For six years, I’ve taught at an International High School in the Bronx, helping recent immigrants from all over the world acclimate themselves to a new culture and learn a new language. Many of these students arrive in NY with little to no schooling, no knowledge at all of English, and…
Consider the film “Plastic Bag” by Ramin Bahrani. (If you haven’t watched it yet, just click the title and you’ll be taken to the film online)
1. Why does it end with the line “I wish you had made me so that I could die”?
2. Why does the plastic bag keep saying that he is “useless” to the animals?
3. In what ways does this film reflect issues from this class?
4. In what ways does it connect to chemistry class?
5. In what ways are this class and chemistry class related? What are common themes?
Read the article from Salon.com below.
What is the writer’s moral dilemma?
What recommendation would you give her to help her feel better?
Dear Cary,
I have an enviable life. I’m married to a wonderful man, and we are both happy, active and in good health. We make pizzas from scratch once a week, adore our sweet dog, live in our own home in a city we love, and spend lots of time with friends and family. We have lively discussions about politics, movies, books and beer.
I’m an attorney with a degree from a top law school and do policy work for a nonprofit, and my husband is the rare satisfied high-school teacher. Thanks to each of our families, we have no financial worries, despite many years of post-high school education.
The problem is that I am plagued by guilt. Having all of the above, and more, has made me feel an immeasurable obligation to all those who have so little. About once a week, I sink into a depression over the helplessness I feel toward the many struggling, sick, and starving people in the world whose lives are no less important than my own.
I’ve taken steps to address these feelings, which I consider valid and accurate. I work in policy reform for one-fifth of the pay I would receive from a large law firm, given my education and background. My husband and I give about 10 percent of our AGI (adjusted gross income) to charity (we do not belong to a church, but value the concept of tithing). We are vegetarian and have only one modest car. When we decide to have children, we have agreed that we will adopt. We have traveled to several parts of the developing world, and formed ongoing personal and financial relationships with organizations there. Still, at the end of the day, I feel helpless and selfish for not doing more.
Also, I feel anger toward the wealthy and powerful who so easily ignore the plight of the less fortunate. Just the other night, I was overwhelmed at the House’s proposal to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. The disproportionate impact on poor women is so utterly wrong, I could just spit. Luxury cars and homes strike me as grotesque, though I keep those thoughts to myself.
While I am a happy and upbeat person, I frequently have to control these feelings to keep them from interfering with otherwise pleasurable activities. A vacation, a nice dinner out, even a night on the couch can be dampened when I contemplate our relative privilege and wealth. But what can I do? My husband tells me there will always be injustice in the world. That we do as much as any people can. And that I’m entitled to be happy with the life we have made — and, yes, been given. Why can’t I accept that?
Unclear Conscience
You can read Salon.com’s response here. Do you agree with their advice?
You can watch this if you missed it or want to review it.
Assignments related to this outcome:
So!
For number one, make sure you have your headlines and an explanation of how the New York Times search relates to sociological imagination.
For number two, make sure you have your answers to the questions from the book.
For number three, just explain what sociological imagination is.
For number four, please do the following:
What you need to do:
1. Choose 1 headline or article and connect it to your own life. How might the event or issue have affected your life?
2. Think of another event in history, especially one from your native country. How did this event effect YOUR life?
3. How is this project related to sociological imagination? In order to answer this question, you must say in your own words what sociological imagination is, and then say how this project is an example of that.
What do you need?
What does a sociologist (a person who studies how people interact with society, each other, their environment, their history) want to investigate?
