Gender, O Gender, Where Art Thou Gender? Tuesday, May 6 2008

I don’t think that accepting the fact that men and women communicate differently breaks the rules of gender equality. In order to strive to become equals we must first respect and try to understand each other’s shortcomings and try to also understand the motivation behind each other’s actions, whether they are non-verbal or verbal. I don’t think that there is any harm in acknowledging any of these things. I don’t think that this takes away from being a feminist in any way. 

 

A feminist today is someone ( male or female) who wants women to be on an equal playing field as men in the workforce as well as in society. Although women have broken down barriers and in doing so, have accomplished numerous goals that have enabled us to have a voice that deserves to be recognized and heard, we still have a long way to go in order to be considered as capable in different aspects of culture and society as men. I would say that being a feminist 40 years ago differs somewhat than being a feminist today but not terribly, because no matter what decade you are trying to advocate women’s issues for, you still have the same goals in mind, however I think that trying to make people see and accept these goals was a lot harder back then than it is now. I think that women are still fighting everyday for things such as equal pay, because even in 2008 women are still paid less than men, we are fighting to protect our bodies, our contributions to our community and society and many more. Unfortunately, because of close-minded people we still need to fight and I think that we should always be fighting for equality until it is ultimately achieved. 

 

I don’t necessarily think that the social representation of what it means to be a man has changed, I think that men will always be associated with courage and strength, they will be considered the protectors of the family and this is because society has projected this to us and dictates this stereotype to us through the standards that they hold men to from the time they are able to associate themselves it has to be with the color blue, race cars and trucks and GI Joes.

 

Yes, it is usually a bad thing to be macho, because it is usually a pretty extreme thinking that women are inferior to men. Unfortunately, there is still such thing as a male chauvinist and we are seeing them matriculate in this upcoming election, speaking out on how a woman won’t be able to perform the duties of the President of the United States as well as a man can. 

 

I think that the acceptance of alternative lifestyles is something that we assume would be more accepted by females, rather than males, which in a way plays on the socially constructed role of people automatically thinking that a male has ultimately been seen as intolerant and macho, so in this way I think that it does slightly change the basic differences between men and women. 

It is always interesting to learn about the differences between men and women, but I think that it is important to note that they are just that, differences, and these differences are what set us apart as human beings. So no matter how big they are, it is dually important to accept these differences and also try not to underestimate or overestimate each other because of them. 

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Cultural Studies/Critical Theory Monday, Apr 28 2008

I think that it is very rare that we can pick up a magazine or watch a television show today in which the average person is being represented in society. The average person being shown through the media is usually caucasian, thin, rich, tan and beautiful. In the days of photoshop and airbrushing, we hardly get to see normal everyday, average people, and this is something that is contributing to making the average person powerless, because these images are not real and do not represent the average person living in society today. 

I think that corporate control is a pretty scary thing, it prevents us from hearing, seeing and knowing the truth about certain issues around the world and because these corporations have so much money they are willing to do anything so that it stays this way. I think that these stories involve anything that will hurt their company’s image and who knows to what extent they have been breaking laws and using people as scapegoats in order to do so. 

I think that it is the people with the most control and the most money that are able to sway the media into putting certain spins on stories in order to rank higher in ratings or sell more magazines and newspapers. Because of this, we are seeing one side of the story through a skewed interpretation. 

Ideology to me, can be re-defined as a way in which we take representations of images and words and look at them while we interpret and place meaning on things that society has given importance and power to and in doing so, we create our own spin on them which is greatly influenced by the meaning that has already been constructed through the media. 

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Narrative Paradigm Tuesday, Apr 15 2008

 

Yes, I think that there is a difference between a story and a simple sequence or chain of events. I think this because although the story is based on a sequence of events, it is the anecdotes in between that make it a story instead of facts being repeated to someone. When we tell stories, we are relaying information in a way in which our target audience will want to listen and become engulfed in what we are saying. I think that it is usually helpful to have a beginning, middle and end to a story to help it flow along well. I also think that it is helpful for a story to have a storyteller that relies heavily on feedback from an audience. Since we are constantly communicating non-verbally as well as verbally, I think that we can create stories non-verbally without an audience that we know of, however, people may tend to pick up on the story we are telling without us even being aware of it. I think that this is where the meaning of a story is assigned, and I think that both the storyteller and the audience give it meaning, the storyteller by the way he or she relays the story and the audience by the way he or she interprets it. 

I think that we tend to live in a narrative paradigm, because we are sometimes clouded by the media and their interpretation of how a story is told, which is sometimes skewed so that they will be able to shock people by tweeking information in order to sell magazines, newspapers…etc. 

 

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Obama Speech Monday, Apr 14 2008

Act:  A speech given to United States citizens in order to call to their attention issues surrounding the country that we live in and how they will be handled when Barack Obama is elected President.

Scene: A country in need of change for a better, stronger and more unified America

Agent: Barack Obama, presidential candidate hopeful

Agency: American citizens hoping for a new united America brought on by the reassurance of the best candidate for the job.

Purpose: To unite a group of people ( American citizens) and alert them of the need of a new America, one that will result in choosing a candidate who will unite the citizens of the country by the promise of a new America built upon hope that will ultimately result in change.

 

Response:

I have never actually viewed one of Obama’s speeches, and after watching this one I was quite impressed with his public speaking capabilities as well as the amount of passion that he had behind everything that he said. I specifically liked when he called upon each one of us as citizens to make a change. This made the speech seem more intimate and personal, it took it to a level of overall concern for each and every one of us as Americans and showed his genuine interest in “fixing” all of the problems surrounding the country to date. I thought that Burke’s Guilt-Redemption Cycle was most clearly used when Obama made reference to 9-11 during his speech. He makes reference calling out people for using it as a tactic to “scare up votes”and “win an election”. At this point in the speech, he is making them and the incident the scapegoat, in order to get rid of guilt, as we have learned occurs within the cycle while speaking in public to an audience.

