Week 6 - Culture & Socialization

Culture

• The beliefs, behaviour, that a social group shares.

• Refers to beliefs, artifacts, and ways at like that a social group shares.

• Shared beliefs, values, practices, & objects that shape how we live.

• It’s very broad (Meaningful components of group interaction)

• Learned (Passed down through generations), Shared (Cannot be individual), Dynamic (Constantly changing and evolving overtime).

Cultural Universals

• Are all common practices and beliefs found in all societies.

• (Ex: Need for food, shelter, and systems of communication are cultural universals)

• The Kinship system: Every society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and care of children.

• Universals are expressed varies among cultures.

• Every culture eats, but what/how they eat are DIFFERENT.

• There is change overtime within culture.

Language

• An abstract system of word (Both what we say) meanings and symbols (Non-verbal coms)

• Most common form of non-material culture.

• It’s a cultural universal but takes different forms in different culture.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Initially developing language to express concepts that emerge from our experience concepts that emerge from our experience of the world to be able to coms w/ each other.

• But afterwards language comes back to shape our experience of the world.

• How you refer to the world, and you experiences it differently. Our understanding of distance would be different.

Values

• Beliefs about ideal goals/behaviours

• What are we look up to (Ex: Freedom, EDI, etc.)

Norms

• Unwritten cultural rules that define behaviour.

• Spell out what we should to in everyday life to reach values.

Sanctions

• Rewards or punishments.

• Can be formal or informal.

Taboos

• Culturally prohibited actions.

• Highly stigmatized, highly.

• (Ex: Suicide, incest, nudity, & cannibalism)

Folkways

• Informal norms

• Norms shaping everyday behaviour.

• If not done, won’t get extreme consequences.

• (Ex: Saying please and Thank You)

Mores

• Norms w/ strong sense of importance.

• (Ex: Murder, Theft, Lying)

• More serious consequences

Laws

• Formally defined norms.

Negative Sanctions

• These are consequences, when people don’t follows norms.

Positive Sanctions

• Is when they follow they do follow norms.

High Culture

• Those who have an appreciation for this culture and the resources necessary to immerse themselves in them.

• (Ex: Wealth, high education, classical music, etc.)

Mass Culture

• Everyday cultural practices and products that are widely accessible and consumed by large groups of society, often produced for commercial purposes.

• (Ex: TV, social media, pop music, etc.)

Pierre Bordieu

• Argued that advantage also comes from social connections and valued cultural knowledge.

• Knowledge comes from different types of capital.

• Money = Adv. in gaining capital

• Inequality is reproduced through more than money. (Human capital & Social Capital)

Economic Capital

• What do you own?

• Money and financial resources.

Human Capital

• What do you know?

• KSAs

• (Ex: Education credentials, skills, etc.)

Social Capital

• Who do you know?

• Connections and networks you can draw on

• (Ex: Connections)

Capital

• Resources that give people advantages and shape their opportunities.

Cultural Capital

• Knowledge, behaviours, tastes, and qualifications that are valued.

Status Symbols

• Signals wealth and prestige (Ex: Luxary cars, designer clothing, and expensive things)

• Elites are distinguished from lower classes through status symbols.

Socialization

• The process of learning the expected norms of a group or society through social interaction.

• Common sense notion

• Internalizing norms DOESN’T equal culture within a society.

What are the main agents of socialization

• Family

• School

• Peer Group

• Mass Media or Social Media

• Workplace

• State

The Family

• Most important agent of socialization.

• It’s one of the key agents of gender socialization.

Gender Socialization

• Process in which we learn the attitudes, behaviours, and practices associated with being make and female according to our society and social groups within it.

The School

• Plays an important role in socialization.

• Functionalists say that teaching young children to be obedient in school will help them become competitive and productive and become good members of society and good future workers.

Dominant Ideology of Society

• Helps maintain powerful, social, economic, and political interests.

The Peer Group

• When the child becomes older, family becomes less relevant.

