Culture and Socialisation - Key Sociologists

Erving Goffman - Interactionist

Argued that people manage impressions & perform different versions of themselves in social situations, almost like actors on a stage.

Hall and Jefferson - Marxism

Argued that youth subcultures can be understood as collective attempts to solve problems created by class position and social change.

Millett - Radical Feminist

Argue that gender role socialisation is one of the main causes of patriarchy

Pierre Bordieu - Marxist

Argue that habitus, cultural capital & tatse help shape class identities & influence people’s opportunities & life chances.

Emile Durkheim - Functionalist

Argued that scoial order depends on shared norms & values + weak social regulation → anomie

George Ritzer - Marxist

McDonalidisation, consumer culture & prosumption shape contemporary lifestyles & the way people build identities

Karl Marx - Marxist

Argued that material conditions & class relations shape class consciousness + the ruling class spreads the dominant ideas in society

Talcott Parsons - Functionalist

Socialisation = process through which the family passes on shared norms/values → help to maintain social stability

Strinati - Postmodernist

Explored PM popular culture & argued that identities are incrwasingly shaped by media, image & consumption

Stuart Hall - Neo-marxist

Identities are shaped through representation, history & difference. Never completely fixed.

Lawson -

Social identities remain shaped by structured inequalities & that social class still matters in shaping opportunities + self-understanding

Terry Flew

Global media & digital communication shapes contemporary culture, participation & identity.

Louis Althusser

Ideological state apparatuses (e.g. schools, family & media) reproduce capitalist ideology + shape obedient subjects.

Charles Horton Cooley

Looking-glass self
People develop sense of self by imagining how others see/judge them.

Howard Becker

Being labelled deviant can shape self-concept & encourage people to take on a deviant identity.

Zygmunt Bauman

In liquid modernity, identities become more fluid, fragile & tied to constant choice, uncertainty & consumption.

Kath Woodward

Identity = socially constructed through difference, classification & belonging > purely natural/fixed

John Storey

Popular culture = a site where meanings are produced, challenged & used in the formation of identities

Antonio Gramsci - Marxist

Developed idea of hegemony
Dominant groups maintain control by winning consent & shaping common sense

Ulrich Beck -

In risk society traditions weaken
Individuals must build own biographies under conditions of uncertainty

George Herbert Mead

Self develops through social interaction
Role-taking
Relationship between “I” (subjective sense of self. reality experienced on inside. deepest feelings on self.) and “Me” (socialised/conforming self, social expectations, social roles)

Naomi Wolf - feminist

Beauty myth places pressure on women to judge themselves through appearance, shaping female identity in unequal ways

Ann Oakley - Feminist

Children learn gender roles through socialisation:
1. manipulation
2. canalisation
3. verbal appellations
4. other activities

Anthony Giddens -

Self-identity → reflexive project in late modernity
People continually work on/revise their identity

Dick Hebdige -

Subcultural style can communicate resistance to dominant culture
Even if style = absorbed into mainstream later

Giddens & Sutton

Socialisation = lifelong process
Individuals learn culture of their society
Individuals develop social identity