I've actually returned.

I have so far not done so well with my new dedication to be a regular blogger. Often I have ideas that smack into my head suddenly. These fill me with excitement and optimism, "yes! I'll write about that in my blog, that will be great". However when it comes done to the nuts and bolts I consistently feel that I do not have enough real substance to my musings. Recently I have been attempting to read through 'The Sociological Imagination' with little success, I don't seem to get much time or am too tired to do so with full attention. The final chapter, or more accurately what I have actually read; the first few pages of the final chapter, details a recommendation that an ardent social scientist should keep a file. This file should include a journal of your fleeting thoughts which may not survive to any substance, any personal experiences of the days along with any observations you have made, which may well have a significance for any studies. This journal is to aid reflective thought, which is an important skill for the social scientist, it also has another purpose in ensuring that the fledgling analyst is writing at least once a week in order to stay in practise. Blogging very much resembles this activity in some form especially with its openness for others to see, coinciding with Mills' assertion that ideas need to be bounced around with others to vocalise aloud and hear alternative thoughts. Blogging regularly however does come across as a lighter exercise to what Mills describes; which is bordering on obsessive documenting of the random firings of the mind and perceived events in case they become significant. On top of these endeavours the social scientist must frequently reorder the file to keep these thoughts dynamic and preserved from simply being forgotten.

This brings me to a thought I had during my studies, Sociology is a very diverse subject with analysts taking vastly different approaches. These diverse concerns vary from looking to provide grand theories of societal nature or very localised and specific social trends, arguably the latter is subdivided between the provision of raw qualitative or rich quantitative data. What does strike out to me is that Sociology -if not a worth while endeavour and as some (a lot of) people tell me- is essentially the history of today. The work produced by Sociologists is the documenting of the social history of today. I imagine the recording and analysing of the details of everyday life will provide much archived data for future scholars to utilise to develop (hopefully) accurate details of how people in the modern, digital or information age went about their daily lives. The archaeologists of the future, maybe the postmodern (sorry) the post postmodern age or whatever it it is called will have a wealth of data in journals, newspapers and books; also equally important blogs and social networking sites as the artifacts in which to paint a picture of life in modernity. It appears that a typical behaviour of people today is very alike what Mills recommends avid students of Sociology to do; surely this is reflexive modernity.

With regards to Mills, if I'm wrong please don't hesitate to let me know. Also please forgive this post if it appears clumsy or short sighted.

Gender rant which could have gone on and on.

Yesterday morning while waiting to go to work I found myself trying to keep myself occupied so I picked up the first thing nearby to flick through. The thing I picked up was Saturdays copy of The Daily Mail. I briefly flicked through the pages until I came across a story about a child, now named Livvy, who finished year 5 a boy and returned to school year 6 a girl. Having grown up through early childhood with a preference for girls toys, the colour pink and having long hair. It was decided to allow Livvy to live as a transgender girl full time, as opposed to only at home which she had done up until this point. Unfortunately Livvy and her family came under attack with her parents being accused of nurturing their Little boy incorrectly and 'confusing' him. At the beginning of year 6 for Livvy included an assembly held by the headteacher explaining Livvy's alternative lifestyle choice. What highlighted to me was that the headteacher defined Livvy's situation as being the result of a medical condition not unlike being disabled or having glasses. This was to ensure Livvy was not bullied by the other children while seeming to ensure that Livvy's situation is still understood to be a violation of what should have been. This is a classic example of the heterosexual imperative shaping western attitudes, where the two sexes; male and female, are understood to be binary opposites. This ultimately results in strict definitions of gender roles and since this is understood as 'nature' anyone who deviates from these gender guidelines is defined made into a problem or convalescent. I believe it to be a terrible shame that Livvy can only receive empathy from her peers as a medical anomaly.

