IHSS C2021-22

Katie Vojvodic  Mr. Roddy IHSS 27 September 2021 Suicide: A Study in Sociology           Suicide: A Study in Sociology is a book written by well-known sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1897. Durkheim introduced the notion that suicide was not only caused by psychological and emotional factors, but it is also affected by social factors. His theory was that the more disconnected a person feels from social groups and the world around them, the more likely they are to commit suicide. According to Durkheim, there are 4 types of suicide: anomic, altruistic, fatalistic, and egoistic. These 4 types are defined by different social factors that might drive someone to commit suicide.             An anomic suicide is a result of a person feeling disconnected from society and/or the circumstances of their life. These types of feelings might be caused by a major life event that leaves a person too confused to be able to connect with th...

  In 1897, sociologist Emile Durkheim published a book on suicide titled Le Suicide . The book discusses the possible social causes of suicide. At the time, it was one of the first texts to discuss suicide as a social issue that had causes and effects instead of a black and white issue.  He analyzed suicide among different groups, primarily religions. He found that suicide rates were higher among Protestants than Catholics. He theorizes that among groups with higher community mindsets and social control, suicide rates are lower. He also found that men were more likely to commit suicide than women. Durkheim categorized suicide into having 4 main causes. These causes are described as Anomic, Egoistic, Fatalistic, and Altruistic. Anomic suicide happens when someone experiences Anomie. Anomie is a feeling of a huge disconnect from society as a whole. This can happen during major social change and societal upheaval. Egoistic suicide is described as a suicide that happens when one i...

 Imaar Chauthani Mr. Roddy IHSS September 27, 2021 Suicide Suicide is ending your own life mainly because of depression or pain. There are other reasons that are less common. Worldwide around 5,000- 15,000 people die due to suicide.  Suicide rates increased 33% between 1999 and 2019. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It was responsible for more than 47,500 deaths in 2019. In 2019, 12 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.5 million planned a suicide attempt, and 1.4 million attempted suicide. Suicide affects all ages. It is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-34. Durkheim also discovered that suicide occurs less in women then men. Suicide and suicide attempts affect the health and well-being of friends, loved ones, co-workers, and the community. Durkheim argued that suicide can be a result not only of psychological or emotional factors but of social factors as well.  Suicide can be prevented. We all ...

 Bernardo Guerra Mr. Roddy I.H.S.S September, 28, 2021 McDonaldization Blog In this article the author, Ashley Crossman, explain the tactics that large companies (in this case Mcdonalds) use to become monopolies. These are tactics like Efficiency,  Predictability and most importantly, control. The author talks about how Mcdonalds creates a depressing work environment. The author described the Mcdonalds work space as "dehumanizing to the workers". The author also explained how sociologists have observed that this "dehumanizing" environment ends up with workers having less of a say in their pay and how they're treated.  The author points out how large companies having control over their workers leads to lower wages and poorer work conditions. Something that lots of companies like Mcdonalds are resulting too is automation. Automation is when companies utilize robots and machinery to eliminate workers. Today, automation is mostly used in factory's, but is being ...

  Carson Dunaway Mr. Roddy IHSS 9/27/2021 IHSS HW: Sociology Reading and Small-scale research, blog, seminar The Study of Suicide by Emile Durkheim is about how suicide isn’t limited to yourself or self struggles but can also derive from social encounters. The book was published in 1897, which people back then thought that suicide only comes from yourself or that it isn’t or can’t be linked to other people. So when Emile Durkheim published the book people were going nuts over the idea that people could commit suicide because of other people. In his book, Emile Durkheim did a study of suicide rates between religions. He found a lower rate of suicide among Catholics and theorized that this was due to stronger forms of social control and cohesion among them than among Protestants. He also did research into things like suicide rates of men and women, (Which most/all women were housewives.) and men had a higher rate. Or other things like being single and together, (More single people ...

