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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
Socialization
Human Reproduction
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Biological imperatives seem to do a better than adequate job of making sure the species persists.
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Our biology is not enough to make certain that we continually replenish the species.
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Unlike any other organism our continued existence is largely dependent on social imperatives.
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Society makes us human.
Anna & Isabelle
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Both born out of wedlock.
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Both in some form of isolation until 6 - 6½ years of age.
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Neither could communicate.
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Anna only lived to age 10 and never progressed beyond the developmental age of approximately 2½.
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Isabelle eventually caught up with children of her similar developmental age.
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Why the difference in outcome?
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Be critical first.
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We don’t know the whole story.
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Sociologists would not generalize about populations, let alone an entire species, based on two
sad little girls’ stories.
There is a marked difference in either girls’ early life experience.
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Anna was in total seclusion.
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Isabelle experienced some, however minimal, early human interaction… with her deaf-mute
mother in particular.
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Big deal social interaction?!... with a deaf-mute?!
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Social Interaction:
Nature, Nurture, Not Sure
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How much of who we are is the consequence of our biology?
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How much of who we are is the consequence of out biography?
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
Socialization and How it Works
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Socialization:
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The lifelong social experience by which people develop their human potential.
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The process through which people learn the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate for
members of a culture.
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The dynamic process of give-and-take between people and others in their environment.
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The process by which people acquire cultural competency and through which society
perpetuates the fundamental nature of existing social structures.
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People don’t receive their social selves passively.
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What’s a social self you ask?
Social Self
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A relatively organized complex of attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors associated with an
individual…. A distinct identity that sets us apart from others.
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What?
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Everything that has gone into and continues to go into making you everything you are.
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This is all about me (you).
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Personality
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A person’s fairly consistent patterns of attitudes, needs, characteristics, and behavior.
Baby Social Scientists
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Human infant is to learn answers that persons she will never see, persons long dead, have already
worked out.
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How do they (babies) do this?
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Socialization (Coming soon).
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Babies are skeptical and observant (two key ingredients to being a good scientist).
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Logic.
The Looking-Glass Self
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Cooley is Cool (Charles H. Cooley)
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The Social Self arises through interaction with others.
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Dynamic of self-creation:
As we see our face, figure, and dress in the mirror (of our mind) and are interested in
them because they are ours... we like what we see or we don’t… we think about how
others are perceiving our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, the
way we talk, etc. etc. etc. and we are affected by what we imagine they are thinking.
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
The Looking-Glass Self
1st
2nd
3rd
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We learn to use this looking-glass and we learn who we really are.
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This is all happening in our own minds.
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We learn to read what other people are thinking and to discover what happens when we adjust our
behaviors according to what we think they are thinking (but really we can never be certain).
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Some are better than others.
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We all feel some level of ineptness at times.
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We are all relatively successful enough to get by in our respective groups.
The “Me” and “I”
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The “me” (self as object) is the part of the self that is based on how one sees others as seeing oneself.
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What you see when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look back at yourself.
The “I” (self as subject) is the part of you that is uniquely you.
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Your personal reactions to the situation.
Play
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Preparatory Stage(Imitation): Simple imitative behaviors. No sense of self separate from others.
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As they play, children:
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Begin to appreciate the perspectives of other people.
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Build up a sense of themselves as something that other people look at and make judgments
about .
Role-Taking
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To take on the role of another and see how things look from their point of view.
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
Games
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Formal Play
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Games have rules.
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Specific rules and behaviors associated with roles.
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To participate one must:
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Know the rules and roles.
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Have the discipline to follow the rules.
Games enhance children’s ability to do role-taking.
Generalized Other
“The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community… in the case of such a social
group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other insofar as it enters as an organized process on
social activity, into the experience of any one of the members.”
-George Herbert Mead
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The ability to take the role of many others.
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Recognition that others have roles to fulfill within society and that one is part of that same society with
roles of their own to fulfill.
Freud and Personality
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Basic Human Needs
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Eros - “life instinct”; the need for bonding.
