Principles of Sociology
Darryl Hall
Department of Sociology
University of Nevada, Reno
Socialization
Socialization is the lifelong process of social interaction through which people acquire personality and learn the way of life of their society. Socialization is the way that individuals develop their humanity and particular identities.
- Personality refers to the fairly stable patterns of thought, feeling, and action typical of an individual.
- The Way of Life of a Society refers to the appropriate norms, role behavior, values, and language of a society that is, culture.
Studies of nonhuman primates and young children demonstrate the permanently damaging effects of social isolation and reveal that social experience is essential to human development.
Agents of Socialization refer to those significant individuals, people, or groups that affect our self-concept, attitudes, and orientations to life.
Agents of socialization include:
- The Family
- The Workplace
- The School
- The Peer Group
- The Mass Media
- Sports
- Day Care
- Religion
The influence of specific agents of socialization varies through the life course.
The Development of Self
Self refers to the ability to see ourselves from the outside, to interpret how others see us, and to project ourselves into the past, the future, and into various, present situations in life.
Charles Horton Cooley argued that our sense of self develops from interaction with others. He coined the term looking-glass self to describe the process by which a sense of self develops.
Elements of the Looking-Glass Self:
We imagine how we appear to those around us
We interpret others reactions
We develop a self-concept
George Herbert Mead focused on taking the role of the other (i.e., to put oneself in someone elses shoes; to understand how someone else feels and thinks and thus anticipating how that person will act) as central to the development of the self.
Stages in Role Taking:
1) Imitation ages 3 and under
2) Play ages 3 to 6 years
3) Games
At first, children are only able to take the role of the significant other (i.e., one who significantly influences their lives), but as the self develops they are able to take the role of the group as a whole (i.e., the generalized other).
Mead saw the self as an emergent process with two phases:
1) I the active, creative, and spontaneous phase of the self
2) Me the reflective phase of the self, which consists of attitudes that we internalize from our interactions
Mead concludes that not only the self but also the human mind is a social product. We are unable to think without socially shared symbols.
Resocialization
Resocialization the process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors
Total institution a place in which people are cut off from the rest of society and are almost totally controlled by the officials who run the place
Degradation ceremony a term coined by Harold Garfinkel to describe an attempt to remake the self by stripping away an individuals self-identity and stamping a new identity in its place
Socialization Through the Life Course
Childhood
Adolescence
Young Adulthood
The Middle Years
The Older Years