This story reminds me of an essay I wrote for my final year, I had to assess the usefulness of the binary opposite model of sex relations. My conclusion was simply that they are not at all. Scientific study consistently finds that there is no hard evidence to suggest any differences between the sexes, with exception to reproductive hardware, there is no difference in natural abilities. Women aren't predisposed towards flowers, pink, motherhood, sensitivity or more suited to searching for berries etc, and men aren't predisposed towards fighting, math, machinery or hunting. These are just cultural norms assumed to be natural and unfortunately are reinforced with pop science accounts with no real supporting evidence. The truth is human bodies are not strictly dimorphic, there is much overlap between individuals in what are defined as male and female characteristics, to a point in which defining a distinct set of separate sex characteristics which are alternate to one another is over enthusiastic guesswork. As for Livvy she is not suffering from any medical condition of gender, she is simply daring to have a preference different from the overly strict and long out of date norm.

Hi Guys... (there is no one reading :-<)

Yet again I post filled with the desire and resolve to become a regular blogger, to voice my thoughts and feeling aloud hoping to find a discourse with others over matters, both trivial and salient. I have completed a degree in Sociology and am desperate to continue to keep my grey matter glowing. I have looked back over my previous posts and am embarrassed by the sentiment of immaturity it makes me experience. I have no strict theme for my blog, I will just write what happens to dominate my delicate mind. That said, I'm sure my thoughts will be lined with what my lecturer called the Sociological Imagination (after C. Wright Mills' work, something I strive to develop). Whether I'm managing to apply what I've learned or just getting carried away with an incomplete understanding of my chosen discipline will surely be revealed (and will cause me some anxiety).

Anyway I'll stop writing now, as I'm sure I will have begun to sound a fool.

Friend inspired contemplation.

I would like to have a pointless ramble if I may. I'm writing this completly from scratch so please forgive me for any gramatical or spelling errors. I'm a little fed up of work and would like to unload some random thoughts.

I shall start with a thought, first expressed by a friend of mine. This observation is originally his, which he shared as a comment on a story I told him. I find myself, most likely un-necassarily occupied with it. I was telling him about my trip to the Natural History Museum in London. During my tour of the exhibits, I was not paying full attention to myself. As I walked down a hallway, not looking where I was going I suddenly felt a light tap on my knee. Assuming I'd unwittingly almost walked into someone, brushing my leg against their bag or something trivial like that. I looked at my immediate surroundings. To discover, to my horror, that I had accidently kneed a child onto the floor. Of course feeling concerned, and absolutly awfull that I had knocked a small child flat onto the floor! I reached down to help them up and make sure they were ok (I could see that they were about the height of my knee, so I must have kneed them in the head :-S), but, I stopped about halfway. Suddenly conscious of the fact that I could be seen to be overstepping a boundry of some kind. To be met with a hostility and, perhaps not most sincerly, prescribed a label which has had a recent boom in publicity.
Thankfully the child was fine and the mother laughed

This is where my friend commented on how it's interesting how social discourse can have an effect on our instincts. I know I said I became aware of the reason why I stopped myself. But this was'nt at the very moment I stopped, I actually stopped myself from helping the child up then became aware. So I can completly empathise with his comment.

This has led me to think about alot of different things, with no real intended point or conclusion. One was the effect of social discourse on actions which we do not put conscious thought into. We all have "automatic reactions", when something happens we react without thinking. Such as if a snow ball was thrown at us, most of us would flintch or when we touch something hot,we tend to pull away very quickly without having to make a conscious choice too. These reactions are commonly seen as natural to our bodies, I wonder, can the unnatural social discourses we are bombarded with every day have an affect on our natural reactions. Alternativly, to what degree are we natural beings? What part of us is the result of biological process?

I'm just spitballing (to put it bluntly). Personally I take the view that we are more a result of the social than of the natural. We have natural bodies and capabilities but I think that's it. Everything else about us such as our temperment, mental health, psyche, gender, capabilities and habits are socially defined. This is very vague, I hav'nt put too much thought into this to make a fully coherant point, but as I said I was'nt out to make a conclusion.
If I have any readers who have an idea please share some thoughts yourself.

First thought...

So I'm in my third year of university. Over my summer break I had a "summer job" working in the local super market, I also started attending church. In these two social arenas I got to meet new people and make some new friends :-) In meeting these new people, I discovered how generally apathetic I am when it comes to... everything.