 

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Extra Credit: Sunday, Apr 6 2008

1.) MMC communicates as an organization because it is built up of several various departments that work together to accomplish a certain goal. The goal happens to be educating students from a Liberal Arts perspective. MMC communicates this in these different ways and to different people such as staff, faculty and the student body by enabling a shared belief from each different side. Through taking the information received by the college, enabling the professors to share and expand on their knowledge, and ultimately having the students participate in an open-minded and no one answer mindset, MMC functions in a trickling down of information that works circularly, no matter which end of the spectrum you fall under, to contribute what you can in order to further your Liberal Arts education. 

 

2.) In thinking about organizational culture, I would describe the culture at MMC to a prospective student as, a very open-minded atmosphere where each subject is approached with a variety of understandings and interpretations. There is almost never only one way to answer the questions that arise when discussing topics and subjects in the classroom at MMC. I think that it is a place for each of us to bring what we have learned or interpreted from the subject at hand and listen and learn from others what they have as well.

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Information Systems Approach to Organizations Sunday, Apr 6 2008

Having more meetings as opposed to fewer meetings enables the organization to work through the confusion or different interpretations of the problem at hand. I think that Weick’s basis of action over inaction is a very smart plan of attack. When an organization doesn’t address issues as soon as they are presented, there is a window of time that is automatically opened that can in turn create chaos and misunderstanding within the organization privately and publicly. For me, the most interesting part of his theory was his response to those who criticized his “shoot from the hip” approach, where he stated that, ” When you are lost any old map will do. When you are confused, any strategic plan is better than inaction  because it animates and orients people. Act first, then figure out what those actions might mean”. (287)

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Functional Perspectives Sunday, Apr 6 2008

After reading chapter 17, I think that there are many parallels between the four functional requisites of task groups and the body’s need for respiration, circulation, digestion and elimination. I think that the four functional requisites of task groups: Analysis of the problem, Goal Setting, Identification of alternatives, and Evaluation of positive and negative characteristics coincide with carrying out a decision just as our bodies take what we put in them and carry out the tasks that we need to have taking place within us in order to survive. In groups, we are forced to think outside of our own minds and call upon others to contribute to the problem within the situation at hand. This enables us to work together in order to accomplish a certain goal. This is happening the same way within living systems when they work together to regulate and maintain homeostasis within our bodies. There is no way a living system could exist without the interaction and working together of all of the systems within it, in order to eliminate the bad things that we need to get rid of in our bodies, just like this, groups take the problem or issue at hand and work together until it is worked out and resolved. 

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$1/20 Experiment: Wednesday, Mar 26 2008

This experiment was rather confusing to me, however it was interesting to learn about. It is so crazy to think that we as humans can not only be manipulated into thinking a certain thing about something but we have the ability to do so while influencing others into thinking the same way. I think a big part of this experiment had to do with persuasion and it is interesting to find out how people in general are able to lie to others and persuade them into doing things under false pretenses for money. 

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Chapter 14: Social Judgement Theory Tuesday, Mar 25 2008

Chapter 14 opened my eyes to something that I have been doing subconsciously for quite sometime now, which was easy for me to understand why I had certain feelings either strongly for or strongly against certain issues and why. I think that the yardstick metaphor was a great way of showing how each and every one of us has a certain range or latitude of acceptance, rejection and noncommitment. These ranges are influenced by our personal stance on a subject and our ability to think about the issue in a certain way may become compromised based on how someone may persuade us in a variety of ways. I think that the airplane example was a nice way of putting this concept in motion. It gave me understanding and insight into our own feelings and emotions towards certain subjects, in this case, airplane safety. The text says that we each have the ability to perhaps be swayed into thinking in certain ways or be persuaded by others who we have close-knit relationships with if they present us with information that may help us to be more easily persuaded, also if we have wide latitude of acceptance. This makes sense to me, because I think that each of us has the ability to expand our minds and stances on subjects, but it is up to us to determine whether or not we want to. This makes sense to me because usually the people who are able to do this must have a wide latitude of acceptance rather than rejection.I must say that Social Judgement Theory makes a lot of sense to me, and it was something that I had always known existed, however, I guess I just didn’t know exactly how it worked until now. 

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Chapter 11: Relational Dialectics Monday, Mar 10 2008

I think that Baxter and Montgomery have touched upon a subject that most of us worry about when dealing with relationships. I think that a lot of people tend to think that their relationship is doomed when there is that struggle of push and pull, yet it is rather normal and healthy to experience it. I think that most relationships are stronger because of the constant state of flux that they remain in.Also, the concept of Contradiction is something that is introduced in the beginning of the chapter, and at first I had to re-read it to make sense of it. According to the text, Contradiction “refers to the dynamic interplay between unified oppositions.” I began to gain a better understanding of the concept in the example of the concept put into play by the characters James and Sarah and their struggle to gain interdependence and independence among their relationship with one another. I think that it is important to create a relationship in which each person is able to be independent and also interdependent at the same time, however it is not always as simple as it sounds, and most of us need to establish ourselves independently before we also become interdependent on another.The study of Relational Dialectics is important for us to learn about for many reasons and in my opinion some of these reasons include, to understand our relationships with others better, to establish a sense of normalcy within our struggles to maintain our relationships with others, but also to understand that the struggles that we face in our relationships exist for a reason and to learn that we let ourselves form these relationships based on the push and pull each other within our relationship.

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