Chapter 2 - Socialization Socialization and the creation of social identity Period 1: Warm up • Test Yourself – pg 31 Briefly explain how objects like mobile phones may be seen as status symbols Nature v. Nurture Debate • How human behavior can be explained. - nature – biological/genetic - nurture – cultural terms • Roles – expected patterns of behavior associated with our status - i.e. – teacher, student, friend, parent • Values – beliefs or ideas that are important to the people who hold them - expresses how something should be • Norms – socially acceptable ways of behaving when playing a particular role Domain Assumptions Domain Assumptions: assumptions on which a particular perspective or ideology is based ex – domain assumptions for Marxism include economic exploitation and class conflict. ex – domain assumption for Post Modernism assumes that… • Social world can be understood through personal narratives • ex – domain assumption for Positivists assumes that… • Knowledge is created by constructing and testing hypotheses Structuralist + Functionalist • Structuralist (macro)- Originated from Durkheim and Marx - Social Action is beyond individual control, structure of systems dictates our actions. i.e. - capitalism • Functionalist (opposite of Marxist Structuralist) – Arrangements between institutions make for a smooth running of society - ex – family, education, and government make for smoothly running society Social Order + Structuralists • Established social order represents a powerful force that the individual has little or no freedom to oppose • People typically accept the established institutional patterns of behavior – conforming to social rules in this way reflects the dominant influence of the social structure • Therefore, structuralists believe that the study of sociology should be the study of the effects of the structure of society on social life. • Every time we play a role, we experience the effect of social structures which suggests that social structures exert a significant influence on how we behave. • What roles do you play on a daily basis? How does that affect your behavior? Interactionism • Interactionism – microsociological approach – sociology focused on individuals and small groups. • 3 types of interactionism 1. Phenomenology – the social world consists of phenomena whose meaning is both negotiated and interpreted through interaction. • Behavior becomes an action when it is directed towards other people in ways that take account of how those people act and react. • Social action involves a knowledge of how our behavior might affect the people at whom it is directed. Interactionism • 2. Ethnomethodology – all social interaction is underpinned by a search for meaning. If we can understand the meanings people give to a situation we can understand their behavior in such situations. (possible to discover the nature of social order by disrupting it) (start here Period 1 Tues) • If the concept of structure focuses on how behavior is governed by constraints that control, or at times, determine how we behave, social action focuses on our ability to make choices about how to act. • 3. Symbolic Interactionism –analyzes society and situations in terms of the meanings that people impose on objects, events and behaviours. • To explain human behavior we need to study people’s interactions at the micro level – their daily lives • The meaning of something is never self-evident and its meaning can be changed by the social context in which it appears. Over-Socialized Conception of Man • Two men fighting on the street – call police • Two men fighting in a ring – buy tickets • Social interaction doesn’t simply involve obeying rules without question, because the meaning of behavior can change depending on its social context • The Over-Socialized Conception of Man - a criticism of the claim that human beings are simply the product of their socialization. Behavior can be understood merely as a response to external stimulation. • Society has subjective reality that we experience through social interaction • Society is simply a label we give to the rules and responsibilities arising from our relationships. Labeling • Interactionists view labeling as the product of social interaction. • Labeling theory argues that when we name something we associate the name with a set of characteristics that are they used to guide our behavior. • Male / Female – We associate certain characteristics and roles. These may change over time because they are based on interactions. • Women – 50 years ago versus today Structuration • Structuration – both structure and action are equally significant in our ability to understand the relationship between the individual and society. - people develop relationships, practices towards one another become normalized, then we conform to the structure we have developed • The key to structuration is the idea that as people develop relationships, the rules they use to govern their behaviors are formalized into routine ways of behaving towards each other. • Through the range of practices in our lives, a sense of structure develops in our social world – involving rules. • This indicates how our actions create behavioral rules and demonstrates how such rules become externalized (separate from our individual behaviors) • Eventually leads to conformity Stop