desperate housewives

All of a sudden I found myself thinking sociologically when I was watching this weeks episode of desperate housewives.  There were tons of examples of sociology but I'm going to focus on mobs and riots.

This season, one of the major events is that Paul (the creepy neighbor who was in jail for murder) is opening a halfway house on Wisteria Lane.  All the neighbors are against the opening of the halfway house because of the fact that their are many little kids in the neighborhood. When the mayor comes to speak in favor of the house, all the neighbors come together to protest.  The families from Wisteria Lane bring signs and plan chants, but a near-by street brings bats and their willingness to start a fight.  According to our textbook a mob is " and emotionally stimulated, disorderly crowd that is ready to use destructive violence to achieve a purpose."  The group of neighbors from near-by streets could be considered a mob because they were angry about the halfway house and were willing to use violence to get what they wanted.

As the protests started to heat up, someone from the crowd saw Brie's ex-boyfriend punching his dad in the face. He was wearing his work clothes (he's a carpenter) so the crowd member thought he was one of the residents of the halfway house beating up an innocent guy. He shouted to the crowd "hey one of the con's is beating that guy up!" Immediately, a group began attacking Brie's ex.  When Brie walked out of her house and saw the commotion, she fired her gun into the air to get their attention. In doing so, she startled the entire crowd of protesters that weren't aware of the fight going on in Brie's yard. As soon as people realized someone had a gun, the crowd turned into a riot.  People began pushing to run away, some were trampled, cars were destroyed, ex-convicts were beaten with bats.  Since the crowd was still creating deliberate violence but no longer had a common purpose, it could be called a riot.

All of a sudden, I found myself thinking sociologically when I went to the after school workout for softball.  The first thing I realized was that the people I work out with is a secondary group.  We are all their to get stronger to we can be a better team.

The second thing I noticed was that the coaches use positive informal sanctions.  If they see you working hard they tell you that you're doing a good job and push you to work even harder.  Teammates also use informal positive sanctions when they give high fives and cheer for each other.

Third, I realized that the players who make the team in the spring are receiving a positive formal sanction because they are being specifically rewarded for being a hard working player by be given a spot on the team.