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Social Stratification Is Affected By The Interactions Of Individuals

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Social Stratification in Our Community

People in our society are often judged, consciously or unconsciously, by the way they look. How someone presents and carries themselves says a lot about them. For this assignment, I chose to go out and judge strangers based on their appearance. The reason I chose to do this was because it was something that I constantly do. Every time I go out, I analyze what class I think a person belongs in and why. In order to come up with accurate predictions, I use the symbolic interactionist view point, which is a framework for building theory that sees how society is affected by the interactions of individuals (Macionis 2014:20). This theory is focusing on the interactions of individuals instead of society as a whole, and why they react in certain ways. I pay attention to the smallest details about that person in order to come to a conclusion.
I went out to three different locations and analyzed the seventh person I encountered in each. In order to properly analyze the individual, I used my micro-level orientation, which is a close-up focus on social interaction in specific situations (Macionis 2014:20). The first individual I analyzed, I mentally placed in the lower middle class. My reasoning for this was located in his clothes, location and body composition. He was wearing a grey hoodie with a police logo on it, sweat pants, worn out black sneakers and a drawstring bag. His clothes initially led me to believe that he was in the lower class,

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