• Young ppl associate with others who are approximately their own age and who often enjoy a similar socioeconomic status.

• Can pose the transition into adulthood can help w/ independence.

• Ppl asserts themselves as individuals apart from their families and schools.

The Workplace

• Workplace is almost as important an agent of socialization as school.

• We might spend just as many hours in the workplace as school or with family.

Mass Media & Technology

• Internet, social media, and mass media (ex: TV, and movies) → Are critical forces in the socialization of children.

• There’s positive & negative socializing influences of mass media.

• Negative = Bullying & Negative Self-Image

• Positive = Introduce young people to unfamiliar lifestyles and cultures.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)

• VIP in Socialization

• Interaction between ppl creates meaning

• Sense of self

• Poor interaction is mostly within childhood’

• What were some things you did in childhood that you wouldn’t do in adulthood?

What are the 3 Stages in Socialization?

1. Preparatory Stage (Imitation: Ages 0-2)

2. Play Stage (Significant Others: Ages 2-7)

3. Game Stage (Generalized Other: Ages 7+)

Preparatory Stage (Imitation)

• Ages 0-2

• They imitate parents, people in family, etc.

Play Stage (Significant Others)

• Ages 2-7

• Starts to interact with others

• Starts to pretend to be others

• (Ex: Child pretending to be a teacher)

Game Stage (Generalized Other)

• Ages 7+

• Starts to understand roles within societies

• Takes on the perspective of others

• Understanding of taking on multiple roles within society.

• (Ex: Teacher can also be a mother)

The Self as a Social Process (Mead) - I

• The part of the self that responds to or acts in response to the expectations of the generalized other.

• You can either reject or accept.

• You have agency.

The Self as a Social Process (Mead) - Me

• The part of the self that recognized the Expectations of the Generalized other (How society sees you)

• Expects you to be quiet in school

• Generalized expectations

Charles Horton Cooley (1864 - 1929)

• A pioneering American sociologist and professor at the University of Michigan who helped shape the Chicago School of Sociology and modern social psychology.

• Concepts of the looking glass self.

The Looking Glass Self

1. Imagines how they appear to someone

2. Imagines how that person must be judging their appearance or behaviour

3. Some self-feeling → (We develop of a feeling within ourselves)

• Our sense of self is determined from the opinions of others.

Examples of Gender-Neurtral Practices in Preschools like Egalia in Sweden

• Books that demonstrated non-traditional gender roles, gender neurtal stories, and non-traditional families.

• Encouraging students in activites typicaly associated with the other gender (Ex: Boys to play w/ dolls and girls to play w/ trucks)

• Using a gender-neutral pronoun (calling students “friends” instead of “boys and girls”)

Secondary Socialization

• You unlearn the old habits.

Anticipatory Socialization

• Anticipates a new environment

• (Ex: Internalize new norms)

Resocialization

• 
  

Generalized Other

• What society expects us to do or how society expects us to act.

• She believes that society and her peers expect her to conform to those images.

Reflected Appraisals

• What she thinks her peers think of her

• She imagines what other people think about her

• How we THINK other people are appraising or evaluating us.

Third-Person Effect

• We believe others are more affected by the media than we are.

• She thinks other ppl are more influenced by the media than she is.

• The belief that others are more affected by media messages than you are.

Social Comparisons

• How we compare ourselves to others

What Are the 4 Key Concepts in Milkie’s Study?

• Social Comparisons

• Generalized Other

• Third Person Effect

• Social Comparison

The Canadian Gov. Participated in Cultural Genocide by Not Allowing Indigenous People

• Keep their own names.

• Hold cultural ceremonies like the potlach and the Sun Dance.

• Speak their own languages at residential schools.

• Perform in their regalia in shows or exhibitions.

• Practice their traditional religions in residential schools.

• Engage in their traditional forms of governance.

Cultural Appropriation

• The act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.

Society

• Group that interacts within a common bounded territory or region.

