Ch 1-4 Mix It Up-Rachel

The book starts off discussing popular culture and what that exactly means. popular culture must be well liked by the public. Examples of pop culture well liked by the public are movies. recent popular movies are The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Prince Caspian, and the Indiana Jones movies starring Harrison Ford. Also, some actors and actresses are famous and well liked regardless of their talents and acting ability.Culture is another fascinating topic that is discussed and sociologists of culture are interested in all different types of rituals and social activities. These types of activities are dating, retail shopping, sports participation, cigarette smoking, casino gambling, and many others. When studying culture, it is important to study the cultural objects of society. These are social expressions of meaning that have been transformed into a tangible item. An example of a cultural object id Homer's Iliad. Media and popular culture can be defined by combined efforts that produce movies, musical compositions, novels, advertising, and many others.
The functionalist approach is discussed in Chapter 2, which is associated with the French sociologist Emilie Durkheim. Durkheim was interested in the role that religion played within society. I found it very interesting that Durkheim studied very early religions. Early religions that Durkheim studied were the ancient spiritual faiths of the Native Americans as well as Aboriginal Australians. Religion in these societies structured their everyday living like their way of governing themselves and, work schedules, and the way they viewed the natural world. Durkheim also looked into the sacred and the profane aspects of religion.
Karl Marx is another prominent person to mention. Marx was one of the first thinkers to notice the problems with pop culture in a capitalistic society. In a piece of writing called The German Ideology, Mark makes an important argument. He argues that dominant ideologies in a society are in place to benefit the wealthier ruling classes and so that they can also maintain their power. Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned during Mussolini's reign of power drew on Niccolo Machiavelli's sixteenth century political work called The Prince to understand the ways in which the media can control a society through the power of persuasion.
There are so many recognizable brands in society- Kellogg's, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, and Nintendo are just a few that the book mentions. Coca-Cola was ranked number one under criteria such as consumer loyalty, customer demand, and predictions of future revenues. Chapter four explores another inportant theorectical approach in Sociology, the Interactionist Approach. This focuses on smaller-scale interactions between people and groups of people. Erving Goffman explains personhood as a mixture of presentations of self that we that we express when participating in social activities. We act differently when around different types of people such as a close group of friends, teachers, police officers, and our parents. How else can we explain the differrent eays we act around different groups of people?