SOCIETY- A group of people who live in a defined territory. They also share the same culture. A society also consists of institutions, shared beliefs, cultural ideas, and shared political authority.

PETER BERGER AND THOMAS LUCKMANN (1966) They authored The Social Construction of Reality. In this book, they stressed that society is made through “habitualization”. According to them, society is a habit.

HABITUALIZATION- happens when an action that is repeated often becomes cast into a pattern. This act then is done again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort. sees society as something that was already created before us.

Constructed the Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”. This means that people can be subjective in their construction of reality despite the objective reality.

A student who is often called or labeled as slow, stupid, or hard-headed might live up to those words even though those are not part of his or her character.

ROBERT K. MERTON - Self-fulfilling Prophecy. This means that even a false idea can become true. Merton used the idea of a “bank run” to explain it. Imagine that, for some reason, depositors of a bank falsely feared that their bank is soon to be bankrupt. Because of that they eventually decided to pull out their money thus fulfilling the false prophecy. This shows that, indeed, the reality is constructed by an idea.

Roles are patterns of behavior that we identify in others that represent their social status.

Status - is the responsibilities and benefits a person experiences based on their rank and role in society.

ROLE STRAIN

This happens when there is too much required from a single role. An example is being a student. A student is also a son or daughter, a friend, a sibling, etc.

ROLE CONFLICT

This happens when one or more roles are contradictory. An example is a working mom. When she misses a school event of her child, she is deemed as a bad mother. But when she misses a day of work for her child, she is deemed as a bad employee.

ROLE PERFORMANCE

how individuals express their roles.

ERVING GOFFMAN

stated that people are like actors on a stage. His theory, called dramaturgy, states that people use “impression management” to present their selves to others as they hope to be perceived. Each situation is a different scene and people play different roles depending on who is there.

CHARLES COOLEY

Looking-glass Self. Cooley said that we base our image on what we think other people see. He believes that we based our sense of self on the imagined perception of us of others and how they would react to us. He concluded that people’s reaction to us is like a mirror in which we are reflected.

George Herbert Mead

THEORIES ON HOW WE SOCIALIZE

George Herbert Mead - the self is a person’s distinct identity and it is developed through social interactions. Mead said that an individual has to be able to view himself or herself through the eyes of others.

Mead stated that there is a specific way of development.

The first stage is imitation- During this stage, children

copy the actions of the the people surrounding them.

The second stage is called play stage- In this stage,

children take on roles that other people around them

have like their parents or grown-ups. Also, children learn

to consider various roles at the same time and how those

roles interact with one another.

The last stage is called the generalized other- This is

where individuals can imagine how they are viewed by

one or others.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development - Moral development is crucial for socialization. It refers to the way people distinguish the good and bad in society. Moral development prevents people from doing uncheckedurges. Kohlberg’s theory states that people undergothree levels of moral development: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional

Pre-conventional stage - children experience the world around them through their senses.

Conventional stage - When they grow a bit, they become more aware of others’ feelings and consider those when weighing what’s right or wrong.

Post-conventional stage - people begin to think of morality in abstract terms. They realized that legality does not equate to morality.

Carol Gilligan - agrees with Kohlberg’s theory but she stated that that theory shows gender bias. It is because Kohlberg’s research was only conducted on male subjects. Gilligan’s research shows that boys and girls have a different understanding of morality.

• Boys tend to highlight rules and laws. They have more of a

justice perspective. While girls have a care and responsibility

perspective. That is why they tend to consider people’s

reasons for their wrong actions.

• Gilligan also noticed that Kohlberg assumes that the justice

perspective was the right or better perspective. She, on the

other hand, said that neither perspective was better.

Teaching culture to new members is how society

preserves itself. If the new members did not learn the

way of life of the society, then that society ceases to

exist. The culture must be transmitted to those who join

the societyfor the society to survive.

Social interaction lets us see ourselves through the eyes

of others. Thus, we learn who we are and how we fit into

the society. Through socialization, we learn about

cultureand language too. Without it, we have no self.

Socialization is expedited by agents of

socialization. We have two broad categories of

agents of socialization: social group agents and

institutional agents.

Group Agent

These are usually the source of our first

socialization. Under this category are family

and peer groups. These groups are the people’s

first teachers of culture, beliefs, and values of

society.

INSTITUTIONAL AGENTS

These are further divided into two, formal and informal.

1. Formal social institutions are schools, workplaces, and the

government. They teach people to behave in a certain way and how

to navigate in society.

2. Informal social institutions. An example is mass media. Media

contributes to socialization by flooding us with messages about

norms and expectations.