REFLECTIVE WRITING II - CLSY

REFLECTIVE WRITING II

The following piece of writing reflects upon my experience in the CLSY500; ‘Culture and Society’ paper over this past semester. It taught me a lot of things and had brought me to understand issues and concepts from a different perspective. It allowed me to re-evaluate where I stand in relation to these concepts and helped shape how I view them now. In this piece I will provide a summary of my viewpoints of the concepts and issues we explored and how it related to me and society as a whole. I will also discuss my own identity and values and beliefs and how concepts learnt in this paper has helped shape my perspective of them. I will also speak upon how this paper has helped me broaden and strengthen my perspective of how I perceive other people and how I am able to understand other people’s opinions and beliefs.

For the group project aspect of this paper my group and I chose to tackle the issue of depression and the stigma in relation to it in today’s society. As a group we chose to look upon this issue is because we as a group felt this was an issue faced by society most people choose not to discuss or turn a blind eye towards how it results in other forms of societal issues. Also before we even began research I assumed that depression was feeling down and unhappy for long periods of time due to certain situations in one’s life. However, once I started researching, I came to find out the depression was actually persistent and intense feelings of unhappiness even when situations leading to this improve but the feelings of unhappiness do not (Is this depression, n.d.). A concept we linked the issue back to was human rights. We found out that depression does lead to homelessness and according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25; “everyone has the right to a standard of living and adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family. If someone were to seek help, they have the right to be treated and social services should be available.” Upon further research we came to realize a concept that plays a large role in the stigma behind depression is popular culture. Mass media portrayals of sports people, especially the All Blacks and their idolization in New Zealand society leads to this image of an ideal kiwi who are strong, both mentally and physically. Due to this people, especially men avoid speaking about dealing with depression and turning a blind eye towards it. Through evaluation of mine and other people’s work and opinions in the Culture and Society paper I have come to believe that we must be weary of how we choose to understand popular culture as all that we see and are influenced by are not as it seems.

I feel as my own values and beliefs are largely influenced by popular culture. However, before taking part in this paper I had always defined popular culture as trends and ideologies set by media forms such as music, television, internet and news media and by the personnel who have influence over this media. The academic definition as per Dahlgren and Sparks (1992), is “Popular culture has emerged as one of the main sites of investigation within contemporary mass communication research and cultural studies. Most of that work is concerned with fiction, particularly in television, and with ‘entertainment.’” Through the duration of this paper I came to realize that popular culture has both negative and positive connotations in a person’s life and their views and beliefs and identity.  It all comes down to how they choose to perceive popular culture and whether they indulge in it for positive or negative reasons entirely depends on the individual. Learning more about popular culture has strengthened my belief that popular culture plays a large role in people each individuals lives, as it does in mine, especially in this day and age and there are forms of media around us at all times.

The concept of human rights before taking part in the culture and society paper was somewhat of a blur to me as I did not know very much about it. I just assumed it had to with the very basic needs in today’s society such as food & water, shelter, and security. Though once I started to learn more about this concept I realized how much more complicated and how much more broad it is than just a few basic necessities. After reading through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights I found myself agreeing to a lot of the articles within them. They matched my values and ideals of which I thought were necessary for people to live by, however I did not realize they were also considered human rights. These were ideals such as racial and gender equality. Growing up a dark brown skinned Indian in a multi-cultural society I was highly racially abused. Things going as far to me being labelled as ‘black disease’ in primary school. Up until taking part in this paper I did not realize my rights were being abused. I just assumed all that time that racial profiling and racial abuse where just forms of oppression upon people who were different. Through this paper I came to learn so much more about human rights and found these learnings extremely helpful. They strengthened my perspective of equality and diversity and also showed me that standing up against bigotry and oppression is my right. This idea was shared around the class by many people and more light was shed on this by others. This allowed me to understand other people’s perspective and reasoning’s behind their opinions and I was able to comprehend where they were coming from.

In conclusion I have found most of the concepts we have looked at in culture and society to be enlightening. It helped me realize how much of an important role these concepts play in our everyday lives. We use these concepts to make well thought and wise decisions but we also subconsciously we use these concepts to make day to day decisions without realizing. These concepts are somethings we already somewhat knew off but just did not understand them as well as we should. However, after spending a semester taking part in this paper I better understand these concepts. I found that this paper was a huge learning curve for me. It helped me grow as a person and I feel as if I am more of a critical thinker now than I ever was. I am not only able to evaluate my own but also other people’s perspectives on certain issues and better understand what I am saying and what they are. Therefore, for me, the skill of critical thinking and being able to better understand issues has been by far the most significant point of learning for me in Culture and Society.

REFERENCES

Dahlgren, P., & Sparks, C. (1992). Journalism and popular culture. London: SAGE Publications.

Depression and Dysthymia. Retrieved from http://caprihospital.co.nz/Mental-Health-Treatment/Illness/Depression-Dysthymia.html

Is this Depression? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.depression.org.nz/depression

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Reflective Writing I - CLSY

REFLECTIVE WRITING I

For the first assignment in this paper we were required to share photos with a small caption which highlighted our views on culture, identity, human rights and history. It was an interesting learning curve for me personally as I dwelled into really personal territory and shared views and opinions I wouldn’t normally share in a public forum. Especially with the ‘identity’ post. 

Firstly, we were required to share about our culture. I chose a picture which I felt represented my culture well. It was a picture of a group of friends playing ‘Holi’, which is a religious Hindu festival. In saying that, I personally do not feel like religion and culture are directly related as I am a former Hindu but I still partake in various different Hindu festivals etc. This was contradicted by some other people’s post who mentioned how religion is part of their culture. For me this is somewhat true, but I feel they aren’t directly related. Personally, just because I no longer regard myself as a Hindu does not mean that I am not an Indian either. I can’t simply ignore the things I’ve grown up with, these being things like religious festivals etc. I not only enjoy the vibrancy of my culture but also the positivity and the ideals it shares.

The second post, which was about Identity, I was confused at first what to write about. I wasn’t exactly sure what a good reflection of my identity was. However, according to Fearon (1999), which claimed ‘identity’ is a social category defined by characteristic attributes and socially distinguishing features a person takes pride upon. Therefore, I chose to write about the characteristics and traits I’ve picked up from my Father and Brother. Nonetheless, I found it somewhat difficult write because I lost my Father last year. I noticed some other people’s identity posts were also about their families and how they’ve been influenced by their families. This was one of the reasons I wrote my identity piece as I did. I felt since other people were willing to be so personal I could also do the same.

The human rights picture was an interesting photo for me. I felt I wanted to choose something a little different to what my peers where choosing. Most people were posting about, poverty, child labour, child poverty etc. I however chose to post about a human rights issue I’ve faced personally. An issue which is very common, can be found all around the globe people, has been faced by a majority of the population and is faced on a daily basis. I chose to speak about racial discrimination. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2; everyone has rights without differentiation of any form, including race. However, despite this I think racism will never end because I see it as a constant struggle of dominance versus equality.

For the history post, I decided on a picture of Adolf Hitler saluting his troops as they seemingly march towards battle I’m assuming. The reason for my choice of picture was because I felt that World War II was such a significant event in all of history, and its outcome and effects impacted the world as a whole, rather than just as individuals or countries. If the war had been won by Nazi Germany, the liberty and freedom we live in today could have possibly seized to exist. I felt my post was somewhat different to most other posts because most people talked about their personal history where I felt I addressed global history which affected each and every one of us in one way or another.                

REFERENCES 

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             Fearon, J. D. (1999). What is Identity (As we now use the word)? Department of Political Science Stanford University.

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      The Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/