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Chapter 4 René Spitz (1945, 1962): conducted a study that showed convincing evidence of the importance of socialization in unleashing human potential. o Comparison of children being raised in an orphanage and those who were raised in a prison nursing home o 6 nurses cared for 45 orphans, while nursing home children were taken care by their mothers o Nursing home children tasted a slice of society Social deprivation Without childhood socialization, most of our common potential remains undeveloped "the central growth process in adolescence is to define the self through the clarification of experience and to establish self-esteem" Socialization is the process by which people learn their culture - including norms, values, and roles - and become aware of themselves as they interact with others They do so by: (1) entering and disengaging from a succession of roles and (2) becoming aware of themselves as they interact with others A role is the behaviour expected of a person occupying a particular position in society "agents of socialization": families, schools, peer groups, and the mass media o It is during childhood that the contours of the self are first formed Theories of Childhood Socialization FREUD o Social interaction soon enables infants to begin developing a self-image or sense of self - a set of ideas and attitudes about who they are as independent beings o According to Freud, a self-image begins to emerge as soon as the id's demands are denied o The child eventually develops a sense of what constitutes appropriate behaviour and moral sense of right and wrong o Repression involves strong traumatic memories in a part of the self that we are not normally aware of: the unconscious o Insistence that the self emerges during early social interaction and that early childhood experience exerts a lasting impact on personality development The self consists of your ideas and attitudes about who you are The id, according to Freud, is the part of the self, that demands immediate gratification The superego, according to Freud, is a part of the self that acts as a respiratory of cultural standards The ego, according to Freud, is a psychological mechanism that balances the conflicting needs of the pleasure-seeking id and the restraining superego The unconscious, according to Freud, is the part of the self that contains repressed memories we are normally aware of

Researchers have called into question many of the specifics of Freud's argument. Three criticisms stand out: 1. The connections between early childhood development and adult personality are more complex than Freud assumed However, sociological research reveals no connection between these aspects of early childhood training and the development of well-adjusted adults 2. Many sociologists criticize Freud for gender bias in his analysis of male and female sexuality Freud argued that psychologically normal women are immature and dependent on men because they envy the male sexual organ 3. Sociologists often criticize Freud for neglecting Freud believed that the human personality is fixed by about the age of five COOLEY o Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley introduced the idea of the "looking glass self" o From these judgements we develop a self-concept or a set of feelings and ideas about who we are. In other words, our feelings about who we are depend largely on ho w we see ourselves evaluated by others o The way others evaluate us helps determine the size of the discrepancy between our self-concept and the person we would like to me The I, according to Mead, is the subjective and impulsive aspect of the self that is present from birth The me, according to Mead, is the objective component of the self that emerges as people communicate symbolically and learn to take the role of the other Significant others are people who play important roles in the early socialization experiences of children The generalized other, according to Mead, is a person's image of cultural standards and how they apply to him or her PIAGET o Jean Piaget divided the development of thinking (or "cognitive") skills during childhood into four stages o The first two years of life, he wrote, children explore the world only through their five senses o The "sensorimotor" stage of cognitive development o Children begin to think symbolically between the ages of two and seven, which he called the "preoperational" stage of cognitive development. Language and imagination blossom during these years o Between the ages of 7 and 11 o Piaget called this the "concrete operational" stage of cognitive development o By about the age of 12, children develop the ability to think more abstractly and critically o This behaviour marks the beginning of what Piaget called the "formal operational" stage of cognitive development VYGOTSKY

o For Vygotsky, ways of thinking are determined not so much by innate factors as

they are by nature of the social institutions in which individuals grow up o Ancient Chinese philosophies focused on the way in which wholes, not analytical categories, caused processes and events o Ancient Greek society was less socially complex o Markedly different socializations grew up on these different cognitive foundations; ways of thinking depends less on innate characteristics than on the structure of society Primary socialization is the process of acquiring the basic skills needed to function in society during childhood. Primary socialization usually takes place in a family MEAD o Took up and developed the idea of the "looking glass self" o Noted that a subjective and impulsive aspect of the self is present from birth simply called it the I o Like Freud, Mead argued that a repository of culturally approved standards emerges as a part of the self during social interaction. Mead called this objective, social component of the self ,the me o Mead saw the self as developing in four stages: i. Imitating important people in their lives i. Pretending to be other people by using their imagination i. Simultaneously take the role of several other people i. Teach an individual that other people, employing the cultural standards of their society, usually regard the individual as funny or temperamental or intelligent GILLIGAN o One of the best known examples of how social position affections socialization comes from the research of Carol Gillian o Demonstrated that sociological factors help explain differences in the sense of self that boys and girls usually KOHLBERG o Lawrence Kohlberg showed how children's moral reasoning - their ability to judge right from wrong - also passes through developmental stages o Argued that young children distinguish right from wrong based only on whether something gratifies their immediate needs o "preconventional" stage, what is "right" is simply what satisfies the young child o Right and wrong in terms of whether specific actions please their parents and teachers and are consistent with cultural norms o Some people never advance beyond conventional morality o The capacity to think abstractly and critically about moral principles o "postconventional" stage of moral development Secondary socialization is socialization outside the family after childhood The hidden curriculum in school involves teaching obedience to authority

