UNDERSTANDING SOCIOLOGY

  SEX ·         The term sex and gender are concepts used by academicians, researchers and feminist writers to make a distinction between the biologically different male and female and between socially different man and woman. ·         Sex: refers to the biological attributes in humans and animals. ·          It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including : CHROMOSOMES GENE EXPRESSION HAROMNE LEVEL REPRODUCTIVE/SEXUAL ANATOMY ·          Sex is usually categorized as female or male but there is variation in the biological attributes that comprise sex and how those attributes are expressed. ·          Thus when an infant is born, the infant comes to be label as boy or girl depending on their sex. The genital differences between male and female is t...

   TOTEM AND TABOO Totem is the spirit or sacred object or symbol or emblem of a group of people such as family clan, lineage or tribe. Totem has a special significance in tribal life. Tribal people’s belief abut totemic character, signs, marks, letters, ideograms or any other identity serves as a reminder of the ancestory or mystical past of them. It signifies spiritual, religious, social and cultural association between a clan or lineage and a bird, animal or natural phenomena. According to Emile Durkheim a renowned French Sociologist the word totem is originated from OJIVWE an ALGONQUIN tribe of North America and it refers to an object of an animal or a plant G. Van. Der Leeuw the Dutch historian and philosopher of religion summarized the concept and definition of totem as group bears the name of the totem totem denotes its ancestor totem involves taboos such as prohibition against killing or eating the totem except in specific circumstan...

  RELIGION Anthropologist Anthony F.C. Wallace defined “religion as a set of rituals, rationalized by myths which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformation of state in man and nature”. Since no known culture, including those of modern societies has achieved complete certainty in controlling existing or future conditions and circumstances, spirituality and /or religion play a role in all known cultures. At one end of the spectrum are food foraging peoples, whose technological ability to manipulate their environment is limited, who tend to see themselves as part of rather than masters of nature. This may be referred to as naturalistic worldview. Among food foragers religion is likely to be inseparable from the rest of daily life. At the other end of the spectrum is Western civilization, with its ideological commitment to overcoming problems through technological and organizational skills. Here religion is less a part of daily activi...