Week 3: theory practice

Goldiie is a jewelry brand that sells a limited amount of handcrafted earrings made in the Netherlands with a Caribbean touch. The founder of the brand is Rudmarla- she is from Bonaire and Curacao. I’m really a big fan of her handcrafted jewelry. My relation to Rudmarla is that we share the same skin color and gender. We both live in a society that’s all about white, hetro, cis man. This disadvantages womxn and black people, this disadvantages us. That's also why I have decided for myself to buy from black owned products, especially from black womxn. They deserve every kind of recognition! While your reading this, please also visit her Instagram page: @goldiieshop

Art from black womxn

Queer + not able-bodied

When I saw category the ‘queer and not able-bodied’ I immediately thought of Frida Kahlo.
Frida was a Mexican woman who had multiple disabilities including polio as a child and spinal and pelvis damage from a car accident. She became a world-renowned self-portrait painter. Frida has since served as a role model for generations of artists, people with disabilities and bisexual womxn. Me, also as a woman of color really admire the way she came face-to-face with her disabilities, tragedies in life and turned them into art. It really inspired me to view my battles differently and also turn them into 'art'. People like her really made a difference – for not able-bodied people, Latinos, womxn and those who identify as LGBQT.

Source: photo of book

This is my favorite photo ever. I took this photo in my motherland Kaapverdië in 2018. This little boy was in a fight with his friend right before I took this photo. When his buddy walked away I saw this boy crying for few minutes. But then he suddenly ran into this sandy place and throwed sand in the air. For me, this was kinda breathtaking. I felt like this was his way to cope his feelings.

I'm connected with this maker in every single way because I'm the maker myself. When I saw this young boy coping with his emotions there was also a small self reflection moment happening in my mind. How have I coped my own feelings the past years? I remember that I never wanted people to worry about me. But people also assumed that I was always happy and strong. They saw me as the stereotypical image of being that ''strong black woman''. Don't get me wrong: I am a black woman and I’m strong, but I’m also more than strong. At times, I am weak and lonely and afraid and anxious and angry and silly and happy and defiant and bored. Sometimes, I don’t even know what I am, and sometimes I don’t know what I am in English – I can only explain it in a different language.
Having been a black woman in many places and spaces, I can tell you that being a black woman always seems to come with its special set of concerns, regardless of place and space. Life is not easy for any of us and all of us.

‘’The concept of virginity was created by men who thought their penises were so important it changes who a woman is.’’ Yep, I felt this in my whole body. Unfortunately, I could not find the name of the maker. But speaking from the position of being a woman I could definitely feel what the artist was saying. Virginity has always been a big deal in this society. Countless cultures have been obsessed with the concept from their beginnings. For example, when I ‘lost’ my virginity my mom was not happy at all. She was even disappointed. But let’s get things straight. Virginity is conceptual, it is a social construction. When we have sex for the first time we don’t actually ‘lose’ something. It doesn’t change your identity and it does not affect your worth. It’s simply a new experience and it supposed to be fun.

As a side job I work in a nursing home for older people. I have been doing this for two years already. It may sound a bit strange… but arriving at work feels like coming home. I really thought differently about this in the beginning. I remember sitting on the toilet crying my balls out on my first day. Where did I end up? And I had not just chosen a nursing home, no, I chose a nursing home for people with dementia. All I saw around me were elderly people who were in the: initial stages of dementia, final stages of dementia, elderly people who were hallucinating, elderly people who were feeling lonely, elderly people staring at you for hours and hours. This place looked like a shielded world. A world that society prefers to distance itself from. A world where I unconsciously also distanced myself from. Now I am anything but distanced, now I am in the middle of it. And I truly love it.

I have developed such a special bond with those elderly people. Everyone feels a bit like my own grandfather and grandmother. My relationship to these people? I officially work as an activity supervisor, but it feels more than that. It really feels like family. I always say: ‘’They may not understand everything, but they can certainly feel everything. Love is universal. " And I feel like I do this work with all the love I have inside of me.

Teana's class: 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬

Karl Marx & Conflict Theory

Karl Marx: 'How can people be free?'

