Analyzing Social Forces
IN ACTION: Analyzing Social Forces
“Nowadays we are in the dot-com age where we find many new things coming into our hands. Mostly the junior youth follow the new fashions, their friends, and the new brands. But if you talk to the junior youth about materialism, they don’t react so fast to trends. They look at it first and think about what the benefit would be.”
— An animator of a junior youth group
GLIMPSES FROM THE FIELD: These words from a young man serving as an animator of a junior youth group demonstrate the high degree of mental clarity needed to recognize that things in this world are not always what they seem.
GLIMPSES FROM THE BOOKS: The series developed by DLP seeks to raise in participants a consciousness of the forces at work in the world and how they act on individuals and society. In Drawing on the Power of the Word, a group of young people in a small town in Latin America come together from time to time to undertake a variety of activities with the assistance of an older youth, Elisa. In doing so, they enter into several conversations in which they begin to consider the many forces, constructive and destructive, at work in society.
Here, take a look at the group’s discussion of the influence the media has in their lives. Exercises that accompany the lessons help participants to think further about the use of media in shaping social forces. Click to see lesson.