Week 7: Socialization and the Construction of Reality Flashcards
Describe this week’s paradox.
The most important aspects of social life are those concepts we learn without anyone teaching us.
“The most important we learn without teaching.”
Describe socialization.
The ongoing process by which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learn the function as members of that society (behave, talk, and dress, “normal stuff”).
E.g. Tarzan or Spock wouldn’t know how to behave in today’s society because they haven’t been socialized.
What is human nature?
Combination of “organic equipment,” or raw materials that we are physically made of, and social interaction, the environment in which we are raised.
Biology X Social Environment = Human Nature
Self
Your view of yourself. Sociologists argue that self is developed through social processes.
Mirror: who do you see when you look in the mirror?
The first theory of the social self was developed by Charles Horton Cooley: “The Looking Glass.”
I
One’s sense of agency, action, or power.
No I in Team. Eye have POWER.
Me
How others perceive you!
When others look at me, what do THEY think??
How do we move beyond the self?
Get to know another through games, interactions, and socialization.
E.g. Kids playing soccer can’t organize an offensive attack because they don’t have a sense of social behavior.
Describe the generalized other.
The way you would expect other people to act in a variety of settings.
E.g. Funeral vs. Club! You’ll expect people to act differently at a club than at a funeral.
Give an example of generalized other.
It is a sense of generalized other that keeps you from taking off your pants to sit at a park comfortably on a hot day, that keeps you from singing on a bus, or from extracting an uncomfortable wedgie in a public place.
Identify the agents of socialization.
Families, School, Adult Socialization, Total Institutions, Peers, and Media.
F - A - S - T P - M (Fast night time).
Families
Primary unit of socialization.
E.g. The children of immigrants - who are immersed in the U.S. school system while their parents maintain less contact with mainstream American communities - are likely to take on the role of an agent of socialization instead of the other way around, teaching their parents the language and other tools of cultural assimilation.
School.
Goal is properly socialize you - teaching you to share, take turns, to resolve conflict with words, be quiet when necessary, and speak when appropriate. Schools also transmits philosophies, programs, and lifestyles.
TEACHES YOU EVERYTHING!
Peers.
They reinforce messages taught in the home, OR they contradict them. Conformity is expected.
Media.
Provides information to the public that they may not have access to otherwise. There is an ongoing debate on how media impacts us.
How would we know about Kardashian’s wardrobe without TV?
Describe adult socialization.
Refers to the ways you are socialized as an adult.