Superstructure: culture, world views, beliefs, values and norms that people in a society inhabit. Marx believed that this was built on top of material reality.

I see this as all kind of beliefs and ideals that form this society.

Modes of production: stages of history defined by forces of production and relation of production

I immediately think of capitalism.

Forces of production: the technical, scientific and material parts of the economy

Tools, buildings, material resources.

Relation of production: how people organize themselves around labour. Werk je voor loon of produceer je je eigen goederen?

I see this happening with big organizations like H&M. The employees in Bangladesh (third world country) who work hard for less than the minimum wages while the CEO earns loads of money. - Basically capitalism. But on the other hand I also see more people starting a (online) business for themselves. This is still a small group.

Means of production: the means you need to use in order to labour and produce goods

This could be all kind of machines or labour to produce goods.

Hegemony: a dominant set of ideas that are all-pervasive and taken for granted in society.These ideas shape everyone's understanding of the social world, blinding us to the realities of things. This could also be beliefs about gender, or race.

For example 'Europan beauty standards'. These are also a set of ideas that tells us who is 'beautiful' of who is not.

Marx saw that the economic base supported a superstructure - the institutions that exist like in society such as those linked to the law, politics and the media.

They were shaped by the economic base and exist to support, serve and legitimize the base to society. He believed that elements of the superstructure like mass media, were used to brainwash the proletariat into seeing the current set-up as natural and right.

The ideas behind communism were to eliminate the problems that Marx saw in capitalist society during the industrial revolution. Countries like China or Russia run their country like that. However, their implementation were not problem free! I think they did not produce fairer societies at all.

Theoretical perspectives: structural perspectives

Manifest function: things that are put in place intentionally to keep society going. Like a school that want to teach their students.

Latent function: Unintended (positive or negative) consequences from manifest functions

What are important institutions in your life today?

What are social facts?

Invisible forces that impact us and can influence our lives without us necessarily knowing

What is the difference between a manifest and a latent function of things that society develops to keep it going? (such as institutions)

Sociological theory: consensus vs. conflict theories

Suggest that society is meritocratic and those with the right attributes debate what norms and values are (functionalists)

Suggest power is the key factor in setting norms and values (feminism, marxists)

1) Structural theories - society shapes individual behavior.

2) Social institutions have a key rol in socializing people into norms and values of society

3) Individuals are subjected to formal and informal control through different social institutions

4) Social processes, such as socialization are responsible for behavior of individuals

While they agree that social institutions as socializing agents, they suggest different reasons for this occurring:

1) Functionalist: see this as beneficial to all society

2) Marxists: see it as beneficial to ruling class

3) Feminist: see it as beneficial in maintaining patriarchy

Symbolic Interactionism

Created by: George Herbert Mead

Social Interactionism: it examines society on a small scale and gives the individual the same importance as the society as a whole

- actions depends on meaning

- different people assign different meanings to things

- meaning of something can change

Mead believed as we grow up our beliefs about how other people percieves us start to become more important. This happens through three stages:

1. preparatory stage: imitating (not true interactions)

2. Play stage: pretend to play, rol taking (person is more aware of social relations)

3. Game stage: understanding attitudes and beliefs of the generalized other. They start to understand about other people having opinions about them. And that those perceptions are influenced by how they act and what they say.

Personal responses to what society thinks

1. Marx's core ideas was that all societies have an economic base, which is essentially capitalism (the whole system based on the pursuit of wealth). The rich gets richer and the poor poorer. It leads to social inequality.

2. Structural functionalism focuses on society as a whole (the bigger picture). In order to achieve the order for a society to be stable it has to has order..you can NOT have one without the other to make the society as a whole achieve greatness.

3. Symbolic Interactionism (my favorite) examines society on a small scale and gives the individual the same importance as the society as a whole. It is interesting to know that symbols are attached to absolutely everything in this world. This concept explains the ‘self’ of every person by the way they interact with other persons or objects. It gives you spa ce to understand yourself and reflect about you position within this society (and how it affects others).