A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation that helps bring about what it predicts The Thomas Theorem states "Situations we define as real become real in their consequences A person's peer group comprises people who are about the same age and of similar status as the individual. The peer group acts as an agent of socialization Status refers to a recognized social position an individual can occupy Agents of Socialization o The family is the most agent of primary socialization, the process of mastering the basic skills required to function in society during childhood o The family into which we are born also exerts an enduring influence over the course of our entire lives o Child care - and therefore child socializations - became a big social problem in the twentieth century Peer Groups o Peer groups consist of individuals who are not necessarily friends but who are about the same age and of similar status o From middle childhood to adolescence, the peer group is often the dominant socializing agent o Adolescent peer groups are controlled by youth, and through them young people begin to develop their own identities o In contrast, families are controlled by parents o We should not overstate the significance of adolescent-parent conflict o Research shows that families have more influence than peer groups over the educational inspirations and the political, social, and religious preferences of adolescent and university students o Helps integrate young people into the larger society Self-socialization involves choosing socialization influences from the wide variety of mass media offerings A gender role is the set of behaviours associated with widely shared expectations about how males and females are supposed to act Resocialization occurs when powerful socialization agents deliberately cause rapid change in a person's values, roles, and self-co9nception, sometimes against a person's will an initiation rite is a ritual that signifies the transition of the individual from one group to another and ensure Total institution are settings in which people are isolated from the larger society under the strict control and constant supervision of a specialized staff Anticipatory socialization involves taking on the norms and behaviours of the role to which we aspire The Mass Media o The mass media have become increasingly important socializing agents in the twenty-first century

o The fastest growing mass medium is the internet Self-Socialization o Mass media also helps young people cope with anger, anxiety, and unhappiness o The cultural materials provided by the mass media helps young people construct their identities o To a degree, the mass media allows adolescents to engage in what sociologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (1995) calls self-socialization Gender Roles/Mass Media/Feminist Approach to Socialization o They tend to choose influences that are more pervasive, fit existing cultural standards, and are made especially appealing by those who cannot control the mass media o People learn gender roles, partly through the mass media o We may be free to choose which media messages influence us, but most are inclined to choose the messages that are most widespread, most closely aligned with existing cultural standards, and made most enticing by the mass media Resocialization and Total Institutions o The importance of resocialization in contributing the lifelong process of social learning o Initiation rites require new recruits to abandon old self-perceptions and assume new identities. Often they comprise a three-stage ceremony involving (1) separation from the old status and identify (ritual rejection), (2) degradation, disorientation , and stress (ritual death), and (3) acceptance of the new group culture and status (ritual rebirth) o Suggests that your sense of self and the roles you play are not as fixed as you may think o The development of the self is a lifelong process o People's identities change faster, more often, and more completely they did just a couple of decades ago o One important factor contributing to the growing flexibility of the self globalization o A second factor that increases our freedom to design is our growing ability to fashion new bodies from old

Computer-assisted social interaction can profoundly affect how people think of themselves o

A virtual community is an association of people, scattered across the country, continent, or planet, who communicate via computer and modem about a subject of common interest Problems of Childhood and Adolescent Socialization Today o Declining adult supervision and guidance o Increasing media influence o Declining extracurricular activities and increasing adult responsibilities o Adult socialization is necessary for four main reasons: i. Adult roles are often discontinuous

i. i. i.

Some adult roles are largely invisible Some adult roles are unpredictable Adult roles change as we mature Mainly the result of inner developmental processes o By discontinuity in the sense that we expect retired people to find new ways of enjoying life yet, at some point, we expect them to prepare for imminent death o Invisibility characterizes the role of terminally ill people because our culture makes a great effort to deny death and keep us at a distance from it o Learning the role of the terminally ill person thus requires socialization because it combines maturation and unpredictability o The self has become increasingly flexible, and people are freer than ever to shape their selves as they choose o In preindustrial societies, children were thought of as small adults o The achievement of full adulthood, was common by the age of 15 or 16 o The idea of childhood emerged when and where it did because of social necessities and social possibility o A new term had to be coined to describe the teenage years: adolescence o Subsequently, the term young adulthood entered popular usage as an increasingly large number of people in their late teens and twenties delayed marriage to attend university

