Socialisation Flashcards
Formal social control
-Mechanisms of social control
-these involve written rules, laws or codes of conduct that individuals need to follow
- police, justice system, court, government
Informal social control
-The unwritten, informal ways of controlling people that are learnt during everyday interactions
-Family, peer groups, media, religion…
Socialisation
-Process of learning how to become human and behave in ways which are acceptable to the expectations in others
Primary socialisation
-Early years of life where we are in prolonged intimate contact with our parents
-Parents teach us basic norms and values
-We learn through imitation, trial and error, role models
Secondary socialisation
-Between individuals and the things and people they have a secondary relationship with
-Takes place in the later years by outside agents: education, peers, media, religion…
Norms
-Unwritten rules in society which guide our behaviour and are underpinned by values
Values
-Widely accepted beliefs in society that underpin the norms
Status
-Social position in society that can either be achived or ascribed
Role
- Position in society such as a mother or a police officer
Society
-The mechanism by whih people organise and are organised in order to survive and develop a shared understanding
Parsons = primary socialisation
-Family as a personality factory- parents produce children with identities and social qualities fit the social expectations of the society which they belong to
-parents use reawrd and punishment to teach right and wrong
Functionalism
-Consensus theory
-sociaty is realtively stable and interdependant
-works like an organism
-creates sense of solidarity
-Parsons
Marxism
-These sociologists think the function of socialisation in the family is to make sure that children grow up accepting inequality particularly based on social class and wealth/status. Socialisation is therefore about working class children learning conformity and subordination.
Feminism
-Inequality in society that benefits men at the expense of women
-These sociologists think the function of socialisation in the family is to make sure that children grow up accepting inequality particularly based on gender as a natural fact of life. Socialisation is therefore about girls learning conformity and subordination.
Post modernism
-society has moved into a postmodern era- typefied by individualism and insecurity
-individuals less connected to norms and values
New Right
-These sociologists argue that socialisation in modern society is becoming less effective because of increasing trends such as divorce and the absence of a father in many one-parent families.
Interactionist
These sociologists argue that socialisation in families is a two-way process because it is negotiated. Parents also learn from their children. Moreover, socialisation is not a universal process shared in the same way by everyone. Rather it is experienced in different ways because of the influence of social class, ethnicity, religion…