Behavior, Facebook, cultures, discirimination, soccer games, baseball games, football games, all sports, brains, schools, trains, buses, streets, corners, parks, Laundromats, instant messaging, texting, drugs, blackberries, the mall, computers, the internet, church, temple, mosque, bodega, neighborhoods, gender, male/female, sexual orientation, racism, purses, power, politics, republicans and democrats, economy, highways, the Fed, distribution, money, business, personalities, Social classes, airplanes, cars, airports, parties, families, clubs, work, dance places, theaters, buildings, cafeteria, mcdonalds, relationships, marriages, sexuality, emo, dance, gangs, gay rights, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental health, pregnancy, babies, myspace, twitter, hifive, other social media sites, iphone, oovoo, farms, instant messenger, clothing, discussions, dating, ice skating, law and justice, language, communication, books, time management, anger management, music, poverty, metalheads, television, skaters, laundry, foods, trends, abuses, transportation, vandalism, sexual education, sexual harassment, traumas, families, government, summer, bombs, terrorism, the united states, engliand , Puerto rico, money, society, countries, world cup, dream act, immigrants, house of represenatatives, teenage pregnancy, teenagers, domincan republic, undocumented immigrants, medicare, movies, novellas, religion, dancing, traveling, tourism, walking, speaking, phones, six flags, foods, learning, friendship, public restroom, university, stores, boats, human beings, computers, camping, jail, incarceration, libraries, pets, tumblr, class distinctions, social classes, beaches, slang words, resources, laughter
What does a sociologist (a person who studies how people interact with society, each other, their environment, their history) NOT want to investigate?
Dogs, horses, rivers, cats, zebras, forests, insects, trees, hydrogen, flowers, elements, formulas, the sky, symbols, planets, stars, cockroaches, rats, cats, atmosphere, stratosphere, monkeys, mars, snakes, natural features of the united states, trash, elephants, lions, tigers, bears, puppies, goblins, pollution, ice cream, horoscopes, weather, a bathroom, bacteria, diseases, states of matter, atoms, electricity, con Edison, oxygen, mountains, fake materials, death, carbon dioxide, biofuels, plastic, solar power, metals, air conditioners, bikes, time , number two, Egyptian mummies, space, water contamination, aliens, human body, conductivity, chemistry, mathematics, the ocean, astronauts, soil, 2012, earth, neurons, walls, shoes, wood, tables, doors, animals, the wind, poop, buffalo, pollution, wagner’s hat, non-human sexual reproduction, lizard sex, precipitation, condensation, the water cycle, math
Post some of the ideas from your analysis of the “every day life object.” We used an iPhone. What section did you have (local, global or historical) and what were your ideas?
As a reminder, here are the questions:
Group 1: Local Analysis Where and how does it exist in the social world? How is it used, bought, sold? How does it relate to other aspects of social life? Who benefits from it? Who if anyone, suffers from it? Why does it appear the way it does? How, does it or does it not relate directly relate to your life? In what context does it exist? Group 2: Global Analysis Do you know whether this object exists in other countries? If so, in what form? How is it used? How do you think the object would be used differently in other countries than in the United States? Can you give an example? Why do you think that would be the case? Is it altered in any way when used elsewhere? Does it affect life on the planet in any way? Where and how is it made? Group 3: Historical Analysis When did the object first come into existence? Why do you believe that it appeared at this time? Has the object changed over time and how? Has this object had any significant impact upon social life/society? If so, what? How has your use of this object changed over time? Do you think this object will still exist in the future? What do think this it will be like?
Student demonstrates understanding of social sciences and how it differs from the natural sciences.
P: Accurately complete all the classwork and homework!
H: In addition, demonstrate it through essay on these differences (use class materials)…
What Is Sociology? Comparing Sociology and the Other Social Sciences (page 4-5)
JAMES M. HENSLIN
Introductory students often wrestle with the question of what sociology is. If you continue your sociological studies, however, that vagueness of definition – “Sociology is the study of society” or “Sociology is the study of social groups”– that frequently so bothers introductory students will come to be appreciated as one of sociology’s strengths and one of its essential attractions. That sociology encompasses almost all human behavior is, indeed, precisely the appeal that draws many to sociology.
To help make clearer at the outset what sociology is, Henslin compares and contrasts sociology with the other social sciences. After examining similarities and differences in their approaches to understanding human behavior, he looks at how social scientists from these related academic disciplines would approach the study of juvenile delinquency.
Science and the Human Desire for Explanation
Human beings are fascinated with the world in which they live, and they aspire to develop ways to explain their experiences. People appear to have always felt this fascination-along with the intense desire to unravel the world’s mysteriesfor people in ancient times also attempted to explain their worlds. Despite the severe limitations that confronted them, the ancients explored the natural or physical world, constructing explanations that satisfied them. They also developed an understanding of their social world, the world of people with all their activities and myriad ways of dealing with one another. The ancients, however, mixed magic and superstition to explain their observations.
