Cultural and Social Analysis of Everyday Life - Assignment Example

Cultural and Social Analysis of Everyday Life Cultural and Social Analysis of Everyday Life Question Brief Definitionsof the Concepts 1) Front Stage and Back Stage: The concept of the front stage and the back stage belong to the social interaction perspective. The concept reveals the roles which the actors play on the stage at a certain moment of time with the consideration of the different audience which the roles played by them involve. The frons stage role is such a role when the actor’s performance is clearly visible and emphasized on in the course of the play action development, and the back stage roles presuppose the actors revealing without his or her introduction to the audience the same way it is done in the mentioned front stage role. The front stage roles are usually aimed at the audience and due to this are open to evaluation, whereas the back stage ones are not. 2) Racism The concept of racism is one of the primary ones in the scope of the sociological science and one of the most actual problems of its practical application. Racism is a theory and a model of behavior which states that one race is better that the other one because of some reasons which usually may either have no evidences at all or they may be vague. The best example of racism is the Black-White relationships which have never been simple and have given origin to many related problems; the most widely used justification for racial discrimination of the Black population has been the skin color. Racism is a convenient means of manipulating of the public opinion: in times of economic difficulties, it is the easiest way to find the guilty and to react accordingly. 3) Tactics and Strategies Initially, the concept of tactics and strategies have been originated and applied for military purposes. The development of science and overwhelming process in all the spheres of human life has enabled application of these terms in other spheres of activity as well. Tactics is the concept which deals with the actions of the agent in the given period of time, for example, right here right now, with the limited set of resources and time available. This is a short-term period of activity. Strategy, on the contrary, is the activity which involves a considerable amount of resources and lasts for rather a long time and includes planning, decisions making, and reserves preparation, whereas the tactics has no time available for these measures. (de Certeau, Rendall, 1988, 34-42). 4) The Sick Role The sick role is a peculiar role from the sociological point of view which considers the rights and duties of the ill persons. Such persons, obviously, have different condition from the normal one and cannot fulfil the usual functions, which is usually proved by medical evidences, and the behavior of the ill persons differs from those normal ones. In this regard, the expectations of social nature from such people shall be reconsidered for the period of duration of their illnesses, as this is a certain form of deviant condition, and the productivity of these persons is also a point of significant concern. The role in this regard is the measures which shall be taken by the ill to recover from the deviant condition in order to gain back the normal condition and fulfill the complete and usually performed social role to contribute to the society. 5) Prosumption Prosumption is a concept which has been introduced into sociological science from the market development and consumption development. The concept has been formulated by means of contraction of the two words: professional, which relates, obviously, to the category of people with the professional level of education or skills, and consumption, which refers to the category of the goods consumers. A wide range of the goods available together with the increasing number of features and functions they can perform have significantly increased their popularity with the ordinary people who are not skilled enough for operating complicated items, for example electronic devices, which has been resolved by means of creation of the consumer-oriented professional-level goods. Prosumption is a driving force for the market progress: it reacts to the people’s desires for certain items with the high level of functionality but which would be available for them in terms of fitting their level of readiness to use them properly. Question 2: Scenario The offered scenario provides the following assumptions and hidden meanings. The main assumption is the attitude of the local inhabitants of certain country, Australia in this case, to the immigrants (South Asia men in the case provided). The issue of immigration has always been a point of significant concern, especially now, when there are some difficulties with the job offers and the labor market on the background of the general economic recession and uncertain perspectives of the future. From this point of view, any immigrants are perceived as the ‘aliens’ and undesirable elements and those who deprive the locals of the jobs and salaries and occupy their living space. An important accompanying assumption in this regard is the governmental and legislation policy in the sphere of migration: on one hand, liberalization contributes to the cultural and economic exchange of the countries; on the other hand, too high indices of immigration cause anxiety of the local population and initiate demand to reconsider the mentioned liberalization. The hidden meaning behind the scenario is the racism. The conflict situation coincides by its features with the definition of the racial discrimination: a representative of one race (an old woman in this case) limits the rights of the representatives of the other race (South Asian men) by hidden ordering them to leave the country and come back to their motherland. The accusation of occupation of all the space has similarity with the seeking for the guilty in the adversary conditions of life, which is also seen in racial conflicts. The process that can be identified in this scenario is a social conflict. This is a conflict of the elements of society which has risen on the basis of one element being disappointed with the supposed benefits of the other one, that is, of the supposed inequality (this is close to Karl Marx theory of social conflict): the old woman might think that the young people used their age to establish their further lives in Australia taking this advantage from the local youth. The relations of the different age categories may be traced in this case. The old woman represents a category of population which tends to be dissatisfied with the life in general, whereas the younger population