Cherry Juliana Sudartono
SSS 100
Professor Walter
Mid-Term
05 – 06 –2006
1.
Sociological imagination is how we make connections between our own problems and problems in our society. It suggests that people look at their own personal problems as social issues and, in general, try to connect their own individual experiences with the workings of society. This helps us to link our own experiences and personal troubles with social issues. Personal troubles are problems that occur and affect someone and those related to him.
These problems have to be solved by themselves within their own living space. For example, one person being poor or might be a personal problem.
Public issues are problems that affect on large numbers of people and usually needs solutions from the society level. A poor neighborhood is an example of a social problem. Sociological imagination make us connect personal problems such as losing a job or being suicidal into a larger social context, where we can tell apart whether a personal trouble may be related to public issues.
2.
Suicide is one example of social problem that is very much alive in our society. For example, the rate of suicide among teenagers and you people in the United States is one of the highest in the world. A functionalist might theorize that a high suicide rate happen when a sudden social change happen to a strong-bonded society that has a lot of shared moral values. This might lead to a shift of moral values and people might be at a loss on how to act

towards the new way of life and they might lost their perspective of life and lost the will to live that might lead them to suicide thoughts. A conflict perspective advocate might approach this issue from different angles. For example, a high suicide rates among young Americans might happen because of the inequality of social race. Those who come from a lower social class might see that they have no future in education or employment whatsoever in this society. Conflict advocates might also notice that women are likelier to attempt suicide. From a society point of view, women are put under a lot of pressure, such as being a good mother and wife in a family. They are also faced unequal opportunity in education and employment. For example, some women might be more qualified for certain jobs, but because they are females, they are not given the jobs and they went to their male competitors instead.
An interactionist might focus his study in suicide with the victims’ one-on-one relationship with others and of the roles they played in their society.
Interactionist believes that in attempting to interact with other people, we define a situation based on our own understanding and our own perspective.
From this point of view, a suicide attempt is merely a way of communicating to others as a form of a cry for help or personal acceptance because other forms of communication has failed.
3.
We can’t analyze problems such as rape and suicide without acknowledging the societal values involved because not every perspective work when confronted with different societal values. For example, both the United States and Japan might have high suicide rates, but the same theory might not be

appropriate for both countries. A conflict theorist for example, would say that gender play a big part in suicide rate in Japan, women in Japan are more expected to be a good and responsible mother and wife but she also has to be a good worker in her workplace. In big cities in United States such as New
York, this might not be true because women there are not as much expected to be housewife/worker anymore, they have the right to be working as anybody else and they are not expected to stay home all the time as women in Japan are.
4.
The word culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give meanings to such activity. There are a lot of different definitions of "culture" and all of them shows the different theory based on different understanding and criteria for evaluating human activity. A
2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO states that culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". The definitions stated above, as well as many others, offer a list of things that comprise culture. These items are treated as objects with an existence and life-line of their own. For example, a law, a stone tool, a marriage, is constitute as items that comprise culture. A culture, then, is by definition at least a set of cultural objects. Many people today use a conception of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early
19th centuries. This idea of culture then reflected inequalities within European

societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world.
It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with nature. According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. In practice, culture referred to élite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used 'culture' in the sense of
'cultivation' might argue that classical music "is" more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock or than the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples of Australia.
5.
Culture is not static. It always changes overtime. Cultural change can happen due to the environment, to inventions, and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the beginning of agriculture, which in turn brought a lot of cultural innovations. Something might have a different context when brought to another culture. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. A theory of why culture is always changing because people are always looking for ways to better their lives. For example, scientists are always looking for better, newer technologies – such as cell phones and home appliances, which in their beliefs will help to make our lives easier. Change in technologies is an example of material change. Non-material change on the other hand is a change in a more

abstract aspect such as beliefs. How people react and adapt to the new technologies that are coming out everyday is an example of non-material culture change. Cultural diversity is the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole. It is sometimes known as multiculturism too. The more diversity there is in a society, the more changes there are to be done and applied to everyday life. For example, during the colonization period, a lot of Native American have to change their beliefs and ways of life so as to survive and to adapt to the colonization of the British.