Week 6 - October 01, 2007

Chapter 6 - Sexuality and Society explores the sexual revolution and how it changed society, along with why society tries to control sexual behavior and how sexuality plays a part in social inequality. Sexuality in the biological sense refers to bodily differences between males and females, while gender is a cultural construct that points out the behavior, power, and privileges that society attaches to being male or female. The sexual revolution of the 1970's brought sexuality out into the open, with baby boomers being the the first group of individuals who grew up with the understanding that sex was a normal part of social life. Conversely, the sexual counterrevolution of the 1980's stressed a return to family values, criticizing sexual promiscuity.

Sexual orientation is an individual's romantic attraction to others. Four sexual orientations are: heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality. Most research supports the notion that sexual orientation is biologically predisposed, much like being right-handed or left-handed. Currently about 9% of adult males and 4% of adult women report engaging in some form of homosexuality activities, but only 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women actually consider themselves homosexual.

Chapter 6 will also look at sexual controversies, such as, teen pregnancy, pornography, prostitution, abortion, and sexual violence. As in every chapter these issues will be investigated through the use of the Structural - Functional Approach, the Social Conflict Approach, and the Symbolic - Interaction Approach.

Week 5 - September 23, 2007 - Examination Review and Examination I

Week 4 - September 16, 2007

Chapter 5: "Groups and Organization" are the vessels through which social interaction is transmitted. Social groups are the small clusters of people with whom we interact with in our daily lives, while organizations are corporations and bureacracies. Primary groups are small social groups who share personal relationships and secondary groups are ones formed to pursue a specific goal. There are two types of leadership, instrumental (focuses of task completion) and expressive (more interested in the group's well being) and three types of leadership styles, authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. America faces many challenges in terms of organizations, 1) race and gender; 2) the Japanese work organization; and 3) the changing nature of the work. As we move from an industrialized to a post industrialized society we have created two types of work, highly skilled crative work and low-skilled service work.

Week 3 - September 09. 2007

Chapter 3: "Socialization: From infancy to old age" stresses the ways in which society shapes how we think, feel, and act. Society manipulates our lives according to race, class, and gender. During our lifecourse, if we are fortunate, we pass through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. All of these stages have both biological and enviromental ramification. During this chapter we will explore how we acquire a self and reasoning skills, evaluate Freud's psychoanalytical theory of the development of personality, and determine how socialization affects emotions.

Chapter 4: "Social interactions in everyday life" discusses how we as human create reality in our face-to-face encounters with others. Status is a social position that a person hold and a status set is the various positions held by an individual, which is subject to change over time. Ascribed status's are present at birth and involuntary, while achieved status's are those that a person voluntarily takes on due to ability or effort. A role is the behavior expected from one who holds a certain status. Three major dimensions of everyday life and social interaction are emotions, anger, and humor.

Week 2 - September 02

Chapter 2: "Culture" is a universal concept that can be described as a design for living that includes both "material" and "nonmaterial" culture. Individuals have an innate tendency to perceive and evaluate the world through the lens of their own culture, this concept is referred to as ethnocentricity. Cultural relativism attempts to understand the culture of other societies within their own cultural framework.Nonmaterial culture consists of symbols (language, values, norms, folkways, sanctions, and mores).

Language is a key element of culture as it allows us to move beyond the present and share our past experience and future plans. All groups have values and norms. Values give rise to our preferences, guide our choices, and indicate what is important in our lives, while norms are the expectations that develop to reflect and enforce values. The United States is considered a pluralistic society made up of many different group, each with its own set of values, however certain core values dominate.