Today, we are no less fascinated with the world within which we live out our lives. We also investigate both the mundane and the esoteric. We cast a quizzical eye at the common rocks we find embedded in the earth, as well as at some rare variety of insect found only in an almost inaccessible region of remote Tibet. We subject our contemporary world to the constant probing of the instruments and machines we have developed to extend our senses. In our attempts to decipher our observations, we no longer are satisfied with traditional explanations of origins or of relationships. No longer do we accept unquestioningly explanations that earlier generations took for granted. Making observations with the aid of our new technology – such as electronic microscopes, satellites, and the latest generation of computers and software – we derive testable conclusions concerning the nature of our world.
As the ancients could only wish to do, we have been able to expand our objective study of the world beyond the confines of this planet. In our relentless pursuit of knowledge, no longer are we limited to speculation concerning the nature of the stars and planets. In the past couple of centuries the telescope has enabled us to make detailed and repetitive observations of the planets and other heavenly bodies. From these observations, we have reached conclusions startlingly different from those that people traditionally drew concerning the relative place of the earth in our galaxy and the universe. In just the past few years, by means of space technology, we have been able to extend our senses, as it were, beyond anything we had before dreamed possible. We now are able to reach out by means of our spaceships, satellites, and space platforms to record data from other planets and – by means of computer-enhanced graphics – to gain an intrinsically detailed and changing vision of our physical world. We have also been able to dig up and return to the earth samples of soil from the surface of the moon as well as to send mechanized vehicles to Mars and probes to the radiant and magnetic belts of Jupiter, over a distance so great (or, we could say, with our technology still so limited) that they must travel eighteen months before they can send reports back to earth. Having discovered evidence of water on Mars, we have begun to dig into its surface to find out if life exists on our “sister” planet.
A generation or so ago such feats existed only in the minds of “mad” scientists, who at that time seemed irrelevant to the public but whose ideas today are producing fascinating and sometimes fearful consequences for our life on earth. Some of those scientists are drawing up plans for colonizing space, beginning with the moon, opening still another area of exciting exploration, but one whose consequences probably will be only inadequately anticipated. Others are developing weapons for real space wars, with potential outcomes so terrifying we can barely imagine them. For good and evil, science directly impinges on our contemporary life in society, leaving none of us unaffected.
The Natural and the Social Sciences (page 7)
In satisfying our basic curiosities about the world, we have developed two parallel sets of sciences, each identified by its distinct subject matter. The first is called the natural sciences, the intellectual and academic endeavors designed to explain and predict the events in our natural environment. The natural sciences are divided into specialized fields of research and given names on the basis of their particular subject matter-such as biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. These fields of knowledge are further divided into even more highly specialized areas, each with a further narrowing of content: Biology is divided into botany and zoology, geology into mineralogy and geomorphology, chemistry into its organic and inorganic branches, and physics into biophysics and quantum mechanics. Each area of investigation examines a particular “slice” of nature.
People have not limited themselves to investigating nature. In their pursuit of a more adequate understanding of life, they have also developed fields of science that focus on the social world. The social sciences examine human relationships. Just as the natural sciences attempt to understand objectively the world of nature, the social sciences attempt to understand objectively the social world. Just as the world of nature contains ordered (or lawful) relationships that are not obvious but must be discovered through controlled observation, so the ordered relationships of the human or social world are not obvious, and must be revealed by means of repeated observations.
Like the natural sciences, the social sciences are divided into specialized fields based on their subject matter. These divisions are anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology, with history sometimes included on this list. To be inclusive, I shall count history as a social science.
The social sciences are divided further into specialized fields. Anthropology is divided into cultural and physical anthropology; economics has macro (large-scale) and micro (small-scale) specialties; political science has theoretical and applied branches; psychology may be clinical or experimental; history has ancient and modern specialties; and sociology has its quantitative and qualitative branches. Because our focus is sociology, let’s contrast sociology with each of the other social sciences.
After watching the film, “Sin Nombre,” please show that you saw some examples of what we have been studying. Explain one example of each of the following:
Challenges:
If you want to challenge yourself, give an example of the 2nd definition for egoism and answer this question: Why is the film called “Sin Nombre”?
Radiolab: “The Good Show”
Words words words
