Chapter Outline
It was a school day, and Inayah woke up at 5:15 a.m, checked her phone, and began a few chores. Her aunt had gone to work, but had left a pile of vegetables for be cut for dinner. After taking care of that, Inayah gathered and organized the laundry, then woke up her younger cousin and sister. She led them in prayers, gave them breakfast, and dressed for school. Inayah was running late, so she didn’t have time to record a full video. Instead she took a few pictures and posted a good-morning clip, updated her status on another platform, and went to check on the younger girls.
Twenty minutes later, Inayah was fixing her sister’s uniform and calling to her cousin to hurry along. She loaded them up with their school bags and one sack of laundry each. The three girls walked the two kilometers to the bus station, dropping the laundry at the cleaner on the way. The ride to school took about thirty minutes.
Inayah had grown up about sixty kilometers away, where her parents still lived. She usually saw them on weekends. She had previously attended a boarding school, but those had become dangerous due to kidnappings or other trouble. Inayah’s new school was not quite as good as the old one, but she was still learning. She did particularly well in math and economics.
After school and the bus ride back, Inayah sent her sister and her cousin to the house while she stayed in town with some friends. The girls sat at the picnic tables near the basketball courts, where groups of other teenagers and some adults usually came to play. She didn’t talk to any of the boys there, but she had met several of them at her uncle’s store. The girls recorded a few videos together, started on their homework, and after about an hour, headed home to help with dinner.
How does Inayah’s day compare with yours? How does it compare to the days of teenagers you know? Inayah interacts with her family and friends based on individual relationships and personalities, but societal norms and acceptable behaviors shape those interactions. Someone from outside of her community might feel that her society’s expectations are too challenging, while others may feel they are too lenient. But Inayah may disagree with both perspectives. She might have taken those societal expectations as her own.
- achieved status
- the status a person chooses, such as a level of education or income
- agricultural societies
- societies that rely on farming as a way of life
- alienation
- an individual’s isolation from his society, his work, and his sense of self
- anomie
- a situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness
- ascribed status
- the status outside of an individual’s control, such as sex or race
- bourgeoisie
- the owners of the means of production in a society
- capitalism
- a way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by individual people and companies rather than by the government
- class consciousness
- the awareness of one’s rank in society
- collective conscience
- the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society
- false consciousness
- a condition in which the beliefs, ideals, or ideology of a person are not in the person’s own best interest
- feudal societies
- societies that operate on a strict hierarchical system of power based around land ownership and protection
- habitualization
- the idea that society is constructed by us and those before us, and it is followed like a habit
- horticultural societies
- societies based around the cultivation of plants
- hunter-gatherer societies
- societies that depend on hunting wild animals and gathering uncultivated plants for survival
- industrial societies
- societies characterized by a reliance on mechanized labor to create material goods
- information societies
- societies based on the production of nonmaterial goods and services
- institutionalization
- the act of implanting a convention or norm into society
- iron cage
- a situation in which an individual is trapped by social institutions
- looking-glass self
- our reflection of how we think we appear to others
- mechanical solidarity
- a type of social order maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture
- organic solidarity
- a type of social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences
- pastoral societies
- societies based around the domestication of animals
- proletariat
- the laborers in a society
- rationalization
- a belief that modern society should be built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition
- role conflict
- a situation when one or more of an individual’s roles clash
- role performance
- the expression of a role
- role strain
- stress that occurs when too much is required of a single role
- role-set
- an array of roles attached to a particular status
- roles
- patterns of behavior that are representative of a person’s social status
- self-fulfilling prophecy
- an idea that becomes true when acted upon
- social integration
- how strongly a person is connected to his or her social group
- society
- a group of people who live in a definable community and share the same cultural components
- status
- the responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to his or her rank and role in society
- Thomas theorem
- how a subjective reality can drive events to develop in accordance with that reality, despite being originally unsupported by objective reality