• Represents social structures, processes & organization of the ppl who share those beliefs, practices, and material artifacts.

• Neither society or culture can exist w/o each other.

Ethnosphere

• Entirety of all cultures. “Ways of thinking, being, and orienting oneself on Earth”

• Collective cultural herritage of human species.

Breaching Experiment

• Disrupting social norms in order to learn more about them.

Sociology of Culture

• Study of how things & actions assumes meanings, how they orient behaviour, and how social life is organized around meaning.

• Culture is a sources of meanings that humans shame.

Biological Determinism

• Forms of human society & human behaviour are determined by biological mechanisms like genetics, instinctual behaviours, or evolutionary advantages.

Sociobiology

• Provides biological explanations for the evolutions for the evolution of human behaviour & social organization.

Sociobiological Propositions Are Conducted Within 3 Steps

1. Identify as aspect of human behaviour that’s universal (Common to all people in all times & places)

2. Assume that this universal trait must be coded within DNA of the species.

3. Argue why the behaviour or characteristics increases the chances of survival therefore, creating reproductive advantages.

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989)

• Argues human makes have innate biological aggressive tendency to fight for scarce resources, orotect territories, & secure access to sexual reproduction very popular in the 1960s.

Problem of Sociobiology

• Human bio doesn’t vary greatly throughout history or between cultures, forms of human association varies extensively.

• Difficult to account for variability of social phenomena by using universal biological mechanisms to explain them.

Human Package

• Psychological, bipedalism, omnivorous diet, language ability, brain size, capacity for empathy, lack estrous cycle.

• Constant across culture.

• But range of cultural behaviours & beliefs is view broadly.

Social Consequences of Biological Determinism

• Supporting rigid cultural ideas concerning race, gender, disabilities.

• Which were involved w/ slavery, racsim, gender, inequality, etc.

Eugenics

• Meaning “Well born” in Greek

• Social movement sought to improve human “stock” through selective breeding & sterilization.

New Eugenics Movement

• In reference to the way the mapping & testing of the genome makes it possible, w/ consent of person, to manipulate genes of foetus or egg.

• To eliminate what we consider “Birth Defects”

• Ppl choose to act upon genetic info given by docs, geneticists, and counselors to make decisions for their children or themselves.

• Focused on calculated risks, self-improvement & realization.

Old Eugenics Movement

• Promoted selective breeding & forced sterilization in order to improve biological qualities, & racial qualities of whole populations.

Geneticism

• Qualities of human life are caused by genes.

Universal Features of Kinship Structure

1. A long childhood maturation process which requires one adult to commit to prolonged child maturing & educating.

2. Preservice sociallu recognized bond between 2+ ppl that regulate their sexual & domestic relationship through time.

3. Gender based division of labour.

4. Incest taboo that prohibits sexual intercourse between close kin.

Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

Cultural Differences > Cultural Universals

Ethnocentrism

• Evaluating & judging other cultures based on how it compares to one’s cultural norms.

• Everyone’s a bit ethnocentric.

• Can lead to hate towards other cultures, causing misunderstandings, & conflicts.

William Graham Summer (1840-1940s)

• Beliefs at attitude that one’s culture is better than all others.

Cultural Imperialism

• Greek revolution of the 1950s-1960s in which international and agencies introduced technologically intensive agriculture methods & hybrid crop strains from developing countries.

Culture Shock

• Ethnocentricism can be so strong that when confronted with all the differences of a new culture, one may experience disorientation and frustration.

• Occurs when ppl don’t expect to find cultural differences.

Cultural Relativism

• Practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture.

• Requires an open mind and willingness to consider new values & norms.

Androcentrism

• Perspectives in which male concerns, male attitudes, & practices are presented as “normal” a define what’s significant & valued in culture.

• Women’s experiences, activities, & contributes to society & history are ignored \, devalued, or marginalized.

Multiculturalism

• Refers to both the existence of a diversity of cultures within one territory.

• Way of conceptualization, managing cultural diversity through social policy.