The Sudanese Youth - Societal Expectations

The Trials of the Sudanese youth are beyond comparison. To be displaced across hundreds of miles, enduring countless perils, and still maintain one's humanity is an incredible feat. Then, after this entire ordeal to move to America and try to begin a new life in order to provide for a impoverished family, takes an iron will.

Societal expectations govern nearly all of our actions, and are the core of every society. These expectations vary from society to society, which can cause conflict  when one must enter another society. This is demonstrated in the fullest sense for the Sundanese boys. The refugee village that these boys came from was incredibly tight knit, with everyone being familiar with each other. This village also was incredibly impoverished, leading to a debilitating lack of resources. 

When these boys were then relocated to America, they encountered an entirely different belief system. Americans are very private, then segregate themselves with single family homes with individual bedrooms. This is nearly the opposite of the Sudanese village, in which, as one of the boy's sister says, 'the group's troubles are your troubles'. Another difference in lifestyles is in our gathering of resources, for in the refugee village the people had little opportunity to make money, or gain a leg up, due to food rationing.n In the United States these youth found that one must work hard and "market" themselves in order to get ahead in our economic system.

   

Doing Fieldwork - (Mis)Adventure in the Venezuelan Jungle

The study of sociology and anthropology can lead one to many places within their own society, but for others, it can lead to the study of culture in the most exotic of locations. This can be seen in Napoleon A. Chagnon's study of the Yanomamo tribe in Venezula, for a "civilized" Western man found himself deeply immersed into a completely foreign culture.

Chagnon had set out to study this tribe, and initially encountered extreme resistance from them. This was due to a large divide in the cultural beliefs of the two parties. For example, he was terrified by the shouting and overtly aggressive nature of the tribesmen, but after months of study and immersion, Chagon quickly became proficient in the Yanomamo way of life.


This is an example of how ethnocentrism is a part of every culture. We only ever learn what goes on around us, and as a result we favor our own culture's norms and customs. It is only through diligent study, or total immersion, that we truly see how another culture functions.


I have experienced this, albeit on a much lesser scale than the above case. I spend the majority of my summer break every year in Toronto, where I compete in the area's sailboat racing circuit, both for keelboat and dinghy racing. This exposes me to not one, but two different cultures, and leads to a minor case of culture shock. I do have the benefit of a common language, and a majority of cultural norms remain the same. However, as a whole the Canadian outlook on adolescence is much more relaxed. More choices are available, for example a few of my friends go to high schools devoted to art, where others go to schools for math and science. As a result, a overall more tolerant society is present.

A downwind leg of a Laser Radial race

The sailing community also has its fair share of norms, the most noticeable is its value of equipment. Sailing gear is pricey enough, but add racing to it, and the cost can become downright exorbitant. This develops an almost religious-like care for equipment. Lines must be properly coiled and stowed, the hull and deck spotless, and sails rolled to perfection. This in a universal value among the community, and one who does not respect this can often find themselves without a boat to crew on. To an outsider, this reverent care of equipment can seem monotonous, but to all in the community, it is a cultural given.     


The sense of our cultural being the "only" or "best" way of doing things, is ethnocentrism at its finest. This can be seen in our countries ongoing occupation of other countries, namely Afghanistan and Iraq. I see how it benefits America to ensure stability in that region of the world, but is it really our place to install a form of government that has never functioned there before? We think so. This is also how we, as Americans, obtain our reputation as being rude, obnoxious, and prying. It always surprised people that I became acquainted with in Toronto that I was American, ie "You're American? You're surprisingly polite." Although I am but one case, it stills demonstrates how we become fixated upon our own cultures and become less accepting of others.        

  

What would you have done?

"Fish are friends, not food." - Bruce (Finding Nemo)

October 12, 1972 - A small turboprop passenger plane left Montevideo, Urguay, bound for Santiago, Chile. On the flight were fifteen members of a rugby team, with twenty-five of the player's family members and friends. Adverse weather conditions had created heavy turbulence, which had the pilots worried. Eventually the pilots set down in Argentina, and tried to wait out the storm. The next day conditions had improved slightly, and grudgingly the pilots decided to chance the flight to Chile. Disaster stuck when the plane hit an "air pocket" and lost 3,000ft of altitude. This caused the plane to collide with a mountain, lose its right wing, and crash into a valley. 