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Thanatos - “death” instinct; The need
to reconcile the reality of our own
mortality.
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Id
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Ego
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Basic drives, impulses, pleasure seeking.
The part of you that’s you. Balances the pleasure seeking impulses (id) and the demands of
society.
Superego
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Internalized norms, values, and restraints.
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The culture within us.
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
Emotions
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No one is emotionally indifferent to his or her culture.
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Emotional loyalty continues in the face of reason because of the intimate conditioning of early life
continues throughout our lives… though the initial wiring that promotes future conditioning occurs in
childhood.
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There may be physiological consistency across cultures in the expression of emotions however timing
and appropriateness are socialized.
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Emotions are social constructs that function to maintain the sentimentality of culture.
Agents of Socialization
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The social self is a constantly evolving thing.
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Not just something that happens to us as children.
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Though at no other time does it happen so rapidly and so great of profundity and complexity.
Agents of Socialization wherein the dynamic process takes place:
The Family
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Crucial agent of socialization.
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Gets first crack at the job
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Thorough lessons regarding gender appropriate behaviors.
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Children acquire an appreciable amount of cultural competency (non-material and material)
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Communication
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Right and wrong
Beliefs about the natural world
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Tying shoelaces
Buttoning shirts
Using eating utensils
Telephones
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§ Tissues
Reproduction of social arrangements
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Source of ascribed status (and the meanings attached to ones ascribed status).
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Socialization is caught not taught.
Parents tend to pass on to their children the outlooks that are suited to their own experiences in the world.
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
School
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As opposed to the child’s socialization experience at home the experience at school is quite different:
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At home the child may be treated as a unique individual.
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At school children learn that everyone can expect to be treated in a relatively similar and
impersonal manner.
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School often reinforces gender roles learned at home.
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Manifest Function of Education: The imparting and acquisition of skills necessary for
success is in the adult world.
§ Latent Function of Education: Maintenance of social stratum.
Other social values and norms learned in school:
Obedience to authority.
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Formal and informal.
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Cooperation.
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Responsibility and accountability.
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Achievement.
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Individualism within a group.
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Competition.
Mass Media
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Exposure to media influences people’s perceptions of reality.
“…television viewing shape’s a viewer’s conceptions of social reality…the more one is exposed to
television, the more likely one’s interpretation and perceptions of social reality will reflect the television
world, as opposed to the real and observable world.”
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Television (and other media for that matter) reflect elements of the real observable
world?
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Media only produces what we’ll consume.
Peer Groups
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Manifest Function: To have fun.
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Latent Function: Socializing agent.
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Socializes children and adolescents to become independent from adult authority.
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Peer groups for children and adolescents can develop into elaborate subcultures with their own
values, norms, language, and use of symbols.
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While these subcultures are in some ways set apart from the prevailing culture they tend to also
reinforce standard cultural conventions.
§ i.e. gender-role behavior and expectations.
§ Class distinctions
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SOCIALIZATION
Introduction to Sociology
Workplace
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Learning to behave appropriately within occupational setting is a fundamental aspect of human
socialization
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Anticipatory socialization, preparing for new roles.
Total Institutions
“A place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider
society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered life”
-Erving Goffman
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Total Institutions
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Ongoing supervision and reeducation (loss of autonomy).
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Life is controlled / standardized.
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Formal rules.
Resocialization
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Strip the individual of their previously known social self and replace it with a new self that is more in
keeping with the structure of the total institution.
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Loss of individuality.
Societal Need
Total Institution
Resocialized Identity
Incapable and harmless
Incapable and unintentionally harmful
Capable and intentionally harmful
Seeking retreat from the world; spirituality
Ensure our defense
Resocialization Process in the Total Institution of the Military
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Stripped of formally known self (identity).
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Breaking down of pride destroying ability to resist the transformation.
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Manifest / Latent Functions of Physical Exercise:
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Better physical conditioning.
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Stronger sense of pride and accomplishment.
Total Identification with other members.
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