socialization and social interaction

how does culture function as a social force?

• must be internalized by social actors in order to influence behaviour

• socialization is one process through which culture becomes internalized by individuals → become part of cognitive architecture used to take in how to behave in the world

• socialization

socialization

how people learn and internalize their culture. they do so by 1. entering into and disengaging from a succession of roles and 2. becoming aware of themselves as they interact with others

• behave with the social expectation of a student at school → occupy a different socialization depend with who you are interacting with

• socialization in early childhood is important

socialization: winthrop kellogg, his baby son donald , and donald’s “sister” gua

• design natural experiment

• expose infant chimpanzee to human exposure

• raised in own family

• exposed to the same socialization (in human household)

• had to remove Gua from the household due to impact on donald’s well being

  • he was starting to act more chimpanzee

• was an attempt to socialize Gua but Gua was socializing donald

• we pick up things that we are exposed to

nature vs nurture

• how do individuals come to be the kinds of people that they are?

• biological determinism

• empiricism

biological determinism (“nature” limit position)

• genetics and the biologicals systems they produce imbue individuals with particular qualities: temperament, intelligence, behavioral traits, etc.

• difference determined by difference that exists at the biological level

empiricism (“nurture” limit position)

• people’s experience is what accounts for the new way they develop

• “let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, a tabula rasa (blank slate), void of all characters, without any ideas. ow comes it to be furnished? whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? when has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? to this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE” - John Locke (1689)

• different kind of socialization create different people

problems with testing nature vs nurture empirically

• why does the question of nature vs nurture continue to confound social scientists?

• issues with testing nature vs nurture empirically

  • nature vs nurture cannot be tested experimentally → would involve taking babies and subjecting them to experiences

  • nature and nurture are confounded in the social world

keep plant alive

• plant food a and plant food b

• take both friends advice

• thriving now but don’t know if plant food a or b is helping so they are cofounded (cannot separate them)

even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that particular trait is “natural” or biologically based, we still need to think about how that trait is expressed under specific social conditions

• the same trait may be understood very differently depending on the social context in which it is expressed

ex. bar fight

• anti-social

• crime

• deviant

ex. football

• not though of as anti-social

• important member of the team → taking one for the team

• aggressiveness → can be expressed differently depending on the context

• doctor wont seem intelligent when put in a car shop

all traits require nurture for expression

• human being are, by virtue of their nature, radically open to nurture (to the effects on socialization)

• even behaviours that we might be able to clearly designate as “natural” to humans (walking on two legs, speaking language), require socialization to manifest

ex. that one girl who was neglected and was raised by dogs

the examples of language

• there is ample evidence that human beings are “pre-programmed” to learn how to comprehend language, and how to use language to think and to express thoughts

• however, which language a human being learns in entirely the result of nurture (i.e which language (s) someone is exposed to in early childhood)

• still requires nurture to be expressed

socialization: explicit socialization

• purposeful, declarative instruction of social knowledge

• “chew with you mouth clothes”

• “go clean your room”

• “no elbows on the table”

• requires purposeful instruction

• parent tells kid what to do

socialization: impilict socialization

• automatic, unconscious transmission of social knowledge

• children mimic behaviours they witness

primary socialization

• the process of squiring the basic skills needed to function in society during childhood, usually in the context of family → very young children soak up in childhood

• language

• basic rules of social interactions

  • limits of acceptable behavior

  • ex. “don’t hit” “share” “be nice”

• sense of self

  • child absorbs the system of categories that are socially meaningful in their society

  • identification with categorical membership

• has to take place in order for someone to be open to socialization in arenas

• need to have successful primary socialization

• intense face to face

ex. child playing hockey at young age

• need to understand rules of game and coach language → NEED PRMARY SOCIALIZATION TO ACHIEVE THIS BEHVAIOUR

primary socialization can come from children’s literature

implicit socialization in childhood:

• martin (2000) “what do animals do all day?; the division of labour, class bodies, and totemic thinking in the popular imagination”

• children learn through illustration

• what kind of jobs people do, how jobs in division of labour work together

• socioeconomic class

  • upper class

  • middle class

  • working class

division of labour

• organize in concept of socioeconomic class

doctor and lawyer

• level of education

• income

• social status

• we see a-like but at the level of work is completely different

pilot and software dev.

• tech

• income

firefighter and plumber (electrician in middle)

• blue collar

• time

• trades

“what animals do all day?”

