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Socialization Norms and Values

For American society high education is the most important stage which gives the opportunity to play significant and adequate role in society and to realize personal aspirations. The significant social role determines and develops personal self-identity and equal interaction which insure society welfare and harmony. Moreover, it also allocates person in well-provided economic groups insuring his family financial independence and comfort. The statistics shows that family income of those who have good knowledge of English is much higher among minorities: 82 per cent comparing with 68 per cent of families where English level is low. This statistics is closely connected with data of minorities employment. 60 per cent of adults with low English level can find a good job comparing with 67 per cent of good English-speaking people. Moreover, there is a significant difference in jobs rank (position and wage accordingly): the majority of poor English-speaking adults can find just low-wage job with low positions such as operator/fabricator. Thus, the percentage of persons with high living standards is greatly influenced by knowledge of English in America. The higher knowledge results more positive and successful implementation of social roles among minorities. The choice of this research focused on minorities is not occasional.
Minorities always suffer from native inhabitants’ resistance to accept them in society at all. But the largest resistance occurs when minorities try to occupy positions equal to native inhabitants ones. The socially adopted value of equality is greatly resisted in practice. The reason is not because equality declaration is a big lie and illusion. The real origin of such resistance is human natural feature of non-acceptance of something new. Therefore, the natural origin of such behavior makes resistance very constant and insurmountable. In such situation taking adequate and independent place in society becomes almost unrealizable for those who suffer from resistance.

Religion is the one of the oldest agencies of socialization and, therefore, can play very considerable role in personal formation as sociable unit. The deep historical roots of religion feature its versatile influence including politics, economy and social life. Religious agencies of socialization are the following: churches, sects, cults and denominations. While churches can cause social changes in large human groups, sects, cults and denominations work with small groups and do not extend their influence beyond is close society. One of the most felicitous examples of religious agency influence on social change is Islamic Fundamentalism. This movement appears as the resistance reaction to globalization which features Western integration and is considered to be real threat to Islamic religion. The importance of this movement for Islamists lies in significant role of religion in Islamic society and politics. The globalization is evaluated as Western attempts to eliminate values and norms existed in Central Asian societies. In case of Islamic Fundamentalism values of Asian world were constantly strengthened with growing resistance to accept some of Western values. Such processes evoked more active demonstration of difference between West and Islamic world and encouraged Islamic people to defend their values. Generally it is human natural feature to defend original values for self-identity, independence and freedom. But for Islamic world it has negative specification: they see the only possible and effective way to defend in war fighting and physical destruction of dissenters. Thus, the Islamic Fundamentalism became real threat for the United States since 11th of September when thousands of American people were killed without any reasons. Not just Islamic world bore considerable changes caused by religious movement reinforcement; these changes led to strong and irretrievable changes in American society. First, the destruction of myth of American invulnerability made people change their minds and, as a result, change their values, social roles and even status.

The article was produced by the member of masterpapers.com.
Sharon White is a 5-years experienced freelance writer and a manager of Dissertation Writing support team. There you can get essay writing tips and view essay samples.

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Poverty

The concept of poverty can be viewed from different points and aspects. One can have nothing according to general standards and still consider himself the happiest or the richest person in the world. In some way poverty is a personal issue and each one of us has a personal definition of it depending on the class we are in, personal values and way of life. What is a lot to someone can be nothing to the rest of the society. There is also an opinion that rich people keep on getting wealthier and the situation of those poor just gets worse with time. It might be due to the inner world and attitude of a person.

There are many theories, mainly individualistic which tend to identify the main causes of poverty as being within the individuals themselves, or in the characteristics of the subculture to which they belong.

Oscar Lewis, a sociologist who illustrates one of these theories, “the culture of poverty”, argues that the poor are part of a class stratified society and this culture develops in response as they are trapped in their poverty. It is a reaction to the poor of their marginal position in society. In effect it is the characteristics of this culture that perpetuates poverty. Also on the family level, due to high rates of abuse and divorce, individuals tended to be more mother centred hence society was mainly matriarchal. Furthermore, on the community level, individuals tended to have negative attitudes towards national (external) agencies, for example; political parties, trade unions, etc and also very little use was made of banks, hospitals, etc by these individuals. These values were internalised and passed on from generation to generation.

This theory therefore provides evidence that if the poor adapted a more positive culture, then there would be no absolute poverty in society since everyone would have enough to attain a better standard of living which would therefore cause less public spending on the provision of benefits since everyone would have enough to physically survive. This in effect would eradicate poverty to an extent.

On the other hand this theoretical explanation fails to account for the fact that the existence of poverty could be caused by another source other than the individuals themselves. This other source to be considered would be society. It may not be so obvious straightaway, but it depends on how it is assessed. Lack of employment, low wages, social stratification etc. which are caused by society are different ways and means through which society could make situations or living unbearable for individuals. This thereby causes them to adapt to this subculture thus perpetuating poverty in the society.

This view is further supported with evidence from the work of Elliot Liebow (a sociologist), who argues in favour of the fact that it is society that causes poverty and not individuals. He proves this from research he carried out among Black men in Washington, where he realised that they did accept mainstream values but because of their situational constraints of being poor they never succeeded in accomplishing these mainstream values.

Also, as argued by other sociologist, if you were born into a deprived background, i.e. poor housing, poor diet etc., it was very difficult to escape this cycle. Hence you would go through this cycle into adulthood and it might continue through your children, which puts no end to the cycle. Thus it could be said that it is social, economic and environmental factors that prevents the poor behaving.

In conclusion, evidence provided above may justify the fact that poverty is caused by the individuals themselves within society but from the other side of the coin, this may be far from the truth.

The article was produced by the member of masterpapers.com.
Sharon White is a senior writer and writers consultant at Research Papers. Get some useful tips for Coursework and Term Papers writing.

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