suicide than women, that those with a loved one had a lower rate than those who were single. Another piece of information that he discovered was what the trends were with soldiers who committed suicide. He found that the rate for soldiers who committed suicide was more than the regular citizens and that surprisingly they committed it while they weren't serving the country but when it was peaceful. My theory for this is either they didn't want to go back to serving the country, ...

Gabriel Avritscher Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 September 2019 Nickel And Dimed: On Not Getting By In America One interesting Sociological study was Barbara Ehrenreich's 1998 study of how low-wage workers survive financially as well as literally in modern America. She conducted it differently, however, by actually taking on those jobs for extended periods of time. At that time, the prevailing minimum wage was $5.15, which for reference is two dollars and ten cents less than it is today. In addition, around 30% of the workforce made less than $8 an hour back then. Today, around 40% of the workforce makes less than $15 an hour.  Anyways, back to the study. In her study, Ehrenreich pretty much washed out of each of the three different locations that she tried, all in different parts of the country. The jobs she held ranged from Wal-Mart to hotel maid to housekeeper, and each presented their own challenges. She also found that assistance for low-wage workers is poor at best, non-ex...

Tyler Holland Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 September 2019 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Erving Goffman has suggested the idea that social interaction is similar to a form of theater on a stage, the actors being ourselves, and the plot being how we interact with others. This theory is quite interesting because he goes on to explain everyones role in any sort of interaction, you have the audience which is the onlookers who are watching an interaction between multiple "actors." Whats interesting about this is that he goes on to explain how it isn't just the interaction between the parties involved, but also the impression of the "audience" and how it affects the way that the people conduct themselves, trying to stay in character and show the audience what they want/expect to see. There is also the backstage where people can be themselves and not who they are expected to be when they step on stage. I think that this is a very interesting and quite frankly ...

      Why is it that more people are scared of riding in an airplane than eating their lunch? Research has proven that 556 people per year are killed due do plane incidents while 5,051 individuals die from choking annually. Who is it to blame for the multiple irrational fears that constantly swirl through our minds? The media.      The news media is both a wonderful blessing an unfortunate curse. During natural disasters, it keeps us updated on our safety, and during elections, it previews political candidates. It grabs the attention of our entire country and shines a light on incredible accomplishments. However, the media constantly selects unusual and rare fatal incidents to headline, spreading various fearful beliefs throughout society. All of these stories about plane crashes and toddler kidnappings that are displayed in bright letters on top of social media pages and televisions screens are simply not portraying the actual issues and concerns pre...

Alex Gross Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 September 2019 Why We are Scared of Fear In the world today, there are so many things that we have to be careful of, and refrain from doing. There is one specific part of our brain that specifies fear, and it can become uncontrollable when there is one thing that is focused on. Many people have irrational fears that they cannot control, and this is not anyone's fault, because it is hardwired into their brain. On the other hand, there is the fear that is developed from society. Things that are repeated, and happen a lot, are not as widely feared. If there is something that rarely occurs, but when it does the consequences are awful, people will be more afraid of that than something that occurs every day under our noses, that is of a similar severity. Although humans see fear as a bad feeling, and there is almost nobody in the world that would say they like to feel truly afraid, we fill our lives with things like horror films, scary stories, an...

In this article by Ashley Crossman, it talks about the book called " Le Suicide"  by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. It was published in 1897, and it was written to present a sociological study of suicide. The conclusions of the book had shown that suicide was not only caused by an individuals temperament, but it had also been caused by the social causes around each individual person as well, which was ultimately groundbreaking at the time. An overview of what Durkheim had written about was that he had found many differences in demographics related to suicides. When first comparing Protestants and Catholics, he had found out that there was a lower rate of suicide amongst the Catholics because there was stronger social integration among the Catholics, rather than among the Protestants. Also, Durkheim had found that suicide was less common among women than men, and it as more common amongst single people than those were already partners, and even less common among those ...

Emile Durkheim studied different groups/classifications of people that were either Protestant or Christian, and he found higher suicide rates in Protestants. He also found that compared to people romantically involved, single people had suicide rates, people with children, compared to those who didn't have any had lower rates, and that soldiers also had higher suicide rates than civilians. After analyzing these results, he was able to find root causes for suicide and identified what he thought to be the 4 basic categories/types/reasons of/for suicide. They were Anomic Suicide, Altruistic Suicide, Egoistic Suicide, and Fatalistic Suicide. Anomic suicide was identified to be an extreme response when a person feels hopelessly disconnected from society. They feel like they are unable/can’t/don’t want to be a part of society.  Altruistic suicide is like a sacrifice of types. A person that would commit altruistic suicide, would usually do so for the greater good that they believe in, ...

