Globalization is simply defined as the "worldwide diffusion of practices", as Ritzer (2003) states, and is the process in which different societies are pressured by others to adopt their own practices, whether it is due to a better system or out of necessity. Following Ritzers' theories on globalization, connections were made with Marxist imperialist theories; creating the concept of “cultural imperialism”. Globalization as a process can be divided into two categories; each then divided into three others. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay One aspect is globalization. This focuses on nations, companies and organizations to grow and spread their influence across the world. As Marx predicted, due to capitalist ideals organizations had to continue to spread further or they would destabilize. Naturally, after expanding to every available location within their own country, they look to other countries to continue expanding. Furthermore, where these organizations, especially American ones, already have so much power, they can produce products with greater efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. This is McDonaldization and its many benefits make capitalist expansion somewhat desirable in the eyes of those on its receiving end. Finally, Americanization can be seen as the “propagation of American ideas, customs, social patterns, industry, and capital throughout the world” (Ritzer 2003). However, the lesser-known side of globalization is glocalization. This process examines how people within a society influenced by globalization can influence how practices are imposed on them. For example, McDonald's is at the forefront of the fast food industry, and although its stores have opened all over the world, they still have small differences in the menu depending on which country you are in. So this links to part of Giddens' (1990) definition of globalisation; “Local events are shaped by events happening many miles away and vice versa.” The idea is that while there is a homogeneous and more efficient method of production; their culture will one way or another evolve into something new. Les Back (1998) characterizes global and local cultures as a relationship rather than opposites because while global pressures influence all societies, societies essentially continue to choose which parts of the culture they prefer, as if there were no demand for something. , organizations will have no interest in that case. Although these organizations produce advertisements aimed at specific people, ultimately it is the individuals in society who choose. Globalization as a whole appears to be converging towards a set of global norms and single predominant industries, but the world has not reached that point and to say that McDonald's or any other form of McDonaldization has replaced traditional restaurants is an oversight. McDonald's offers convenient, fast and cheap food, but that doesn't mean that people traveling to France will want to eat McDonald's once they hit the road to their permanent home. They will want to experience what that country specifically has to offer, otherwise there is no point in investing time or money in going there. Of course, if an individual were to choose, based on their own logic or for some other reason, that they want to avoid the local cultures of an area, they can do so to some extent. To what extent is the future of young people determined by society? Discuss in relation to the agency debatestructures. There is enormous debate in a number of fields involving structure and agency. At one pole of the spectrum, everything that happens in one's life is determined by external forces; the idea of ​​structure. On the other hand there is the concept that each individual shapes their own future. There are scenarios in which one of the two can be argued more convincingly than the other; For example, something like choosing to dye your hair pink can be seen as an act of agency because while there will be factors that led you to that choice, ultimately the final decision was yours. Meanwhile, the fact that you pay taxes is almost infallibly a structural construct, except for the rare situations in which people evade taxes. Emile Durkheim, an esteemed structural theorist, states that "if they existed before you, it is because they exist outside of you" while referring to social facts. These are factors outside the control of the individual such as race, gender and class into which by birth you adapt and as Marx said "Men make their history, but they do not make it as they want" because we do not choose in which circumstances we had to make choices since the circumstances in which we find ourselves are transmitted from the past. However, structures are composed of many individual agents that occasionally change the structure in which they are located. Revolutions are examples of agents acting against their structures because they are unhappy with their circumstances. While action is about how our decisions affect our lives; it does not pretend that we can achieve anything with sufficient willpower. We can control what we do but not the consequences. Herbert Blumer theorizes that throughout our lives our interactions create meanings associated with what we have interacted with. However, the connection to agency is that we understand these meanings and can then change them through interpretation, meaning that we each perceive things in our own way based on our previous interactions. However, a much more balanced view is that we create our own structures as agents and structures that shape our behavior; a vision used by Anthony Giddens. His view of individuals positions them as conscious agents and structures not only as factors that limit your options but also that enable them. So to evaluate all of this, I believe that younger people should have more freedom to influence their future but much less freedom to influence their future. their immediate