Download CULTURE - Warren County Schools

CULTURE &
SOCIALIZATION
The Who, What, and Why of Our Social Self
CULTURE
a HUMAN CREATION consisting of socially-constructed:
shared ideas (e.g., belief in free speech)
understandings (e.g., rain is the result of atmospheric
changes)
mental models (e.g., dogs are companions to human beings,
not table fare)
modes of categorization (e.g., religions include Christianity,
Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc...)
values (e.g., spousal abuse is bad)
speech forms (e.g., English is spoken everywhere in the U. S.)
traditions (e.g., Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, birthday
parties, Thanksgiving, 4th of July, retirement celebrations, etc...)
CULTURE
can be observed at various levels
small groups (e.g., South Warren HS v. Warren East HS, a family in Chicago v.
a family in Texas, a Baptist congregation v. a Catholic parish)
large scale national societies (e.g., United States, France, Syria, China, Russia)
global system of the world
includes the shared belief systems, rituals, and conversational styles of small groups as
well as societies
anything created by the mind, hand, or mouth of humans and passed from generation to
generation
CULTURE & GROUP INFLUENCE
Social Basis of Belief - group pressure can influence belief about the natural world
Solomon Asch’s experiments on social influence and conformity
Authority and Domination - group pressure can influence deeply held moral values
Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority
Attribution Theory - the “fundamental attribution error” is the tendency to overestimate the
causal importance/responsibility of the individual and minimize environmental influences
concept of the modern “self” as historic product of Christianity and the Enlightenment
Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment on how roles determine behavior
Accounts and Accountability - how culture arises from situational contexts, how it changes,
and how it influences human behavior
Harold Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology explaining how social order arises from social
interactions and the meaning (e.g., “Rules for Standing in Line”)
Interpersonal Attraction - homophily is the tendency to choose/bond with similar others
100+ sociological studies citing various forms of homophily including age, gender,
class, race, ethnicity, status, etc...
“Standing in a Line”
Garfinkel has frequently illustrated ethnomethodological analysis by means of the
illustration of service lines.[19] Everyone knows what it is like to stand in a line. Queues are
a part of our everyday social life; they are something within which we all participate as we
carry out our everyday affairs. We recognize when someone is waiting in a line and, when
we are "doing" being a member of a line, we have ways of showing it. In other words, lines
may seem impromptu and routine, but they exhibit an internal, member-produced
embodied structure. A line is “witnessably a produced social object;”[20] it is, in
Durkheimian terms, a “social fact.” Participants' actions as "seeably" what they are (such
as occupying a position in a queue) depend upon practices that the participant engages in
in relation to others' practices in the proximate vicinity. To recognize someone as in a line,
or to be seen as "in line" ourselves requires attention to bodily movement and bodily
placement in relation to others and to the physical environment that those movements also
constitute. This is another sense that we consider the action to be indexical—it is made
meaningful in the ways in which it is tied to the situation and the practices of members who
produce it.
The ethnomethodologist's task becomes one of analyzing how members' ongoing conduct
is a constituent aspect of this or that course of action. Such analysis can be applied to any
sort of social matter (e.g., being female, following instructions, performing a proof,
participating in a conversation). These topics are representative of the kinds of inquiry that
ethnomethodology was intended to undertake.
THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
LANGUAGE (Basis for Culture)
BELIEFS (The Truths We Accept)
VALUES & NORMS (Bases & Guidelines for
Behavior)
TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS, RITUALS (Culture
in Action)
SCRIPTS, SCHEMA, & TYPIFICATIONS (?)
THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
SCRIPTS, SCHEMA, & TYPIFICATIONS
In sociology, there is a concept knowns as “defining the context of a situation.”
SOCIAL SCRIPTS provide scenarios for social interaction through language in action.
Scripts dictate:
1. what one should be doing
2. at a particular time and
3. in a particular place
4. if one is to play a role associated with that script.
SCHEMA are the mental concepts (including the scripts, roles, language, etc.) that help us
to interpret our experience in the world.
Schemas are the mental models we create of persons, objects, or situations.
Through our experiences with creating scripts and schemas, we develop TYPIFICATIONS
which social constructions about the world around us based on standard assumptions
THE GOOD - help us understand and function in the culture in which we live
THE BAD - often inhibit learning new information due to prejudice and stereotypes created
THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
CORE AMERICAN VALUES
In 1970 Robin Williams, a sociologist at Cornell University and pastpresident of the American Sociological Association, identified what he
saw as core American Values. They were:
• Equal Opportunity
• Achievement and Success
• Material Comfort
• Activity and Work
• Practicality and Efficiency
• Progress
• Science
• Democracy and Enterprise
• Freedom
From Macionis, John J. 2005. Sociology. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 66.
