Sociology Week 4

My cultural Experiences

            In my 18 years of life my exposure to cultural experience has been minimal, but I feel like the little experience I do have has been very beneficial to me.  In March 2018 I went to Disneyworld with my family and among all the parks we visited we made our way into Epcot. Now Epcot is my most favorite of all the parks and the reason it because of all the cultural diversity in just one park. As you walk into the park everything looks pretty normal, you see the rides and the food vendors. But as you walk across the bridge past the flower garden you make your way to what is known as the World Showcase. In this world showcase there are different foods from each culture and various gift shops and other cultural experiences. For example, when walking through Germany there were plenty of brats and pretzels, but when you made your way into France the savory smells turned into smells of sweetness from macaroons and warm crepes. This exposed me to various foods that I didn’t even know existed like smoked salmon mixed with egg noodles that I had when I briefly traveled through Japan.

Week Four Tuesday 9/18/18

By: Maddie Gums

            On Tuesday in class we started discussing chapter 3, and in chapter 3 the main focus is culture. Besides talking about culture, we discussed society, and the main components of culture. The two main components of culture are material culture, and nonmaterial culture. We discussed the differences between material culture and nonmaterial culture. Material culture tends to be tangible things created by members of a society like cars, building, clothing and tools. Nonmaterial culture tends to involve things like abstract ways of thinking like traffic laws, clothing and dress codes. We also discussed the classic visions of society which are that society is defined by the type of solidarity. Solidarity means Solidarity is unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on unities of interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies. It refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one. We also talked about how society can be defined by the type of social conflict that is occurring. Social conflict is a macro-oriented paradigm in sociology that views society as area of inequality that creates conflict and social change. Factors such as race, sex, class, and age are linked to social inequality.

Definitions:
Culture: A shared way of life.

Society: An organized interaction of people who typically live in a nation or some other specific territory. 
Nonmaterial Culture: The intangible world of idea created by members of society.

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is by remembering and keeping in mind the nonmaterialistic value within our culture like the various dress codes when I got to various places and obey the various laws that are set into stone in our society. This will benefit me because I won’t get a speeding ticket and it will benefit society because if I follow the law it will give the cope and society one less person to worry about.

One thing I can do to negatively impact myself and society is by not keeping nonmaterialistic values in mind when I travel to different places that have different cultures. For example, if I went to Saudi Arabia I would have to be aware of their laws surrounding what women can and cannot do. If I did not follow these it would impact me because I may get jail time, and society because that would make that culture look down upon America because they may think we do not appreciate their customs.

One thing society can do to impact me in a positive way is by enforcing our laws and nonmaterialistic values on everybody. Don’t let people who have a bug following like a supreme court judge or a celebrity get away with things just because they are “celebrities” they should get the same punishments as everyone else. This is positive for me because this would allow me to have a greater trust in the law enforcement and judge system.

One thing society can do to impact me in a negative way is by not keeping nonmaterialistic things as important facts in our lives. They could do this by not enforcing laws, and by not putting an emphasis and acknowledging that people have spiritual and religious beliefs that need to be met. This would be negatively for me because I really love learning about the values and beliefs of other people and I would lose respect for our society if they took that away from people.

A Solution: A solution that could help to be sure that everyone is following laws is to put cameras within all of the city limits. They have these cameras and they work very well in England to catch crime in progress and to regulate people. I think it would be worth it for us to do this in the US also.