 Ethan Zweig Mr. Roddy IHSS September 27, 2021 "The Culture of Fear"     "The Culture of Fear" was written in 1999 by Barry Glassner, who was a sociology professor at USC. The book explains who Americans are so engrossed with "fear of wrong things". Glassner examines and exposes the people who manipulate Americans perceptions profit from the often baseless anxieties they cultivate and encourage. Three out of four Americans say they feel more more fearful than they did a decade ago. Culture of fear is the concept that people incite fear in the general public to achieve political or workplace goals through emotional bias. Barry Glassner found out that no amount of debunking can wipeout fear. 

  Gustavo Alvarez  IHSS  Mr. Roddy  9/27/2021  The Mcdonaldization of Society       Something interesting that I observed from reading was how the work ethics and the overall characteristics of fast food chains such as McDonalds started to affect our society and how we act, work, and look at things. When we look at all of these things together you can clearly see the bureaucratic "Fast Food" influence that our modern society holds. Many of these things include a priority of efficiency, calculability, Predictability and standardization, and control, and while these characteristics aren't necessarily the biggest part of our society, the influence of this new system has grown extremely high in the past 70 years with inventions that make our society more efficient and calculable. Meanwhile at first it may not seem like a bad system, the fact that these sort of policies control your life and how you act are in some way dehumanizing. A good quote f...

Wyatt Quillin  Mr. Roddy IHSS 27 September 2021 The Tipping Point     The tipping point is the point where something becomes immensely popular and spreads across a society. This something can be anything from a pair of shoes to a dance move to a hairstyle, and there are a couple of variables that are necessary to the success of the something. According to Malcolm Gladwell, the writer of the book The Tipping Point , the three components that determine whether something will reach its tipping point are the law of the few, the stickiness factor, and the power of context. The law of the few relies on the select people who are able to use their special social traits to help spread information and influence. Again according to Gladwell, the three types of people are the salesmen, mavens, and connectors. Salesmen are naturally very convincing and can easily persuade people. Connectors are very popular and connected to lots of different influential people. Connectors can easily s...

 The Study of Suicide by Emile Durkheim Camila Yengle     In 1897 Emile Durkheim published a classic text called "Le suicide" that was  the sociology study of suicide. The text came to a conclusion that suicide can be caused by social reasons instead of just individual personal reasons and this statement had been new and 'groundbreaking' at the time. The text talked about how suicide rates differed between religion, for example he found that suicide rates in Catholics were lower than those in protestants because of a stronger form of social control. He also found that suicide was more common among men, more common among single individuals, and less common around those who have children. He also found that soldiers were more common to commit suicide and that they would commit suicide in times of peace rather than at war. Durkheim came to the conclusion that the more socially integrated a person, the more likely they are to commit suicide. Durkheim created categories t...

  Claire thacker  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  27 September 2021  The Study of Suicide  The article I read was the study of suicide by Emile Durkheim. The article was about suicide and the different “types.” Durkheim says there are 4 different categories for the reason people might kill themselves. Anomic suicide, which is where someone kills themselves because they are feeling like they don't belong and are disconnected from society. This usually happens during times of fast, extreme changes in everyday life and society. Next is Altruistic suicide, which is where someone would kill themselves to achieve a shared goal or to benefit a cause or society. An example would be someone committing suicide for political or religious reasons like Perpetua did for Christianity. Egoistic suicide this type of suicide happens when people feel detached from society. This type of suicide often happens to elderly people who have experienced more losses in their lifetimes. The last on...

 Baker Croyle  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 27 September 2021  The Communist Manifesto  The Communist Manifesto was a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. Many countries have so far implemented the ideas of communism into their government. It talks about the struggles of class setups and the exploitation of one class by another. It preaches the idea of everyone being equal and not believing in private ownership of property. The Communist Manifesto also talks about how capitalism is unstable and that it must cease to exist. It discusses going against capitalism in the form of revolution by saying that capitalism will not cease to exist without it. It discusses 10 goals that the communist party wants to accomplish. The goals include: abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes, a heavy progressive or graduated income tax, abolition of inheritance, confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels, and centrali...

  Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 27 September 2021 History of Sexuality I read the History of Sexuality, and after some further research I found that there are not very many articles that talk about the history of sexuality. There have been multiple books on it, but no easy access articles, which does not effect me very much, but I think this issue could affect others, especially younger people as they are still exploring their sexuality and what each sexuality means. In the USA, in 2015, there was a supreme court hearing about legalizing same-sex marriage in the united states. This just barely passed in a 5,4 vote. This one vote caused thousands of people to be outwardly queer and live their lives knowing they were safer than before. Before this law, same-sex couples could date, but not get married. Some of these couples would have a celebration celebrating their love for each other, but that was as close as they could get. Thankfully same-sex marriage is now legal in most states. Th...

Noor Qureshi  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 28 September 2021 The Social Transformation of American Medicine          "The Social Transformation of American Medicine," written by Paul Starr was the Pultizer Prize book winner in 1983. It discusses the evolution of the medical profession in the United States up until the 1980s. The idea of medicine was considered a privilege by most people rather than a profession (which is how we think of it today). Doctors were never paid and treated the sick on a low income. It wasn't until the 1700s that jobs in the medical field became a prominent profession. There were more medical schools available, and with technological advancements like transportation and communication (the telephone) became more widespread, so did the need for medicine. That's where the controversy begins, about the wage of a doctor or any other professions in medicine. They do their job for the well-being of others and work hard too. get there, so don't th...

Imaar Chauthani Mr. Roddy IHSS September 27. 2021      We arrived at a Spanish island off the gulf of Mexico. It was called chicalacca. I went to the central island and was shown a cabin. Inside was a bed made of leaves and a desk in the corner. My job was to be a shadow in their tribe to see their everyday lives. On the first day they ate of someones head as a death penalty. I was scared to death. I tried to approach one of the villagers but they didn't respond, they ignored me. Throughout the week they did traditions of their tribe. I observed what they did. What they ate. Did they educate the children? What was their medicinal system? I brought my research back. I was relieved to finally be safe from those savages. I published my research and was finally known as a reliable Ethnographer.

Aiden Cunningham Mr. Roddy IHSS 26 September 2021 IHSS HW: Sociology Reading and Small-scale research, blog, seminar     I chose to research the topic of McDonaldization in the world. Written in 2013, this article shows how the world overall is shifting more to a standardized, controlled workspace. One of the first major examples of this, of course, is the large business chain: McDonald’s. Workers in McDonald’s are hired with no matter to skill and are all trained in a standardized way. This takes away the advantage of skill in hiring, and removes many opportunities for better pay and work. Because all McDonald’s are mostly standardized, workers have to stay in the jobs allowed to them, and the only main route to improvement is to become a manager, which leads me into the third characteristic of McDonaldization. Workers can be controlled by the manager, and must follow orders from a higher authority. It allows for easier changes in the way individu...

  Oscar Rawson IHSS 9/25/21 Mr. Roddy This week, anthropologists discovered footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The anthropologists, Jeff Pigati and Kathleen Springer, used evidence from seeds found embedded in the ground around the footprint. After analyzing the seeds as well as the footprints themselves, they were found to be over 23,000 years old. These footprints are the earliest recorded evidence we have of humanity on the greater American continent.  Previously, it was believed that humans had arrived here much, much later than this. They were thought to have travelled over an ice bridge formed between what is currently Alaska and Russia. The White Sands people came during a different ice age than the Clovis people, who used to be thought of as the oldest population on the continent. The evidence from the White Sands footprints places the estimate almost 10,000 years before the previously accepted date. The footprints were found to be mostly from you...

