In What Ways Does Docility and Conformity Differ - Essay Example

In what ways does docility and conformity differ? In what ways does docility and conformity differ? Sociology isthe subject which relates two or more phenomena together. Sociologists propose theories in order to relate two or more concepts. It can be said clearly, that a theory is proposed to explain why a particular phenomena occurs and what are its applications. God has created all human beings in form of couples. No one is single in this world, including animals. God has created man and woman with some special traits and differences. Man has its own structure according to his responsibilities, woman posse’s different structure as per her responsibilities. Men and women both created in couples but both posses different attributes and different lifestyles. Woman posses some traits completely different from man and man owns some characteristics entirely different from woman. Still, there is a competition lies between man and woman. No matter in which part of the world, they live but it’s so easy to find a tight competition between man and woman. Gender plays an important role in both human beings. Gender helps creating special traits in every man or woman. It is generally considered that men are strong and women are weak, there are thousands of differences on the basis of which it is usually said. Regardless of strength, there are many other factors that make woman different from man. Man are usually strong in feelings, they do not take care lots of small things in their life, while on the other hand, woman are always possessive about their relationship, their belongings etc. The word docility states the trait of being agreeably manageable and submissive. Docility can also be defined as the willingness and readiness to fulfill other wishes without considering own’s wish. Docility is usually seem in woman as they easily get ready to ruin their own wishes and they have power, strength to work against their wishes, their desires. It is usually said that once sexuality is invested in the person, he starts developing his characteristics according to his gender. In other words, it can be said that sexual subject makes a docile body. Focault, (1975) argues that the docile body is usually the active avatar of disciplinary practices by acting as a self disciplined body. The term docility also points Judith butler’s (1990) theory of gender performance. She points that individuals must constantly perform defined gender actions, in order to get away the social discipline that is experienced against queer sexuality. In the repetition of gender actions, actions are usually ignored and the avatar is usually considered as an internal identity. In this way, gender seems a docile body. For instance, Miroslaw Filiciak (2003) argues that the developing of identities in cyberspace is not so much in plenty from a self as it is a longed for chance of showing one’s self beyond physical limits. These expressions might not move beyond the gender actions and sexual norms that make the “self”. In the eyes of many sociologist, docility in the main concept of performance. Docility usually helps in identifying personal traits as per their gender specification; it also helps in understanding why individuals authorize with the agency to develop their own sexual world rather to perpetuate the identified norms of gender and sexuality. Conformity is the action of relating attributes, concepts, and actions to what human gender considers is usual of their community or social group. This determination appears in small units and society as a whole, and normally output from elusive unconscious shapes, or direct and overt social force. Conformity can appear in the presence of others, or when an individual has no one around him. For instance, people incline to obey social values when eating or watching their favorite plays, even when they have no one around them. A number of people normally conform from a wish of being safe within a unit generally in a group of a similar religion, unit, religion, race , community or academic status. Involuntariness to adjustment holds the risk of social act. In this regard, conformity can be a way of reducing bullying or avoiding criticism from individuals, though it could also influence crushing of personality. Conformity is usually linked with immaturity and youth culture, but highly affects individuals of all age groups (Cameron & Deborah, 2007 23).,Although individuals pressure can manifest negatively, conformity posses both good or bad effects counting on the situation. Identifying the right side of the road can be visualized as beneficial conformity. Conformity highly affects development and maintenance of social values, social traits, and facilitates societies work calmly and expectedly via the self- riddance of behaviors observed as same to unusual rules. In this way, it can be considered as a real force that safes acts that are perceptually destructive or harsh. In addition, the societal press to adjust and disseminate conformity usually does not distinguish between norms that have bad effects, and those that rarely cut off a group sense of identifying what is 'normal' or a good predictable behavior. Few examples of this are listed below: • Clothing traits • Length of Hair • Gender actions • Social and class roles • Parental expectations for their child • Utilization of accent and slang word There are some attributes that are uncontrollable, less mutable sides are not usually controllable, for instance, difference in skin color or ethnic background, 'unusual' body shape, or sexual preference. The reason of this is the conformity identifies as a group phenomenon, things such as group size, unanimity, cohesion, status, prior commitment, and public opinion aid in determining the height of conformity an individual actions. Informational Influence There are number of influences that occur due to conformity such as informational influence and social influence. Informational social