• quantitative content analysis

• little children soak up at young age

• content analysis of richard scarry’s “what people do all day?”

• best-selling children’s author of all time

• research question: how do children learn about the division of labour in society?

• martin: class-linked categorized are introduced in pre-school literature

what animals do all day?

• research method: quantitative content analysis

• what animals perform what jobs? is species linked to what job an animals perform?

• 5 variable data set

  • case = individual character

  • variables = species, job, relationship to authority (does character play higher authority to another, doc has higher authority to nurse), sector (customer service), skill level (some need high level of skill and some don’t)

• clump categorizes together

results of what animals do all day

• animal species and jobs are related variables

  • having information of species gives category it falls into in relationship to job in division of labour

• information about species → categories of employment that mirror the DoL in contemporary society

• boundaries are not absolute

• conclusion: children’s literature teaches children that there are different categories of people in society, and that those categories correspond to different roles in the paid labour force (boundaries are not absolute)

• not intended by author

• pigs can work a more skill needed job

  • almost always depicted as doing un-skilled jobs

  • working man of american

• politician is played by a certain character (used species to assign)

sources of socialization

• the most important source of socialization in early childhood is face-to-face interactions with other people

• other sources of socialization

  • children’s literature

  • mass media

  • social media

• child can’t soak up tat division of labour from book without the primary socialization (need face to face)

• kid’s were picking up accent from these shows because of exposure to the show

• children soak up osmotically

gender socialization

• the process of learning and internalizing gender differentiation'

• gender socialization begins in the first minutes of life

  • adults tend to talk more to female babies

  • adults tend to handle male infants more roughly, and are more gentle with female infants

• people have different ideas

• perceived to be

• babies are being differentiated by gender

• exposed to slightly different experiences

gender socialization: toddlerhood

• gender socialization continues into toddlerhood. both the toys that children play with as toddlers, and the activities they are enrolled in by parents, are differentiated by gender

• statistical problem → lots of exceptions, these are not absolute laws

• 2 different classes of toys that are played with differently

  • girl toy: baby dolls

  • boy toys: lots of legos (given more practice with tasks that involve social reasoning)

  • toys that little boys are usually given usually involve doing an activity that can be reflected on adult society → cognitive reasoning → spatial reasoning ( required to build lego, looking at 2D instructions but building in 3D)

  • women have adv, with task on vocabulary because they talk to the doll (practice verbal expression)

  • tricycle: at the level of activity there is no differentiation, they are played with he same

  • exposes kids at a young age that one person type is meant to ride the pink one and the blue one

gender socialization - nature vs nurture and the question of gender

• biological determinism → gender essentialism

• gender essentialism: the idea that differences between men and women are biologically based

• empirical evidence that supports the idea of gender essentialism is always cofounded by gender socialization

• always confounded at the level of experience

• BD —————————————— E

bobbi gibb

• applied to run the boston marathon in 1966

• received letter that denied entrance based on basis that “women are not physiologically able to run a marathon”

• gibb disallowed from racing because the organizers feared they would be held liable if she collapsed or suffered some other medical compensation

• women being socialized that they shouldn’t run a marathon

secondary socialization

• explicit and implicit socialization that occurs outside the context of a child’s primary socialization environment (which is usually the family)

• in Canadian society, the most important source of secondary socialization is the school system

• secondary socialization at school occurs via two distinct sources of social knowledge

  • authority figures (teachers, librarians, coaches, support staff, etc)

  • peer groups → socialization of each other

peer group socialization

• in additions to being socialized by the socially mature adults that care for them, children are also socialized by their peers

• peer socialization takes place in childhood and continues throughout the life course

• peers are group of people who are similar in age and social status

• within peer groups, teenagers and young adults collectively process and engaged with the social knowledge they recieve from primary socialization (and from the secondary socialization they are exposed to via authority figure)

• within the context of an affirming peer group, teenagers and young adults often feel comfortable challenging or rejecting aspects of their accumulated social knowledge

  • should I follow this social? challenge what they learn from other sources of socialization

• this can result in “deviance” from social norms, including dress and other aspects of presentation, behvaiour, and beliefs

  • look like peer group but in family stand out like sore thumb, fail to reproduce social expectation

monteigel (2023) peer socialization in an oral preschool classroom. language and communication

• data collection: 25 hours of video recording in a preschool classroom with DHH (deaf and hard of hearing) toddlers

  • socialize dhh students into verbal communication to nourish them with social skill they will need to communicate with heaving students

• fata was analyzed using conversation analysis

• results: peers were an important part of socialization process, enforcing the classroom norms that were being introduced by the teachers

conversational analysis

• detail transcript

• non-verbal communication

• peer is enforcing the classroom norm.