  Claire Thacker  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  Date  Marcel Mauss Marcel Mauss was a sociologist and anthropologist. He was born May 10, 1972, and died February 10, 1950. One of his accomplishments is an original study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure. Mauss’s views on the method/theory of ethnology are thought to have shaped the thoughts of many famous social scientists. His career started as a professor of primitive religion in 1902 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He also taught at College de France and established the ethnology institute of the University of Paris. Essai Sur le don , also known as The Gift,  is thought to be his most influential work. The Gift is an essay Mauss wrote about how human relationships are formed through the exchange of objects between groups. The Gift also talked about what part of giving a gift does it mean that you have to give something back. The answer according to Mauss in his writin...

 IHSS  Mr. Roddy  9/9/2021  IHSS: Historical Development Anthropology and Blog    Franz Boas  Franz Boas was a German/Prussian born Anthropologist who lead way into more modern discussion of Anthropology in America and the rest of the world. He introduced the world and mainly the Anthropology community to more modern day ideas and the dismissal of the current racial Anthropology that was based on the oppression of societies that western society saw as inferiors. Boas also introduced a new way of thinking to Anthropology, one where culture cannot be superior or inferior to another and are just judged through a lens of ones own culture.  I see Boas as a pioneer in Anthropology and was kind of essential to starting a age of Anthropology. However at the same time, while Boas made huge contributions at the time, I don't think the discoveries affected much of what was currently happening with Anthropology. The age and popularity of the Racist Anthropolo...

Imaar Chauthani IHSS Mr. Roddy September 9, 2021      Franz Boas           Franz Boas was a German-born American Anthropology.  He sadly passed away on December 22, 1942. He worked in New York.  He was the founder of the relativistic, culture-centred school of American anthropology. Franz worked as a specialist in North American Indian cultures and languages, the organizer of a profession and the teacher of many scientists who developed anthropology in the United States. In Franz's childhood he spent most of his time with books. His father was a merchant and both his parents were free thinking liberalists. He was jewish but grew up feeling a complete German. At the age of five he developed an interest and started studying botany, geography, zoology, geology, and astronomy.  While studying in Minden at the gymnasium he started to develop an interest in the history of culture. After many years of studying he got his fir...

 Baker Croyle  Mr. Roddy IHSS  9 September 2021  Karl Marx and Marxism  Marxism is the theory that society has no classes. This means that there is no low, middle, or high class in a marxist society. Many people confuse communism and marxism because they are very similar. Some of the differences are that marxism is a political ideology while communism is a political system built on marxism. Some of the benefits of having a marxist society is that there is true equality in social status because everything is the same. In a marxist society work for one purpose that is to serve each-other. some of the cons are that there is no concept of private property. this means that you cant own land that is only yours. everyone owns the land. also there are no opportunities for entrepreneurship.

  Aiden Cunningham Mr. Roddy IHSS 8 September 2021 Functionalism ( Émile Durkheim) - Aiden C IHSS Blog Functionalism is an idea formed by Émile Durkheim around the 19th century which thought of societies as a delicate balance, with each part of a society working together but individually to overall create a working society. This theory focused mainly on the institutions and social facts of society, and very little on the people inside said society. This means that functionalism explains how big business, schools, medicine, marriage, etc. work together with things that are known as common parts of society, such as laws and traditions. These things will not die out after any individual passes away, and they can be known as defining features of a society. This system was actually quite good when being used to observe the basics of a society, but its problem was that it lacked any form of recognition for social change and conflict. This means that, as a basic tool for explaining what...

Wyatt Quillin Mr. Roddy IHSS 3 September 2021 Margaret Mead      Margaret Mead was an anthropologist born in December 1901 who was extremely famous for her work on the people of Oceania. She graduated from Colombia University with a Ph.D. and in 1929 she started to gather data for her most well-known book "Coming of Age in Samoa". She was very interested in "primitive" peoples who didn't live in modern societies. This meant that they had spent centuries evolving in a way different from our "modern" selves. She was a strong believer in observing to gather data and spent a long time with the people of Oceana, watching how they lived and gathering data for her book. She was especially fascinated with more complex things in these societies like gender and race relations, sex relations, and other similar topics. She made a total of 26 trips to the Pacific, observing 6 different peoples. Mead was also an assistant curator at The Museum of Natural History in ...

