In the court room for the double murder trial, I felt tension in the room. I saw the victims family and I could not believe they were in the same room with the killer. The court room was organized, and during recess time officers were organizing everything even more. There had to be more than one officer in the room apparently, because there was one in every side of the court room. I enjoyed seeing how the judge, lawyer, witness etc. new what they were doing making everything run smoothly. The whole process of asking the witness questions is very lengthy. Being specific, including every detail, is what made the process long and boring.
This was a criminal case and the criminal committed a felony. Gary, the plaintiff, was charged with double murder. He was a young, Caucasian man, and his victims were his own mother, and a prostitute. This took place in Gary's house in Addison. The strain theory would go with this case because norms were fully absent on Gary's part. Based on the pictures shown in court, what he did I found shocking and disturbing.
   
In the jail i saw lots of Caucasian men and Latin men. I thought it was not too different from our school, which smells bad, majority of the walls are plane, its loud and under supervision. The difference is that at school we are not locked up in cells, or have to get escorted everywhere we go, and we as students get more privacy. Out of the four rationales in jail I only saw retribution and incapacitation. I saw the strain, shaming, control, feminist, and differential theories take place int he jail. I think that jail is helpful. Yes it keeps some bad people away form the communities but many still remain out. Those who come in aren't rehabilitated so they go out and come right back in. Therefore, I think that jails need to be changed in order to see change in people. Providing more humane conditions, and rehabilitation would be the key to success.

I found myself thinking sociologically when I was at my cousin's house. This day we went ding dong ditching around his neighborhood in Chicago.  Although it was really fun I bet those who were a victim of this weren't so happy. We took turns at ringing or knocking at houses, and even all the doorbells for an apartment building. Our parents thought we were outside playing kick ball, which we did for a while but then decided to do this. Kids of several different ages were involved, there were kids with nine years of age to 18 years of age.
If any parents, would have found out what we were doing they would have gotten upset, and tried to use the shaming theory on us by trying to make us feel guilty and never want to do it again. To them it would of been a deviant action, because its rude, and disrupts others. In the other hand, to us its not deviant because its a common way to have fun among our age group. Its not wrong to us also because no one is getting hurt, we are just simply having fun, plus there is not a law saying we can't do it. The differential association theory would be implied because the young ones would learn from us, even though its not to good.                 

I found myself thinking sociologically when I was talking with my guy friend. I was discussing about how an event in his life changed him. Before this event  he was an ordinary teen; going to  parties, hanging with friends, going to school etc. At home he was use to his mother preparing good food for when ever he got home, he got the usual please, thank you, and sorry from people. After he got in trouble with authorities he had to live in an environment that was new, the environment behind bars.
Desocialization was a process he had to go through because he was so use to the outside rules and rules at home, and then he had to learn to adapt to new ones in jail. In there he had to get use to being an independent guy, because guards were just yelling at all times, and inmates weren't always too polite. His life was pretty much controlled by the prison, so that makes the jail be a total institution. The thing that made his situation worse is that as soon as he had gotten use to life in there, he would have to come back out into the real world, in other words resocialize.  

I found myself thinking sociologically when I my eight year old cousin came to my house. She is an only child so she can act really stub-urn, and spoiled. She can get out of hand so many times that I sometimes ask myself if she has any morals. Crying and whining are her specialties, and help her get what she wants. When we were going to eat dinner she began complaining saying she did not want to eat what my mom had made, and that she wanted to eat cereal. She also tends to try and break the rules in our house, like taking food and drinks to the living room, and then she tries to blame it on my sister.The way she was acting reminded me of sociology class.
Morals, which is the distinction between right and wrong, I think are missing in my young cousin's life. I can tell she doesn't know her morals, based on her behavior, so she is at stage zero. Her parents would be placed in stage three because the only reason I think they yell at her to stop whining is, because they know my parents would get ticked off if they let their daughter do what ever she wanted. They are just seeking approval by my parents in a way, so they won't get upset. Even though my parents aren't too strict, I still think they could be placed in stage four. They like rules to be followed at our house, but they still wouldn't hold a grudge against someone if they break one at some point. 

I actually think that this mother has gotten way out of hand with her ways of raising her children. If kids are taught that violence is not the answer, and that screaming is disrespectful, why does the mother act this way? The time were she made Lulu play the song in the piano right she yelled at her to the point were she lost her voice. If you want your kids to be successful in life, the parents have to motivate and guide them through that success, but this doesn't have to be done the way that she is doing it. Just because this is the way she thinks Chinese moms do it, does not mean it is the right way.
If she wants to be a good mom she should bring her kids on top in life, but with her girls having fun at the same time. The right way to raise your children will be by guiding them to success; with patience, positive attitude, and even fun. I feel like this mom breaks all of these things and just cares about how others are going to view her and her daughters. She is not considering the negative impact this is going to have on her daughters. I think this mom is messed up and that success has her blind.
Sigmud Freud's theory that personality is influenced by interaction with parent is going to be seen later  in these girls future's. They were raised with over loads of practice, and yelling and insults, well this can cause the girls to be the same with others. Charles Cooley said the idea of the looking glass self, and this can be applied here for when the girls ever feel negative about themselves, and they say it is because of the way their parents treated them with negative comments. Mead's idea of the significance of getting under the skin of others by taking their roles, is something that the mom is not doing. I think that the mom should go under the same pressure she puts her children in so she feels what they go through. 

All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was watching a recording of traditional dances on television. I  was so amazed at the variation of dances that exist in the world. There was dances from different parts of Mexico, dances from down in South America, Spain and many more. I was able to connect the variations with the culture unit in my sociology class. Before I knew it I had at least included about five different words form class and applied them to life. 
For example, when I saw a dance that required the people to wear masks, I thought that was strangely different. My thoughts towards that cultural dance made me sound ethnocentric . The universal is something that cultures have a like, but that are done differently. In this case dancing is a part of all of these counties culture although, they each had something unique about them. In some there was a lot of jumping, or turning, and acting, or tying a ribbon into a bow etc. To some people a jump in a dance is a norm, and to another culture a jump can be breaking a norm. The differences among the dances is what made the whole show more intereseting to watch.

All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was talking to my aunt. We were talking about her marriage, which was with a white man and how they had to adapt to one in another in some things. It was funny because they came from different cultures so food, religion, parties and much more are different. She began telling me how he sometimes felt a little weird in the beginning of their marriage, because he was the only white person usually at parties. The good thing is that there was really no negative opinions from either of them towards each other, or counterculture. the different cultures reminded me of some terms in sociology class.
When I found out they were getting married, my uncle told me that he accepted our culture even though he still had not adapted himself to our culture.This would be making his culture the subculture. Even though my uncle's side was use to different things from us like; their parties are usually at noon, eat different food etc., there was no culture clash. His family and our family have been able to get along with each other, and actually have been finding it fun to try to learn from different cultures, so no fighting is seen. The interaction between the different cultures have brought ethnocentrism. We have made comments to each other like you guys are obsessed with beans, and you guys have parties too early and much more.