            Democracy in America was a book written by a French man named Alexis de Tocqueville . He wrote a book about the U.S after witnessing many failed attempts by the French to achieve a democracy. The goal of his studies was to gain  information and insight on how democracies function and prosper. He wrote two volumes of the book, the first one was more hopeful and optimistic and it was released in 1835. It focused on the structures of the government and the different institutions that insure a true democracy and freedom. Volume two was released in 1840 and its main focus was the different effects that a democratic system has on individuals, societal norms and thoughts that are present in the country. His main goal in writing these books was to "a nalyze the functioning of political society and the various forms of political associations, although he also had some reflections on civil s...

Isaak Townsend The article was about how neighborhoods that had lower income families in them tend not to have good educational systems. It noted that there are a lot more school drop outs in those areas when compared to higher income areas. It concludes that more tax dollars should be directed towards school in general. My opinions on this are that even if you were to use more tax dollars to fund schools, you'd still have the same problem of lower income schools having lower test scores and drop out rates. This is because as the old saying goes ,"you get what you pay for." So, even with the added dollars to the schools, it won't be enough to compete with the schools that people pay thousands to go to. They just can't compete. This is not because the teachers that work in higher income schools are more often than not, better than the ones that work for less. The lower income areas also might not have a healthy out of school environment. Students might have an a...

Leon Hoang Mr. Roddy IHSS 28 September 2019 x The Study of Suicide Suicide is a big problem today. Countless lives have been lost due to the fact that the person doesn’t have a will to live. There are many reasons for suicide, and the book “Le Suicide” written by a French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, studies the psychological effects for suicide. The first study was about how religion affected suicide rates. Durkheim found out that there was a higher percent of suicide rates from Protestants as opposed to Catholics. This makes sense because I did some outside research, and it was proven that even today, Protestant countries are more prone to have higher suicide rates than other countries.  Moving on, Durkheim also determined that status in life has an impact on suicide. Men have higher rates of suicide than women, single people are more likely as opposed to people in relationships, and rates are lowered by people that have children. Furthermore, Durkheim noticed tha...

We've all heard about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but what happens when we're in the right place, with the right people at the right time? Well this is what Malcom Gladwell considers the right circumstances to make and idea or something else into a trend. The name he ahs given to theese circumstances is the "tipping point." The tipping point has three main things that contribute to th rapid spread of one of these ideas. These are the law of the few, consisting of mavens, connectors and salesman. Mavens have highly valued opinions and simply share the information they know with friends or family. Connectors are people with lots of friends and who help information spread quickly through people. Salesman are people who are very talented of convincing others of something, they convince other peoples of something very subtly. The second of these contributors is the stickiness factor which is what causes the idea or trend to stay in the mind of the people ar...

Low wage workers and are how they're getting by in America "Nickel and Dimed: Not Getting By In America" This article is about how low wage workers live and their daily life. The journalist Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to study and write about what it's like being a low wage worker in America. Barbara went to three different states in America and started working and experiencing what it's like first hand. Although she didn't reveal anything about herself that would make it seem suspicious. In each state the experience and results were all fairly similar, it was hard and demanding. Everything from the work to the accommodations she was staying in to how it affected her mentally and even the people she was working with. After reading this article It made me more aware of the conditions some people are living in and how hard it is for them. These situations are not just happening to people in one place its all over America, not just America it can be found an...

Sara Avalos Mr.Roddy IHSS 28 September 2019 The Asch Conformity Experiment The Asch Conformity Experiment shows the power of conformity in a group and shows that simple things are affected by the influence of the group.  This experiment was taken in a university where a group of men participated in a “perception test”. In this group, there was one person that was a “ confederate”. The group was put in a classroom and were given two cards, one with a line on it and the other with three different lines, and the had to match the same lines together. The test was put so that the confederate would answer first and he would sometimes answer correctly and the rest of the time he would answer incorrectly. The goal of this experiment was to see if the real participants could answer correctly even if the confederate would answer incorrectly. The results of the experiment showed that one-third of the class gave the wrong answer when the confederate did. Only one-fourth of the class...

Andreas Cantu Mr. Roddy IHSS 27 September Manifestos and sociology            The Communist Manifesto was originally written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the year of 1848, and has become one of the most taught texts in sociology. It was taught because it gave a very different view and critiq ue on capitalism and how it inserts itself in our culture. It has become a popular worldwide read since the 19th century, and time and time again it has been a basis of capitalism critique. Also it gives a new view of " social, economic, and political systems that are organized by equality and democracy  rather than exploitation." (Cole)            Part 1 of the Manifest is called the " Bourgeois and Proletarians," it is the main part of the manifesto and is the one that is typically taught. In this part Marx and Engels talk about unequal evolution of the class structure that is capitalism. In the rise of Capit...