 Lewis Henry Morgan      Lewis Henry Morgan was a founder of scientific anthropology and is best known for studying kinship  systems and social evolution.  Kinship terminology is blood relationships between people and their  labels.  Lewis attempted to connect the evolution of kinship to technological changes and the evolution of  property forms.  In the early 1840s he began to show interest in Native Americans and studied the impact  of colonialism and oppression on the Native Americans.  He was adopted by the Seneca tribe in 1846 who  was his main tribe of interest.  Lewis studied the Seneca way of designating relatives. He found that some  of their relatives were in Ojibwa in northern Michigan and also even in Asia.  Lewis' study of kinship led  to his theory of cultural evolution which was one of the first major scientific accounts of the evolution of  civilization.  Lewis advocated for ch...

Noor Qureshi Mr. Roddy  IHSS  9 September 2021 Historical Development - Ruth Benedict          Ruth Benedict was an anthropologist who lived during the early 1900's. She mainly focused her studies on the effects of psychology in a culture. She observed two different cultures that lived very close to each other but noticed how both of them acted very differently, despite the fact that their habitat was basically the same. Ruth also noticed how culture affects the mind. Meaning that a culture has the same way of thinking because it's "passed down." Not only are the ideas of the individuals the same, but also their personalities. Personality is a big aspect of psychology and anthropology that Ruth Benedict studied. She found out that some character traits are more liked in a culture, or family than others. For example, maybe a certain group of people teaches and practices a lot of discipline and extreme respect, as opposed to a different culture who, is m...

      Over her lifetime, Ruth Benedict had a vast influence over the study of cultural anthropology. Starting in 1919, she attended The New School for Social Research, where she was convinced by her colleagues to instead study at Columbia University under Franz Boas. She began to write poetry soon after, using the pen name Anne Singleton. Her poetry interestingly analyzed cultures and what impacts them. She went on to receive a Ph. D in 1923 for which her thesis studied Native American culture. A year later, she began to teach at Columbia University. Starting in 1931, she began to write books. Her publications were based on fieldwork she conducted spanning over a decade, and focused mainly on Native American beliefs, culture, and religion. During world war 2, she also advised the Office of War Information on dealing with the peoples of occupied territories, after which she published her final book. Overall, Benedict has impacted the study of cultural anthro...

 Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 8 September 2021 The Grand Diffusionists     Fritz Graebner and Wilhelm Shmidt lead and started a small group of Austro-German diffusionists who did not agree with Boas. They thought that what Boas had been teaching went against 19th-century evolutionism. The Grand diffusionists believed that there were barely any cultures that were completely original, that every culture seemed to adopt parts of a different culture. This is what the word diffusion means, therefore, “The Great Diffusionists”. Their school, Kulturkreise school of cultural anthropology, was named this because Kulturekreise means culture cluster. Kulturekreise is the theory that they believed in and taught. This theory became popular among a British group lead by Grafton Elliot Smith and William J. Perry. Perry and Smith even found that all cultures spring from Egypt. Perry and Smith continued teaching and researching this topic for many more years. They made the group bigge...

 Ethan Zweig Mr. Roddy IHSS September 8, 2021     Thomas Hobbes was born April 5, 1588 in Westport, Wiltshire, England. He is best known for his political philosophy. Hobbes viewed government as a device for ensuring collective security. His enduring contribution as a political philosopher who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of the self-interested consent of citizens. Hobbes was exposed to practical politics before he became a student of political philosophy. He also confronted political issues through his connection with figures who met at Great Tew. They debated not only theological questions, but the issues of how the Anglican Church should be led and organized and how its authority should be related to that of any civil government. Throughout his life, Hobbes believed that the only true and correct form of government was the absolute monarchy. This belief stemmed from the central tenet of Hobbes' natural philosophy that human ...

