Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Our Identity Though Our Costumes

It’s amazing how we can tell a person’s identity and his/her position in life by just looking at the way they dress or act. In almost everywhere you go to, there will always be people that have different jobs. In every home, people have positions and roles. For example, the parents are the ones in control. When entering any home for the first time, you can immediately tell who are the parents, the children, and the servants if there were any. These observations come naturally. Some of these observations are an ascribed status. Age and ethnicity is an ascribed status. By looking at the person, you can naturally tell their age group and their ethnicity by their appearance. However a mother on the other hand is an achieved status, she chose to build her family

The way people dress is based on who they are in the society. When you see the people in your everyday life, you assume what their job is from their costume. Uniforms of any kind of job act as a status symbol. For example, you can identify a police officer through his uniform. There are also other costumes that are common in our everyday life. Examples are: Workers, housemaids, school students, chefs and businessmen.








The costumes make it easier for people to identify who these people are. People have different jobs based on how they are dressed. For example, if you are in a restaurant you tell the waiter what you would like to order. You know who the waiter is and call him because of the uniform.

The army on the other hand is part of the mechanical solidarity. They all act and think in the same way with the same costume. An army cannot be an army without a large group of people in order to perform the job correctly. In most cases the groups such as a basketball team or an army are considered as ingroups. They have a connection between each other and they are closely tied to each other to form a team.