Gender roles and the function they serve in our society have been known to be a complex system of statuses, viewpoints, and other elements that bring together a particular type of stratification within our culture today. Talcott Parsons developed a model for this system of stratification that analyzed the popular mid 20th century form of the nuclear family. In his article, “Sex Roles in the American Kinship System,” Parsons lays down his beliefs that the roles we play as male and female are essential to creating a functional and productive kinship. Through setting out a particular structure that will potentially ensure that competition and conflict will be avoided, Parsons asserts that these kinship groups act as functioning units of stratification within our society. This paper aims to clarify the strengths of Parsons’ arguments, such as the functionality and effectiveness of certain systems within our culture, while contrasting the outdated viewpoints which he presents that might not be as applicable in today’s modern times considering the amount of social changes and open opportunities that are now available to both sexes.
Bilal Adem Professor Boyle English 111 18 January 2012 Response to the high cost of manliness Robert Jensen writes in his essay “The High Cost of Manliness” that our culture defines the idea of masculinity in a way that it creates certain expectations that have to be fulfilled. Jensen talks about the aspects biology and culture that affect our view of humanity. Jensen says that masculinity is associated with traits such as seeking control, aggression, and competition. Jensen also talks about the consequences such as rape and vulnerability that are connected to the fact that men and women are different, but Jensen later counters that argument by mentioning that men and women are more alike than they are different. Most importantly men can also be associated with the ideals of caring and sacrifice.
In “Autonomy as Natural Equality: Inequality in ‘Egalitarian’ Societies” (Helliwell, 1995:359-375), Christine Helliwell argues that a common assumption in anthropological literature underlying the view of individual societies as ‘egalitarian’ is the conflation of ‘autonomy’ with ‘equality’ (Helliwell, 1995:359), and that this conflation itself stems from a questionable distinction between ‘the social’ and ‘the natural’ (Helliwell, 1995:362). An analysis of Helliwell’s central argument demonstrates that the problem she highlights extends beyond analytical conceptions of equality. The implications Helliwell’s argument raises have a broader implication for the way conceptual paradigms are employed in anthropological analysis. Although Helliwell introduces other complexities (not examined here due to space constraints), the primary focus of her essay is on the relationship between the Western conception of ’the natural’ and ’the social’ as mutually exclusive categories, and the Western tendency to conflate autonomy with ‘true equality‘ (specifically equality of opportunity), and the implications this has for anthropological understandings of both non-Western and Western social orders. To summarise Helliwell’s argument, there exists in anthropology a common practise of elaborating the questionable Western notion of the existence of a mutually exclusive distinction between ‘the natural’ and ‘the social’, into a paradigm in which equality of opportunity (achieved through autonomy) is both a necessary and sufficient characteristic of ‘true equality’ (Helliwell, 1995:361-362).
The idea that humans are naturally violent has conceivably been examined and tested in psychology by the use of genetics, Milgram’s experiments, and the idea of Piaget’s cognitive development. To delve into the topic of whether humans are naturally violent or not, one must first have to understand, from a psychological aspect, if evil is a genetic trait ascribed from birth. While ascribed with a blueprint of life, our genes do not harbor a measurable philosophical trait of violence. It would be an absurdity to believe that at the time of infantry, where one’s basic thought processes are minimally structured at best, humans are capable of measuring philosophical feats such as right and wrong, or attune to a belief such as good and evil. This belief that genetics is not responsible for transferring violence is bolstered by an experimental incident.
A Cross Cultural Examination of Sexuality: Modern vs Underdeveloped Societies Psychologists have highlighted a number of divisions regarding sexuality across a variety of cultures. The word ‘sex’ has different meanings. Sex refers to the biological and physiological differences between men and women, the most obvious being differences in their reproductive systems. Every culture controls the sexuality of its members to a certain extent, by embedding it in the institutions of family, religion and law. According to Potts & Short (1999) the core social arrangement within the institution of the family is the marital relationship.
Article Review: Environmental Effects on Aggression Related to Adolescents Susan E. Smith Montreat College Aggression is considered behavior that is directed toward another individual with the intent to cause harm. The prevailing school of thought with regard to aggressive behavior, in adolescents in particular, is that the behavior is related to the individual without much consideration of any outside or environmental influences (Wettstein, 2012). The study posed a different set of circumstances and divided behavioral influences into three categories. The first category is biological. Biological influences have to do with inherent capabilities the individual possesses from birth, such as the ability to perceive and act during a set of events.
[4] Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist. Both urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. Boas developed the principle of cultural relativism and Malinowski developed the theory of functionalism as guides for producing non-ethnocentric studies of different cultures. The books The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, by Bronisław Malinowski, Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict, and Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (two of Boas's students)
It is evident that there is a fundamental tension between the two world views. However, it would be incorrect to reject one view completely in favor of the other. So, while recognizing the post modern view that truth is unknowable and that we cannot be absolutely certain of our knowledge, I would also like to acknowledge the importance of human dignity. I would also like to state that some of the ethical tenets like Kantian Categorical Imperatives have their basis in human dignity. In other words, we could discover the best in science and social science on the strength of western world view.
This demarcating of science is a definite way to distinguish the difference between true science and pseudo-science. Before diving into the details of the criterion of demarcation, it is crucial to first understand the significance of demarcating science. In the simplest of reasoning, science is a study based on factuality (it is important to point out that scientific conclusions are however not based on absolute certainty, something I will touch on later). There is a specific process and order in which scientific experiments are conducted, the scientific method, and conclusions are gathered based on very tedious and detail-oriented procedures. That is one of the main reasons why that which is labeled a “science” has a certain level of credibility attached to it.
What does Paul Feyerabend’s notion of “Epistemological Anarchism” mean? Evaluate this in relation to his critique of Kuhn’s Paradigms. While Emphasizing the subjective side of science, Kuhn claimed that operating within science means existing within the restrictive confines of the dominant paradigm, which attempts to limit particular questions that can be asked, how these are asked, and how their answers are formulated into viable scientific facts that are accepted by fellow scientists. This paradigm, in turn may actually obstruct the progress of science by nature of being untranslatable to other paradigms and impede rational argument. Kuhn states that a scientist’s switch between one paradigm to the next is similar to a “gestalt switch” where neural programming is required rather than argument and persuasion.