SOC 100 -8. Socialization II: Learning the Rules

Socialisation

• Various life-long processes of learning undergone by individuals that develop them in to adults capable of participation in social environment.

• Particularly important for helping us fit in to our own society by teaching norms, values etc.

Integration

• The function of ensuring harmony and homogeneity of values, norms, and practices across society.

• Preserves social stability by ensuring smooth relations among parts of society.

Socialisation consists of a series of different processes at different stages of life

– We need first to be trained in basic habits, values etc of society so we can go out into world.

– Later, we may need training in the skills and practices of a specific job.

– Sometimes we may need to be totally reprogrammed to follow different social patterns in times of drastic change.

Primary Socialisation

• The first elements of socialisation that the child undergoes, teaching basic habits that become unconsciously ingrained.

• Usually takes place in home.

Secondary Socialisation

• Socialisation that takes place later in life, helping us adjust to new environments such as new jobs.

• Often deliberately acquired.

• is less deeply-rooted: it’s more about adaptation to situations than forming personality

Secondary Socialization Example

Becoming a parent is a form of secondary socialisation: as they

give children primary socialisation, they learn roles themselves.

– Parents & children interact in socialising each other.

Rites of passage 

• Ceremonies to mark & celebrate joining a new social group

• Citizenship, first legal alcoholic drink, first communion.

• Secondary socialization

Resocialization

• Humiliation designed to break down old habits of socialization so an individual can be reprogrammed to new role.

• Basic training in military; strip-search of new inmates in prisons; Intro Sociology

• is usually a brutal experience, aimed at unlearning as much as at learning something new.

– Those who are resocialized are typically under strict control; it aims to break down sense of self.

– Often in total institutions, e.g. Stanford Prison Experiment.

Anticipatory Socialisation

• The individual’s own preparation for joining a new group or taking on new social role.

• They consciously take on the norms of the group they seek to join, adopting its roles, values, and behaviour.

• prepare themselves for a role they anticipate taking on

anticipatory socialization may take ‘negative’ forms: disadvantaged teens, or those excluded from mainstream society or educational & job opportunities may consciously reject or rebel against dominant culture and embrace counterculture in preparation for the disappointment they expect.

Agents of socialisation

• Social institutions that contribute to socialising individuals in different ways.

• May be used to reinforce exist power structures by socialising people into accepting unequal status.

• models of how to behave, or transmit the rules necessary for integration into society.

• Crucial development takes place early in life, so Family and Education are major sources of socialization.

– These institutions prepare us step-by-step to join society as a whole: first family, then artificial world of education.

• Agents of socialization do not always do so consciously.

Identification

Process of internalising values and models of someone else, usually parent, and taking on their values and ways of acting as your own.

• Freud observes how children model themselves on their parents:

  identification with parents gives us role model: we seek to become

  like them. Unconscious internalisation of parent.

Identification example

Children often identify with a toy/doll, and act out adventures with this alter ego:

– The type of toy a child is given affects their ego development: is this an ‘active’ character or a ‘passive’ one?

Partial Secondary identification

entails identifying with one feature of another person, e.g. strength.

Narcissistic Secondary identification

comes as we deliberately try to imitate another, e.g. by putting on their clothes.

Significant others

• People in social circle whose expectations we most try to meet, and whose opinion is most important to us.

Typically, we have direct relationship with Significant Others, and seek a specific response of approval / reward from them. significant others provide model of proper behaviour: children learn by imitation what it means to fill a certain role

• Also provide models for our behaviour.

• Agents of socialization are effective because our identities are

  formed in response to others: CH Cooley’s looking-glass self.

We can identify crucial figures in each person’s life – the significant

others, whose opinion is most important to us.

– For children, obviously this is parents in the first instance:

need for food and safety.

– Friends are the next closest: we seek their approval.

Reference Group

• People whose model of behaviour you seek to emulate, and who you measure yourself against.

• May not be part of your own group; you may aspire to become part of that group.

Robert Merton

• we may imitate our reference group because we want to join that group, e.g. following a workout routine used by leading sports starts.

• Individual may have no personal interaction with them, so doesn’t seek direct approval (as with Significant Others)

– Instead, they identify with reference group, taking on their norms and values, seeking to be like them.

– They define identity and value selves in relation to reference group: depending on your reference group, you may feel either rich or poor with an income of $300,000.

Peer Group

• An agent of socialization from a similar background, age, outlook, status etc to you, who you hang out with.

• Source of many models of behaviour: members of peer group are often significant others

• key source of information about the world

• may socialise by inculcating own group norms

• Peers pressure children to conform

• can provide ‘training’ for adulthood: small, safe venue to practice adult interactions.

Manifest function (Structural Functionalist)

• The explicit, conscious role of a social institution: what we think it does for us.

