Sumblog #13

 

We were assigned to do our own known impact on ourselves. I have done one of these before just to see how much I really use. I noticed that I used a lot more energy when I was younger. I was uneducated and didn’t care much about it because my parents always paid the electric bill. But now that I am an adult and am now living like an adult I really pay a lot more attention to it. Now that I am living on my own I am constantly turning lights off, using less water and trying to keep things completely unplugged. I try my very best to not use my car, I either bike or walk everywhere I go. It is easy living on a campus and now using my car but when I go home I notice how much I have to use it. There is no other choice. Living in the city helps with transportation but when I am back at home living in the country it is very difficult getting around without it. I try to carpool as much as possible. I always try to use my electric bill like a game, every month I try to see if I can get it lower and lower. It is crazy the amount of energy is taken from one household. It is always nice when we have classes to constantly keep you thinking about the environment and how we someday will not always be blessed with what we have. It should be required that everyone should try to lower their carbon footprint at least once a month. And to continuesly be educating people about the effects electricity has on the environment. We only live once and once in the world so we minus well try our hardest keeping it clean and safe.

I posted a site with a carbon footprint calculator! Please take the time to see what yours is!

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/

Sumblog #11

In globalization this week we watched a video about Kibera. Kibera is an area of slums that lacks sanitation because of overpopulation. This video ties into what we have been discussing in class because of the examples it shows with overpopulation. Even though these people live in the slums they still seem to be able to put a smile on their faces. They are living in an area where they can become an easy target for disease and many other sicknesses because of the lack of sanitized areas they live in. There are many time throughout the video that it shows that they could be completely miserable in their living situations but they find the little things to keep them happy. They are happy with just having their families, friends and just the fact that they are alive.  The programs that are wanting to help them seem to be scaring some of the families of Kibera because they believe that they will destroy their homes. If these people do not want help we should not be forcing them to corporate. If they are happy with what they have not then that is refreshing to hear. Living without material things and being able to be happy seems to be thing in the past and to see that there are still people out there that can survive with what they have then the more power to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wawdH2DA6HE

I posted this video because it was nice seeing all the different classed that these kids have and how they all are enjoying themselves during school. It seems like in America education is sometimes taken for granted and these young kids are really enjoying themselves while they get an education.

sumblog #10

In globalization we brought up the topic of being overpopulated. It is said that people believe that America is over populated because of migration, immigration, and lack of birth control.  So do they think if immigration was completely eliminated  would it help with overpopulation or would making people be on some sort of birth control help eliminate overpopulation in china they have the strict rule of the one child policy. They couples in china are only child are only allowed one child per family. If the man and women were born into a family where they were the only child then they were allowed the option of having more than one child. Some will wonder what would happen if America had this role, would it work? I believe that it would cause a huge controversy. That rule almost seems like a slap in the face. To be told that you cannot have the amount of children you want

I once read a book called “Matched” this book was extremely interesting. It was about the future and they had complete different things than how we live in our society today. They had a rule that they would match you up with your perfect match. They would look at everyone’s chips which were filled with information about yourself. When you turned 20 years old you would get married to them. They would look at your background and would get you a job and tell you how many kids you could have. The craziest thing about the story was that once you turn 80 years old you were “let go.” Which in a sense means that they killed you. Everyone was on a strict diet as well. To prevent disease or illnesses. They were only allowed to indulge when there was a special occasion happening. It would be interesting to see if such a huge change would work?

This book is a series of books so I posted the website just to show all of the books that they are! Just incase someone wants to read them!

http://www.matched-book.com/

Sumblog #9

In globalization we started to talk about religion, I feel as if this is can be a touchy subject for many situations. I was raised as a Christian but I enjoy learning about other religions. It is crazy how people can get offended from talking about religion. They put “under god” in the pledge of allegiance it wasn’t as big of a controversy like it is today. I remember when I was in about 3^rd grade we would say the pledge of allegiance every day and one kid would not have to stand up because it said god in it. This kids parent told the school that he would not be participating. I feel as if this was not right in my opinion. People should not have the right to not stand up for the country they live in. There are strong men and women who serve this for this countries freedom and to not stand up for something as simple as the pledge allegiance because of the word god seems a little wrong. For us to live in a world were church and state coexist we should have them work together. Churches do amazing things for the community and I believe everyone should take that into consideration for when there is times in need. Yes I respect other peoples religions and how they live there life but I would not make my child have the feeling of being singled out in a classroom but because of a word.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7yoEzNVZy0

I posted a video of a controversy about the allegiance to show how some schools handle this. This helped me understand a little bit better about what goes on in schools now a days. I believe that there is a life lesson that is learned in every kid when they began to learn the pledge of allegiance.

