Kimberly

I have enjoyed this class very much. I have found many topics and concepts extremely valuable that I will continue to use throughout my life. This class has helped me to greater understand how our society works and the way certain groups effect the greater population. I have learned some of the history of Sociology and the early theorists including: Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber (to name a few). Each of these theorists had different approaches or methods to help us understand society.

One of the things I found to be quite interesting is the way that Sociology was part of all my other classes in a way. I have been taking part in Humanities along with International Politics. I found that learning about the different Ethnicities and Races in Chapter 10 to go right along with my Humanities course when we discussed racism. Our text defined race as a “difference in human physical characteristics used to categorize large numbers of individuals.”  There is a great ethnic diversity here in the United States. In chapter 10 it gave a breakdown of the percentages of the different ethnicities there are in our country. I was surprised to see that there are more Latino/Hispanic populations than the African Americans. It was also interesting to learn the different ways each ethnical group experience life here in the United States. I didn’t really believe that there was still racism going on today. But reading this chapter helped me to understand my own belief. The reason why I didn’t believe there was such racial issues still was because I am a white girl, and I am the majority and not a minority so I see things different than someone who was African American or Asian would see things.

 Another thing I really enjoyed learning about was in chapter 12 when we discussed religion. The text says that “religion is one of the most truly global of all institutions, affects almost all aspects of social life.” I learned that religion is a major reason for why we act the way we do. I found it interesting to learn that since the year 1950 people going to church on a regular basis have been declining. But even though church attendance is on the downfall, people still associate themselves with a group or organization of some religion.

At the end of the book in chapter 16 it talked a lot about globalization and the things that affect social change. Social change is the “transformation over time of the institutions and culture of a society.” Because we have globalization this makes social change happen much more rapidly. I don’t agree much with the idea of globalization. To me it seems that means whichever nation has the ability to export their views or have the money and power is the ones that make all the decisions. That’s why we see more McDonald’s and Starbucks, we drink Coke and Pepsi products. Globalization tends to lend itself to a one world government in my opinion. Whoever has the money/power makes the rules that our globe follows.

Our book also talked more on the effects of globalization when discussing the collapse of Rwanda. The ideas from the Belgium’s were that Tutsi were more intellectual and smarter because they were tall and lighter skinned (racial beliefs). They maintained it for years until the anger from the Hutu boiled over and they decided kill the Tutsi. This happened all because of ideas that the Tutsi had some advantage because of what they looked like. Both the Hutu and Tutsi bought into the idea that the Belgium’s racial ideas had transferred to them: that the skinny white people were somehow better.

I have sincerely enjoyed learning about the many diverse things in this class and will continue to use them for the rest of my life.