The survivors, twenty-seven of the original forty passengers found themselves in a frozen hell, with next to no food, little fuel for fire, and slim chance of rescue. As starvation and hunger set in "the survivors' spirits seemed to be sucked into a hopeless pit". This issue was compounded by the fact that the search for them had been called off, and it was now up to them to survive. This put the surviving passengers in a serious predicament, for with no hope of rescue members of the party would have to leave the crash site in order to get help, but without food the party would not make it far. As hunger won out, the survivors eventually began a systematic consumption of the deceased members of the crash. This process started very slowly, with small slivers of meat. Eventually, all the passengers were eating human flesh, and even cooking it over small fires. One of the passengers justified this by saying, "The soul was gone ... and the body was simply meat - essential to survival". The strongest of the survivors were sent out, after regaining their strength, to find rescue, and before Christmas had arrived this atrocious incident was over. 

In this event I see a Interactionism at its finest, for a normally accepted "rule" is thrown out because of a changing social dynamic. Ask any child and they will tell you that humans are not for eating, it has been long established that humans simply do not eat other humans. This is due to bountiful food sources, stemming from our modern agrarian society. Replace that society with one in which there are no food stores and no way of acquiring food, and suddenly your best friend looks like a good source of energy. By itself, a human body has no intrinsic meaning, however we have learned through society "that a body, while not a person, is still human, and must be treated with respect". This can be seen in funerals, for even though a person no longer occupies that body, we still perceive it as human and give it the utmost respect. 

A live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles. Structurally there's no difference. - Jon Osterman (Watchmen)

Due to the changed social dynamic in the Andes incident, the standards of this society can be shifted by its members. This was demonstrated by the member of the survivors who initially suggested the eating of human flesh. He sought to change a rule, due to this societies' needs. Initially, this was not widely accepted beyond his close friends, but as more and more people saw the act of eating humans become "acceptable" they too joined in. This demonstrates how our society is constructed of unspoken rules, that if a need arises can easily be manipulated.

  
This principle can be seen in the Egyptian Protests. A neglectful, power-hungry, and abusive regime overstepped its bounds too many times. This angers many of the countries citizens, many of whom are young, educated, and harmed by this government. Over a long span of time, it becomes acceptable to be angry at the government, first in private and then, openly. As this discontent it networked, over facebook and twitter, Egypt's youth are at a boiling point. Citizens begin openly gathering, then protesting, and eventually begin rioting and looting. Under normal circumstances, this behavior would be unacceptable, but given the slow progression up of the situation one can see how it developed. A large gap exists between thoughts of discontent and rioting against law enforcement officials. This gap was slowly bridged, over the course of several years. So it became more and more acceptable to harbor this actions. As, others saw these acts, they only served to make those normally unacceptable ideas, such as rioting, appear the status quo. This made it easy for others to join in on the widespread destruction, leaving the situation as it stands today.  





   

The Promise - Hopelessly Helpless

"The sociological imagination is seeing how unique historical circumstances of a particular society affect people and, at the same time, seeing how people affect history."

     - C. Wright Mills

In The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills details the place that each man holds in the course of his own events. We are shown how man sees the world happening to him, how his actions are futile. According to Mills, this is the result of "continent-wide societies" in which a man is consolidated into a small cog of the industrial machine. However, we often fail to notice how our immediate situation is affected by the larger going-ons of the world, and how  we shape history with our seemingly meaningless actions. Despite the stacked odds, Mill's shows the reader how, through the understanding of the sociological imagination, each man can find his niche, and improve his own situation through this augmented perspective.

In today's society this aforementioned mindset is nearly impossible to avoid, for we are constantly saturated with media input. Almost everything we see is a result of mass media, this leads to feelings of displacement within our own lives, for we cannot help but to only see what we are shown. Also, this constant stream of images leads us to be so preoccupied with the current world situation, that we neglect our own world. This can be seen in people's obsession with celebrities. I feel this is due to our perspective, for in our own lives we are never certain of much, and we are forced to speculate on nearly everything. However, when we read about celebrities we feel as if we get the entire story, and that we can feel secure because we do know everything that is going on, even though that story may not contain any true information or exact details.

If one is to find their own place in society, we must first find our place within our own lives. This, for many, can be a difficult task in today's world of distractions and media saturation, but it is a skill that will help one to find their place in history. The confidence given by this particular realization can inspire an individual into history making, but one must first have confidence in themselves.