Margaret is an 84 year old mother of five, grandmother of five and if you ask her to describe herself she wouldn't lead with either of those facts. Margaret will tell you, "I am a chemist."

After watching the video "The House We Live In", and witnessing the media coverage of the occupy movements, it has been impossible to ignore the severity of inequality in America today. This inequality speaks of income inequality, social inequality and racial inequality, to name a few.

In middle school, our class was given the opportunity to adopt a family for the holidays. The process involved collecting money, toys, food, and other gifts for a whole month by all of the students in the class. About a week before Christmas I was selected along with three other students to hand deliver the truckload of goods to the family in need. We were told by selecting organization that it was a family of five living in poverty; however, when we got there we saw a different story. It was indeed a family of five, but the living conditions were not what we expected. The large apartment where we dropped off the goods had a massive TV (which at the time was exceptionally expensive and not myself nor my fellow students had this luxury at home), the woman who met us was exceptionally well taken care of (new manicure and hair styling), and the family kids were sitting around playing video games. On the car ride back from the delivery, I distinctly remember my teacher trying to insist that we had done a good deed even if it didn't seem like we had. As a 12 year old, I felt disappointed because I believed that the goods should have gone to a more "needy" family. As an adult when I think back on this event I question what poverty is in the United States, and I believe it is masked by consumerism and cultural intolerance.

In this final third of the course I noticed an overwhelming trend in the material to explain what makes individuals different in society, as compared to what makes them the same. In our articles and text we read about people being grouped by age, color, race, gender and socioeconomic status, all features that come together to form an individual or individual subgroups of society. We have moved away from looking at the larger aspects and functions of society and delve down more to the human, functional level, what separates us and makes us different from our neighbor.

When I consider becoming a parent and when I talk to parents, discussions about how to best raise children are inevitable. Every parent has an idea about the best way to bring up their children, and in the process of enacting their own ideas they are becoming agents of socialization for their children. Acting as an agent of socialization is an important factor to the continuance of the human race as it passes on valuable learning to subsequent generations. As a result of the closeness that parents share with their children I would argue, and I believe many would agree that throughout a child's life (especially in the younger years), parents and family are the most important and influential agents of socialization. However, I think that another agent of socialization is taking an important and influential role in children's lives. In this paper I will examine if media is becoming more influential than parents (or family), throughout children's lives in the United States.

[This paper does an excellent job including the concepts of social identity, globalization, and socialization, as well as integrating Ishmael.]

In weeks 3-6 in our course we have adjusted our focus towards society and culture. Culture "consists of the values the members of a group hold, the languages they speak, the symbols they revere, the norms they follow and the material goods they create" (Giddens, 54). The complex relationship between society and culture was illustrated by the novel Ishmael and the article on Ladakh which showed two societies which were each differently affected by the similar problem of conformity.

Popular culture of modern America celebrates equality. The United States displays it's affinity for fostering equality in nearly any facet imaginable, in forms both formal and informal. We flaunt how far we have come in our government-recognized holidays such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, local festivals that celebrate diverse communities, the presence of ethnic diversity in advertising and entertainment (although it could be debated that this is merely the effect of institutions formal policy that implements affirmative action to help sway public opinion of it's image). In our capitalistic society, we have easy access to the goods and services that were once limited to the ethnic groups and subcultures they are most often associated with. Popular information dictates that social stratification based upon such factors as race, ethnicity, creed, gender and sexual orientation are outdated and shameful traditions of the past. Examining current social environments of different minority groups will reveal and unspoken culture of inherent social stratification obtained and maintained by behavior including, but not limited to, institutionalized discrimination that directly opposes popularly held values of American culture.

Picture courtesy Women's Press.

The United States, the fabled land of opportunity, of the free, of democracy and equality. These are the promises America touts, that one can take root and be accepted with tolerance no matter your beliefs or physical makeup and, through perseverance and determination, can be highly successful, a beaming example of the American dream. The reality of our country, however, is far from this ideal, and the monikers of our nation are more fable than reality. Throughout our history, inequality has pervaded our perspectives, reinforced by the very system intended to prevent such injustices: our government.