• becomes enforcer for social communication

ivan as social enforcer

• engages social behaviour that teachers can’t (but peers expose them)

  • source of social pressure

• peer getting into aarons face

• ivan providing model of ho they want aaron to behave

from primary to secondary socialization: classed bodies and the education system

• habitus is a social actor’s way of orienting towards other people and their environment (being in the social world)

  • presentation

    • bodily comportment

    • physicality

    • style of speaking and vocabulary → use language to express thoughts and feelings

  • subjective experience

    • spontaneous judgement → enter situations and how they interpret that solution

    • aesthetic taste (what kinds of things a person likes) → food, music

    • evaluation

    • assessment of importance → how do they assign importance to certain tastes

habitus and class

• the professional reproduce a habitus that reserved controlled, outwardly unemotional

• the working class reproduce a habitus that is more gregarious straight-forward, and emotionally expressive (what you see is what you get)

• class status

• ex. music you listen to → pattern of class line

titanic

• upper deck

  • good posture

  • polite

  • quiet conversations

• lower deck

  • having a party

  • dance

  • laughing loud music

habitus

• is a social actor’s way of orienting towards other people and their environment (being in the social world)

• habitus is produced via socialization in early childhood

• entrance into pay market

  • some determination of where you are going to end up in the pay labour market

doctor - reserved, emotionally controlled

working construction - can be emotionally open, doesn’t determine if you will be an efficient employee

working class parenting

• natural growth

  • lots of opportunity for exploratory learning

• lots of opportunities to engage in exploratory learning *trial and error

• parental involvement = authoritative

  • parent tells rules and things child needs to do

  • child is expected to follow instruction

  • lots of time to themselves and to be left to do things on their own

  • would trial and error skate-boarding

middle class parenting

• concerted cultivation

  • children experience intense systematic organization in their time → kids enrolled in activities

• systematic organization of child’s time and activities

• lots of opportunities to practice learning via instruction

  • ex. piano lessons

• invitations to participate in family decision making

  • “what do you think?”

  • allows child to pick a dinner for a day of the week

  • allows child to know what you think matters

  • would be enrolled in skate boarding lessons

early socialization and educational sucess

• middle class children arrive at school with a habitus that is already fitted to the expectations of the school environment, which makes them appear “smarter”, “more hardworking”, “naturally talented”

• what children experience in primary social experience and how they are in secondary school

• they would’ve had practice by learning via instruction

• socially constructed

social interaction

• the micro-level encounters between individuals

• responsible for early socialization

• two people have convo: ATOM (smallest thing of soc.)

• what are the capacities achieved by socialization?

g.h mead: the development of the self

• “the self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience”

• mead describes 4 stages of social development, which culminate in the achievement of a socially mature adult with a fully developed sense of self

• social matures adults

• how someone becomes a social adult that eventually forms our society

stage 1: imitation

• direct copying of the other’s behvaiour

• ex. parent sticking out tongue → baby sticks out their tongue

• infancy

  • immediate imitation

  • individual interaction

  • baby crying → unidirectional communication

stage 2: role playing

• direction limitation is followed by intensive-role playing

• child takes on the role of the other during play

• “playing doctor”, “playing house” , “playing restaurant” etc.

• children role play what they witness

• toddlerhood

• imitation of a role

• mimic roles that they witness

• child needs to be in role of entire situation

  • they have a script in their head

  • they hadn’t developed the spontaneous information

  • “i have a cough” “no you don’t you have a broken leg”

• children have hard time reacting spontaneously with another person

stage 3: simultaneous appreciation of multiple roles

• children begin to play games that necessitate taking on the perspective of multiple roles simultaneously

  • interactions require you to take responses from other people

• team sport, board games, etc

• during this stage. children start developing what is ultimately an essential building block of social interaction: the ability to predict what an interaction partner’s response will be, and the ability to assess the other’s apprehension of one’s own behaviour

• elementary-aged children

• have capacity to play as a team → requires ability to think “ball is over there, but team mate is closer so i’ll move here and wait for them to pass”

