Houston Heat

I have never been out of the US but I've traveled to many different parts of our great country. Just on these journey's I've been able to see the differences in culture. Take for example when I was in downtown Houston. It was a nice summer day, not too hot, but sunny and nice. But no one was on the streets or sidewalks except a few kids skating. I was a little confused since I had come to expect the hustle and bustle of downtown even in the middle of the day. This was culture shock, thinking like what do these people do downtown? No one walks around? Like in NYC people walk and bike and the streets are always crowded. But then I walked inside a building in search of a restaurant and I found lots of people, they were all inside avoiding the heat. But this raises the question, how do they get from building to building? Well, Houston has an incredibly extenive tunnel system that links most of the downtown buildings. This is where the city lived during sunny midday, underground in the tunnels. There were little restaurants and shops where the tunnels let out into hte lobbies of buildings. After my initial shock, I came to think that this was actually pretty cool. It does get ridiculously hot in Texas and this seemed like a brillaint soluton.

You borrow my car. And then you give her the test.

So the past few days we've been watching a Bronx Tale in Soc. Aside from this being a great movie, there are many example of sociology in the interactions and actions of the characters.
We'll start with groups. Collogero belongs in at least three groups; his family, his childhood friends like Slick, Sonny's crew, and Jane. Each of these groups shapes him in a different way. With his family, we see C's dad trying to lead C to be a working man, someone who will make money for his family in all the right ways. C's childhood friends seem like all trouble and he typically disagrees with their actions, like beating up the black kids from down the street. Sonny influences C to want "the life." With cars and clothes and money and power. I think that C sees how people respect Sonny and he admires that the most out of all of his qualities. At least one argument is started between C and his father about whether Sonny is feared or loved.
The neighborhood has its own construction of reality. The unwritten rules are that Sonny is the boss, the big man in town. Another implied rule is that you don't leave the neighborhood unless you're looking for trouble. We see this when C walks Jane home and turns around at the viaduct and his heckled anyway.
All of this got me thinking about the social construction of own neighborhood. Like it's expected that anyone who has their license has their own car to drive. OBviously this is a result of living in an affluent area. It just seems like an unwritten law that if you're a senior, you're gonna be driving to school. The movie also made me realize that so many different groups of people have an influence on me. I think the best example of this is the way that I talk. My speech and phrases I say are all influences of where we live and who my friends are.

Abondon Ship

In a survival situation, there is typically a set of people or one person who is in charge and makes a lot of decisions. Our class experiment was no different; the people who knew they would be saved controlled many actions. But there was also the aspect of microsociology that had to do more with the actual people in our class than their charcter's roles. Jeff, who was castes as the old woman, should have certainly been one of the first voted off and Sal's stats, that reflect macrosociological decisions, would agree. But why was Jeff one of the people saved then? Microsociology was at play since Jeff is the baskeball player who's going to be louder than everyone and try and take charge and keep himself on the boat regardless of his character's described uselessness.
You could say that an example of microsoc in my life would be they way I text different people. I'm more likely to tell my best friend something sarcastic and obnoxious than to my girlfriend. It's a simple difference in the way I act around different people. You could look at how I act in different classes as well. Say, in my math class I'm louder and more talkative, I know that in my geometry class sophomore year, people viewed as "that obnoxious smart kid" b/c I talked so much instead of truly paying attention. But if you compare that to who I am in English class, much more quiet and more of a listener, you can see microsoc at work.