What is Sociology (3) 안지영 (Ji Young An)

This week was my third time to learn sociology. At first we learn theoretical perspectives. First perspective is structural functionalism. This perspective asks what function those parts of social organism have for the society. Second perspective is conflict paradigm. This perspective focus on the conflicts.

 

And about conflict paradigm we had short discussion. The topic was "How does this power inequality influence your behavior in the classroom?" Our team thought because of power inequality which means teacher's authority to score student's grade students attend class, study harder, and do homework. Also there was interesting opinion that other team said. It was about difference of power distance comparing Asia and Europe. Compared to Europe students, Asia students are more careful about expressing their opinion to teacher.

Above these perspectives, there are also symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, social network theory, utilitarian theory, feminist paradigms, and evolutionary theory. After we learn topics about basics of sociology, our new topic was culture. First, culture is systems of symbols that humans create and use to guide behaviors, interactions, and patterns of social organization. Values, beliefs, and norms are major elements of culture. We should beware of beliefs are more specific than values. And norms tells us what is appropriate in a given situation. And then we learn subcultures and deviance. Subculture is unique culture that is created from particular social group separately from dominant culture. And deviance is actions or behaviors that violate social norms. But those deviance could be acknowledged as dominant culture as time passes.

And we had discussion about topic that is relevant to deviance. Topic was "Can we think of examples of cultures that were not tolerated in Korea in the past but became accepted in recent years?" Our team said in constraint with past women now commonly wear short skirt and now demand of plastic surgery is increasing.

 I think culture is more friendly topic because it is what we deal with everyday. So this week was more easy to understand and more interesting than last week.