prefers to focus on the time remaining before retirement and try to make it unusual. Another relations model is the native-non-native one: the old woman is a local Australian citizen who is not content with the immigration, and the immigrants are the non-locals who have to put up with this situation. Due to this the old woman executes her power in an inappropriate way by means of abusing these men. This way is inappropriate both from moral and physical point of view: it is unacceptable to insult people by their belonging to certain race, nor it is allowed to use physical force to prove one’s point of view, and the only acceptable way of expressing real power is a constructive dialogue which would let each party bring about the arguments and find the solutions. Question 3: Women Working from Home The question whether women shall be the primary caregiver or the only caregiver at all is one of the most important in terms of gender relations and labor state of affairs. Historically, women have been associated with the upbringing of the children and taking care of the family together with the arrangement of the home, which has been their primary duty. The development of society, significant shifts and changes in relations of all kinds, and an increasing role of feministic ideas and emancipation tradition have reshaped the mentioned idea and have given liberal vision to the activities which women can take up. (McGregor, 2001, 17-29). From this point of view, one of such activities is working. It is not a surprise at all that today many women have reached considerable success at such occupations which have been referred to as usually male ones as management, politics, and even production. This phenomenon has also covered women’s working from home, which has also been promoted by an enormous development of technologies such as internet access and computer data transfer which allow for acceptance and sending certain volumes of work from the employer to the employee. This state of affairs contributes to the women’s positive evaluation of their role in society and, consequently, of the meaning of the work in their life. Many women state that having a job is one of the elements of their independence and an instrument of self-assertion, especially emphasizing their money making which makes them equal with the representatives of male sex. Working from home may be beneficial from this perspective in such terms that a woman is capable to combine both activities: arrangement of the home and working, which is potentially reached by means of time management and planning. Women can also decide on their own which of these activities is of primary importance and meaning for them, and the realities of the contemporary society is that women prefer working to usual staying at home and performing traditional social role of a woman, a wife and a mother. In Australia, modern society experiences growing rates of feminization in all the spheres of activity, which reshapes the traditional norms and rules and introduces the new ones, which, obviously, has both positive and negative effects. The point of concern which shall also be mentioned in this regard is the influence of the work on women: as they try to gain maximal results and take great efforts while performing their labor activity, it demands more and more investments which means more time and efforts spending for the working purposes with little time left for the families. There is a situation which is usually called a balance between the work and the life, when it is necessary to find a mean between the two mentioned activities in order to spend equal amount of time and efforts to gain equal benefits from both, which, however, is very seldom the case. There are such variants of the situation development possible: the balance on the side of the work or the balance on the side of the life. The first scenario means that women pay most attention, take most efforts and spend most of their time to their work which helps them to achieve magnificent results and create successful careers. The second scenario presupposes that women concentrate on their domestic routine and things related to family, for example, children upbringing, which, obviously, leaves no room for working at all. As it was mentioned, these scenarios are only possible ones, and in practice women manage to combine these activities, though there is no ideal balance between the work and life and it is always necessary to decide which part would prevail. Working from home from this perspective would not be very different from standard office occupations. The only difference here will be the working mode, that is, the working hours which are mostly determined by the employee herself. This is a significant benefit of this type of labor activity as it gives an opportunity to plan all the activities according to the time schedule which helps to fully cover all the duties. From this point of view, the use of communication technologies is very beneficial because it, the mentioned benefit aside, also allows for agreement upon prolongation or further discussion of the work scope with the customer or the employer. The use of computer technology also provides such convenient working tool as the internet access which has become very easy and overwhelming, and this helps to obtain better outcome of the work performed. There is, however, the negative effect of this digital technology use: it often happens that big volumes of work make the employees spend much time in front of their computers with no time for any other activity. There is also such phenomenon as correction of the work results which sometimes can take more time than the work itself, and even be more time and efforts consuming. This makes women who take up working from home stay in home for a rather long time which is negative from psychological point of view because it means deprivation from social communication with the other members of society; moreover, communication with the family can be reduced to minimum which definitely does not enforce the existing family ties. Taking the above said into consideration, it is possible to state that the women who practice working from home are both lucky and unlucky. Their being lucky is explained by their being involved into labor activity rather than into daily routine which they find more interesting and impart a significant meaning to it, and because they earn money and contribute to the family budget. Their being unlucky is revealed by the fact that the work sometimes may be too tome and efforts consuming and deprive them from communication with their families, relatives, friends and other elements and members of society. Read More