Sumblog #8

This last week in globalization we talked about the hacktivist group anonymous. We watching a video on them called “We Are Legion”, my feelings about this video are so up in the air and I don’t really know how to feel about it. It is crazy to me that something that seems so harmless can cause such disaster. People who are just sitting in their mother’s basement and are bored can make a statement just by using technology.  These people seem to think that the government is hiding things from the rest of the society. This is where anonymous comes in and tries to express freedom of speech and to have fairness. They would start with internet pranks and as the technology increases they seem to be getting bigger and stronger. Yes, they have done some bad things to protrude the message. But I believe that their intentions can be positive as well. They seem to just want the government to stay true to what they say. They want to inform everyone that the government does wrong and what the government is planning and acting.  I liked how they shut down the racist guys radio station! They used what they do in a positive way instead of a negative way. That man clearly deserved what he got.

http://live.wsj.com/video/us-warns-on-hacking-group-anonymous/66EFD4D7-D177-4519-A5EA-556AD861F351.html#!66EFD4D7-D177-4519-A5EA-556AD861F351

I posted this website because there is a video on there that helped me understand a little bit more about what’s going on. This explains what they are doing and plan to do. It also shows that the government believes that they are powerful enough to shut down the internet. They also talk about how they want to be in the eye of the public. It seems it will be are to advertise this if the power will be shut down. Which would just conclude into making people mad.

Sumblog #7 Education

Education is a very large aspect when it comes to globalization. Education is something taken very seriously worldwide. After completing high school and going into the real world many can find themselves thanking the fact that they completed high school. Many may even take the next step to enter themselves in college. People even are able to study abroad and this has been a huge improvement throughout the last couple of years. Being able to study abroad changes someone’s education tremendously. With a higher education many are able to get better paying jobs and with studying abroad in the back ground they will have an even better chance because they have experience.

The problem with education can always back track to money. Education is extremely expensive! If education is so important to so many countries then why are we constantly being forced to pay more and more?

I feel as if we as a world is becoming better by trying to make people of different areas and cultures feel welcome. Places are starting to show different languages throughout the store and restaurants are starting to become more diverse. And I feel that schools are going to make it soon a requirement to have at least a few years of a different language. At this university they make us as sociology majors take a semester of Spanish 102. Which I agree is extremely important due to the fact that we will be working with many different types of people!

I love that we get to put a media part on your sumblogs. I always try to dig deep and try to find a “homemade” video of some sort. This video I posted shows interview of what people think about globalization and education. This also pinpoints many facts that people would not be fully educated on. I defiantly learned new things from this video.  Many compare the different educational systems from the different cultures they have lived in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw_PwtnxWi8

Sumblog 6

With all of the craziness going on with the government lately, I was really happy we were able to talk about economic related topics. Talking about this stuff helped me be able to understand it a little bit better.  We were given an extra credit worksheet and I took the opportunity to complete it. The questions made me do some research on how the dollar was being spent and how much are world market really works. I brought up that in this world today people are very money hungry. It only makes sense to why people would always what money seeing how all the media puts out there is what the new treads are and how to make yourself look better. I believe that a lot of it has to do with technology. Technology has grown rapidly over the past decade. It amazes me the things that people are coming up with. I thought that I had a nice phone but apparently there are a lot nicer ones out there. I cannot deny it, I like the newest thing but I feel as if I can live without some of the stuff they have out there! I was watching TV the other day and saw a commercial for a phone that is a wrist watch! Now that is ridiculous to me. Technology is defiantly taking over how the way people live. It seems that you can do anything with technology including shutting down the whole world system.

I posted this short video to explain how crazy things have changes over the years. It is saying facts like 1 in 8 people have gotten married from meeting online. They also say that there is on average 31 billion google searchs a MONTH! Also stating that in 2006 it was 2.7 billion. That is a crazy difference!

Sumblog 5 Causes of Poverty

Over the last week we talked about the causes of world poverty. One cause that was mentioned was legacy of colonism, this was shown in the video we watched. It seems that this mean when two colonies seem to not understand how to agree. And not being able to agree causes many problems. Another reason poverty is so large is because of overpopulation.  Overpopulation and poverty go together because of the lack of recourses. With the world being as overpopulated as it is we find ourselves running out of resources. Also, families that are in poverty seem to have a lot of children and children cost lots of money. The more children you have the more money you will lose to take proper care of them. While being in poverty you do not have the same resources as other. Contraception is not as common for people in poverty.   So overall this means that there is to many people for the amount of resources given.

Natural disasters can be a huge factor when dealing with poverty. Throughout my lifetime I have been aware of many disasters, one being the tsunami. That wiped out over 250,000 people, buildings, homes, ships, etc. This breaks my heart to see people’s lives get taken from them in the matter of minutes. Poverty happened quickly due to the amount of homes, buildings, etc that were destroyed. It has taken many years to rebuild the area that was affected and is still being redone to this day.

