Re-Defining Community, Essay Example

A portfolio of Writing about Community

Introduction

Now days it is virtually impossible to stay out of some type of social network, text, and immediate communication source.  There is a large demand for such networks because of the gratification of involvement.  We want to be instantly connected with friends, activities, and social statuses.  Virtually everyone wants to feel that they belong to a community or a group.  This is done in many ways besides social networking, however this is one of the fastest growing community’s to-date.

Communities are made up of a vast majority of shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities.  We are drawn to such diversities as much as we are opposed to them.   A lack of understanding with cultures, beliefs, and activities often allow us to dismiss individuals instead of embracing them.  Redefining community can be done through many ways.    In this course we wrote on topics related to social networks, food, and even the University life, showing that community if much more than the neighborhood one grew up in.

Throughout this course we learned many ideal on community-related unities.  Starting with the Hamburg steak, we will see that one common like is intertwined throughout most countries, regardless of the differences that normally separate them.  Next we will move onto the Diverse Community of Orange and Green, which shows the communal association in supporting their university.  The community is not defined by menial factors like age, race, sexuality, or religious beliefs; it is joined by common support for their university.  And finally wrapping up we will read about social networks like Twitter and how positive communication on diversity can create understanding, respect, and favorable outcome.

Food-related Community: Hamburg Steak

Hamburger (or known as Burger) is a beef patty served between two slices of bread. This is considered the main meal or the favorite meal among Americans nowadays. The word Hamburger originally applied for the people from Hamburg. Hamburg is the largest city in Germany. Centuries ago when America was discovered many people emigrated from Germany, mainly from Hamburg, where the largest port of Europe was located. Hamburg’s port took people by sailing them from Hamburg to finally arrive to New York’s port. These immigrants arrived New York in the early 18^th century. While sailing to New York they were served those beef patties (or so called Hamburg steak) it was basically ground beef sliced into round circle patties, added regional spices with chopped onions and breadcrumbs. German-speaking immigrants brought their favorite foods with them when they first came, Hamburg steak was one of those favorite foods they brought and luckily the steak became popular and a standard meal among the poorer classes.

In the mid 18^th century, the German Hamburg steak spread around the U.S. It was also seen in some restaurants breakfast menus known as Hamburger or Hamburg beefsteak and the asking price was about 0.10¢. In the late 18^th century, the term Hamburger became an original American meal. Few decades later the Hamburger became the most popular and most consumed meal throughout the whole country. And that’s when restaurants started adding it to their menus. And the first appearance of fast food restaurants was in mid 19^th century. These restaurants main idea is to cook frozen food that was already prepared before it was frozen and to serve them as fast as possible in a low cost of money. By that period of time, a fast food restaurant, McDonald’s came out and created the first Burger that is considered fast food.

Hamburgers today are most likely to be found in fast food restaurants than in a higher-class restaurant. McDonald’s has the honor of having the best fast food burger out there. They serve the Big Mac; it is one of the world’s top selling hamburgers. Other major fast food companies, Burger King (also known as Hungry Jack’s in Australia), A&W, Culver’s, Whataburger, Carl’s Jr., Hardees, Wendy’s (known for their square patties), Jack in the Box, Cook Out, Harvey’s, Shake Shack, In-N-Out Burger, Five Guy’s, FatBurger, Vera’s, Bargersville, Back Yard Burgers, Lick’s HomeBurger, Roy Rogers, SmashBurgers, and Sonic. Also rely heavily on hamburger sales: Fuddruckers and Red are hamburger chains that specialize in mid-tier “restaurant-style”. These restaurants and chains serve not only the burger as meat between two breads, also the varies kinds of burgers that could be imagined like, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, mushroom and Swiss, veggie burger, hot and spicy, chill cheese, chicken, etc… In few word in this paper am going to explain how that German steak after it came from Hamburg to New York and introduced to American people, and how some restaurants started added this German food to its breakfast menu, then in became more popular and consumers started seeing it all around America, then it became the signature of an America food, and finally it landed in its final stop to be considered a fast-food product (McDonald’s).

Hamburger now reflects McDonald’s, which an American fast food restaurant is more than it reflects any restaurant out there or even knowing that this food originally came from Germany many decades before. McDonald’s now has many-many restaurants throughout the whole world probably more than any other food or non-food chains. And whenever it opens a place in a country it always has the same main burgers like the Big Mac, cheeseburger, chicken burger, and the quarter pounder. And they always have some different added burgers to the menu for more choices for the consumer and those items are always different depending on the country or the community around that specific store. For instance, McDonald’s in Saudi Arabia have an item in their menu called “Marabou” with the   choice of chicken or beef. And many other items that are not so related to the community but they are well consumed by people. And also in France they have the Croissant burger. In Germany they have the “Big McFeast”, “New York Classic” and “Big Texas Bacon”. Also in the U.S. they have some of that international menu item like the “Mac Rib”. What am trying to point out, is the varies items that McDonald’s have to add to its menu to basically try to interact with the community its targeting.

