Socialization

• The primary agent of socialization is usually parents, but other agents include peers, siblings, teachers, religious institutions, media, and society at large.
• Primary socialization refers to the initial learning experiences that occur during childhood and adolescence, while secondary socialization occurs later in life as people adapt to new situations and roles.
• Socialization is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, beliefs, norms, roles, and behaviors that are considered appropriate or acceptable within their culture.
• Socialization involves the transmission of culture from one generation to another through learning processes such as imitation, modeling, reinforcement, and punishment.
• Primary socialization refers to the process by which individuals acquire basic values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for survival and adaptation within their immediate environment.
• There are two types of socialization: primary (early) and secondary (later).
• Socialization involves both formal (institutional) and informal processes, with institutionalized forms including schools, churches, and workplaces, and informal processes involving family, friends, and peer groups.
• Formal socialization includes education, religion, and employment, which are all highly regulated by rules and norms.
• Primary socialization takes place from birth through early adulthood and involves acquiring basic cultural patterns such as language, manners, and moral codes.
• Secondary socialization occurs when an individual's behavior changes due to new experiences or situations that challenge previously acquired norms and values.
• Informal socialization can be more influential than formal socialization because it often takes place outside of structured settings and may involve unintended consequences or hidden messages.
• Culture includes language, customs, traditions, religion, art, music, literature, technology, and material goods.
• Secondary socialization occurs throughout an individual's lifetime and involves adjusting to changing circumstances and roles.
• Society consists of groups of people who share common cultural characteristics and interact with each other according to established rules and expectations.
• Individuals internalize these shared cultural elements and develop a sense of identity and belongingness within their group.
• Secondary socialization refers to the process by which individuals acquire additional values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for adapting to changing circumstances and roles throughout their lives.
• Culture is defined as the shared patterns of behavior, ideas, customs, and artifacts that characterize a particular group of people.
• socialization is the result of the misinterpretation by Franklin H. Giddings in his translation into the English notion of Vergellschaftung (coming into a social relationship,

  as-sociation') that is central in the works of Georg Simmel
• Socialization is part of the classical vocabulary of sociology ever since the 1937 publication of Sutherland and Woodward's sociological textbooks.
• the term socialization has, most, usually, been employed to refer to this developmental process, sometimes referred to as primary socialization.
• it has been used to examine the social roles of parents peers, social institutions such as the school as agents of socialization.

  socialization
• Translation of Vergellschaftung

  coming into a social relationship or as-sociation
• Sociology and psychology been preoccupied with the question of "human nature," and more specifically, with the manner in which, and process whereby, neonates come to be recognized as more-or-less competent members of a shared social order.
• the term socialization has also focused on locally specific issues (e.g., work, occupation, social role-- parenthood, political socialization) often referred to as __________

  secondary socialization
• what are some learning processes that can be used in socialization?


  imitation, modeling, reinforcement, punishment
• approaches to socialization

  1. socialization as smt that happens to people
  2. socialization as being a matter of development of a linguistically mediated reflexive self (Mead, 1934)
• through socialization, ppl come to:

  1. learn or internalize the values, attitude, norms of the culture or society (or local setting such as workplace in which they live?)
  2. enact culturally congruent social roles and culturally appropriate practices
• According to Cooley (1902), societies and their members are collective & distributive aspects of the same thing
• this tradition (of Cooley, 1902), rejects the idea that "self" and "society," or "identity" and "culture" are separate or separable things and dismisses the commonsense assumption that they are binary contrasts. instead each informs and co-produces the other.
• Trends of Research on Socialization in 1960s | Socialization as:

  1. assimilation process of indivs into social groups
  2. learning experiences the indiv goes through, especially when he is young (linguistic, cognitive, symbolic, normative learning experiences)
  3. stages of fundamental socialization processes that are conceived as being independent from particular cultures and social contexts such as formation of moral judgment in child (Piaget & Kohlberg)
  4. adopt comparative perspective
  5. developmentalism (Weber): influences social, economic, and political dev't
• Trend of Researches on Socialization in 1970s:

  1. socialization processes = key to understanding permanence of class & more generally social differentiation
  2. comparisons focus more on social groups (classes, professions, sexes)
  3. Bernstein: learning processes of "formal language" was exclusively spoken by middle & upper classes -> sig. adv. in competitive school system even if formal lang. cannot be considered as richer than "popular" language.
• general trend of researchers on socialization

  lack homogeneity as they:

  1. provide answers to changing motivations and preoccupations
  2. do not always have convergent results
  3. not easily integrated into a theoretical framework
• Essential Questions for Researchers

  1. What is the most appropriate representation of socialization process? Can they be primarily regarded as conditioning processes through which the social actor under the influence of his environment would record and internalize the "answers" that must be given to the various situations he might encounter?
  2. what role do socialization effects play in the explanation of social phenomena?
• Socialization Process

  1. Sociologism
  2. Causality
  3. Conditioning Paradigm
  4. Interaction System
  5. Action Analysis
• Sociologism treats socialization as some kind of training through which the young person is led to internalize norms, values, attitudes, roles, knowledge of facts, and know-how that will make up a kind of syllabus designed to be achieved later on, more or less mechanically.
• Causality: correlation bt. social classes and values leads to draw conclusions abt. the mechanistically causal action of social structures in the internalization of values. But the causal interpretation is only possible because it was decided to isolate 2 variable factors inside a complex process.
• Conditioning paradigm: the formation of moral judgment in the child, just as his progressive mastering of logical operations, depends, on an autonomous process of developing cognitive structure (Piaget).
• Interaction system: as long as the child's interaction are limited to his parents, he tends to reify moral rules and to behave in an egocentric way.
• interaction paradigm seems to be much more realistic and much more flexible than the conditioning paradigm.
• 1. it helps to think of socialization as an adoptive process. Facing a new situation, the indiv is guided by his cognitive processes and by the normative attitudes resulting from the socialization process, he has been exposed to. However, the new situation will finally lead him to enrich his cognitive resources or to modify his normative attitudes.