CULTURE & SOCIETY
CULTURE AS SOURCE OF COHESION (Functionalism)
CULTURE AS SOURCE OF INNOVATION (Exchange Theory,
Feminism)
Cultural Diversity
CULTURE AS SOURCE OF SOCIAL CONFLICT (Conflict Theory)
Ethnocentrism
Subcultures
Countercultures
ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN POPULAR CULTURE (Who Made Who?)
SOCIALIZATION
The Social Construction of Self
social environments have causal force
not everything can be explained by reference to individual choices, human error, personal
heroism, or moral deficiencies
commonly-held misbelief around the world, esp. in Europe and the Americas
since the Reformation and the Enlightenment onward, western cultural tradition has placed a
strong emphasis on:
1. the autonomy of the individual as a moral actor
2. with organized preferences and goals and
3. a coherent personality and system of values
Social psychologists have discovered that this emphasis leads people to favor interpretations
of events and behaviors that highlight the coherence of the individual personality and the
causal force of individual choice and action --- even when experiments are rigged to make
outcomes random, or evidence of individual inconsistency is abundant. (known as the
“fundamental attribution error”)
to sociologists, the way we see our “self” is the way our environment has shaped us
SOCIALIZATION
The Basics
Socialization is the process of social interaction through which people
acquire personality and learn the way of life of their society (their culture).
Socialization is a life long process that begins at birth and ends at death.
Through socialization, an individual:
1. acquires language (which influences how the world is understood)
2. develops personality (through complex interaction of heredity & environment)
3. learns and adopts the norms, roles, and group structures of society
The primary agents of socialization are:
1. FAMILY
2. SCHOOL
3. PEERS
4. THE MASS MEDIA
SOCIALIZATION
Theories of Socialization
Sigmund Freud: Socialization and the Development of the Psyche
Charles Horton Cooley’s “Looking Glass Self”
George Mead: “The I and the Me” and Symbolic Interaction
Albert Bandura and Social Learning Theory
SOCIALIZATION
Web Resources about How People Become Social
Robert E. Wood’s Virtual Tour C, “Social Interaction and Socialization”
SOCIALIZATION
Gender Socialization and Material Culture
What are some traditional gender roles for males and females in our culture?
Are there still gender stereotypes that persist in America today?
Can you think of any gender neutral roles in our society?
SOCIALIZATION
•
Gender Socialization and Material Culture
Use the images of material culture provided to discuss the following
questions with your group (questions also provided):
1. What is most noticeable about the images on your handout?
2. Could the items be used by both genders? Explain.
3. What kind of gender socializing messages would a person coming in
contact with these items get?
4. Are gender stereotypes reinforced with these materials?
5. Where would you go if you wanted to get away from gender socializing
messages?
SOCIALIZATION
•
Gender Socialization and Material Culture
Use the images of material culture provided to discuss the following
questions with your group (questions also provided):
1. What is most noticeable about the images on your handout?
2. Could the items be used by both genders? Explain.
3. What kind of gender socializing messages would a person coming in
contact with these items get?
4. Are gender stereotypes reinforced with these materials?
5. Where would you go if you wanted to get away from gender socializing
messages?
SOCIALIZATION
Throughout the Life Course
SOCIALIZATION is a continuing, lifelong process.
All cultures and societies must deal with the LIFE
COURSE that begins with conception and moves
through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old
age until ultimately ending with death.
Erik Erikson’s THEORY OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
• 8 psychosocial stages of development throughout life
• each stage involves a psychosocial conflict
• conflicts must be resolved for normal social development
(see handout)
SOCIALIZATION
•
Throughout the Life Course
OTHER LIFE COURSE CONCEPTS
Rites of Passage
rituals or ceremonies marking a person’s progress from one
status to another (e.g., puberty, acquiring driver’s license,
graduating high school/college, marriage, parenthood,
baptism, death
Anticipatory Socialization
social learning that prepares us for the roles we are likely to
assume in the future (e.g., school, college, job training)
Desocialization
the unlearning of previous norms, expectations, and roles
which may lead to identify crisis, loss of peer status, loss of
peer group, etc. (e.g., single to married, retiring from a fulltime job)
Resocialization
learning a new set of norms, attitudes, values, beliefs, and
behaviors (e.g., military training, prison, mental institutions)