Ethan Zweig Mr. Roddy  IHSS September 7, 2021     Today 5,000 to 6,000 languages are spoken in the world, but a century from now, the number would be in the low thousands or maybe even in the hundreds. Communities that were once self-sufficient find themselves under intense pressure to integrate with powerful neighbors, often leading to the loss of their own language. The pressure on languages can be economic, social, cultural, religious, political, military, or any combination of these. Language loss has been seen as a loss of social identity or as a symbol of defeat by a colonial power. Much of the cultural and spiritual life is experienced through language. This ranges from prayers, ceremonies, poetry, oratory, and technical vocabulary to everyday greetings, leave takings, conversational styles, humor, and ways of speaking to children. When language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in a new language.            

Carson Dunaway Mr. Roddy IHSS 9/7/2021 How languages can differ      The blog talks about in differences between different languages. For example, Different languages may say the same sentence in their language but they will sound totally different. This is because different languages use different sounds and sometimes motions to communicate. People who are born in America are accustomed to speaking their formal language which is English, but people from Mexico are accustomed to speaking their formal language which is Spanish. But the indifference doesn't stop there. There are also people in America that use sign language as well. People who can only use sign language and are born in America or their culture will still have a language barrier. They will only be able to speak to people who can use sign language. but people who can use sign language and can speak a language will be able to communicate with multiple cultures and people. But with so many languages today it wo...

  Gustavo Alvarez  IHSS  Mr. Roddy  9/7/2021 The Role of Indigenous Languages in Defining Indigeneity I found it interesting how these indigenous groups have managed to survive after almost 600 years of colonization and still find ways to continue living. The article makes a good point on how indigenous groups in Latin America are still met with challenges from the government on their own authenticity. A good example of this is in the 90's in Oaxaca Mexico, there was a uprising of indigenous people against the government for pushing into their lands. They eventually managed to make the government pull out but the actual "war" has never ended. They also talked about how these indigenous groups would need to prove that they are indigenous through saying things like swear words in their language. Another group of Indigenous people in Ecuador would wear lots of body paint in order for the government to see them as indigenous and grant them protection....

Mispronunciation Blog  By: Camila Yengle     A recent study with 2,000 adults in the Uk showed that 65% of them felt annoyed with mispronunciation but a majority of them felt uncomfortable with actually confronting/calling out the people in public. The person who wrote this article is a Phonetician who studies the way people make speech sounds and pronunciation.   Some examples that the author of the article gave of words being changed through mispronunciation is the word espresso. People often say the word espresso with a z (expresso) even though that's not how you spell it. This way of mispronunciation also occurs a lot in young children who are just learning to speak. This mispronunciation comes from a process called weak syllable elision or deletion. When adults speak faster, syllable elision also occurs. For example the word memory people often pronounce as memry. Language mispronunciation can also form from the influence of other speakers around y...

Claire Thacker  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 7 September 2021  Mispronunciation and why you shouldn’t correct it: blog The article I read was about the mispronunciation of words in the English language. The article talked about how we shorten words by “deleting” the weak syllable while talking. For example, probably is said instead of pro-ba-bly it’s spoken pro-bly. Another trend is, for example, the mispronunciation of words like espresso. Most people pronounce espresso as expresso. There are a few reasons why this is. One, espresso sounds like the word express. Two, someone could’ve mispronounced it once and someone else could've heard it and thought “wait am I supposed to say it like that,” and then a chain reaction. Another reason is that espresso in french is an expresso. Another thing the article talked about is how you probably should correct people on mispronunciation. This is because of pronunciation prejudice. Mispronouctation shouldn’t bother you enough to actively point it...