In this exchange of food, traditions we found in the main meal which was the Hamburg steak. To be manipulated and changed by adding new and different ingredients and toppings. To now be know as the American burger. Or even inventing new recipes and types of cooks like what McDonald’s do with their stores outside the U.S. and creates new signature to almost every nature around the world. That could result on having a new tradition. Even to other parts of the world. In the future the American hamburger could be changed and become the main dish for another country. In this case the Hamburg steak that belongs to Germany, by time transformed to Hamburger or burger and became a number one American tradition. And that sort of exchange happens usually from immigrating people to new places like in this case, the transformation of a food that was first served in a ship to immigrants to sharing this food with the people of the new land which in this case its New York to finally become an American meal served everywhere in the country. Nevertheless, there are positive aspects of this exchange. There is also some negativity. The positive thing about this sort of exchange is the sharing and trying new ideas of food and creating their own signature, and the negative side is usually when the exchanged is a bad habit that is a dangerous thing or something that could ruin other culture traditions like cigarettes, drugs, or whatever. But in this subject the exchange is considered positive because the majority of people are satisfied now after developing one food to a better one and in this exchange I don’t think there is anything negative about it.

School-related Community: The Diverse Community of Orange and Green

In this observation essay, I wanted to observe the student life in Stanford and from that point on I noted much more things than I expected. I started to walk back and forth in the aisle and tracking people moves and actions.  I watched them closely interacting with each other and starting those small communities.  There was a common thing running around between the individuals I observed.  They all had that desire of making new friends with people who shares the same interest.  This is where I developed what I will be writing about in this paper.  While in Rebekah Nathan’s essay she also has the same type of observation and she mainly focused on some key points that I also will focus on in this paper. One of her key points was “Community” which I will speak a lot about in this paper whether it is the community created in the dorms, or the events that are created by it.  Nathan also spoke about this field in particular, or even by involving in an event helps create more friends and communities, which also Nathan said; but she said that these events did not succeed at her University because the students did not involve interact in those events.  The diversity of people she was talking about was mostly about the skin color and how they are weakly connected, but within the University of Miami it is a different case.  In my observation watch, I mainly focused on the nationality of students and how diverse it is in UM and they succeed in breaking the barriers between all countries and created a new big diverse community, what I like to call “The Big Family of UM”.

?The city of Miami is one of the most diverse cities in the US. It has more Hispanic citizens than Americans and also a lot of other races from other parts of the world.  However, the most Hispanic race in Miami comes from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, México, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and few from other parts of Latin America.  As well as Europe, and Asia, and that ads to what makes Miami such a diverse city. The University of Miami is the best university in the area it is actually ranked in the 38^th place among all the US universities.  That is a good thing to attract more and more people to come, live and study in Miami.  That what makes UM one of the most diverse university in the US. The two main colors that represents UM are Orange and Green and “the U” is the logo for it. UM also has a great football team that plays in the college league football “The Hurricanes” and they are the mainstream and the first representative of the university. The mascot of UM’s team is an angry cane wearing the football jersey of UM and his name is Sebastian.

First of all I would like to talk about the dorms. In UM there are few dormitories where students can live-in during their study years, but there is a specific one called Stanford.  It is only assigned for freshman and all freshmen must live there for their first semester.  The reason of assigning a building just for freshman is to help them make friends with each other since they are all new.  They don’t know anybody and they all share the same thing; which is making friends by putting them all in the same place. It makes it easier for freshman to make a lot of friends and build up their connections, that also helps their network to expand and so. Basically then, it is obvious to say that Stanford’s main idea is to help students create communities within the dorms. That is actually what is happening, when I first went to Stanford, and started my observation I had a lot in mind to write about, but what really I think is the most noticeable thing is that everybody there are friends, and all the dorm rooms were open for anybody to go in a hang out, and they hang out in groups.  Even if someone didn’t know the person who actually lives their as long as he knows someone in that room then he kind of invited to get in and make friends with these people, and they do that because they all know that is the only way to make friends.  However, Nathan might not agree with me based on her study, but still diversity and community in UM is different than any other university. Honestly that was quite amazing; it just makes making friends much easier.

