Aging is a natural process that we, as human beings, faces daily. Every day we age little bit more and progress on this one-sided track. The articles I've read focused mainly on old ages. It is a stage that most of us haven't faced yet but will eventually participate in it. There is a natural tendency that we categorize people in groups and attempt to sum them up with a perceived collective commonality. The thought of these differences can be referred as stereotype, and the thoughts associated with the target group can be positive, negative, and neutral. In the selected article "The Cultural Trap: The language of Images", author Dr. Hazan believed the formation of stereotype is largely related to our lack of information, but there
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In this reading, he indicated few "common manifestation of this general image"(Hazen, 15) of elderly. It includes devoid of sexuality, inability to learn, senility, obsessive of past, powerless, dependence, depressed, sense of failure, and disintegration. He advanced into the next chapter "The Personal Trap: The Language of Self-Presentation" by presenting several possible reaction elderly has towards the stereotypes. The behavioral responses mentioned is acceptance, withdrawal, rebellion, search of new focus, and self-inflicted death (1994). In this chapter, he used the 'looking glass self' (Mead 1934; Cooley 1972) theory to conclude that elderly's attitude, behavior, and self-perceived image are "shaped and reinforced by society's prevailing images of them" (Hazan, 19). It can explain the reactions because they think that the society think of themselves are truth and they need to act according to their age. Predicted by Durkheim's 'collective effervescence', they spontaneously group-up when shared same value. In the current context, they gather and join …show more content…
Hazan didn't have the global sense in mind while writing the chapters. While he didn't indicate it in the readings, the theories and researches he draw upon were mostly done in Western Europe countries or targeted to their culture. It didn't consider cultures that praised elderly, like Japan and China. Both countries emphasize heavily on the importance of elderly and have great respects for them. The stereotype they receives are different from what he mentioned, hence the responses are different as well. And he didn't include the field site of city with elderly being their major population. In that environment, presumably, stereotype won't play as much of a important contributing factor in sense of decision making compare to cities with more age-diversed population. What will guide their actions in that case? These are all possibilities that I failed to find in the selected
In this reading, he indicated few "common manifestation of this general image"(Hazen, 15) of elderly. It includes devoid of sexuality, inability to learn, senility, obsessive of past, powerless, dependence, depressed, sense of failure, and disintegration. He advanced into the next chapter "The Personal Trap: The Language of Self-Presentation" by presenting several possible reaction elderly has towards the stereotypes. The behavioral responses mentioned is acceptance, withdrawal, rebellion, search of new focus, and self-inflicted death (1994). In this chapter, he used the 'looking glass self' (Mead 1934; Cooley 1972) theory to conclude that elderly's attitude, behavior, and self-perceived image are "shaped and reinforced by society's prevailing images of them" (Hazan, 19). It can explain the reactions because they think that the society think of themselves are truth and they need to act according to their age. Predicted by Durkheim's 'collective effervescence', they spontaneously group-up when shared same value. In the current context, they gather and join …show more content…
Hazan didn't have the global sense in mind while writing the chapters. While he didn't indicate it in the readings, the theories and researches he draw upon were mostly done in Western Europe countries or targeted to their culture. It didn't consider cultures that praised elderly, like Japan and China. Both countries emphasize heavily on the importance of elderly and have great respects for them. The stereotype they receives are different from what he mentioned, hence the responses are different as well. And he didn't include the field site of city with elderly being their major population. In that environment, presumably, stereotype won't play as much of a important contributing factor in sense of decision making compare to cities with more age-diversed population. What will guide their actions in that case? These are all possibilities that I failed to find in the selected