Various factors shape life decisions. Primarily, social norms play a significant role in this. Daily life decisions include ways of treating people, the career path to follow, the voting process, and when to marry. Indeed, social norms have reportedly been crucial in influencing decisions more than they need for fairness (Weber, 2019). Human’s lived experiences are primarily affected by sociological concepts. In this discussion, the primary focus is creating a field log of social and institutional experiences for a day to have a critical assessment of how human life, or specifically my life, is constrained by society. This will critically help in understanding the sociological aspects taught in class.
Observation (Creating a Field Log)
5:00 a.m.: wake up, talk to my parents. Carry out house duties.
7:00 a.m.: Inform my parents about my needs. Have breakfast, workout, and shower.
8:30 a.m.: Arrive at an internship place and interact with fellow workers. Follow the norms and bureaucracy.
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9:00 a.m.: Board vehicle with children and adults headed to the field. People seated by are listening to news bulletin and talking about the government and how it has failed its citizens.
Piaget's stages of development, emotional labor.
10:00 a.m.: on board with a certain family struggling with the crying children and receiving help from the other people around them.
Emotional labor, gender roles, and family.
11:00 a.m.: Arrive at the field, and few people are watching, while others are toiling to make ends meet.
Inequality, poverty.
5:00 p.m. friends arrive for dinner and photo-taking session, and reminisce on some of the things when we were young. Head back home to watch evening news where cases of robbery and assault are mentioned.
Social deviance, material culture
6:30 p.m.: communicate with my parents about paying fees for the remaining semesters. Discuss, among other things, the costs involved in my attachment process.
Application
Social norms constrain and shape our day in different ways. In essence, the rules and behaviors are created depending on some standards of actions or concepts linked to the group’s perspective. Indeed, the norms of behaviours linked to such ideas influence an individual's perception and other people's, resulting in a team's sense of belonging. For guidance, human beings need social norms and inform their actions to offer appropriate and predictable social relationships and to ensure that every person’s understanding is sensible in every way.
My field log is mainly applicable to the four sociological concepts learned in class. These four include interactions, impression management, emotional labor, and stage theory. Primarily, emotional labour is evident in cases where I observed that a certain family is struggling with the crying children and receiving help from the other people around them. Secondly, through Piaget's stages of development, the stage theory can be noted when boarding a vehicle with children of different ages who react differently from the adults. Interaction, on the other hand, was at every point of my observation. In essence, my interaction was not only with the parents but also with the co-workers. For example, as stated, I arrived at an internship place and interacted with fellow workers. Follow the norms and bureaucracy.
Sociologists study this concept in everyday society by using emotional labor to comprehend the organization, its composition, and social processes in the service work. Secondly, sociologists emphasize personal efforts to show and control emotion and its outcomes (Al Hourani, 2019). The idea of emotional labor has significantly motivated massive research studies, but it does not help mainly in providing theoretical information to integrate the outcomes found or established by these studies.
Secondly, according to sociologists, social interaction could mean an exchange of more than two parties, and it is a central factor in society. Social interactions are understood in the realm of groups of two, also known as dyads or three called the triads, or the massive groups. Through interaction, people come up with rules, form institutions and structures within which they want to live or stay. As a result, symbols are meant or implemented when communicating the expectations of a community. Social interactions are the building blocks for social structures and cultures. Through interactions amongst people, there is an agreement on which rules or system to use for cordial relationships (Al Hourani, 2019). Society has expectations that can be communicated effectively using symbols; this can be done through the children or the outsiders. Using a larger perspective of social development, one can understand the significance of social interaction. Microsociology is primarily focused on understanding the concept of social interaction because it focuses more on human social interactions on a limited level. Approaches like symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology are common in this field. As indicated previously, Social norms constrain and shapes our day in different ways, and through interactions, we can realize how these norms operate or work.
Reflection
My motives, instincts, feelings, and structural constraints reflect what society holds for its people. I have understood, more importantly, the concept of structural constraints. I have been limited in my decision-making ability to accommodate others' views and expressions, not only at school but also at my workplace. I feel like the constraints have opposed human agency because they incapacitate my independent decision-making process in a certain setting. For instance, I can’t make a certain point because it may seem sensitive to people with a disability or who subscribe to different norms in society. I have different instincts at some point, but again, I have to work in tandem with set rules and structures in society. I feel that I represent the larger part of the society, where my actions are constrained by other people who should be accommodated for the effective working of a society.
At the same time, other people have affected my decisions and me as a person in my social experiences, and so have I affected others. We have this thinking that receiving influence from others is wrong, and correctly, there are cases where influence is not appropriate. Similarly, there are scenarios where being influenced is useful. I can only imagine if I had a chance to eat at a restaurant or watch a movie without talking to any person. I can also imagine not going through online reviews or asking friends about some issues. I think that life would be completely hard in such cases. I believe that other people offer crucial information that makes me make better and quicker decisions. They are the primary source of motivation. Comparison with others can encourage everyone to work harder and excel more in performances. As much as influence hurts, its significance is also evident. I affect others by learning from society and understanding what is best for us all. The influence from others is as critical as the one I give.
Conclusion
To sum up, life decisions are shaped by various factors. In essence, social norms are central to life decisions. Daily life decisions include ways of treating people, the career path to follow, the voting process, and when to marry. My field log observation established four sociological concepts: interactions, impression management, emotional labor, and stage theory which define our every day life.
References
Al Hourani, M. A. K. (2019). Lived experiences of young Emirati women in the combined family: Extending and rethinking sociological concepts. International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 11(3), 27-36.
Weber, M. (2019). 1. Basic Sociological Concepts. In Economy and Society (pp. 77-138). Harvard University Press.
