Download Resocialization in Escape from Camp 14

Resocialization in Escape from Camp 14
Contributed by Mariecris Gatlabayan
UAA/APU Books of the Year Faculty Steering Committee
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, socialization is:
Usually, the process through which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a society and
learn to function as its members. Socialization can refer to narrower processes of group formation and
integration—in accordance, for example, with occupational or ethnic groups. It can also be treated as a
more fundamental process of acquisition of the basic cognitive and psychological requisites for social life,
such as language. Sociologists draw a number of distinctions between types of socialization. The process of
internalizing norms and values that are different from those held in the past is often called resocialization.
Socialization illustrates the forces that mold an individual’s view of the world, their role in society, and how they
relate with people. Shin’s socialization was planned since birth: “Shin’s Guards were his teachers—and—his
breeders. They had selected his mother and father. They taught him that prisoners who break camp rules deserve
death…. The boy memorized the camp’s ten rules, “The Ten Commandments,” as he later called them, and can still
recite them by heart” (xiv). After leaving Camp 14, Shin experienced resocialization in order to integrate into the
new and different cultures in which he was living.
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What cultures does Shin engage with once he leaves Camp 14?
How does he resocialize, (change his ideas, beliefs, and interactions with people), when living in these
different cultures?
What factors facilitate his resocialization? What sources of information influence the changes in his point
of view, ideas, and beliefs?
How does the definition of a mother/child relationship differ in Camp 14 than in the cultures outside of
Camp 14?
Shin calls the ten rules of the camp, “The Ten Commandments” which is in reference to “The Ten
Commandments” in Christianity. What similarities do they have in socializing people? How do they differ?
Is Shin successful at resocializing into the different cultures in which he has lived?
Was there a time in your life when you had to resocialize, adjust your worldview and behaviors, when
interacting with a new environment? Please give an example of what value, belief, or norm changed, how it
changed, and why?
Give examples of when a society had to “resocialize,” adjust values and norms to those different in the
past? Some examples of concepts that have evolved and changed over time include: equality, freedom,
privacy, class, marriage, gender, science, justice, democracy, etc.
Bibliography
(2002). socialization. In Calhoun, C.(Ed.), Dictionary of the Social Sciences. : Oxford University Press. Retrieved
7 Mar. 2013, from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195123715.001.0001/acref9780195123715-e-1553.