Metropolitan Individuality

A great deal of fictional films and literature deal with the concept of society. Writers have played around with the idea of societies that are different from the world we know. While some portray this in optimistic ways and others darker, what these works have in common is the idea of social control – wherein people are forced to conform to means that are believed to benefit their society.

Currently, people within our society are predominantly divided by the groups they identify with or with how they are identified by others. These identities are defined by our social location. Social location includes our gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and religion (Hutchison, 2011). In this paper, I will take a close look at my social location and attempt to describe how it affects my way of living and my professional life.

My social location a 43-year-old Latino man, born and raised in a Pentecostal family in Puerto Rico (United States of America Territory or kind of Colony). The first and oldest child of Puertorrican mother and immigrant catholic Mexican father. Even though I am the "second” of 6 children of my father and a younger sister from my mother side. In between of this complexity and my Christian leaders’ family, my opinion on family decisions is important, my advice in different matters and I am valued for the oldest I am. My social position as middle class defines my life as a Spanish-Latino educated and experienced in United States. Although as Puertorrican with a B.A. in Administration, I grew-up thinking as American but when I came to U.S.A in 2006 to live, here I realized Latino in

Social location, or the status in life that people have because of their place in a society, have a huge impact on everyone. The impact that social location created could be neutral, but most of the time it will have a positive or negative impact on people. For example, an African American could be discriminated because of his ethnicity, or a patient will choose an older doctor when he needs a treatment. Different social location that we have will affect our decisions in everyday life, and most of the time it happened subconsciously, which means we don’t realize that the decisions we make are based on our social location. Like everyone else, I was affected by my own social location, both positively and negatively.

Recent events that have highlighted racial tension in the United States have had even a larger number of opinions that vary regarding why the nation continues to struggle with such a challenging issue. In our text Chapter 6 titled “The City/Suburban Divide” (Judd & Swanstrom, 2015, p. 136) identifies a subject that very well may contribute to the tension. A reference to the “urban crisis” describes a landscape that is littered with “high levels of segregation, inequality and poverty, along with racial and ethnic tensions.” (Judd, et al., p. 165) Many scholars argue that the crisis was a result of the demographic changes the nation experienced following World War II as advancements in technology and infrastructure aided White Mobility. The term “White Flight” has been used to describe a massive relocation early in the twentieth century when the White Middle-Class population left the cities for suburban areas following the great migration.

Additionally, my parent’s substantial economic and social capital was a great asset in my career path of finding a better education outside of my community. Professor Abrego explains that one’s social location shapes an individual’s identity and how one experiences how the world treats them (Abrego, Lecture 01/06/16). In my case, there were not as many resources that my social location offered, for this reason, my mother was determined to find another high school for me to attend, away from South Central. To emphasize, my local high school carried a bad reputation of teen pregnancy, gang violence, and lacked many resources, therefore, due to my mother’s strong social capital she managed to obtain a fake address in order for me to attend a better

Currently, people within our society are mainly divided by the groups they identify with or with how they are identified by others. These identities are defined by our social location. Social location includes our gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and religion (Hutchison, 2011). In this paper, I will take a close look at my social location and attempt to describe how it affects my way of living and my professional life.

Tanfer Emin Tunc, in a book titled “The American Dream” by Blake Hobby & Harold Bloom, makes an analysis about how the “new money” acquired his means and the “old money” who will never accept it.

How do we define this ideology of the American Dream? Society has formulated this idea over time. We as people have chosen to base our lives around it and make it our goal to try and achieve something that in all honesty is just this abstract idea that we as have chosen to believe and chase over time. Due to society following this ideology, people have grown to believe that happiness can only be achieved after they have reached the American Dream. You see these advertisements for products that make you think if you don’t own that specific product than you are not going to achieve the American Dream. Media has managed to turn people into these materialistic beings that are just sitting there waiting to be told what to buy next. For my paper I will be analyzing the film The Great and focus primarily on this idea of materialism and more specifically how this American Dream myth and ideology plays into it. Why does the media want us to believe that happiness is derived from the “stuff” we buy and not the things we already have?

In America, during the 1920s, a decade known as The Roaring Twenties, there was a transformation in American prosperity due to the rise of consumer culture and, increasingly, materialism became more prominent in society. Americans, in newfound prosperity, looked to increase their wealth without limitations and consumed itself with leisure culture for self-gratification. As more Americans looked to satisfy their lives through wealth and consumerism, the old ideals of the American dream, of a hope for a better future were destroyed due to an excess of wealth, privilege and a lack of humanity. Previous ideals in American history were hopeless as the wealthy acquired more riches and the poor lagged behind and both classes viewed wealth and

The sociological issue depicted in the video The New Ghettos of America is deviance. This is any belief, characteristic or action that members of a societal group consider a violation of group norms and that the person who violated these norms will be punished. One example of deviance from the video is the increase in crime in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. There are two cops in the video that talk about having to take twenty-four hour shifts most of the week to at most keep the crime under control because they haven’t even made a dent in solving the problems with drug and gang violence crime. Another example is the woman in Los Angeles who lost her son because gang members came into the house and shot him in his bed while he was unarmed.

A new has entered the American vocabulary: affluenza. Affluenza is defined as the unsustainable addiction to economic growth. Many scholars, writers, and comedians have made America's affluenza mentality as a warning to the American people, as well as the bud of jokes. Based on human nature, and strive for a more advanced life; Americans are truly people who need more growth. Affluenza is a characteristic that humans have been exemplifying for centuries.

So feel extremely disappointed, and barren spiritually. And thus people started to get into the blind pursuit of material pleasure. In the early 1920s, businesses were also prevailing, and a new Jazz Age was born. The U.S. at this time, becomes a place where everyone is yearning for money, and people become tools for making money. The purity of the American Dream, which was originally regards to hardship and self-success was gone forever.

The tattooing of criminals sustained through the Middle Ages and spread across Europe, making the social practice of marking bodies go hand-in-hand with delinquency, deviance and social outcasts. The practice of marking bodies was later used during the colonization projects in Africa and Asia, and like the branding of criminals, it was used as a means to exert ownership and power over the locals (Fisher, 2002). With such a dark history, how then did the act of tattooing become intended and commoditized?

The most important changes were brought in the economy and the way of earning income. Industrialization turned everything upside-down in this sector of human activity. In pre-industrial societies income and the economy as a whole, were based on agriculture and manufacturing in home. Wealth was not something to be pursued, the character and personality of the individual had greater value than his wealth: “the hard-working poor man is superior to the lazy rich man” (Vidich: 230). In modern economies everything is based on industrial mass production and white-collar jobs have increased. The pursuit for wealth is so high that if we compare it with traditional societies, modern ones would look corrupted (Macionis: 408).