Then, The dormitory holds all kind of people from different countries and different continents of the world with different backgrounds and as stated above that Miami is already one of the most ethnicity diverse cities in the US, so that what makes UM also a diverse ethnic university. That’s what makes it kind of hard for those students to create a community that holds all of those students together. That’s when Stanford come along trying instantly to gather those student to help them create their own community by doing all possible things to attract as much students as possible pushing them to meet and make friends. By hosting different kind of events like a movie nights, the super bowl night, and outdoors sports tournament events like football, basketball, baseball, soccer, etc… Once I was involved in one of those sport event, a soccer tournament to be specific and it actually helped me a lot to make a lot of new friends who they also share the same interest like me which is soccer. After that tournament was done, me and my new friends realized that the best thing about this tournament is that we actually met new people and made new friends, not only playing and wining. That made me actually more involved in events and gatherings. I believe others had been involved more too because everybody wants to make friends.

However, I also noticed that the board always giveaway T-shirts that are basically Orange or Green or the ones that has the litter “U” or the picture of Sebastian the mascot or even other words or phrases that are commonly used throughout the universities campus. Those T-shirts are also sold in the bookstore as well, and they are selling well. The reason of doing this is because that when wearing those shirts it makes students feel connected or united because they share something in common. The university itself also encourages them to wear those T-shirts by showing up Sebastian on campus from time to time to take pictures with and cheer them up, so that students will always have him in mind and never forget him. However, T-shirts are not the only wearable stuff that the students wear to display them selves as a UM student or fan of “The Hurricanes”. For instance, there are wristbands, shorts, bags, and other stuff as well. But the real question is does the majority of these students wear this stuff to show that they are from UM or to support the football team. So I looked up more and more to finally discover that three out of five which is the majority of those students wear T-shirts and stuff that has the name of the team “Hurricanes”, the picture of Sebastian or anything that is related to the football team more than the regular Orange and Green shirts. That means that the vast majority of students are cheering up for the team. There is a great team atmosphere between students and the community that brings all those different people together under one roof to care and share and feel like they are in a one big family that is called “Hurricane” or “the U”.

To sum up, we can say that Diversity and Community does exist in the University of Miami and that is totally a positive thing. The dormitories like Stanford, the events that are held within the UM campus, and the “Spirit clothes” made it happen by helping create these small communities and to finally in the end it becomes a big one. It actually doesn’t matter where students come from, their ethnicity, background, or whatever, as long as the university tries to work things out it, if they did a good job in the end it will finally happen. Not like the university Rebekah was in I honestly did not like Rebekah’s university based on what she wrote on her essay, but compared to University of Miami there are big difference here. I really like what’s going on in UM and they are making a good job put of it, and am proud to be part of UM’s big family.

Social Network-related Community: Twitter translates Appiah’s image

Appiah had always wanted to see an idol world, world without hate, world without wars, and world without discrimination.  However, cosmopolitanism meant a lot to Appiah; he always wanted people to get together to share love and peace, he suggested making conversations with people from other parts of the world will help resolve some of the problems we have, to change this world we live in into a better place.  Although, there are some people would not communicate with others who have issues that are not familiar with because of their pride, they think that letting go of their extreme pride might break their ego; but that is wrong, for instance, when homosexuality first occurred, a lot of people was shocked they ignored it and was instantly against it, but by time people started to accept it more and more; if people tried to accept homosexuality from the beginning, we would have reached this type of mentality long time ago. Anyway, most of these problems are now being solved and people are being more connected and more understanding because now we have much more advanced ways of communicating specially the social networking. Most of these ideas Appiah had, happens to be achieved in most of these social networks like: Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Google Plus, etc. By that, this finally brings us to the next part which is introducing Twitter, the social website that will be discussed in this paper.

?Twitter is one of the largest social networks out there, Twitter’s main idea is to let people write what’s on their mind and also have the chance to discuss anybody’s idea as well, it is almost like Facebook, but more focused on sharing what is on your mind or so called the “status”. But the reason why Twitter is going to be the main subject of this paper is because in Twitter there are no friend requests, you do not need someone to accept your friendship; you can follow anybody, and anybody can follow you; by that you can share and also see what people you are following are thinking about, and these statuses can also be discussed. Twitter succeed on achieving most of Appiah’s image on cosmopolitanism like following different types of people, making conversations, and learning from one another; and how are these three subjects are connected with Appiah’s idea: which are help people reducing their ego, communicating with people with different backgrounds, and helping each other on understanding themselves.

