Objectives unit 5
• To focus on micro-sociology and the ways in
which sociologists study everyday life and human
nature
• To introduce the concept of socialization and
present some theories of socialization (Freud,
Mead, Cooley and Goffman)
• To introduce the concept of the ‘self’: how we
become social and develop biographies
• To present everyday life as social, constructed
and negotiated
Micro sociology
• Everyday realities are social constructions
• The study of everyday life in social interactions
• Symbolic interactionism is based on above
tenets
Human nature: nature vs. nurture?
Humans
• What makes us humans? How do we become
humans? What is human nature?
The case of “Genie”
• Watch short video on Feral Children
The case of feral children illuminates the
importance of the socialization process
• Feral children are all evidence to the crucial role
of social experience in personal development.
• human beings are resilient creatures, sometimes
able to recover from even the crushing
experience of abuse and isolation.
• but there is a point -unclear when due to the
limited cases for the study of this- at which social
isolation in infancy results in irreparable
developmental damage
Nature vs. Nurture debate
Nature
• Socio-biologists,
psychologists and others in
the natural sciences argue
that behavior traits can be
explained by genetics
Nurture
• Sociologists, anthropologists
and others in the social
sciences argue that human
behavior is learned and
shaped trough interaction
What is Human Nature?
• The nature vs. nurture debate refers to the
ongoing discussion of the respective roles of
genetics and socialization in determining
individual behaviors and traits.
• Ultimately both sides do play a role in making us
the people that we are
• we should not think of nature as opposing
nurture, since we express our human nature as
we build culture. Nature and nurture are
inseparable
The Socialization process
The process of socialization
• is the process of learning and internalizing the
values, beliefs, and norms of our social group
and by which we become functioning
members of society.
• The socialization process begins in infancy and
is especially productive once a child begins to
understand and use language
• but it also is a lifelong process that continues
into adulthood.
The process of socialization
Is a twofold process:
1. The process by which a society, culture, or
group teaches individuals to become
functioning members
2. The process by which we internalize the
values and norms of the group
• Works both on the individual as on the social
level: we learn our society’s way of life and
make it our own
2 main goals of socialization
1. It teaches members the skills necessary to
satisfy basic human needs and to defend
themselves against danger, in order to ensure
that society itself will continue to exist
2. It teaches individuals the norms, values and
believes associates with their culture and
provides ways to ensure that members
adhere to their shared way of life
Main questions
Socialization theory asks broadly 5 question:
1. Who is being socialized? human nature
nature-nurture debate
2. By whom? agents of socialization
3. How? theories of socialization
4. Where?
5. When?
Becoming biographies?
Theories of socialization
What is ‘the self’?
• The self is our experience of a distinct, real,
personal identity that is separate and different
from all other people
• Sociologists look at both the individual and
society to gain a sense of where the self
comes from.
• Most believe the self is created and modified
through interaction over the course of a
lifetime.
Freud: the importance of the unconscious
The unconscious goes deep
“the cornerstone of my work is the
workings of the repressed
unconscious: people’s lives are partly
shaped by emotional experiences,
traumas and ‘family romances’ which
then become too difficult to confront
and so become hidden from the
surface workings of life, while still
motivating our actions”
Sigmund Freud
Id, superego and ego
• Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic approach divides the mind
into three interrelated systems:
1. The id consists of basic inborn drives that are the source of
instinctive psychic energy.
2. The superego is composed of the conscience, which serves to
keep us from engaging in socially undesirable behavior, and
the ego-ideal, which upholds our vision of who we believe
we should ideally be. The superego represents the
internalized demands of society.
3. The ego is the realistic aspect of the mind that balances the
forces of the id and superego.
Freud’s importance to sociology
• Freud’s notion that we internalize social
norms and that childhood experiences have a
lasting impact on socialization
• just as human beings develop through
instinctual repression, so civilisation as a
whole advances through controls. Civilisation,
then, depends upon repression but in the
process it generates many problems
Mead: the social self
The social self
• Mead believed that the self was created through social
interaction and that this process started in childhood, with
children beginning to develop a sense of self at about the
same time that they began to learn language.
• Mead argued that one of the key developments was the
ability to think of ourselves as separate and distinct and to
see ourselves in relationship to others.
• When children can take the perspective of the generalized
other, rather than specific individuals, they have passed
through the final stage of development.
“the self is born of society. The self is
inseparable from society and bound up
with communication. It builds on social
experience. This is largely a matter of
taking the role of other with increasing
sophistications, broadening out from
significant others to greater complexity”
George Mead
The self builds on social experience
The self is the human capacity to be reflective and take
the role of others. It is a connection explained in the
following steps:
1. The self emerges from social experience. It is not part
of the body and it does not exists at birth, but it is
distinctly what makes us humans.
