Chapter 4 Flashcards
Socialization
lifelong learning process that involves figuring out or being taught how to be a social person in a given society. It brings changes in an individual’s sense of self.
Type of socialization
- Primary socialization is the socialization that occurs during childhood
– Secondary socialization is the socialization that occurs later in life
Socialization two contentious topics
– Determinism versus free will
– Biological determinism ( nature) vs social or cultural determinism (nurture)
Determinism
the degree to which an individual’s behaviour, attitudes, and other personal characteristics are determined or caused by something specific (e.g. genetic makeup)
Biological determinism
states that the greater part of who we are is determined by our roughly 26,000 genes
– E.g., if we are good at sports, music or art it is because we are somehow genetically predisposed to be so
Freud: Balancing the Biological
and the Socio-Cultural argued
both biological and social factors shape human personality
The human mind has three parts: the id, the superego, and the ego:
Id
represents our unconscious instinctive drives
Appetite learning, it response to appetite, desire driven. “I want this” “give me”
Eros
dedicated to pleasure seeking
Part of Id
Thanatos
the instinct for
aggression and violence
Ego
is the main agent of personality, driven by the id and its demands but restrained by the superego
If you are hungry, here is food grab it, it doesn’t matter who owns it, you see food grab and eat.
Superego
It is the part of the mind that polices the id (your conscience)
Moderator, the concious componet of one’s personality, “why do you want to grab, it is not yours”
Social (or Cultural) Determinism, a.k.a. Behaviourism
– “nurture” in the “nature versus nurture” debate
– Behaviourists emphasizes the power of learning in the development of behaviour
– Much of who we are and what we do is a consequence of how previous behaviour was responded to
Behaviour modification
Shaping someone’s behaviours through rewards and punishment
Edward Thorndike law of effect
1) Desired behaviours are rewarded and thus reinforced
2) Undesired behaviours are ignored or punished and thus likely abandoned
Limitations: humans have agency
Canadian sociologist Dennis H. Wrong (1961) argued that behaviourists work with an oversocialized representation of human beings
• Individuals are not passive recipients of the messages that our socializing agents give us, but have the agency to resist
Agents of socialization
are groups that have a significant impact on one’s socialization
– E.g., family, peers, neighbourhood/community, school,
mass media, the legal system, one’s culture and religion
George Herbert Mead, a symbolic interactionist, argued children are
socialized by others and internalize norms and values
Mead distinguished between two categories of agents of socialization
Significant others
Generalized others
Significant others:
key individuals, primarily parents, siblings and friends, whom young children imitate and model themselves after
Generalized others:
the attitudes, viewpoints, and general expectations of the society into which the child is socialized
Freud would call that the superego’s internalization of societal norms
Mead argued that the socialization of a child unfolds as a developmental sequence in three stages:
Preparatory stage
Play stage
Game stage
Preparatory stage:
involves the imitation on the part of the child
Imitating what other people are doing
Play stage
the child engages in role-taking and assumes the perspective of significant others (e.g., parents, grandparents, siblings)
Game Stage
the child is able to consider several roles and viewpoints simultaneously
Development in reasoning
Charles Cooley (1864–1929), also a symbolic interactionist, introduced the idea of
the looking-glass self as an explanation of how the self develops
– The individual’s self-image is based on how a person thinks they are viewed by others
There are three components to the looking-glass self:
How you imagine you appear to others
How you imagine those others judge your appearance
How you feel as a result (proud, self-confident, etc.)
Family
first and often most powerful agent of socialization
Peer group
can be defined as a social group sharing key characteristics such as age, social position, and interests
Peer pressure
refers to the social force exerted on individuals by their peers to conform in behaviour, appearance, or externally demonstrated values
– Peer pressure is socialization in action
Looking glass self
Carol Gilligan’s (1990) research on
girls’ self- esteem
Family
Melvin Kohn (1959) investigated the relationship between social class and the passing on of parental values to children
-Connections between culture and personality and national character
Peer group
Paul Willis’s (1977) study of
the informal culture of teenage, working-class boys
Peer group
Paul Willis’s (1977) study of
the informal culture of teenage, working-class boys
Community and neighbourhood can be important agents in child and adolescent socialization
• Depending on where they live, children are more or less likely to engage in risk behaviours, that is lifestyle activities that place a person at increased probability of suffering negative consequences
– (e.g., dangerous speeds, drinking to excess)
Broad socialization
Cultures in which individualism and independence are promoted, less restrictiveness on dimensions of socialization
(i.e broad range of individual expression and developmental tendencies such as sensation
seeking=higher rates of risk behaviour)
Narrow Socialization
Cultures that are characterized by
obedience and conformity to standards and expectations of
the community to be paramount (i.e decreased risk-taking tendencies and narrower range of individual expression=lower
behaviour) rates of risk behaviour)
Mass media effect of children
• Some studies suggest that exposure to violence desensitizes, especially young men
• Others claim that violence in media provides a safe outlet for pent- up hostile emotions
Rowell Huesmann’s longitudinal studies on the relationship between violent TV watching and violent behaviour concludes that
Ther is a connection
Huesmann proposed two theories to explain this increase in violent behaviour:
Observational learning theory
Desensitization theory
Observational learning theory:
children acquire aggressive scripts for solving social problems by watching violence on television
Desensitization theory:
increased exposure to television violence desensitizes or numbs the natural negative reaction to violence.
Habitus
is a wide-ranging set of socially acquired characteristics (e.g., manners, good taste)
Reproduction
is the means by which classes (i.e., the upper or dominant class) preserve status differences among classes.
Jib Fowel argues that condemnation of television violence is aim at
reproducing the habitus of the dominant class by
condemning the habitus of the dominated class.
