clayton3854

i need to do a topic that is relivant to society and i thought what better then how a jeep (or any 4x4 modded vehicle) changes someones life. from spending all your money on it spending all your free time working on it researching for it or wheeling it. so i need your guys help by telling me how owning you XJ or any other 4x4's that youve wheel has been a major part of your life. thanks guys

jiffy

you can mention something about the comradery you get when chatting on the forum and/or trailing with other xj owners or just going to xj social meets to check out other xj's. then expand on how that makes you feel like you belong to movement that only xj lovers know and feel.

4.3L XJ

I have almost always had some type of 4X4 around for situations that come up. When I didn't my spending habits did change. Car parts were for fixing, not upgrades. When I have Jeeps though, I end up redoing the whole vehicle. I think that is the common thing here, not accepting the factory version, but building something better that is a reflection of our personalities.

5-90

Your topic sounds like it would be for a psychology paper - or even a "cumulation of individual psychological changes" paper, not sociology.

For sociology, you really should look at the 4WD community as a whole, taking the general attitudes and outlook and possibly contrasting it with the attitudes toward the "deviant section" of the community - the "tear it up" crowd, the illegal 'wheelers, et al.

Recall that sociology isn't psychology, nor is it a summation of individual psychologies. I've taken a semester of psychology and a semester of sociology, and the two are very different.

By way of contrast, my final paper for psych was a review of Richard Bachman's/Stephen King's Rage, and was titled something like "The Mechanics of Sanity." (I wish I could find that paper - worked on it the whole semester, and it showed! Got high marks for it.) For sociology, it was "A Comparison of Tribal Sexual Practises Considered 'Deviant' by First World Societies, Compared and Contrasted." Got good marks on that one as well.

(When I took Ancient Peoples of Mesoamerica, my final was an opinion paper on how the Aztecs et al were in a state of decline before the arrival of the conquistadores, and how the societies' demise was simply accelerated by the loss of traditions caused by their arrival, due to their practise of human sacrifice. Not for any moralistic reasons - but for practical ones! Their pattern of killing and sacrificing their "best and brightest" to appease their gods was draining the gene pool to the point where pretty much anyone would have been able to step in and wipe them out - give it another fifty years or so, and I could have done it handily with an unarmed rifle squad. The instructor told me it was a "refreshing viewpoint on a subject he'd thought was worn out.")

But, the difference between sociology and psychology is both simple and critical. Psychology concerns the thoughts and behaviours of people taken individually or in small groups (not more than a few dozen.) Sociology is the summation of thoughts and behaviour of groups taken wholesale - anything from a few hundred (well-established good-sized village) on up, including traditions, mores, the Social Contract, and considering deviations from the norm (large group psychology, for instance, would not be able to account for someone like me. Sociology can. I'm an example of a "deviation from the norm" in most respects, and I would be included in sociological assays of society. Psychology of the large group would simply dismiss me as irrelevant, or as 'flyer data' - too far off the norm to be accurate.)

wyatts95xj

society involves psycology and you could references freud's theory of sublimation which is taking a socialy unacceptable act and acting it out in an acceptable manor. like a desire to hurt people being taken out through a full contact sport or other violent tendencies being sublimated into videogames. jeeps allow you to sublimate your desire for adventure and travel into a little offroad trip. they also allow you to sublimate desire to go where others cant, a way to be isolated and away from society in a managable way

Ritter4.0

jeep > crack

Project done. Lol

jiffy

yeah...what he said.

5-90

I'm not arguing that point at all - just trying to make the point that sociology is much more than the summation of psychology taken from the individual level.

If sociology were that easy, there'd be no differentiation in subject matter for degree study, would there?

clayton3854

thanks guys im only in intro to psych and intro to soc so everything you guys said is far above what weve learned in either class. my teacher told me for my soc paper she wants me to focus on how owning a 4x4 is a subculture to the majority of the world since basically every1 owns a car. and to focus on those like us who modify it and why we do and how we do etc. but some of the stuff you guys did say has givin me some good ideas on where i can go with this. so keep the ideas coming please and thank you

clayton3854

also for any of you who modify other vechiles other the 4x4's like a car tell me what you like better about modifying you jeep or you like less about the jeep. thanks

wyatts95xj

the oonly problem with jeeps is like cars. theyre money pits lol

5-90

Applies to pretty much any vehicle-based hobby, really...

"A boat is a hole in the water into which money is thrown."