>>Sandra Woodside: Hi, I'm Sandra Woodside and I teach in the Sociology department.
And I'm here today to share with you some special
projects we have going on in our introductory sociology classes and our marriage and family
classes.
And this is a project I've been working on, actually
it's was project of my colleague Dick Hanson who is one of
our adjuncts, who began this project several years ago.
And it started off with the concept of conscious coupling.
>> Dick Hanson: What brings couples together? What separates them upon separation, what
brings them back together?
So we had them (students) go out into the community
and interview different couples in different generational periods.
Their parental generations, their contemporary generations,
their grandparental generations because, in fact,
coupling varies in different temporal generational context.
So we came up with some pretty general ideas that seem to
keep emerging about what makes successful, intimate coupling.
It's a high degree clearly of commitment but also consensus.
Agreeing on multiple dimensions and making a commitment to
one another as a whole.
>>Sandra Woodside: But it's also branched off to a new project
where we are beginning to explore the concept of tattooing.
The idea that tattooing is moving from a traditionally deviant
behavior into a more mainstream behavior.
And so our concern and our question is, what's that about?
Why are people engaged in this process and what does it mean
to the individuals who are doing it?