First, Twitter allows you to connect and follow anybody you want, That means you can follow your friends, your favorite athlete, favorite singer, actress, or even important people like a politician or a president, that will let you be up to date on what is going on with the people you are interested in; for example, watching Obama on Television making a statement and he says something that made some listeners uncomfortable, but then, on his Twitter he explains what he meant and also can apologize if he may said something wrong, and by looking at the presidents status and what has he wrote in response to defend his statement and then maybe that will eventually help the followers to understand exactly what the president Obama meant. This also shows that there are no differences between people, no matter who you are or where you come from, anybody can follow you and you can follow anybody.

Then, communicating with people and making friendly conversation is also one of the things Twitter has to offer, you can share your ideas with anyone, and you can also involve in someone else’s sharing and discuss each other’s status and posts. This will help people with different ideas to discuss their ideas and see what responses they get to either support it or to deny it; for example, when someone shares something asking if he should buy a specific product or not, people who are following him will try to give him some ideas to help him make up his mind. That is communicating and caring to help each other, and of course everybody will respect the comments they get and that will make them to respectively reply to their posts as well.

Finally, Tweeter’s always try to learn from each other; when something unacceptably is shared, followers will always try to discuss and change the Tweeter’s mind and can also show the right from wrong also to learn and understand other people point of view and accept them. For instance, a Muslim Tweets saying something about alcohol and why it is forbidden in Islam, then a Christian sees it and discusses it with him and finally the Christian will understand why, and will probably respect that when he meets a Muslim in the future, then he can also educate someone else who does not know that. Therefore, too many people will understand each other and will think twice before judging others. That’s why you see more understanding people now than before, if that happened long time ago, Twitter or any social network by it could achieve world peace, the thing everybody now looks forward to.

In the first argument, in Twitter members are allowed to connect or follow anybody they wanted, that is also related to Appiah’s image of connecting and communicating with each other in favor of letting people know that all the people in this planet are human and they are all similar one way or another.  Positivity is that Twitter also helps famous or well known people and the not so much know people to feel all the same and to live a normal life all united under this social network. Nevertheless, Twitter also helps individuals to reduce their ego and pride and makes communicating with others much easier, and educate them and telling them that they are not better than them, which they think they are; there is nobody who is better than any one.

?The second part states that making good and friendly conversations. This will make members to talk together without any barriers; that is also what Appiah always wanted to happen is to help find world peace which he called social exchange in a globalized connected world, where everybody can share their social life without being afraid of being criticized because of the differences in mentality, and also to be connected and to show how others can help and work together to know others point of view and understand it, this will also reduce the ignorance that is going on around right now, and let people appreciate their views and backgrounds.

?Finally the third paragraph is about people educating each other by correcting the mistakes that occurs frequently between people, that is something that will help expand the knowledge and learning from each other’s background and explains what’s right and what’s wrong to help critics measure twice before judging someone or judging a group of people, also by knowing each other’s background and ethics can make those who speak publicly on the television or the radio to always make the right statements trying to avoid wrong ideas that might cause a negative impact on the people he’s talking about or even the same group of that speaker. This will also show how much people care about each other.

?In conclusion, from what is written above it is obvious that Twitter can accomplish what Appiah had in mind about reaching world peace, which might take a little bit of time to do so, but let’s hope it happens soon. Also the reasons above shows why Twitter had been chosen to talk about, when there are too many social networks like Facebook, My Space, Google Plus, and etc. it is because Twitter is most closely to Appiah’s image of cosmopolitanism. For the mean time, communicating with people and making conversation, learning about each other’s background, and finally understanding and accepting one another without negatively judging each other all these together will remain Appiah’s vision of the future world and hopefully to reach world peace as soon as possible.

Conclusion: Re-defining Community

Community-related unity is important to almost everyone.   Researching common grounds like in Hamburg steak, Community of Orange and Green, and Social Networks we see that there are virtually a million different types of community.   This is not necessarily where you were born, grew up, or what you are most familiar with, this exists in so many more places than that.   A community provides a understanding of each other that may not normally be in place.  A tolerance for differences to the extent they will be embraces instead of disliked.

In redefining community we see factors like age, race, sexuality, or religious beliefs that join people together.  Stepping outside of what is known opens the doors for  a whole new understanding of people.  A community is a great thing to belong to, and there is some type of community on just about every corner.   Picking the best option for you, may mean stepping outside of the comfortable or common, but it will also be more rewarding.  Sharing views, desires and goals with others will more often than not benefit everyone involved.    Re-defining community to be a positive set of basic values will create a much better outcome for everyone involved.