  • understand your perspective and teammate perspective

• uno → you appreciate the fact they are ignorant about what you know (they don’t know their cards) → give mention to make it seem like you have terrible cards but they are good

  • giving an impression

  • toddler can’t do thus because they can’t appreciate other person doesn’t know your cards

allows them to participate in society

• seeing one’s behaviour from the perspective of the other

stage4: internalization of the “generalized other”

• at this stage, individuals become socially mature

• late adolescence, early adulthood

• no longer need to think consciously about one’s behaviour look like to others, this assessment becomes completely incorporated into the self

• the generalized other: “the organization community or social group which gives the individual his unity of self may be called ‘the generalized other’. the attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community” → internalization of social norms.

• when you begin to see people behaving in social norms without thinking about it

• ex. get up and get dressed

  • don’t have to think about you need clothes

  • small children will run naked

  • only parent is embarrassed → unconscious thought that this isn’t the social norm

the generalized other

• “the organization community or social group which gives the individual his unity of self may be called ‘the generalized other’. the attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community” → internalization of social norms.

• always wear seat belt

• touch seatbelt when police behind you

• you know you did nothing but you unconsciously realize that the cop behind you doesn’t know that

• if you grew up with nudists you wouldn’t feel that wall of shame even though it is not the social norm

erving goffman: the presentation of self in everyday life

• social interaction amounts to a relationship between individuals who take one ROLES in particular SETTINGS

social roles

• instructor and student

• doctor and patient

• sever and customer

all these are interactions regardless if who plays what role will act similar to one another

• very important part as to why social structure has the stability it has

role

• for goffman, a “role” is analogous to the roles that actors take on in plays or films: they are prescribed ways of interacting that are conditioned by a particular social time and space

• teacher

• student

• parent

• citizen

• bus driver

• every role has particular expectations and acceptable behaviour built into it

• without social roles, social interactions would be much worse difficult

we don’t have a script

• we know how to respond spontaneously from experiences

• “hello, i am your server for today, can i interest you in…” you wouldn’t go on some random story

role has two components

appearance

• expectation of how one is going to look

• ex. go to doc. you know how they will appear even though you never seen before

  • stethoscope: essential to appearance even if you don’t have a resp. illness

  • gives credibility to the doctor (trust them), wouldn’t trust them if was wearing PJ’s and messy hair would assume you don’t know what you are doing)

manner

• the way of how you act

• ex. doctor would have authentic attitude

• treat you with respect, wouldn’t yell at you

social interaction, for goffman, occurs as much between “roles” as i does between the individuals who inhabit those roles

setting

“…furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage props for the spate of human action played out before, within, or upon it”

• interaction is conditioned by the character of the space in which it takes place

• the way setting is configured supports Ethena’s role of professor

• if went to prof. office and had swimsuit models posters everywhere you would question their credibility

• books on her self that she uses everyday and some she will never touch again but use as prop

ex. restaurant

• organization of space

• nice and inviting

• tables organized so server can walk between and serve the role of a server

frontstage and backstage

• goffman notes that roles often have both a “front stage” and a “backstage”

• back stage activities involve the coordination of roles to present a certain kind of interactive experience to an “audience” (individuals who are not part of the construction and reproduction of the setting)

• put on costume

• put make-up on

• work on construction of how to present the front stage

• present interactive experience to individuals

• important to maintain a front stage role

• what goes on in backstage stays hidden

ex. restaurant

• front stage; where people sit and eat

• back stage: kitchen

• you interact differently

front stage: reporting new guy

backstage: he is a father and husband

real life of him being a father leaks through into a front stage of him trying to present information

front stage

• for her successful ride as a being professor

• back stage: her in morning trying to get ready

• what customer experiences → folded stuff

• back stage → cardboard boxes and schedules

backstage

• the backstage is also a “setting”, and people also inhabit roles while backstage

• in the backstage, actors coordinate to produce the situation of the front stage

• doctor has some anxiety because they don’t know what’s wrong but presents to you in a professional manner

frontstage, backstage, and social media

• increasingly, the “frontstage” of social activity is digital

• in social media use, the distance between the activity of the frontstage and the activity of the backstage is amplified

• social media is an example of frontstage → what you post

• backstage → everything that goes on to be able to present front stage

backstage: set of a plane to produce frontstage