I posted below a video of the tsunami just to show how tragic it really was and you can just tell how the people were instantly affected by the natural disaster. It shows how in a matter of minutes everything was gone and people were left with nothing and for some including their own lives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDOuwMj7Xzo

Sumblog 4 (Catergorized)

During this week of class we talked about how counties become categorized. They become categorized by western/nonwestern, developed/undeveloped, 1^st world, 2^nd world and 3^rd world countries, etc. These categories can have a negative effect of the countries. For example the way we say nonwest sounds like a negative thing in my mind and it may give the same feeling to others as well. Being not western is like say they are not apart of the western cultures.  Wallerstein would divide up counties in order to help with the division of labor. He labels this pyramid as core, semi-periphery and periphery.   This shows that we are able to separate countries by political strength they have, the consumption of goods and economics. The core can be known as the higher part and the periphery is the lower thing. By calling a country undeveloped is almost a slap in the face for them. I feel that people should be encouraging to help the less fortunate places. In a sense being categorized will always happen in the world. This reminds me of high school and how people were constantly categorized for what  they did and who they are. It can be wrong to judge something but I feel as if these places would not function the same without being categorized.

I added a picture of the core, semi-periphery, and periphery.

https://www.google.com/search?q=core+semi-periphery+and+periphery&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=lMxRUreWLKWgyAGt4IDIAw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1409&bih=293&dpr=1#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=LRGbLar3XApBwM%3A%3B6CUyyCKTDAn1dM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Firows.ucr.edu%252Fpapers%252Firows69%252Firows69_files%252Fimage005.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Firows.ucr.edu%252Fpapers%252Firows69%252Firows69.htm%3B492%3B341

This is like the one we learned about in class and it was a great way to help me understand exactly how to understand this method. Some would say that categorizing countries is a bad thing but I think that it is unrealistic to not categorize them. We can’t all make the same money and have the same things. It only makes sense to label places, people and even countries.

Identity

In class we spent a lot of time talking about identity.  There are so many ways that describes identity. People are seen by their gender, race, class and the list goes on and on.  People often see themselves through the looking glass self. A looking glass self is explained how people see themselves through someone else’s eyes. For example I see myself as a daughter, sister, students and hard worker. But through other people’s eyes they only see me as a college student or something completely different.

Identity can also be described as something that is ascribed to them such as being a mother or daughter. Those things happen automatically. While on the other hand, you can be known by things you achieve like becoming a doctor. You have to work for that status and earn that title. I feel that there are ways that someone could be confused about this. For example if someone becomes a mother they do not automatically become a mom. In my opinion a mother is just someone who gave birth to a child. I feel that a mother needs to earn the status of a mom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HbieNlwRrU

I have posted a video of a girl going through changes throughout her high school years. It shows how she is constantly judging herself and thinking that her friends were judging her constantly. When in reality they were saying anything about her at all. While watching this it reminded me of how my high school went and how my friends were constantly asking me how they looked and if they looked alright. And I would always respond I don’t care what you look like and usually either did the rest on the world. I can’t lie I sometimes do the same thing and I then I remember that if they don’t like the way I look or act they don’t need to talk to me.

Sumblog 2 Globalization

I am now in two different classes that are about the environment and the way this world works. One thing that has a lot of effect is globalization. During class one topic caught my attention was the fact that this world is becoming almost the same.  Every place is different in its own way but it seems that the same things are being made. Not only are products being made the same but schools are treating the same things. They are going through the same experiences and same processes.

I have noticed when I go on vacations that everything is becoming the same. Last summer I went to Aruba and when we got there it was very different due to the climate and by the views of oceans. When we went to explore there seemed to be the same type of clothing and food. Then it made me realize that different countries are all in the same trading system. And everyone seems to have the same products because it’s coming from the same places. Yes, every place is different but it seems that all the products are the same.

So many products are made in China and they disturb all these products worldwide. By having this happening all the different countries are going to eventually have all the same products which will be taking away from all the originality.

Sorry about the long video, but I have found a video about how in china is in need of more dairy. This is showing how they want to become similar to America in a way. They have been trying to find new and improved ways to product milk. By them doing this they are producing it in the wrong way. Milk should be produced by fresh farmed cows. Not from cows that are in factory looking places. They are going to take away the freshness of milk all around the world. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mbyANkYZAw

SumBlog 1 Language being a Problem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-MMUXOY3mc

While reading the article by Michael Burawoy, I found myself realizing that language really is a factor in society. I have to agree with him when he says, that language is a problematic and promising field. We see it every day in society. It causes problems but it also is a great thing.  While reading this article I found myself having opinions of my own. I was able to realize that English really is the dominate language. From going on passed vacations I look back at the effort that the locals have given to people who speak English. They try very hard to make us feel comfortable in their culture. As in America we look at it as being a bad thing if they don’t know English. We think that if everyone spoke English the world would be a better place and we would solve all the problems. But in reality it would take away from people’s individuality and culture. As Americans who speak English we almost believe that we have the ethnocentrism over other countries. I believe Americans can be a little close minded when it come to being bilingual and we just want everything to be our way.

I posted a video explaining how it is difficult for children to learn when they do not speak the correct language as the school. This high school would teach the children in English and in their home language until grade six. After that they would be taught in English. By having them learn in both languages the children are able to come home with to their parents and get help because they will be able to understand it because it is not only in English. In South Africa it seems that the children are growing up in a diverse and multicultural world. Like Burawoy says this can be a problem but it also can be a wonderful thing!