Sumblog 7

William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois made studies of self and identity.  Double-consciousness and the veil two of his strong theoretical points.  Double-consciousness or 'twoness"  he sees as one person having two very different identities.  Acting one way with a population and then acting completely different with another population.  He also saw that some people lived life under a 'veil', that something was blocking their perspectives from seeing the whole picture, or life as everyone else saw it.
I think Ted Bundy would be a good example of someone who shows having a double-consciousness.  Ted Bundy was a smart, atrractive man who earned a Bachelor's degree in psychology.  He was confident and had is hand in politics.  He fit in with his community having girlfriends and a place in society.  Ted Bundy also raped and killed many women.  He kept some of the heads of his victims at his house and also admitted to performing necrophilia with some of his victims.  He had admitted to fifty murders but many people believe the number to be closer to 100 victims. 
Some how Bundy managed to convince Carol Boone to marry him while he was on trial.  She had completely believed in his innocence even with the vast amount of evidence against him. 
Ted Bundy is a man who showed one facet of his personality to his girl friends and colleagues and a very different personality to the women he brutally kidnapped and killed.  Ted Bundy showed the signs of having very two different identities.
Here is a link of Ted Bundy's profile.  It shows how he had ups and downs but still managed to fit in with society and get people to trust him.
http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/tedbundy.htm

Sumblog 5

Harriet Martineau was a woman social thinker in the 1800's in a society that was male dominated.  She wrote scholarly articles about society that were received well.  She believed that you needed to be out in society to know what was going on.  She reached out to the masses to explain society to everyone.  She wanted to understand the 'why' of things, how society worked, and how inequalities kept people from achieving human happiness which she saw as the essential fairness of society.
 Martineau saw disruptions in society.  She focused on America in one of her studies and saw how the constitution was built on natural rights and how these rights were not extended to everyone.  She saw that these inequalities would affect the society.
The way she looked at society is still important in today's world.  Inequalities still exist and keep people from achieving happiness.  People look at the American dream, what ever it may be for the person, and they want it.  An example would be of someone living in poverty with a family and low income.  Both parents may work but if their job pays minimum wage, that really is not enough to pull themselves out of poverty and getting them to the point that their dream is possible.
http://billmoyers.com/content/slideshow-poverty-in-todays-america/
The eighth picture is this slide show shows a family in poverty who does have inspirations but no way of attaining them.  The rest of the pictures make one think, is it really fair that some people have so much when some people have almost nothing?

Sumblog 4

Max Weber believed in three types of authority in a given society.  Authority is a type of power that is legitimate.  Weber's three forms are rational, which is laws and written documents, traditional, how things have always been done, and charismatic, the social context of the day.  I believe that rational authority is overtaking traditional authority and has been for quite a while.
I think a good example would be the Civil Rights Movement.  It took charismatic speakers such as Martin Luther King to build an audience.  Once enough people listened, how things were done in the past were reevaluated.  New laws were then written.  Society changed.
Traditional families have also changed.  No longer is every family on the block arranged with a mom and dad and brothers and sisters.  Easier divorce laws have made step families a type of norm.  Or in many cases, some parents do not even get married which is now acceptable but wasn't in earlier times.
This is why I think rational authority has overtaken traditional authority.  New laws make it possible to look a head and not always do what has already been done.
This is a picture from the show Modern Family which shows that families are made up very differently than in the 1950's.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ2UiI17jib6lk6kz9XmMNSbAsRSx1M-EuwYgtRO99EzUBbCHeu8w