Culture and Identity

• Achieved status: Your position in society that is earned by your own efforts and achievements.
• Agents of socialisation: The places or groups of people responsible for teaching individuals the correct norms, values and behaviours e.g. family, education, workplace, media, the peer group and religion.
• Ascribed status: Your position in society that is based on the social characteristics you were born with and is difficult to change.
• Canalisation: Parents give their children gender-specific goods that are considered the norm for their gender, such as dolls for girls rather than boys for example.
• Conformity: Following the norms, written rules and laws of society.
• Culture: The whole way of life of a society.
• Femininity: The quality of acting in a way that a society deems is typically female behaviour
• Formal social control: Written rules and laws enforced by powerful agents such as the police and the courts.
• Hidden curriculum: The norms and values that schools teach students through day-to-day school life, not part of the formal timetable.
• Identity: How we see ourselves and how others see us.
• Informal social control: Controlling people's behaviour using informal methods in everyday situations.
• Masculinity: The quality of acting in a way that society deems is typically male behaviour.
• Manipulation: Parents encourage children to behave in a way that is seen to be appropriate for their gender.
• Multiple roles: Playing more than one role.
• Negative sanctions: Punishments used to prevent unacceptable behaviour.
• Relativity: Specific to a particular situation, social group or society, not general.
• Values: General ideas about what is right and wrong, the correct ways of behaving and what is considered important and worthwhile.
• Patriarchy: A society dominated by males, where they have more power than women.
• Positive sanctions: Rewards used to encourage acceptable behaviour.
• Role: A part you play that is associated with particular norms and expectations.
• Role conflict: Where the demands of one role clash with the demands of other roles played.
• Social control: The methods used during the socialisation process to make sure that individuals conform to the expected and acceptable norms and values in society.
• Sexuality: Our sexual behaviour and choice of sexual partners.
• Status: The amount of prestige a person's position in society gives them.
• Stereotype: A generalised and simplistic view of a group of people which ignores individual differences. They are often negative.