If one is to understand contemporary social life, then one has to study the history of social theory in order to make sense of today’s world. Gramsci and Habermas are both sociologists, and they both help to explain how society works and functions through power. Gramsci’s power relations of civil/ political societies and hegemony and Habermas’ model of system and lifeworld both affect social change. I will be examining how the power of civil and political societies create active consent and…
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (Mills, 1959) - This is what C. Wright Mills mentioned in The Sociological Imagination. It is true that if we would like to understand our own life, we have to obtain sociological imagination which enable us to understand how history and institutions shapes our own biography and personal choice. Therefore, I would like to discuss how my own biography and history within society intersects…
Does communism work? Most people would answer no to this question. However it's still being used in today's world. Communism is about everybody being equal, but that rarely happens. The government owns everything; therefore they have more than all the common people. Many people living in a communist country are oblivious to the fact the people in their government are prospering and they're living off abundance less. Animal Farm by George Orwell goes into the ideas of communism. A group of…
What is society? Is it the people we surround ourselves with? Or the those who know next to nothing about us, yet judge? It is human nature to judge people on first impressions. First impressions are very basic and many times biased or totally false because you have yet to “scratch the iceberg of their personality”. That is where social standings come in, most people believe that the more people you surround yourself with, the more social you are, but it’s a mixture of that and also what random…
Conclusion The primary purpose of this study is to examine Judith Butler theory of gender performativity. In her work Gender Trouble, she argues that gender identity cannot be biologically determined. She challenges the belief that certain behaviors are natural. Her argument is that gender and sex are not natural but they are constructed through the working of power in societies such as institutions, discourse, and practices. Consequently, gender is prompted by obligatory norms to be one…
Mahasweta Devi, a proficient Bengali writer and activist who puts a question mark on the democratic and civilized nation, India. It is imperative to have a clear understanding of “marginalised “in order to understand and appreciate the writings of Mahasweta. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the concept “marginalize” means “to make somebody feel as if they are not important and cannot influence decisions or events; or to put somebody in a powerless position”. Mahasweta empathetically restates…
Since the emergence of Anthropology as a discipline, there have been many concerns about the ethics and morality of multiple anthropological studies. Are they necessary to uncover new information? Is the interest of the participant being considered? Are the procedures even safe? The most important answer to these questions is to ensure that each anthropologist engaging in experiments and fieldwork considers the safety and well-being of every individual involved through Review Ethics Boards.…
Author Susan Gale makes a good point when she says, “if your world revolves around money, you might be living on the wrong planet.” However, it is a fact that much of our world directly corresponds with exchanges and the meanings of it in different contexts. Economics, ecology, and globalization have both similar and different cultural practices, worldviews, and discourses surrounding them that can be seen when looking at disparities in resources and opportunities. Through several course…
Culture is based on the knowledge as well as the behavior of a particular group of people, defined through many different aspects such as: religion, cuisine, socials habits, music and last but not least through dance. Most of the countries nowadays had a large variety of nationalities within their population, the culture inside the country is influences by all the nationalities that form that country, therefore as the number of nationalities grows, so does the culture. The culture we are raised…
Cultures all around the word use different animals or figures to symbolize other things. When someone says the word “snake,” things such as a gardner snake or a rattle snake might come to mind. Now when a person hears the word “serpent”, depending on the cultural location, many different images can come to mind. The serpent is used in a latin term meaning, “A word used in mythological or religious contexts to denote a being that looks like a snake but has a heightened sense of intelligence”…