It is in this that I have found some curiousity and comedy in my current situation. I am living in a shared house with three other students, three female students who I did'nt know untill I moved in with them. These three (I'll say for ease) girls all commented several times on "how it's good to have a man in the house", hmmm what?
I wondered what that meant but soon dismissed it thinking nothing will come from it. This changed after an event of hilarity (for me at least).

4am I was being shaken awake by one of my house mates. When I came round she explained that another of my housemates had returned home from a night out to discover the front door wide open. She then added that she woke me up so that I could check the house for burgerlers, I thought fair enough, she then added "since your the man of the house". I went and checked the house, no burgerlers and came to the conclusion that we simply did'nt shut the door properly. The next day I was asked to call the repair man to fix the door, I thought fair enough. But it was accompanied by "since your the guy you'll understand him"... What?
Since that night I have noticed lots of comments, apparantly I'm the man of the house so I am meant to take the rubbish out, lock the doors at night, be a bad cook, not mind having my stuff used, be ok with cleaning the disgusting things in the house, automatically know whats wrong with bikes and know alot about cars, along with numerous other things, please don't misunderstand me! I'm not having a vent. I actually don't mind them using my stuff or cleaning up etc, it's the fact that because I am male there are all these expectations of how I'm supposed to behave. I just don't buy into this "men are like this, women are like that" thing.

I tried to play around and said one day that since I'm the man and I have numerous special tasks does that mean that they are gonna do my washing up and ironing. I was met with hostility, that we live in a modern world, men and women are equall and that the old expectations were stupid and pathetic.

Surely the stereotyping of men falls into the same category, in reinforcing the stereotype of the man they are indirectly reinforcing the old stereotypes of the woman. In saying your the man so you should... are they not saying woman should'nt have to... and so making a gender based difference in ability and suitablilty, to me it does anyway...
I personally wish we lived in a less gendered society.

Pleasde forgive any bad use of grammer or punctuaion, along with bad spelling. I may not have fully communicated my idea since I'm not so big on writing. So any misunderstanding please ask and I'll happily clarify!

What on earth.

Ok, I can imagine no one has actually read my blog. I was talking a load of BS! I have no idea what I was thinking at the time of my first publication. I am really sorry.

In light of this comment, I am actually going to try and write a blog, with no specific concentration. I will just rant on about things that come into mind.

Social Worlds.

Throughout all of its history, the human race has lived within some form of society. I will stake anything and everything that if you were to magically look at any time, at any place on earth (inhabited by human beings) the people you observe will be part of some society or community. Whether it be the hunter gathers of early man, the first city states of Mesopotamia, to the Democracies of nations such as France and Germany. Mankind has always resided in some form of social world. By “social world”, what I mean is a set of forces acting on people. Directing their behaviour, and their understanding of the physical world. A “social world” accounts for all those characteristics of humankind which have no direct physical existence. These characteristics are all concepts which we understand to be human traits, such as morality, culture, norms of behaviour, this also includes the “objective” understanding we have of our physical world.The social world co-exists with the physical world, wherever human beings or any other entity possessing freewill and an ego may be. Much like scientists would explain the physical world as having underlying laws which govern physical phenomena. In a similar way the social world can be understood to be a set of laws governing social phenomena.

What is a society? This is the first question for us to address. I encourage everyone with their own thoughts to share them. From my understanding of our social worlds, only one conclusion can be made, that society is in fact the human beings equivalent to the giraffes neck. Society is mealy a human evolutionary characteristic, developed in order to increase our survival chances in the physical world. With this, I reject the ridged (and lets face it, big headed) view that human beings have evolved a “superior intelligence”. Which has led to a complex system of organisation. Our development of society is an alternate method of survival, which happens to include self awareness, free will, “rational reasoning”, emotions, complex psychology etc. Now I will stress that this is not an evolutionary step up the ladder from a more primal existence which had not yet developed these characteristics. As this implies that other animals on earth will, given time become similar to us, and we see no real evidence of that so far. This evolutionary difference, towards a more social and “rational” state, is mealy a different tier to that of conventional organisms, we as human beings are not a more sophisticated step in an evolutionary ladder, but rather a different branch in the evolutionary tree.

I shall leave this entry for now. As reading large amounts can easily become a chore. Also I would like to reduce risk of going on a tangent and ultimately making no sense!