Chapter 5 Social interaction involves people communicating face to face or via computer and acting and reacting in relation to other people. It is structured around norms, roles and statuses Status refers to a recognized social position an individual can occupy A status set is the entire ensemble of statuses occupied by an individual A ascribed status is an involuntary status An achieved status is a voluntary status A person's master status is his or her overriding public identity. It is the status that is most influential in shaping that person's life at a given time Roles are sets of expected behaviours A role set is a cluster is a cluster of roles attached to a single status Norms are generally accepted ways of doing things Role conflict occurs when two or more statuses held at the same time place contradictory role demands on a person Role strain occurs when incompatible role demands are placed on a person in a single status In everyday speech, status means "prestige", but when sociologists say status they means a recognized social position than individual can occupy "Daughter" is an ascribed status, "flight attendant" is an achieved status Whereas people occupy statuses, they perform roles

Perspective norms suggest what a person is expected to do while performing a particular role Proscriptive norms suggest what a person is expected not to do while performing a particular role Such norms, roles, and statuses as those just illustrated are the building blocks of all face-to-face communication Whenever people communicate face to face, these building blocks structure their interaction Our emotions are not as unique, involuntary, and uncontrollable as we are often led to believe The turbulence of emotional life is a measure of order and predictability governed by sociological principles There are three main ways of maintaining social interaction and thereby cementing social structures and society as a whole: by means of domination, competition and corporation Two person groups or dyads Much social interaction takes place among status equals - among members of the same national or racial group A putdown has the effect of excluding outsiders, making you feel superior, and reinforcing group norms and the status hierarchy itself Disadvantaged people often laugh at the privileged at the alleged majority When members of disadvantaged groups are not laughing at the privileged majority, they are typically laughing at themselves An external disturbance causes a reaction that we experience involuntarily We cannot control our body's patterned response Emotions, like colds, just happen to us We can and often do control our emotions Emotions do not just happen to se, we manage them When we manage our emotions, we tend to follow certain cultural "scripts" We usually know the culturally designated emotional response to a particular external stimulus and we try to response appropriately The norms of our cultures and the expectations of the people around us patters our emotions Sociologist Arlie Rusel Hochschild is one of the leading figures in the study of emotion management and even coined the term Emotion management involves people obeying "feeling rules" and respond appropriately to the situations in which they find themselves Emotion labour is emotion management that many people do as part of their job for which they are paid Exchange theory holds that social interaction involves trade in valued resources Rational choice theory focuses on the way interacting people weigh the benefits and costs of interaction. According to rational choice theory, interacting people always try to maximize benefits and minimize costs Across occupation, different types of emotion labour are required

All jobs requiring emotion labour have in common the fact that "they allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees" Status hierarchies influence patterns of laughter Cultural scripts and the expectations of others influence the way we manage our emotions spontaneously and authentically It turns out that feeling rules take different forms under different social conditions Three examples from the social history of emotions help illustrate the point: grief, anger and disgust Emotions form an important part of all social interactions, they are neither universal nor constant In fact, turn-taking is one of the basic norms that govern conversation Social exchange theories argue that all social relationships involve a literal give and take Similarly, everyone wants to gain the most from their interactions - socially, emotionally, and economically - while paying the least When people behave fairly or altruistically, they are interacting with others based on norms they have learned - norms that they should act justly and help people in need, even if substantial costs are attached Moreover, as you will now see, we cannot assume what people want because norms (as well as roles and statuses) are not presented to us fully formed Dramaturgical analysis views social interaction as a sort of play in which people present themselves so that they appear in the best possible light Role distancing involves giving the impression that we are just "going through the motions" but actually lack serious commitment to a role Ethnomethodology is the study of how people make sense of what others and say by adhering pre-existing norms Status cues are visual indicators of other people's social position Stereotypes are rigid views of how members of various groups act, regardless of whether individual group members really behave that way Conflict theories of social interaction emphasize that when people interact, their statuses are often arranged in hierarchy. Those on top enjoy more power than those on the bottom. The degree of inequality strongly affects the character of social interaction between the interacting parties Domination is a mode of interaction in which nearly all power is concentrated in the hands of people of similar status. Fear is the dominant emotion in systems of interaction based on domination Cooperation is a basic for social interaction in which power is more or less equally distributed between people of different status. The dominant emotion is cooperative interaction is trust

Competition is a mode of interaction in which power is unequally distributed but the degree of inequality is less than in systems of domination. Envy is an important emotion in competitive interactions Symbolic interactionists regard people as active, creative and self-reflective Symbolic interactionism is based on three principles. i. "Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meaning which these things have for them" ii. "The meaning of a thing "emerges from the process of social interaction iii. "the use of meanings by the actors occurs through a process of interpretation" If a role is stressful, we may engage in role distancing Goffman's view of s...