Blurred lines and confused explanations comprise the difference between culture and social structure in the public eye, but sociologists tend to see culture as a unifying set of behaviors, attitudes, values, and beliefs that hold a group together, while social structure is the de jure framework - governments, institutions, businesses, groups - that people inhabit. In this sense, culture can be broadly defined as the ties that bind, those intangibles that give individuals an identity and a pattern of behaviors to emulate in their own lives. The origin of all societal patterns stem from culture, for what is human society if not a tapestry woven by the threads of individual behaviors? Yet culture is a weak and fickle thing, and it may find itself
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Unable to respond normally to poverty because of the ever present threat of victimization, those forced into the street mentality take on a particularly paranoid outlook, constantly convinced that someone or something is out to dupe or exploit them. An unspoken but automatically assumed air of desperation comes to define person-to-person interaction, as the very act of living in these environments reveals the horrifying extent of poverty others in the same dire straits must withstand on a daily basis, not to mention the ethical and legal boundaries they’d be willing to cross to escape it for even as much as a few minutes. Respect is of the utmost importance, as it is derived almost entirely from conquest - whether it be violent, financial, or sexual in nature. A high standing in the eyes of others is the most valuable resource one can have on the streets; it must be fought for tooth and nail, as the difficulty in acquiring it is matched only by the speed with which it can be utterly and completely …show more content…
The 2000’s and 2010’s saw the already troublesome relationship between minority populations and the police sworn to protect them devolve into full-blown loathing. Implementing harsher action while actively cultivating military aesthetics gave rise to a new, dangerous culture in police departments; that of the armchair soldier. Police ceased to be regular working-class people doing a job, instead becoming a force to be deployed at will. Armed forces tend to think in terms of “us versus them”, and while that mentality may suffice in a trench in Mosul, it simply cannot be allowed to exist in a civilian environment, especially when an entire race is given the status of “them”. Police brutality transcends the individual biases of particular officers because it derives its culture of violence and accountability from the structural edifices that begat it, not any one culture or mindset. Its status as “culture” is only important in so much that it allows those who do not actually take orders to support and exist within its
Unable to respond normally to poverty because of the ever present threat of victimization, those forced into the street mentality take on a particularly paranoid outlook, constantly convinced that someone or something is out to dupe or exploit them. An unspoken but automatically assumed air of desperation comes to define person-to-person interaction, as the very act of living in these environments reveals the horrifying extent of poverty others in the same dire straits must withstand on a daily basis, not to mention the ethical and legal boundaries they’d be willing to cross to escape it for even as much as a few minutes. Respect is of the utmost importance, as it is derived almost entirely from conquest - whether it be violent, financial, or sexual in nature. A high standing in the eyes of others is the most valuable resource one can have on the streets; it must be fought for tooth and nail, as the difficulty in acquiring it is matched only by the speed with which it can be utterly and completely …show more content…
The 2000’s and 2010’s saw the already troublesome relationship between minority populations and the police sworn to protect them devolve into full-blown loathing. Implementing harsher action while actively cultivating military aesthetics gave rise to a new, dangerous culture in police departments; that of the armchair soldier. Police ceased to be regular working-class people doing a job, instead becoming a force to be deployed at will. Armed forces tend to think in terms of “us versus them”, and while that mentality may suffice in a trench in Mosul, it simply cannot be allowed to exist in a civilian environment, especially when an entire race is given the status of “them”. Police brutality transcends the individual biases of particular officers because it derives its culture of violence and accountability from the structural edifices that begat it, not any one culture or mindset. Its status as “culture” is only important in so much that it allows those who do not actually take orders to support and exist within its