This week we learned about the ways that individuals are shaped by society. They are shaped by things all around us that we may otherwise not have realized. The idea of macro sociology is the thought that the values of an individual person, although they may think are made completely on their own, are really shaped by the values of the community around them. We spent a lot of time talking about the different characteristics of people and deciding how important they were when we did the Abandon Ship exercise. We characterized older people as not as important in our society versus many other societies where people of a higher age are praised for their experience and wisdom in life. Then a few days later created a web of the different groups we belonged in and how being in those groups affected our society.
For me this was a meaningful exercise, I belong to a lot of different groups of people and even being in a family with divorced parents creates sub groups even within my family group. At times I feel like I am living a completely different life when I am with my mom and step dad's family versus my dad and stepmom's family. I have different friends when I am with each different family and although I am a sister in both families, my number of siblings is different. On top of all those differences though I do belong to some very big groups such as being an American, being a girl and being Jewish. This goes to show me that while at times I feel like my life is being divided into smaller and smaller sub sections, at the same time my life is growing and I am expanding my life and sharing similarities with people that I don't even know. I had never really thought about my life in that way before so I took some extra time reflecting on the lesson in class and it has helped me realize how big and evolving my life is and that it'll just get bigger and bigger as my life goes on.
You did a good job connecting yourself to different groups while also acknowledging that you share things with people you don't know because of the bigger groups you're apart of!
ReplyDeleteNice insight. I hope that activity/lesson helps you to understand your own identity more clearly. Also, I think your example is a great example of micro and macro. Although you didn't go into details, you explain that the macro is the understanding of family. As a culture, we have an understanding about what family is: parents, grandparents, step parents, siblings. But then in each family of yours there is a micro-sociological dynamic; the different groups are shaped differently by the interaction within the small group. Does that make sense?
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