Sociological Autobiography

Every culture has their own set of values along with beliefs, norms and symbols to support those values. I come from a Lebanese and German family with several set values. It is a part of Lebanese culture to be family oriented and be supportive of ones family. My family and I greatly value the bond, quality time and respect we have for one another. As a mixture of the two cultures, they both have in common the value of religion, which is also greatly valued in my family. Another value that is shared among many other families experiencing American Culture is the value of education.  Having values within a culture is extremely important because it is a commonalty that unites the culture.

            The importance of family is the most valued within my culture and family. We value spending quality time with family, respecting one another, supporting one another, and maintaining that special bond. I with socialized with this value at an extremely young age. My parents socialized me siblings and I by establishing norms in our home to support the value of family. An example would be our dinnertime routine. Every night for dinner my mom would cook dinner, my siblings and I set the table and wait for my dad to return home from work. Once we were all home, we would sit down and have dinner together. During dinner we would discuss how our days were, share interesting things we may have learned, and had casual conversation. My parents made it very clear that this was an essential to our family and that we must always be home for family dinner. This remained the norm in our family until my twin brother and I moved away for college. When we return home from college for breaks and such, we continue with this norm of having dinner together every night as a family. When comparing this norm and value to others, I realized that only a handful of cultures do value the importance of quality family time. I was shocked that not all other families eat dinner together every night, but instead they would eat whenever convenient for each individual, which usually resulting in eating alone. It has made me appreciate the relationship I do have with family and helped me realize the importance of family that the Lebanese culture values. I hope to carry on this value with future generations in my family.

            The majority of cultures around the world has religious values and believes in some sort of higher power. In my culture, especially the American culture, we value religion. Since a young age my parents would take my siblings and I to church every Sunday, I did my first communion, and we celebrated all religious holidays.  My mom would have bibles and crosses around our house as symbols of our beliefs. As I grew older, I began to question how important this value that my culture held was to me. This caused me to stop doing the norms such as going to church every Sunday and lead me to not do my eight-grade confirmation, which many Catholics believed was an important part of being apart of this religion. I started to reject certain aspects of this cultural value, but decided to keep others. I still valued and value today that there is a higher power, that it’s important to maintain a relationship with this higher power, and I still celebrate Catholic holidays. However, I rejected the idea that I needed to attend church every Sunday, pledge myself to the catholic religion permanently, and accept that the only way to be forgiven for sins is by confession. This decision was not happily accepted by my culture, but has helped shaped me as a person. It has helped me make decisions based on what’s best for me, regardless what other may think. It has also allowed me to help me identify who I am as a person and what is important to myself.  I will continue to make decisions based on what is best for me and not based on cultural values.

            In America, we a told from a young age that in order to be successful, one must attend college. My parents shared with and were socialized with it by their parents, teachers and peers as my siblings and I were. The value of an education has been on a continual increase and transferred attending college into a norm. In today’s culture it is almost looked down upon if one does not attend college or some type of schooling after high school. It has also lead to people believing that the only way to get a job in order to support ones self and maybe family is by attending college to get a well paying job. I share this value, which has aided in shaping me as a person. This value of a higher education and achieving greater things has lead me to always be craving more out of life and to set high goals for myself, which has benefited me greatly. This value has also helped lead me to the decision of applying to medical school, along with several other factors. I expect that this is remain a value in American culture and plan to eventually socialize future generations with these norms.

            Having specific values and norms within a culture are important to help members of that culture identify themselves, whether they reject that value or not. It is also important in bringing the culture together as one. Having a mixture of cultures I identify with has helped me determine my identity; mainly through being socialized with each culture’s certain values.

Unemployment Data Evidence

Unemployment has been an issue faced by the United States, along with around the world, for centuries. Unemployment can be the result of several factors and the unemployment rates based on location can vary. But why does location play a factor? What locations could be more promising for finding a job and becoming employed? What location factors increase the unemployment rate? After doing some research on the Kids Count data center, some of these questions may be answered. I started off by researching my home state, Kentucky. For the most part Kentucky is most rural areas with the exception of a few larger cities.  When searching the parental unemployment in 2012 in Kentucky state wide the percentage was 8%. The unemployment rate in the United States for 2012 was about 8.3%. So Kentucky had a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the United States but not by much. Since Kentucky is mainly rural land, there are several people who are employed as farmers, tobacco tenders, horse farm workers, and jobs of that nature. This may be beneficial to Kentucky's unemployment rate is that these types of jobs would not necessarily bring large crowds of hopeful people seeking those jobs. If you run into the situation where there are several people seeking one type of job in one area, they will be some who are unsuccessful in acquiring that job, therefore becoming unemployed. On the other hand, with the lack of more diverse jobs and industry that you would see in larger cities could contribute to the unemployment rate being somewhat high or average.  

Looking more closely at a specific city in Kentucky, Louisville, we can acquire more information. Louisville is one of the largest cities in Kentucky and is a very urban area. In this particular city the unemployment rate in 2012 is 9%. Looking at maps, this is a decrease compared to what it has been but this number is still about the United States average unemployment rate. Why would this be? It seems that in more urban areas, such as louisville, the employment rate seems to be higher. To challenge this I researched the unemployment rates in 2012 for two other large cites. New York cities unemployment rate is also at 9% and Chicago's unemployment rate is at 10%. These are all about the national average and much higher than the unemployment rate of rural areas. The cause of this could be the mass amounts of people with a decreasing amount of jobs. As jobs continue to move overseas, there are less jobs available in the United States. Also people move to larger cities with the assumption that the jobs will be available but that is not always the case, as we can see with these unemployment rates.

The knowledge about unemployment rates and why this could be happening and where is important to be aware of. Many assume that unemployment rates will continue to rise. In order to start preventative measures, we must first know what is the causing factor and where the issue lies. Most people at some point in their lives will begin the journey into the workforce or attempting to be in the workforce. This information applies to us all and should be taken into consideration.

The Sociological Imagination

This morning I woke up around 7am and went to the gym. After the gym I came back to my apartment, showered then had breakfast. I then later went to class and worked on homework. The importance of health and staying in shape has been stressed to me throughout my entire life by family, health professionals and peers. Media and other sources also provide information and support as to why it's important to add physical activity to you daily routine. As apart of the American culture we are taught the importance of showering and personal hygiene. When we don't take care of personal hygiene we receive negative feedback from others. Breakfast is also a pretty regular part of the daily routine in American culture. It is always advertised how important it is to eat breakfast. At home my parents would always cook us breakfast before school while we were younger, so it's something I've become accustomed to. Education is also highly valued in our culture. Education is usually perceived as the main source for providing for yourself and family by allowing you the opportunity to get a successful job. College wasn't really an option in my family, it's just something that happens after you graduate high school. Homework runs closely with going to class because in order to do well, one must complete homework in order to understand the material. Homework is really placed above many other things in importance unlike some other cultures where household duties would be priority.

Things would be quite different in our world if the same importance wasn't placed on being physically active. What if instead it was preferred to not exercise and exude the smallest amount of effort possible when doing anything. People would become lazy and extremely unhealthy leading to an increased amount of obesity. But the less physical work you had to do, the more intelligent people would assume you are for discovering an alternative way. People would find it useless and pointless to waste their time with something so insignificant. On the other hand, would people be less or more insecure with their body type? Would their be less body shamming and body image issues since nobody would be taking care of their outward appearance? It's hard to imagine how different things would be.