Lesson 2 sociology

• Society


  A group of people who live in a defined territory and share the same culture. A society also consists of institutions, shared beliefs, cultural ideas, and shared political authority.
• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966)


  • They authored The Social Construction of Reality. In this book, they stressed that society is made through "habitualization". According to them, society is a habit.
• Habitualization


  Happens when an action that is repeated often becomes cast into a pattern. This act then is done again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort.
• W.I. Thomas


  • Sees society as something that was already created before us. Constructed the Thomas theorem which states, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences". This means that people can be subjective in their construction of reality despite the objective reality.
• Example of self-fulfilling prophecy


  • A student who is often called or labeled as slow, stupid, or hard-headed might live up to those words even though those are not part of his or her character.
• Robert K. Merton


  • Explained the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy using the example of a "bank run". Imagine that, for some reason, depositors of a bank falsely feared that their bank is soon to be bankrupt. Because of that they eventually decided to pull out their money thus fulfilling the false prophecy. This shows that, indeed, the reality is constructed by an idea.
• Roles


  Patterns of behavior that we identify in others that represent their social status.
• Status


  The responsibilities and benefits a person experiences based on their rank and role in society.
• Role strain


  Happens when there is too much required from a single role. An example is being a student. A student is also a son or daughter, a friend, a sibling, etc.
• Role conflict


  Happens when one or more roles are contradictory. An example is a working mom. When she misses a school event of her child, she is deemed as a bad mother. But when she misses a day of work for her child, she is deemed as a bad employee.
• Role performance


  How individuals express their roles.
• Erving Goffman


  • Stated that people are like actors on a stage. His theory, called dramaturgy, states that people use "impression management" to present their selves to others as they hope to be perceived. Each situation is a different scene and people play different roles depending on who is there.
• Charles Cooley


  • Proposed the "looking-glass self" theory, which states that we base our image on what we think other people see. He believes that we based our sense of self on the imagined perception of us of others and how they would react to us. He concluded that people's reaction to us is like a mirror in which we are reflected.
• Socialization


  The process wherein people are taught to be proficient members of society. Through socialization people learn societal norms, beliefs, and values. Socializing, the act of interacting with others is not the same as socialization. Socialization is a sociological process that occurs through socializing.
• George Herbert Mead


  • Proposed that the self is a person's distinct identity and it is developed through social interactions. Mead said that an individual has to be able to view himself or herself through the eyes of others.
• Mead's stages of self-development

  1. Imitation stage: Children copy the actions of the people surrounding them.

  2. Play stage: Children take on roles that other people around them have like their parents or grown-ups. Also, children learn to consider various roles at the same time and how those roles interact with one another.

  3. Generalized other stage: Individuals can imagine how they are viewed by one or others.
• Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development


  • Moral development is crucial for socialization. It refers to the way people distinguish the good and bad in society. Moral development prevents people from doing unchecked urges. Kohlberg's theory states that people undergo three levels of moral development: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional.
• Kohlberg's stages of moral development

  1. Pre-conventional stage: Children experience the world around them through their senses.

  2. Conventional stage: Children become more aware of others' feelings and consider those when weighing what's right or wrong.

  3. Post-conventional stage: People begin to think of morality in abstract terms. They realized that legality does not equate to morality.
• Carol Gilligan


  • Agrees with Kohlberg's theory but she stated that it shows gender bias. It is because Kohlberg's research was only conducted on male subjects. Gilligan's research shows that boys and girls have a different understanding of morality. Boys tend to highlight rules and laws. They have more of a justice perspective. While girls have a care and responsibility perspective. That is why they tend to consider people's reasons for their wrong actions. Gilligan also noticed that Kohlberg assumes that the justice perspective was the right or better perspective. She, on the other hand, said that neither perspective was better. Finally, she explained that boys are socialized for work environments while girls are socialized for a home environment.
• Teaching culture to new members is how society preserves itself. If the new members did not learn the way of life of the society, then that society ceases to exist. The culture must be transmitted to those who join the society for the society to survive.
• Social interaction lets us see ourselves through the eyes of others. Thus, we learn who we are and how we fit into the society. Through socialization, we learn about culture and language too. Without it, we have no self.
• Agents of socialization

  • Social group agents (family, peer groups)
  • Institutional agents (formal - schools, workplaces, government; informal - mass media)