Education role in socialization
Students are socialized through teachers , curriculums, textbooks, and the social environment of the classroom
A teacher’s social location
their gender, age, ethnicity, and so on—can have a powerful effect on the educational socialization of the student
• David Elkind (2003) studied how culture contributes to
the hurried child syndrome
the hurried child syndrome
• He argues that today’s children have lost free play and
instead have a rigid program of scheduled activities
• Due to over-programming many children now feel adult- like stress levels and guilt
• Digital communication also created a generation gap
– Children and their parents may use different technology
– Technology makes adult content available to children and thus affects childhood socialization
COVID-19 and Schooling
• Techers’ influence and parental influence in socialization and social roles was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, on a global scale
• Varying norms continue around masking in public, hand sanitizing, social distancing
• Not enough sociological research has been done yet regarding these disruptions
Secondary socialization
usually occurs during adolescence and early adulthood and takes place outside the family and involve a group smaller than society (e.g., new school or neighbourhood)
Resocialization
is the process of unlearning old behaviours, attitudes and values and learning new ones upon moving into a significantly different social environment
– Resocialization can be either voluntary or involuntary
– Both types of resocialization can occur together
Voluntary Resocialization
Voluntary resocialization occurs when someone starts school, changes schools, starts a new job,retires, undergoes a religious conversion, e.t.c.
– This type of resocialization is often marked by a rite of passage, a ritual or ceremony signalling a change of status
• E.g., confirmation, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, vison quest
Involuntary resocialization
occurs when someone is forced to change
– Total institutions resocialize by regulating all aspects of an individual’s life (e.g., residential schools, prisons, military)
• Part of the unlearning process in total institutions is the degradation ceremony: A rite of passage that strips a person of their individuality (e.g. hazing)
Hazing as Resocialization
• Hazing entails resocializing new members of a group or organization such as a university fraternity or sports team
• Hazing often entails enduring demeaning or uncomfortable experiences
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• Hazing typically involves ritual humiliation of rookie members by veterans
• Hazing can at times cross over into abuse
• Traditionally, hazing has been more of a male than a female activity
Why Sociologists Obsess
Over Status
• The sociological concept of status is important to understanding how people interact in pairs or small groups
• To sociologists, everyone has a status and everyone holds several statues at the same time
• Each status has a role
• Some can be changed or replaced
Status
a recognized social position that an individual occupies
– It contributes to a person’s social identity
– It imposes responsibilities and expectations that defines that person’s relationships to others.
Status set:
is a collection of statuses people have over a lifetime
• (e.g., daughter, mother, wife)
• Statuses and our status set change as we age
Achieved status:
is a status you entered into at some stage of your life, you weren’t born into it.
– E.g., college/university student, an employee, a role in a hobby group
Ascribed status:
a status one is born into or enters involuntarily
– E.g., daughter, son, teenager, cancer survivor, elderly person *Circumstances can sometimes trump choice in an ascribed status.
Some statuses are both ascribed and achieved
E.g., citizenship
Sexual Orientation and Status: A Problem Area
• Sexual orientation is primarily an ascribed status.
– (e.g., heterosexuality, homosexuality, asexual, bisexual, demisexual, sapiosexual, etc..,)
– Sexual orientation is much more complicated than being seen as either an achieved or an ascribed status
– It has to do with the way one’s own sexuality is recognized by others.
– Status, then, lies in what you do, not in what you feel
• (E.g,. Someone who is gay but who marries into a heterosexual relationship because of social pressure)
Everett C. Hughes (1897-1983): concept of master status (1945):
– Dominates all of an individual’s statuses in most social contexts
– Plays the greatest role in the formation of the individual’s social identity
– E.g., “race,” ethnicity, gender, occupation even when someone doesn’t want them to be.
Labelling Theory
Howard Becker (1928)
Labelling Theory
• Developed this theory in the 1960s to explain the negative effects a label can have when applied to a group outside of the majority.
• When negative labels are attached to a status, a powerful master status can be created and internalized both by the individual and by others
Example: A label like “druggie” thus becomes a master status that can follow a person for their entire life, despite the person’s efforts to change it.
Status Hierarchy
Statuses can be ranked from high to low based on prestige and power
• For social categories such as gender, “race,” ethnicity, age, class, sexual orientation, and physical ability, one status tends to be valued above others
– E.g., male over female, white over black, heterosexual over LGBTQ2
Status consistency:
is the condition a person experiences when all of their statuses fall in the same range in the social hierarchy
– E.g., male, white, of British heritage, rich, heterosexual, and able-bodied
Status inconsistency:
occurs when a person holds social statuses that are ranked differently and do not align
– E.g., Indigenous cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould
Status inconsistency is the result of marginalization
– Process by which groups are assigned into categories that
set them at or beyond the margins of dominant society
A white person who is poor, is also statues inconsistency
Role
is a set of behaviours and attitudes associated with a particular status
– Roles attached to a status may differ across cultures – A status may be associated with more than one role
Role set
according to Robert Merton (1968), refers to all the roles that are attached to a particular status
– E.g., professors, play the role of teacher, colleagues, employees, etc.
Role strain
develops when there is a conflict between roles within the role set of a particular status
– E.g., a student catching a classmate cheating
Students help each other
Role conflict
occurs when a person is forced to reconcile incompatible expectations generated from two or more statuses they hold
– E.g., conflicting demands of being a mother and a student
Role exit
is the process of disengaging from a role that has been central to one’s identity and attempting to establish a new role
– It involves shifting one’s master status (Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, 1988)
– E.g., divorce, death
• Role exit is something we all experience throughout our lives.