Period 1 & 4 • Activity – pg 32 • How do the groups you belong to: • Shape your behavior? • Shape the behavior of those in the same groups as you? • Strongest influence? (which group) Rules in Society Giddens explains why some rules are created and accepted while others are discarded – using the idea of social resources and power relationships • Negotiated – friendship - unwritten, unspoken • Non-Negotiable – murder – imposed by powerful groups Socialization Socialization – people learn various forms of behavior consistent with membership of a particular culture - Genetics suggests that behavior may be guided by instincts based on biological imperatives (commands that cannot be ignored) - Young children learn roles, norms, and values so they can become fully functioning members of society. These things do not occur naturally. Feral Children (wild child) • a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has little • • • • or no experience of human care, behavior, or, crucially, of human language. When raised without human contact they fail to show the social and physical development we would expect from conventionally raised children. • - walking upright, talking, using eating implements – not picked up quickly or easily. What does this tell us about socialization? If human behavior is instinctive it is not clear why children should develop so differently from children raised with human contact. If human behaviors were governed by instinct then we would expect there to be few, if any, differences between societies. Therefore, culture isn’t something we’re born with, it is taught to us. Social Self • Mead argued – our ability to see ourselves as others see us separates us from animals. • Behavior is learned, involves developing a sense of Self • I aspect – our opinion of ourselves as a whole – we respond to the behavior of others as an “I” – unsocialized self • Hand in fire – how you react to pain (I aspect) • Me aspect – awareness of how others expect us to behave in a given situation – social self – developed through socialization • How you express that pain – reaction (me aspect) • Social Self – an awareness of how others expect us to behave in given situations means that our sense of self – who we believe ourselves to be – is created through social interaction and exchange Social Self Review • “I” – our opinion of ourselves (unsocialized) • “Me” – awareness of how others expect us to behave in a given situation - who you are male/female, adult/child, etc. - where you are – alone at home or a public place - who you are with – family, friends, strangers Stop lecture for Period 1 Warm up – Period 1 • Activity pg 35 – • Make a list of anything you think might be instinctive behavior • Remove an item from the list if people have choice about whether or not to do it and how and when we do it. • What do the remaining things on your list tell you about the influence of instincts and culture on human behavior. Looking-Glass Self • Looking Glass Self – argues that our sense of self develops from how we are seen by others. We understand who we are by looking in the “mirror” of how other behave towards us. • Goffman – We adopt a particular identity and “perform” to “manage” the image that others have of us. • People are actors – personal identity – write their own lines • External influences inform how people behave in particular behaviors and roles • When we adopt a specific identity, we perform to others in order to manage the impression they have of us • Identity performance – when you want to create a favorable impression on someone you at in ways you believe they will like Action Theory • The Presentation of Self always involves two characteristics of action Theory – perspective focusing on individuals and how their interactions create and re-create a sense of society. • 1. the importance of interpretation: identities are broad social categories whose meaning differs both historically and cross-culturally • 2. significance of negotiation – identities are always open to discussion what it means to be young, old, male, female is constantly changing. Social Engineering • Not all place the same emphasis on socialization when explaining how individuals become competent social actors • Biological ideas about evolution have been used to explain social development • Social Darwinism – survival of the fittest • Wilson- biological basis for all human behavior –human behavior is influenced by biological programming • Biogrammers – predisposed to act a certain way – women passive, nurturing, caring etc. • Social Engineering – cultural manipulation of individuals to produce particular social outcomes, such as gender equality - Attempts to limit the effects of biological differences. End of Lecture for Period 1 End of Lecture of Period 4 Period 1: Warm up Test Yourself – pg 39 • Suggest two further examples of the connection between school and work. Also suggest arguments against the idea that there is a correspondence between school norms and workplace norms. Agencies of Socialization • Learning the rules for interaction with one another happens through socialization • Two forms: • Primary Agencies of Socialization – critical to the development of behaviors we recognize as fundamentally human - family - peers - colleagues • This type of socialization is necessary for