2. Social experience involves communication and the
exchange of symbols. People create meaning
3. To understand intention you must imagine the
situation from another person’s point of view. By
taking the role of the other: the self is reflective and
reflexive
Mead’s development stages of the self
The self is able simultaneously to take the role of……. (see stages below)
When…
Recognizing the
generalized other
Engaging in games
Engaging in play
“Many” others
in one
situation
Engaging in imitation
“One” other in
“one” situation
“No one” no
ability to
take the role
of the other
“Many”
others in
many
situations
Cooley: the looking-glass self
The looking-glass self
One's sense of self depends
on seeing one's self reflected
in interactions with others
Charles Coo ley
The looking-glass self
• Charles Cooley was George Mead’s colleagues
• The looking-glass self refers to the notion that
the self develops through our perception of
others' evaluations and appraisals of us. The
image people have of themselves is based on
how they believe others perceive them.
We all act like mirrors to each other
“ Each to each a looking-glass,
reflects the other that doth pass”
We imagine how we look to others
We imagine other people’s judgments of us
We experience some kind of feeling about
ourselves based on our perception of other people
We respond to judgments that we believe
Others make about of us, without really knowing
For sure what they think.
And we are not always right
Gender as a social construction
• Watch short video: Mad Men, Don Draper’s
pitch for creative concept: “mark your man”
How many looking glasses are being portrayed here ?
• women through the looking glass of the men,
through the looking glass of advertising
• what advertizing thinks how women want to
see them selves through their own eyes.
• whose eyes are these?
Goffman: Constructing situations & Drama
The presentation of the self in everyday life
People routinely behave like
actors on a stage. Everyday
social life become theatrical.
There are roles, scripts and
actions. Daily life as a series
of stagecraft rules.
Erving Goffman
Presentation of the self in everyday life
• believed that meaning is constructed through
interaction
• ‘Interaction order’: what we do in the immediate
presence of others
• His approach, dramaturgy, focuses on how
individuals take on roles and act them out to
present a favorable impression to their
"audience"
• Goffman argues that people are concerned with
controlling how others view them, a process he
called impression management
Almost 400 years ago,
W. Shakespeare captured Goffman’s idea:
“All the world is a stage, and all
the men and women merely
players: they have their exits and
their entrances; and one man in
his time plays many parts”
As you like it, II
William Shakespeare
The self is a social construction
• Each definition of a situation lends itself to a
different approach, and the consequences are
real.
• Goffman identifies the following components in
his theory of impression management:
– Region
– Backstage
– Front stage
• The self is a Social construction dependent of the
situation
Self-analysis: impression management
• Please reflect on yourself and how you manage
your impression in social context:
• How do you portray yourself to your family
members, your friends, your co-workers,
strangers you meet for the first time, in class, on
Facebook?
• Make a distinction between your different selves
in all these areas, put this information in a table
• What peculiarities and returning patterns do you
see in your analysis?
Agents of socialization
Agents of socialization
• Agents of socialization are the social groups,
institutions, and individuals that provide structured
situations in which socialization takes place.
• Name 4 different agents of socialization?
• The four predominant agents of socialization are:
–
–
–
–
the family
Schools
peers
the mass media.
Family, schools, peers and the mass media
• The family is the single most significant agent of socialization in and
teaches us the basic values and norms that shape our identity.
• Schools provide education and socialize us through a direct as well
as a hidden curriculum (a set of behavioral traits such as
punctuality, neatness, discipline, hard work, competition, and
obedience) that teaches many of the behaviors that will be
important later in life.
• Peers provide very different social skills and can become more
immediately significant than the family, especially as children move
through adolescence.
• The media has become an important agent of socialization, often
overriding the family and other institutions in instilling values and
norms.
Influence of status and roles
• A status is a position in society that comes with a set of
expectations.
• An ascribed status is one we are born with that is unlikely to
change.
• An achieved status is one we have earned through individual effort
or that is imposed by others.
• One's master status is a status that seems to override all others and
affects all other statuses that one possesses.
• Roles are the behaviors expected from a particular status.
• Role conflict occurs when the roles associated with one status clash
with the roles associated with a different status.
• Role strain occurs when roles associated with a single status clash.
Either of these may lead to role exit.
Emotions and personality:
they have a social aspect!
• Though we tend to believe that our emotions are highly
personal and individual, there are social patterns in our
emotional responses.
• Role-taking emotions are emotions like sympathy,
embarrassment, or shame, which require that we assume the
perspective of another person and respond from that person's
point of view.
• Feeling rules are socially constructed norms regarding the
expression and display of emotions and include expectations
about the acceptable or desirable feelings in a given situation.
• Emotion work refers to the process of evoking, suppressing, or
otherwise managing feelings to create a publicly observable
display of emotion.
Changing meanings of identity
Virtual world is real
• Though most sociological perspectives on
interaction focus on interactions that occur
in co- presence (when individuals are in one
another's physical presence)
• Modern technology enables us to interact
with people very far away.
• Postmodern theorists claim that the role of
technology in interaction is one of the primary
features of postmodern life.
Do you have an avatar?
The shifting nature of identities
traditional
modern
Post-modern
given
determined and structured
chosen
taken-for-granted
polarized/dichotomous
Multiple/fragmenting
powerful, but hidden
predictable
chaotic
essential
essentialsing
de-essentialising