impact. Your young life influences the degree to which you will be influenced by structures later in life. For example, the degree to which we engage in school and spend less time on video games and the like will affect our knowledge, and the less knowledge we have, the less we can make informed and rational decisions. Furthermore, any symbolic interactions we develop when we are young can be carried with us until we die and influence every decision in our lives. For reference, while society associates obesity with poor health, if an officer met an obese person who seemed very happy when we were young, our view of obesity might be completely different for the rest of his or her life. What is the best way to study Crime and Deviance sociologically? Discuss in relation to the debate between positivism and interpretivism. Studying world problems can be done in many different ways. These are known methodologies. When it comes to crime and deviance, there is a wide range of crimes that would require a different approach to address as the (socially constructed) motivations would be different. The methodologies support different philosophies that allow research to be undertaken and be more useful tosociologists behind it. These include ontological and epistemological principles that show how research is conducted (Sarantakos 2005: 30). Positivism includes the ideology that everything we perceive is socially constructed and therefore personal accounts are distorted and do not represent real life; a view popularized by Durkheim. People's reasoning can normally be explained through the social norms they experience. This makes the only valid form of data one that is objectively measurable. Its epistemological principles are based on Auguste Comte's idea that "sociology should emulate the method of the natural sciences". The goal of this type of research is to find innate laws in human behavior. This makes positivistic research findings such as surveys and official statistics generalizable to other places in similar conditions. Graphs are drawn for the data from these to find correlations between certain factors. One criticism, however, is the obvious neglect of the individual's action in all the ascertained data. For example, while empirical data may show that an ethnic group is more likely to commit a certain crime; the correlative nature of this data means that a given individual is neither certain nor uncertain of committing this crime at a given time. Furthermore, positivistic views cannot be stated as theoretical or value-neutral because they are still constructed by a person who sees the world in his own way. On the other side of things is interpretivism which is rooted in the mantra that each person holds their own agency and does not respond only to external social forces. This methodology takes into account the complexity of an individual and their understanding of the same "objective reality" while respecting the uniqueness of the reasons why they act. This type of research aims to better understand the reasons for people's actions on an empathic level, which means that the methods involved are not scientific; allow the world to be seen from people's perspective. This is used because, as Weber said; "Social reality is not objective and determining but constructed and reconstructed through social action" therefore "sociology should proceed from the perspective of the point of view of social actors". This methodology, however, is extremely specific and will have difficulty painting a larger picture, but is much better suited to considering smaller groups. In conclusion, basing changes in government policies only on quantitative data seems short-sighted as there are many other sociological factors that will have summed up in those statistics as opposed to the person who simply committed the crime or not. For example, saying that because of a correlation between the health of the child and whether or not he or she was breastfed, breastfeeding should be enforced because it determines good health has other consequences and can never be objectively best for anyone without taking into account everything that happens in the child. How can we understand health sociologically? Discuss in relation to the debate between biological determinism and social determinism. Our health is something we often take for granted until it is questioned. A purely biological definition of good health is that of being free from disease or disorder, while a sociological definition of health looks at social health and also places greater emphasis on mental health. The NHS and other medical organizations are moving towards a more dualistic system involving both social and biological tests and procedures. The definition of health as seen by WHO, 2006, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being andsimply the absence of disease and infirmity"; however it is argued that this neglects aspects of health such as spiritual, emotional and sexual health and is clearly very difficult to acquire. Sociology argues that the definition of health is much more flexible and depends by factors such as time period, location and culture. This can be seen in health magazines where the standard of good health is set in muscular and toned men or with thin and accentuated curves. This shifts awareness away from the social causes of problems of mental health and brings more people's attention to the biological and aesthetic aspects of health. This culture focused on biological health and the reliance on clinical studies to find your problem and then solve it also leads to a culture where if your problem. does not fit into the objective criteria offered by the biological approach; your problem must be solved. The social causation approach allows you to prevent both social problems and medical diseases and therefore save money on the treatment of long-term incurable diseases such as dementia. For example, families of people at