influence takes place when an individual becomes a member of one's group to inquire accurate information (Fitzpatrick, Mulac, & Dindia, 1995 18). An individual’s most likely to utilize informational social influence in different times: when a situation is confusing, people feel uncertainty in their thoughts, decisions about what and how to handle things and they are more likely to rely on others for the correct decisions; and when having a crisis where prompt action is required, in spite of panic. Relying on other people can aid releasing fears and doubts, but unluckily people are not always right. The more knowledge a person has, the more valuable he is considered as a resource. That’s the only reason people often run to experts for assistance. But here one should be very careful, as mistakes can be made by experts too. Informational social influence normally outputs in internalization or private acceptance, where an individual genuinely thinks that the information is accurate. Normative social influence takes place when one prefers to be liked or positively accepted by the other members of the community. It normally outputs in public compliance, saying or doing actions without believing in it. Solomon E. Asch was the first psychologist to investigate this phenomenon in the laboratory. He performed a new version of Sherif’s study, considering that when the scene was very easy and clear, conformity would be dramatically minimized. He exposed individuals in a unit to a series of lines, and the participants were required to match one line with a standard line (Bevan & Aneurin, 1961 50). Societal values usually determine gender differences. There are many differences by means of men and women actions and their conformance to social influence. Social psychologists, Alice Eagly and Linda Carli conducted a meta-analysis of 148 experiments of influence-ability. They discovered that women are more convincing and have more adjustment power than men in community in difficult situations that involve surveillance. In difficult moments excluding surveillance, women are less likely to adjust (Tannen & Deborah, 2006 12). In the experiment of Sistrunk and McDavid at a private university, a junior school, and at a college, they found that, females were more capable of bearing social pressures than males. In fact, females adjust more than males 3 out of 4 times when they were asked masculine inquires. Males conform more than females 2 out of 4 times when they were asked feminine inquires. Previous research has proved that assessing gender conformity is linked with both positive and negative effects for self-esteem and positive affect. The recent research (women,?n?= 226; men,?n? = 175) inquired these conflicting results by breaking up investing variables in societal gender ideals and personally valuing one's gender distant personality and inquiring the link between self-esteem, through either? independent ?actions that are freely selected) or? forced ?actions involved in due to pressure from others individuals. Motivations for gender-consistent actions are communal action for women and agent attitude for men. Confirming expectations, structural equation modeling disclosed that investment in gender ideals expected influenced but not independent motivation whereas private regard expected independent but not pressured encouragement. Moreover, independent motivation for gender-compatible behavior was positively linked with self-esteem while on the other hand pressured motivation was negatively linked with self-esteem. Thus, valuing one's gender traits was not observed to be expensive for the self directly, but to instead pressure self-esteem through encouragement to enact gender-conforming attitude. Although the recent studies present a unique relation between some kinds of gender conformity and self-esteem, now, there is a concept of how gender-conforming attitude can still have negative effects for instance, communal attitude in the circumstance of male-sex-typed areas (Alice & Eagly, 2010). The results show that subjects' sex and age highly influenced the limit of their conformity. Between 19 years and older subjects, females are observed more conformed with surveillance than without surveillance, while on the other hand, surveillance did not bother males' conformity. As per studies among individuals under 19 years subjects, surveillance leaves no effects. Analysis of sex conflicts revealed that older females were importantly more conforming than older males when under surveillance as well as when situations leave impressions of one another appeal ability. Among younger subjects, there were no sex dissimilarities. These findings are explored in terms of the theories that (a) both sex and age used as status features and (b) gender roles decide conformity. The both concepts relate to our understanding of previous modules in different ways. As, it has been discussed that gender posses differences in languages as well, it has been observed that male uses more of slang language and slang words than females. In normal life, it can be easily noticed that a women generally react more positive in difficult situations while men take a lot of time to understand and react positively. God created both gender with different characteristics and females are filled with emotions while man lacks emotions and feelings. Language plays an important role in building one’s self. Sounds and pronunciations are also different depending on gender. “The forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language … every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness” (Benjamin Whorf). Every Language has its own patterns and a vast range of sounds, pronunciation that highly depends on gender. It is a general practice that most powerful people or group name things so name of several things or objects are highly influenced by their perspectives and their ideas, concepts. There are hundreds of gender specific terms like actress, waitress etc they point towards females