SOCL 2001 Exam 2 Notes CHAPTER 4 SOCIALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY Socialization The Concept Socialization 3 9 16 9 39 AM o process by which individuals internalize the values beliefs and norms of a given society and learn to function as a member of that society o Not completely overriding all our thoughts emotions ideas activities or behaviors o There is a biological component to it o Defining this is difficult in cases o Who you interact with the culture that you re in informs how you think about the world o Political views gender views etc all comes from socialization Limits of Socialization The concept of socialization if useful for understanding how people become functioning members of society yet it cannot explain everything about a person s development and personality Biology is also a very important component it is a combination of biology and social interactions that makes us who we are Theories of Socialization Charles Horton Cooley George Herbert Mead o theorized that the self emerges from our ability to assume the point of view of others and imagine how those others see us o developed a theory about how the social self develops over the course of childhood Infants know only the I but through social interaction they learn about me and the other Finally they develop a concept of the generalized other which allows them to apply norms and behaviors learned in specific situations to new situations In relation to the self We learn about who we are through interaction Me Not only do we need interaction with others to define self but it develops in waves as we get older building to the generalized others I Impulse portion of who we are Analogy of a child Generalized other General set of beliefs that we have for all people other Not everyone has the same generalized Who interacts with you informs your generalized other All these things are necessary for us to coordinate social interaction o Mead stressed the importance of imitation play and games in helping children recognize one another distinguish between self and other and grasp the idea that others can have multiple roles The psychologist Eric Erikson o established a theory of psychosocial development that identifies eight stages that span a person s lifetime Each stage involves a specific conflict that a person must resolve in order to move on to the next stage Agents of Socialization o Raising your hand to ask answer a question Families School peers the media total institutions o A total institution is an institution in which one is totally immersed that controls all the basics of day to day life o Examples military prison all important socializing agents or environments Adult socialization o simply means ways in which people are socialized as adults Resocialization o process by which one s social values beliefs and norms are challenged and perhaps reformulated in response to spending a significant amount of time in a very different environment Social Interaction Robert Merton s role theory o provides a way to describe social interaction o Several really important key concepts including Status Roles A recognizable social position Behavior expected from a particular status Old people Kind Loving Teacher Learning Friends role strain role conflict status set ascribed status born with Race Guys ask girls to dances Men hold doors open for women not men Gender what you re supposed to wear Mary Tyler Moore wore capri pants on TV for the first time and everyone was in shock achieved status earned or imposed by others A job you hold Becoming president of the US Being labeled A degree you earn master status Stands out or overrides all others o All social interaction is framed through 1 Gender gender 2 Race 3 Age o Certain types of interactions change in context depending on what age someone is We often use these three as context clues to explain social interaction Gender roles Feral Children o are a set of behavioral norms associated primarily with males or females in a given social group or system o Gender theorists argue that gender roles can be more powerful and influential than other roles that people fill o Norms associated with male female status o How to interact with people daily and roles o Raised in isolation confinement or by animals o Some situations where children are raised in inopportune environments where this happens o Without proper socialization humans are rarely able to socialize o A lot of these people don t ever recover o Less than 100 known cases o Rarely able to function normally in society The Social Construction of Reality To say that something is socially constructed o is to say that people give meaning or value to ideas or objects through social interactions Social construction is an ongoing process that is embedded in our everyday interactions Symbolic interactionism o a micro level theory based on the idea that people act in accordance with shared meanings orientations and assumptions Erving Goffman s dramaturgical theory o views social life as a theatrical performance in which we are all actors on metaphysical stages with roles scripts costumes and sets Ethnomethodology o approach to studying human interaction that focuses on the ways in which we make sense of our world convey this understanding to others and produce a mutually shared social order Harold Garfinkel o developed a method for studying social interactions called breaching experiments that involved having collaborators exhibit abnormal or atypical behaviors in social interactions in order to see how people would react The Internet has created new types of social interaction that don t incorporate verbal and visual cues people are accustomed to relying on It has also changed society by creating new types of crimes and new ways of communicating Because our reality is socially constructed an unexpected change in that reality can be upsetting frustrating or just plain incomprehensible We all have a stake in maintaining consensus on shared meanings so that our society can continue to function smoothly CHAPTER 5 NETWORKS AND ORGANIZATIONS 9 39 AM 3 9 16 Social Groups Social groups form the building blocks for society and for most social interaction The sociologist Georg Simmel o The way broad numbers of inidivials mix with social networkds o The increase in people we know increases social interaction and increases the possibility of social interaction o argued that the key element in determining the form of social relations in a