risk of dementia (perhaps elderly people who receive less than a certain number of visits to a nursing home) can be notified of how often they visit them. Social causation involves examining quantitative data that shows how individuals who share a common social factor are more or less likely to have or contract a certain disease and then taking steps to reduce the impact of that social factor or reduce the number of people in that demographic. According to the stress process model, stress predisposes people from marginalized groups (such as long-term poverty) to having poor health. Much of the bias of our current medical systems stems from our recent history in which technological progress has strongly driven society since industrialization and its rapid improvement would only further propagate popular support and lead to an increase in funding and a focus on the biological side. Furthermore, biology is a science founded a long time ago and is much easier to relate to because we can see the effects of biological problems, while sociology is a relatively new science and is based on the way people's brains work, which it's much more difficult. to demonstrate. To summarize, there is a clear disparity in prioritization between biological and sociological approaches to health based on the skewed history of health, despite the clear benefits of recognizing social causation; perhaps because recognizing such a thing earlier could compromise the power of those in high social status. How can social class help us understand conflict in contemporary Britain? Discuss in relation to the conflict versus consensus debate. Marx and Durkheim see society similarly, but at the same time differently as their theories both say that society functions machine-like: each component is subject to the same causal laws but still works together to function like a machine . Total; and then on the other hand seeing companies that operate under completely different laws. These different laws are classified into different systemic theories known as conflict and consensus approach. These are essentially structural approaches to sociology and suggest that an individual's actions can be described by social forces. Durkheim's description of society operates under the assumption that individuals share a consensus on the norms and values ​​followed. This approach meansthat the social order of the world converges towards a point of stability and is propagated by institutions that form moral conventions and codes; in turn leading to replicated behaviors across generations of people within said institutions. He also discusses how simple societies become a more complex version of itself in which its values ​​vary more. In turn, as these societies become more complex and successful over time, the population increases and its needs diversify, resulting in an increase in the division of labor. However, Durkheim also warns against the excessive division of labor since when labor is divided so much that it makes no sense, society will suffer "anomia"; the collapse of norms and values. Parsons, however, went on to explain that every social system requires four functional prerequisites. Must be able to change to adapt to new situations, then set and achieve goals. Its constituent parts must remain in good relations and must continually ensure that there are motivating cultural models for individuals to continue working. On the other side of things lies completely the conflictual approach that explains people's interactions within society. Marx looks at norms and says that they are based on socio-economic relations and this legitimizes the exploitation of one class by another under the ideology of capitalism. Max Weber also examined conflict and adds stratification of class, status and party. According to him, power is the probability that someone will get what they want despite the resistance of others. In his works he also argues that those who exercise power justify their actions by assuming that their ideas must be important. Looking at Britain from a confrontational approach you can see that there is a difference of opinion within the country and its democratic system of government reflects this, otherwise all votes would be equal. For example, the country was so deeply divided in opinion on whether to leave the EU that votes rose from 48% to 52%, taking power away from expats and giving it to citizens. There is clearly no consensus on this topic and the politics revolve around the fact that people of particular social classes are not comfortable with the power they have. On the other hand, society believes that talking in the library is generally wrong. Dahrendorf approaches society in a much more balanced way, saying that perhaps we need to consider aspects of both to account for society rather than assuming that either is 100% accurate. Should the Internet be understood as part of the modern project? Discuss in relation to the debate between modernity and postmodernity. The impact of the Internet on society is widely debated in the sociological community. It is our most effective method of disseminating information to date, but can we really say that it has had a greater impact on people than TV or the telephone? However, to truly decide whether the Internet should be part of the modern project; the first question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are in a late-modern or post-modern social era. Modernism occurred between 1650 and 1950 (probably ongoing as late modernism) and involved philosophies that the world was progressing towards a utopia or utopia. dystopia and tried to take control of nature using science and technology. Aspects of modernism are about giving greater freedom of action to certain people rather than to everyone as a whole. For example, the creation of the state meant that individuals in government gained control over individuals outside it; capitalism allows those who have money?