• Education trains us, teaches us important information, and prepares us to get jobs

Latent function (Structural Functionalists)

• The hidden role or effects of a social institution: we don’t always realize these

• Education socializes us, giving us chance to learn how to interact in a safe space. It also keeps teenagers off the street…

Structural Functionalists and Education 

specific social institutions serve the function of socialization. This may have several dimensions

Robert Merton and Schools

distinguishes between school’s manifest function as educator, and latent function of socialising us:

– Like all fixed social institutions, schools have set internal rules we must follow; this makes them effective in training us.

– School is typically where children first learn to interact on their own with people outside immediate family.

Total Institution

Insitutions such as prisons, in which every moment of individual’s time is spent under control of institution, cut off from wider society; e.g. prison, military training

Erving Goffman (and later Michel Foucault)

identify total institutions as agents of resocialization.

– By isolating certain groups from society and controlling their actions, these institutions can place large populations under complete control of bureaucracy.

People in such institutions often find themselves ‘reprogrammed’ by having identity removed (e.g. prisoners identified by a number)losing personal possessions important for identity, being subject to complete oversight by an impersonal bureaucracy.

Called ‘total’ because every aspect of life is redefined by institution:

– Prisons are ‘total’ as you’re always there; schools are not ‘total,’ as you go home at night.

popular culture (celebrities, fictional characters) may also act as

agents of socialization, as role models or reference groups

• Mass media present e.g. idealized families with specific models of behaviour, or normalizing violence.

Gender Socialisation

• How we are taught specific gender roles, or what men & women “ought” to do.

• Perpetuates certain roles and stereotpes

• Socialization processes often teach us particular social roles

At a certain age, however, children are treated differently:

– Simone de Beauvoir relates how male children are told to ‘be strong,’ be independent, stand up for themselves, whilst females are kept at home in soft, caring roles.

– Children encouraged to play different sorts of games.

• These differences in upbringing lead boys & girls to have different expectations of life, and therefore to fill different roles.

– Gender roles can be traced back to childhood experiences.

Racial Socialization

Inculation of social standards about race or ethnic group, teaching prejudice to children through examples or toys.

• Racial groups may see negative stereotypes about themselves, or lack of positive role models.

– E.g. low numbers of non-white teachers may generate sense

that education is ‘not for us.

’

Clark Doll Experiments (first done in 1940s)

showed children of all ethnicities socialised early on to treat white as ‘preferable.’

– Asked to choose which doll they preferred, black and white children said the white one was ‘prettier.

– Illustrated how early social norms about appearance are put into children; led to problems of self-esteem.

Class Socialization

Process by which members of different classes learn what they’re expected to achieve (e.g. jobs) often contributing to different levels of achievement later.

• Similar situations seen with other socially-disadvantaged groups, leading to class forms of socialisation, in which individuals have expectations lowered due to group membership.

• People of different economic backgrounds are presented with different possible careers by parents and teachers.

- Children of wealthier families expect to become lawyers, doctors etc, whilst those of poorer origins expect less.

- Children of poorer families encouraged to go into manual professions etc.

• Inequality by group is thus ‘learnt’ by individuals.

Habitus

• An instinctive knowledge of the ‘rules of the game’ or how to behave in social contexts.

• May include etiquette, crucial cultural knowledge.

• Acquired unconsciously: high-status families transmit it to their children in infancy.

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

explains the advantage upper-class people have in many circumstances by the sort of knowledge they acquire in early childhood.

• Specific social interactions, particularly around power, may assume certain level of special knowledge – even of apparently innocuous things like table manners, wine tasting etc.

• Bourdieu states that children of wealthy acquire this knowledge very early: they instinctively know how to behave. Gives them an advantage over those uncomfortable in such situations.

Civilizing Process

• Gradual social process, whereby behaviour/actions previously considered acceptable or neutral gradually become unacceptable.

• ‘Correct’ behaviour gradually comes to be seen as ‘civilized’ or marking status.

Norbert Elias (1898-1990)

describes the emergence of modern manners between c. 1300 and 1600, based on data such as sales of cutlery or manuals of manners.

• Old feudal aristocracy didn’t really care about manners: a product of new middle class distinguishing selves from lower classes.

• Elias suggested that increasing complexity of society meant people had to behave more predictably in order to ensure social stability. Rise of manners helps stabilize society as a whole. Helps establish coherent national culture across wide area.

• Parallels growth of modern state, which added regulations to cover ever more of life.

We can also examine the power dynamics inherent in specific processes of socialisation:

– Gender, class, racial, sexual socialization steer people into particular paths in life.

– Repressive socialization may causes neuroses.

Later stages of life may require more conscious & deliberate acquisition of skills & ways of behaving:

we may be resocialized or undergo secondary socialization.

Socialisation describes series of processes of learning by which people are prepared to enter society.

– Primary socialisation sets up basic values and habits for us; secondary and other forms help us adapt as we are older.