Status and Role (Sumblog10)

                What’s your role in society? Is your perceived status associated with that role? Or are they separate? What other factors are associated with your status? That aren’t just your role? These are all questions that I found myself asking when thinking of these two ideas in class.

                First, let’s take a look at a person’s role. Someone’s role is basically where do they fit into society, and what is their job. So for me, I am a student, while I also have a job, the forefront of my role in society is to get educated and bring that into the workforce once I graduate. I once heard an interesting phrase, and it has always stuck with me. “We have the group ‘students,’ so that we can have millions of people labeled as that, instead of ‘unemployed’ or ‘impoverished.’” I thought this was interesting because of how much we rely on those statistics for knowing whether or not our society is doing well, but we sometimes bring a blind-eye so as to not see the potential for harm in our society. I just was always interested by that.

                Next up to bat, status, this term is really interesting to me. Why would this term be interesting you might ask? Well, because of how much discrepancy, so to be a little bit more specific, let’s talk about perceived status. This is what a person thinks your social status is based off of a bunch of ascribed or even achieved identification. This is why I find it interesting, because as people living in the US, specifically myself, who moved to and lives in Wisconsin (newly declared most segregated state in the US) these ideas of what a person is based off what they appear to be are completely off often enough. For example, how big of a role does a person’s race play into what we think of them? Like, if we see a black man have to shop at Goodwill to save money, we generally have fairly negative thoughts about the entire race. Whereas, if we look at a white man shopping there, we wonder what happened to the individual. Then once they are wearing those clothes. We’ll even say they buy the exact same look and it happens to be a suit. We might perceive a higher status for the white guy compared to the black guy just on race alone. Now, this status isn’t just about race, gender, age, appearance and other factors play a role. But if we look at that, how often does a person’s status actually connect with a person’s role?

Found this picture off an interesting blog post about Cisgender folks. If you're interested in gender stratification and privilege check it out; http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2011/11/list-of-cisgender-privileges/ 

The Stranger

                The theory of “the stranger” by Simmel I think is extraordinarily accurate. In this theory, Simmel discusses how interaction works in small groups. I think that it’s very valid because of a lot of experiences that I have had, and after conversation my friends have had as well. We’ve all felt like the one person in a group who didn’t quite fit, but at the same time, still would be in the group and be able to add new perspective.

                This concept is interesting to me because I see a lot of potential in the job of the stranger and how it can add a diversity to a group that might be extremely necessary. For example, if we look at the idea of social issues, it took people standing up and making a stand to people outside their own groups to make a difference. If we enhance everyone’s knowledge and grow in our thought and ideas, I don’t think bad can come out of it.

                I know that on a personal level, I have been the stranger many times. Sometimes I find it fun because learning about inside jokes, and different experiences is always really interesting to me. I think it’s really fun to meet people with different backgrounds from me. For example, I spent the weekend meeting people from all over the state. These people all had the common thread of being student activists specifically in Student Governments. Learning about how they view the issues students face, versus how I view them and how other campuses view them was a really interesting experience. I learned that there are universal problems on all campuses and some that are just specific to a few campuses. How this relates is that I would actually talk to whole delegations, so a group of 3-4 people who have worked together for a long time on their SA’s and have come to give reports. Hearing how they interact and how they have been dealing with issues is really interesting and then also adding perspective from my experiences on different campuses.

I think this picture describes the theory because it shows how one person can change how a person thinks about people.

The I and the Me

    

I think that Mead’s theory on the self is very interesting with a lot of valid arguments that make you think differently. Mead’s general idea is that the ‘I’ is your true thoughts. These are thought that you think of before any social structures like norms, propriety, or other social context comes into play. Through socialization, those social structures are built into your ‘me’. Then once your ‘me’ is established, (this is ever changing depending on many variables, mainly the person’s current environment.) it filters the thoughts from your I, and either decides not to say it, alter it, or leave it as is.

     This concept is really cool, because of how many example can be found to prove this accurate. You can look at two groups of people, and look at how and what they say, and you can get a better understanding of how much input either their ‘I’ or ‘me’ gets.

     Another interesting piece of this, is the Me’s interpretation of others’ responses to what they do or say. So, if you begin to respond a certain way, a person’s facial response, body language, or even words can dictate how you restructure your thought to either improve a person’s response to you, or sometimes trigger other responses from someone.          

     Overall Mead’s ideas are really interesting, and bring an interesting concept of looking at an individual’s response from their environment. When so often we look at groups and groups of people and try to understand all of their common behavior. Instead of looking at humans, and choosing individual people to get interested and learn about. Especially, when you pair this with non-psychological theories, and theories that are more based on the environment or other social factors.