Sociology Week 3

This week in sociology we learned about the social construction of reality, how people are seen as the group they belong to, and the two main levels of sociology - macro and micro. Macro sociology is more of an umbrella term and refers to the bigger groups that people are a part of, like being an American. Micro sociology is how people within these groups interact with each other, interact with one another. For example, the dynamic of a classroom can be influenced simply by how a a teacher talks with their students - being formal and addressing people by last time will create a very different classroom feeling versus a teacher who constantly is swearing in front of the kids. To really demonstrate this, we did an activity called "Abandoned Ship". In this activity 16 people were given roles on a ship such as a pregnant woman and husband, an elderly couple, a Nobel Prize winning woman in literature, a medical student, and a few more. The group then had to interact with each other to decide which 7 people were going to be kicked off. How the group interacted with one another, like one person taking charge, or taking a majority rule vote, yelling and everyone talking at once, etc. was the micro sociology. That differed from class to class. However, the macro sociology was demonstrated because each class voted off basically the same people. The elderly couple was almost always kicked off, and the med student almost always stayed. This showed what we value as Americans. Age isn't seen as valuable as the practical knowledge of a medical student. In some other countries, like Japan, the elderly couple would most likely be the last to go. We all belong to the large group of Americans where we value youth, usefulness, and practical knowledge. I played the woman who won a Nobel Prize in literature and that's what I was seen as, I wasn't seen as just a woman, but I was labeled. And that label was not seen valuable as an American. We may have not realized it but our values were defined by us being Americans.

I can definitely see this in my own life. I'm Indian and I have been viewed a certain way because of that. Many people assume that I'm very smart and do really well in school because that's how Indians are viewed. Just today in my Economics class we found out our test grades were posted online. The kid next to me made some comment that I probably got 100 on the test. He didn't know my last test grade and barely knows me at all but he just assumed that I did really well. This isn't the first time that it's happened, where people have told me that I'm really smart in school without ever really having a conversation with me or seeing my grades. However, the people I interact with face to face know me better. They know the subjects that I am good at, but they also know I'm really bad at math and have never gotten an A in science!