George Herbert Mead - Child Development - Game Stage

The game stage Mead describes the child having to take the role of everyone else involved.  My son does not play sports like baseball or soccer but I think his participation in karate could be an example of game stage development.  This is a picture of graduation.  He has to be a participant at his belt level performing the correct form at the correct time with the rest of his class.  He has to be a leader to the younger belts as he performs his karate forms.  He has to respect his master at all times.  During this stage as well as this particular karate graduation he had to learn to be able to participate in a organized group.

George Herbert Mead - Child Development - Play Stage

My son loves Zombies.  He really is preparing for the zombie apocalypse.  This would be a throwback picture to when he began perfecting his undead gate and slobbering growl at the young age of five.  This pretending to be a zombie all the way back to the car and down the road (twenty five miles down the road) is an example of Mead's first stage of child development, play.  This is the stage where children play as others.  They learn to take the role and attitude of another person to themselves.  Mead states that this type of play pretend is part of the building blocks to forming a self.

Thorstein Veblen - Waste in Conspicuous Consumption

The time that is wasted in playing this online computer game, Minecraft, is incredible. Video games in general can be quite expensive and take up very large amounts of one's time and thoughts. However, they are truly useless.  They are only to entertain. There is no need to have or play video games.  Those that are of the leisure class can afford to buy the brand new game as well as afford to play the game for thirteen hours straight without break.  But Veblen describes this type of consumption at this level a total waste.

Thorstein Veblen - Characteristic of Leisure Class

One characteristic of the leisure class is the want to fight or duel. Another characteristic is the popularity of playing or watching a sport.  This picture shows both.  Karate is often considered a sport of fighting like boxing.  Studios are often expensive therefore those who partake may come from the wealthier leisure class. Veblen states these type of activities are left over animalistic habits from barbarian societies that are no longer useful.  Karate can prove to still have some use.  But when you think about six years old sparring, Veblen's theory might be quite correct.

Thorstein Veblen - Conspicuous Consumption

That's a lot of crappy makeup.

Conspicuous consumption is part of daily life for the leisure class.  This is the consumption of unnecessary amounts of goods, food, services, amusements, etc. But for those that are not quite in this lavish class, the working poor often emulate the leisure class.  The female or wife of the household often will obtain or collect or buy goods like makeup in order to present herself like the wealthy celebrity women in the magazine tabloids.  Veblen theorized that this type of consumption from the lady of the house is done to promote her spouses reputation.  Therefore if her husband has a pretty made up wife, he will be more popular among friends or have a higher status among coworkers and employer.

Emile Durkheim - Social Facts - Nonmaterial

George Washington was an American hero!  That's what my son told me throughout the month of February when we celebrate President's Day as well as George Washington's birthday.  Durkheim would say that this reverence for our first president would be considered a nonmaterial social fact falling under the collective representation category.  A nonmaterial fact is a norm, value, or the culture of society. These are not tangible items like material social facts.  Durkheim described these facts by forming four different types.  Morality, collective conscience, collective representations, and social currents.  They are all external as well as coercive to the individual. They also can be studied empirically.  George Washington as a collective representation gives the perfect example of the definition: collective ideas and social force.  They are the norms, values, and beliefs within our society.  American's take pride in our presidents and create a hero type of image to portray their importance to our youth. This is the American collective representation of George Washington.

Emile Durkheim - Social Facts - Material

Durkheim describes a social fact as the social structures and cultural norms that are coercive and external to the individual.  A material social fact is directly observable.
Here is an example of a material social fact according to Durkheim.  This is the terms and conditions, rights and responsibilities, policies, and standards of the online community Facebook.  These are legal codes.  Facebook's legal codes fall under Durkheim's material social facts because they are directly observable as well as coercive to the user as well as external to.