but highlights male variant as norm. Mr, Mrs are also problematic words for women. Structure of language and other traits of gender highly affect sounds, pronunciations of words (Burton & Clark, 1960 65).Structure of language highlights that there are two highly different sexes present and differences between them holds great importance. Not only language and language cut off but knowledge and power also has its own effects. Knowledge and power both are not the property of man but it is usually considered that a man can perform task well than a women, however, studies shows that a women performs task faster than a man (Butler, 1990 145). ‘Knowledge as discourse is not knowledge of the ‘real’ world as it exists prior to that knowledge. Although it presents itself as representing objective reality, in fact discourses construct and make 'real' the objects of knowledge they 'represent'. Knowledge is distinguished from other ways of apprehending the world and is considered to be 'knowledge' of the objective world because it is supported by practices of power’ (Nash, 2000:21). Docility and conformity relates to sex at a very high extent. Knowledge and power both highly influence the docility and conformity factors. Adjustment can only be made when some one has power to accept things and ability to adjust his or her attitude as per the situation. Both factors are highly influence by the knowledge and power. Power and knowledge work to normalize and discipline (Hardcastle & Edgar,1947 43). Docility also points towards confession as the one who has more adjustment power can make confessions. Bartky states that “The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle or who, feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate of the Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. The self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy. We cannot begin the re-vision of our own bodies until we learn to read the cultural messages we inscribe upon them daily and until we come to see that even when the mastery of the disciplines of femininity produces a triumphant result, we are still only women” Docility and conformity helps a lot in recognizing various traits of gender. The current studies state that school plays an important role in feminizing boys. Studies criticize that the new school system feminize boys and make them docile body, and those boys who remain try to be independent meet with school failure. Boys become feminize in school, and if this feminization means conformity, docility then education system should be just concerned about the feminization of girls and not for the feminization of boys (Pottkar & Fishel, 2008 52). No child should be motivated towards passivity. Independence and freedom should be encouraged in all schools and no one holds right to pressurize a boy or a girl to perform certain actions. Usually, it has been observed that docility problem comes with males; it should be deemed accurate for girls to continue their role of docility. Conclusion: Language, knowledge and power are the common human traits but God has created all human beings in two sexes i.e. male and female. Both sex posse different traits and different attributes. Language has its own sounds and pronunciation. Docility and conformity holds great significance in determining sexist attributes. Docility points towards adjustment and agreement towards other’s wish and usually it has seen that women are more likely to be docile body as they easily gets agree to work upon other’s wish. They have capability to act as per other’s wish and work against their own wishes. While, on the other hand, men are less likely to be docile body and they takes longer to react positively in difficult situations. It is quiet easy to react positively in routine situations while it is really hard to act positively in the difficult situation. Conformity and docility both are interconnected by several means; these two factors are highly influence by gender and sex. There has been a debate since thousands of years that who is better in gender. Sociology relates/points towards various factors regarding these issues, there are number of theories that clarifies these traits in details. We have studied the linkage between sounds, language and gender and in second session we studied about knowledge, power and gender. Both modules were really helpful in understanding the nature and attributes of the gender. References Alice H. Eagly, (2010), Sex Differences in Conformity: Status and Gender Role Interpretations, pg: 1-12, retrieved: 30-04-2011:http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/10/3/203. Butler, j.,(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. 145 Hardcastle, Edgar (1947). "The Nationalization of the Railways". Socialist Standard (Socialist Party of Great Britain) 43 (1). Retrieved 2007-04-28. Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear p.50, pp.126–128, p.21 MacGibbon and Kee, second edition (1961) Jannice Pottkar, Andrew Fishel, (2008), Sex bias in the school, pg.47-56, retrieved: 30-04-2011:http://books.google.ae/books?id=zALv32qXw3IC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=In+what+ways+docility+and+conformity+differs&source=bl&ots=2DSj7DH0u4&sig=1U62fCg_lZ8fOMxjahkh1KcRHZk&hl=en&ei=B927TZmQCoGo8AP0haHDBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false Burton R. Clark,(1960),The cooling out function in higher education," The American Journal of Sociology 65. Tannen, Deborah (2006). "Language and culture". In Ralph W. Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton. An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Pg. 12, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-61235-7. Fitzpatrick, M. A., Mulac, A., & Dindia, K. (1995). Gender-preferential language use in spouse and stranger interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 14, 18-39. Cameron, Deborah (2007). The Myth of Mars and Venus. Pg. 23 Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-199-21447-6. Read More