Essay about Sociology: Sociology and Cultural Lag

Submitted By haruhanami
Words: 598
Pages: 3

The interviewee that I had interviewed was an African-American who has experienced living in Jamaica for a long period of time. In 1986, he left from home with his girlfriend, to meet her family who were all natives of Jamaica. “She wanted me to see what her family and her culture was like” he said. To him, living in Jamaica was easy to adapt to and had faced barely any problems in Jamaica. While living in Jamaica, my interviewee had experienced culture shock, had seen organic solidarity, had witnessed gemeinshaft, had seen cultural lag, had seen their agent of socialization, had seen status inconsistency in some of the citizens, and had also seen that their society was of an agricultural society. When finally reaching the land of Jamaica, the interviewee felt very welcomed and adapted well to the culture since their culture were similar to the United States. However, he states the experience of noticing how people could smoke marijuana legally. As he walked around with his girlfriend, he would see people smoking marijuana with ease. To him, this was completely different from his everyday life in America because the use of Marijuana is illegal and heavily looked down upon. Thus, he experienced culture shock in this situation because the norms of Jamaica’s culture was different from his and violated his expectations of the way people in a culture are suppose to be. By spending time with his girlfriend’s family, the interviewee saw how similar their views were. “In United States, we are loyal, big on friendship, religious and hardworking. In Jamaica, they are the same and I was able to see this when I stayed with her family” he says. He believes they were hard working because they had crafted most of their belongings and items. For example, he states how some made their own clothing, while others made jewelry and furniture. When explaining that the Jamaican culture was crafty and each had their own work, I came to the conclusion that he had experienced a culture that had the social integration of organic solidarity. This means that the Jamaicans depended on each other’s specific trade to contribute to the entire culture. One person would be the supplier of furniture while the other had a clothing shop. After talking about the different crafts of the culture, he