Sociology In Our Time By Rebekah Nathan Chapter 1 Summary
In Chapter One: Welcome to “AnyU” of My Freshman Year, Rebekah Nathan gives a brief introduction of her background as a cultural anthropologist and a professor. Nathan proceeds to inform the reader of the concerns she has of the professor/student relationship. To resolve her concerns, the author decides to conduct a study by enrolling into the college she instructs at as a first-year freshman. During the first chapter, Nathan tries to interact with the students to gain further understanding of the student culture through participant-observer research. Despite her efforts of fitting in, “[her] old age assigned [her] to a niche…” (Nathan 14). One of the things that I found to be interesting in this chapter was that the author fully immersed
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The author consciously selects her outfit in an effort to blend in with the other freshman at Previews, but was mistaken as a parent based on her clothes. Nathan was not up-to-date on the fashion of the students, which does not make sense to me if she was a professor at the university. Another reference to the textbook is the use of language in culture. “Language is a set of symbols that expresses ideas and enables people to think and communicate with one another” (Kendall 41). The textbook goes on to state that, “language also allows people to distinguish themselves from outsiders and maintain group boundaries and solidarity” (Kendall 41). Nathan quickly realized the first week that she was not current with the student dialect, and in order to gain acceptance of her peers she would have to learn the language of the “natives.” Role-taking is explained as “the process by which a person mentally assumes the role of another person or group in order to understand the world from that person’s or group’s point of view” (Kendall 75). In her study, Nathan attempts to learn all aspects of the student body; from the clothes they wear to the speech they use, in order to have a better understanding of their conduct in and outside of the
The author consciously selects her outfit in an effort to blend in with the other freshman at Previews, but was mistaken as a parent based on her clothes. Nathan was not up-to-date on the fashion of the students, which does not make sense to me if she was a professor at the university. Another reference to the textbook is the use of language in culture. “Language is a set of symbols that expresses ideas and enables people to think and communicate with one another” (Kendall 41). The textbook goes on to state that, “language also allows people to distinguish themselves from outsiders and maintain group boundaries and solidarity” (Kendall 41). Nathan quickly realized the first week that she was not current with the student dialect, and in order to gain acceptance of her peers she would have to learn the language of the “natives.” Role-taking is explained as “the process by which a person mentally assumes the role of another person or group in order to understand the world from that person’s or group’s point of view” (Kendall 75). In her study, Nathan attempts to learn all aspects of the student body; from the clothes they wear to the speech they use, in order to have a better understanding of their conduct in and outside of the