culture and identity

• Parsons views the family as a personality factory where parents train and mold the passive child in the image of society.
• The child is filled with shared cultural norms and values, which gives value consensus and a sense of belonging.
• Parsons emphasizes the need to identify with adults of the same sex as role models for future gender roles.
• People are more than the value belief and expectations of the society they belong in, according to Parsons.
• Children learn empathy in primary socialisation.
• Feminism and socialisation involve women being socialised into accepting patriarchy as normal and agencies supporting to reinforce and reproduce this.
• Radical feminists believe that women are brainwashed into believing that they want to perform traditional roles.
• In mass media, Ann Oakley describes four stages of socialisation: manipulation, differentiation, verbal appellation, and canalisation.
• Manipulation in socialisation involves the use of colours and encouraging girls to say yes from an early age.
• Differentiation in socialisation involves girls being encouraged to participate in ballet and boys being encouraged to participate in football.
• Verbal appellation in socialisation involves girls being praised for being passive and "good girls", while boys are praised for being cheeky and "boys will be boys".
• Canalisation in socialisation involves steering girls towards future careers.
• Education in socialisation involves different subject choices for girls, focusing on arts, humanities, and caring, while boys are steered towards sports and science.
• Not all women are passive and not all women want to be married and have kids.
• Postmodern feminism allows females to choose and being a stereotypical female should be a choice.
• Socialisation is a process that participants in.
• Creation of the self is a key aspect of socialisation, where two important things are learned: understanding signs and symbols and learning to emphasise.
• Socialisation is not the same for everyone – we all chose to take different social roles so there isn't one set of norms and values we are socialised into – we resocialise ourselves if we have too.
• Giddens's approach creates a sense of a story.
• Goffman's theory suggests that life is a stage.
• Structuration is characterized by predictability with our basic norms and values and a common language.
• Giddens proposes a third way, structuration, which involves the culture and structure of society providing the means of establishing our identities and the tools to make sense of society.
• Giddens also proposes a cultural frame work, which is an evolving narrative that constantly reflects on society.
• Marxism is critical of functionalism and believes that socialisation supports the interests of the ruling class, indoctrinating people into the ruling class ideologies.
• Zaretsky's 1976 study on family suggests that it instills obedience and respect for authority, creating exploitation and false class consciousness.
• Socialisation prevents rapid social change, reducing the chance of revolution.
• Althusser argues that the ruling class maintain control through the ruling state apparatus (RSA - formal social control police) and ideological state apparatus (ISA - key institutions that transmit ideas of the state reflecting the ruling class).
• Gramsci believes that the ruling class are able to establish common sense, making capitalism seem normal and common, and promoting hegemony, which Marx believes is when workers form false class consciousness due to the belief that the system is right.
• Zaretsky sees socialisation as being linked to the interests of the social class (ruling class), arguing that family is an institution of the capitalist class to install obedience and respect for authority.
• Religion serves as an ideological appatus, promoting the interests and ideas of the ruling class.
• Religious teaching and emphasis on blind faith distract the poor from the true extent of exploitation by the ruling class.
• Religion promotes the idea of reward in the afterlife.
• Education, according to Althusser, has a hidden curriculum, with the national curriculum not reflecting the true interests of the ruling class.
• Evaluations see people as passive victims of socialism, not always the case as some people do rebel.
• Neo-Marxism accepts socialisation but doesn't add all the ideas of the ruling class.
• Postmodernism suggests that class no longer matters.
• Feminism is often indoctrinated by the patriarchy.
• Paul Willis's study on working class pupils developed a counter school culture.
• Postmodernism and socialisation are not one right theory.
• Modernity came to the end of the 20th century.