development • Secondary Agencies of Socialization – a sense of detachment from those teaching socialization • These are situations in which we do not necessarily have close, personal contacts with those doing the socializing. - Education - Mass Media - Religion Social Control • The process of socialization brings order, stability, and predictability to people’s behavior. - a lifelong process of rule learning. • If there is a “right” way to do something, there is also a “deviant” way. • Eating with a fork vs. hands • Therefore, socialization is a form of social control. • Pfohl – deviance is like noise – disrupts the harmony of a given social order • Social control is the opposite: transforms the noisy challenge of difference into the music of conformity. Sanctions • Social control has been linked to the idea that human behavior involves a life-long process of rule-learning, underpinned by sanctions (things we do to make people conform) • Positive Sanctions – rewards – ie: smiling, praise, encouragement, gifts • Negative Sanctions – punishments – ie: ignore someone, prison Types of Controls • Formal Control – written rules, laws, code of conduct which apply equally to everyone in society. • Tells everyone within a group exactly what is and is not acceptable behavior. Deviance from these rules may result in formal sanctions • Informal Control – reward or punish acceptable/unacceptable behavior in everyday, informal settings (family) • Unwritten rules and procedures • Enforcement can happen through ridicule, sarcasm, disapproving looks etc. Sub-Culture • Sub-Culture – a culture within a larger group - religious groups - gangs - fans of a particular band (DMB, Phish) Period 1: Stop Here Period 4: Stop Here Secondary Socialization • Agencies include: Education, religious organizations and the media. • Some instances we can be in daily contact with other members of a group and never develop a primary attachment to them. • However, sometimes we might never meet someone (Famous person) but we can be influenced by their behavior • Education • Two kinds of curricula: • Formal – knowledge and skills taught • Hidden – things we learn from the experience of attending school, such as how to deal with strangers, obedience to adults, respect for the system • School plays a significant role in secondary socialization for two reasons: • Emancipates the child from primary attachment to their family • Internalize a level of society’s values and norms Education continued • Schools involve many roles which can lead to the cultural relationships • • • • • • • Other students Other age groups Teachers Staff Administration Parents/guardians Security/nurses/janitors • Correspondence between school norms and workplace norms: • Daily attendance • Timing • Authoritative power All are backed by positive and negative sanctions Mass Media • Our relationship with media is impersonal • Unlikely to meet those we are socializing with • Short term affects of the use of mass media • Imitation behaviors • Desensitization – lowers our emotional reaction through repeated exposure to certain behaviors • Learning – new ideas and places • Indirect long-term effects • TV – consumerism – repeated exposure to affluent lifestyles and desirable consumers goods that suggests that happiness is something that can bought • Can define lifestyles and identities in contemporary capitalist societies • Fear – overestimate things such as the extent of crime or their likelihood of being a victim. • Agenda setting Religion • Don’t have to be religious to have religion play a significant role in socialization • Ceremonial functions – weddings, funerals • Important moral values • Can be regarded as a ‘design for living’ – force that provides help and guidance to live a life in accordance with God but can also be a source of conflict: • Between or within religions • Places positive and negative sanctions on their followers in different ways Period 4: Stop Period 1: pg 41 -- continue Defining Society • Society • How people see themselves as having something in common with others in their society and by extension they consider themselves to be different from people in other societies. • Involves two kinds of space: • Physical – imaginary line where one society ends and the other begins • Mental – similarities and differences Social Construction of Reality • If societies are mental constructions, it follows that their reality is socially constructed. • Previous understanding of culture: distinctive way of life that has to be taught and learned through primary and secondary socialization which can be understood through the social construction of reality • The idea that our perception of what is real is created through a variety of historical and cultural processes rather than something that is fixed and naturally occurring. • Dahl – culture is a collectively held set of attributes, which is dynamic and changing over time that structures the social world – Culture has two components: • Material Culture – cars, books, phones (artifacts) that reflect our cultural knowledge, skills, and preoccupation • Non-Material Culture – beliefs that we value – religion, science • Objects can function in two ways: Manifest function (purpose they exist) Latent – hidden or obscured- status symbols Period 1: Stop here (pg 43) Roles / Values /Norms/ Ideologies • Roles – played in relation to other roles • Teacher vs. Student • Parent vs. child • Every role has a name or label – expected behavior to go with the role • Values – specific to specific roles • Norms – behavioral rules used to perform roles predictability and acceptability • Beliefs – roles, values, and norms provide an important framework within which relationships can be ordered and made broadly predictable Ideologies • Ideologies – focused around fundamental beliefs, trying to explain something like: - meaning of life - nature of family organization - superiority / inferiority of selected social groups • Ideologies have typically come to mean something that is not to be believed because it could involve partial or biased accounts of one thing or another. • However in sociology, the FUNCTION of ideologies is more important than its form or content. • Ideology is a pattern of ideas (factual and based on values) which claim to explain and legitimize the social structure and culture of a particular group in society. • Ideologies can provide justification for certain attitudes and behaviors. Critical Theory • Critical Theory – argues that ideologies have a manipulative element. - associated with Marxism - i.e.- capitalist-controlled media which shapes a favorable reality for the elite • Ruling class ideology is transmitted through popular culture and the culture industry which are consumed uncritically and passively by the masses • Films, magazines, movies, music, newspapers, etc. • By controlling the culture industry, a ruling class controls the means of mental production -- h • Ideologies are mental maps that tell us not only where we have been but where society is headed/wants to go in terms of political, economic, and cultural development. • Powerful structuring agencies because it pulls together and makes sense of the various strands of our individual and cultural existence – gives the social world meaning, stability, and order. Power • Power - The ability to make others do what you want. • Active power – suggests the power to bring about change - coercive – forced to obey, threat of punishment - consensus – people obey because they believe it “right” to do so • Authority can be further subdivided divided – • Charisma – obey because they trust the person in power • Traditional – custom and practice, this is how things have been done • Regional/Legal – position allows them to demand compliance • Power has a number of dimensions – in terms of decision making • Ability to make decisions – teachers • Prevent others from making decisions • Removing decision making from the agenda Review • Although reality is socially constructed, the construction process is complicated. • It involves a complex relationship between beliefs, ideologies, and power on one side (the broad structural elements of culture) and everyday ideas about roles, values, and norms on the other. Stop Period 1 Stop Period 4 pg 45) Social Identity • Social Identity – collective or group identities applied to important roles - how a particular group is expected to behave • Example: • Cultures classify, group, and give meaning to broad identities, such as male or female, that define how “men” and “women” are generally expected to behave. Class Identities • Lower Class – working class, manual labor (industrial revolution) - less working class jobs as we transition from manufacturing to service economy • People of a similar class, occupation, and general social outlook had their cultural beliefs continually reinforced through personal experience and socialization • The working-class self could be contrasted with the middle/upper class self. • Therefore, class identity is not just build around what people are or believe themselves to be, but also around what they were not. • Rise of new working class – privatized or home centered; instrumental – work is a means to an end Class Identities • Middle Class – constructed around a range of occupational identities • professional consultants w/ high levels of education, ie – doctors, managers, intellectuals, • Upper Class – based on two major groupings • Used to be landed aristocracy • now is business elite, immense wealth Blurring of Class Identities • Blurring – recent global economic changes have resulted in a blurring of traditional class identities • shift in people seeing themselves as working class to middle class. - people tend to chose who they want to be today. (more fluid) - today upper class often seen “vulgar” and “tasteless” flaunting of money Income Gap • https://www.irs.com/articles/2016-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptionsand-standard-deductions • http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/wealth-inequality/ Male Identities / Female Identities • Connell – argues we are not born a man or a woman • We become men and women through social construction of gender identities • Biological sex – physical characteristics that cause people to be labelled male or female • Gender – social characteristics given to each sex • Lips – differences in male and female identities do not occur naturally from biological differences • Gender identities differ historically and cross-culturally, which means that they are both learnt and relative Gender Identities • Connell suggests two forms of dominant gender identities: • Hegemonic masculinity – traditional forms of masculinity are based on variety of mental and physical characteristics – body type, strength, leaders, providers, unemotional • Regardless of the possibility of the existence different masculinities, one is always dominant. • Emphasized femininity – female identities were traditionally defined by how they could accommodate the interests and needs of men • Dominant identity was one that matched and complemented hegemonic masculinity • Women regarded as essentially passive, emotional beings whose identity was expressed in the service of others (complicit femininity – because it is defined by male needs and desires) Crisis of Masculine Identity • Crisis of masculine identity caused by : • Long term employment • Loss of traditional male employment in manufacturing industries • Lower educational achievement relative to girls • The rise of female-friendly service industries • Male identities once focused on traditional ideas such as providing for a family, but this is no longer the case. • This crisis has resulted in the rise of exaggerated masculinity – retributive (aim at reclaiming traditional masculinity) and hypermasculinity (authoritarian, autocratic, impersonal, contemptuous, violent) Female Identities • Continegent – framed and shaped by male beliefs, behaviors, and demands • Secondary role to men – mothers, girlfriends, partners • Assertive– reflects the changing position of women in many societies. They involve women breaking free from traditional ideas about femininity, but not completely setting themselves apart from their male counterparts. • Resist male power without overthrowing such power • Autonomous – competition with men, on female terms • Female individualism as a new gender regime that frees women from traditional constraints • Highly educated • Successful • Professional middle class • Career-focused Ethnic Identities • Ethnicity is different from race. - Race – man-created. No Scientific evidence of a difference between racial groups. - Ethnicity – a combination of cultural differences. - ie – religion, family structure, beliefs, values, norms - a shared cultural background and history, “memories of a shared past” - symbolic elements – family, kinship, religion, language, territory. - a cultural and social identity Stop Modernity • Modernity – a stage in historical development characterized by things like industrialization, urbanization and the development of science and reason. • A different way of understanding social order, stability and change. • How has modernist sociological perspectives theorized culture and identity? • Modernist Perspective – what do culture and identity do? How are they used? What do they mean? • Fisher – culture systemizes the way people do things, avoiding confusion and allowing “cooperation” (functionalism) Functions of Culture • • • • • • • Communication – common language Perception – how we see the world, “predestination?” Identity – how we see ourselves and others Value Systems – education, media, religion… sources of values Motivation – sanctions, encourage of discourage behaviour Stratification – ie - class.. Functional because incentives motivate people Production/Consumption – what we need, use and value Identities • Adams and Marshall – identities perform 5 functions: • Framework of rules that guide behavior when playing certain roles • Sense of individual purpose by setting behavioral goals • Create a measure of self-control in terms of deciding what we want and how to achieve it. • Ensure the commitments we make are consistent with our personal values and beliefs • Allow us to see likely or hoped-for orientations Culture • Conflict theories are based on the idea that contemporary societies contain competing cultural groups, their own affiliations, products, and consumption patterns. This allows for the focus to be on how culture and identity are used to enhance the sense of self and the social cohesion of a dominant social class, and to lower the social status of other, competing, classes. • High Culture – idea that some cultural products and practices are “superior” to others. - Mass education enables people to work up the social ladder. • Low Culture – “pop culture” or “mass culture” – defined by a ruling class as shallow, worthless, or disposable. - widest possible audience, not to enrich, simple to understand - distracts working classes from problems of low wages, capitalist exploitation. - provides lower classes with a sense of happiness, togetherness, and well being. Neo-Marxist Theory • Neo-Marxist – greater meaning to cultural factors in explaining human behavior. (still has clash of power) – emphasis on economic relationships - consumption for satisfying “needs” - consumption for “symbolic” meaning • People are socialized in pre-existing categories – gender, age, class - consumption choices are used to enhance people’s perception of their own and other people’s identities. • Good Example – types of cars – need/symbolic Postmodernism • Postmodernism - class, gender, and age are becoming less important in defining our sense of “self ” - globalization is shifting our sense of self identity by – going “green”, social media, consumption. - traditional roles are lessened – “real men don’t cry” - people are more confused as to how to behave, “fragmented identities”