I'm going to be discussing the realm of developing a sense of self and how this relates most pointedly to the societal norms of our mother culture. One would think that finding oneself would lead outside any "norms" as we generally think we are somehow unique and not as influenced by our culture as we pervasively are. Instead we are shown the way of our people immediately through agents of socialization and institutions such as the hospital we were born and medical offices thereafter for check-ups. In elementary school we are shown and taught the one right way to behave and we are punished when we misbehave. So begins the start of what might be a lifetime of staying neatly in the box that our culture has shaped for us. Deviance means disapproval from the mainstream masses and often severe punishment. So, when we are driven to go inside and find ourselves, what do we see? We first see a lot of images, I believe, of expectations and norms and paths to an ideal that our culture finds the most promising (usually through power, property and prestige). We must go passed these images to the root of who we are and for a lot of people, societal expectations imposed upon us from childhood go so deep that we must burn everything to see a clean slate of potential.

Diamonds are ubiquitous in our culture as a symbol of high status. "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and "Diamonds are Forever" are two phrases that are often though of in association with diamonds. How did this cubic allotrope (chemical arrangement) of the ever so common carbon atom gain such prestige? What does this high value that we place on diamonds reflect? And what are the consequences of our fixation on diamonds?

As Americans we heavily value our individuality among our peers. I have for most of my life felt quite pleased at being one in a million, but a recent class discussion points out that maybe I am really one among a million. How can such a seemingly personal idea apply to an entire society? This is exactly what I hope to explore and clarify.

"Body Ritual among the Nacirema" is a paper by Horace Miner that describes American culture in a unique way. While it accurately describes many facets of American life, it is written to manipulate the reader into thinking that they are reading about an "uncivilized" tribe of people who either existed long ago or exist today, somehow untouched by modern "civilities". One has to wonder how we, as Americans, could read something that so explicitly and precisely describes our own daily lives and the culture we are immersed in and not only recognize it as a description of us but to also feel both superior and sorry for the culture we're reading about, as many do.

Sample paper 3

Movies in the United States have an enormous impact on how society constructs and deconstructs labels. This media for the masses has a fairly long history and has been around for about 100 years. Eadweard Muybridge was perhaps most influential in the idea of "moving pictures." It was his scientific work sponsored by Governor Leland Stanford of California to prove that all four hooves of a racehorse were off the ground at some point in a racehorse's stride. Stanford won his $25,000 bet as a result and Muybridge inspired other inventors of his time to create more moving pictures. According to inventors.com, Louis Lumiere was one such inventor and in 1895 he created a portable motion picture camera capable of capturing, processing, and projecting motion. The truth though, is that many different inventors of the late 1800's were developing ways to capture and play motion pictures. What Lumiere did (with the help of his brother) that was most significant, was to present projected "motion pictures" to a paying audience of more than one person. Thus, the use of motion pictures for scientific purposes crossed over into creating a media which would be able to sway the masses by making a strong association between science and what was presented. This potential to use film to portray messages the creator wanted his audience to absorb was taken advantage of early at the turn of the 20th century and is still a tool that is used today to perpetuate age old stereotypes regarding race and gender roles in the United States.

Anthropology is the study of humankind and its culture in the past, present and future. This broad definition allows students to study anthropology as a social science and to pursue specific areas of interest such as archaeology (human cultures in the past), cultural anthropology (the study of modern cultures), linguistic anthropology (language, its history and development) and physical anthropology (including evolution, paleoanthropology, primatology and forensic science).

They say that the United States is the land of opportunity. I have a hard time just really getting this to sink in. It seems like becoming a citizen of the United States just locks you into this prison of social class, debt you will be paying off forever, and a constant worry of making money to live. We are born into or move into a country where social stratification effects everyone's lives.