Experience Sociology 3rd Edition by

Croteau Hoynes ISBN 1259921662

9781259405235
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Croteau & Hoynes, Experience Sociology 3e

Chapter 6 – Socialization

Brief Outline
Reproducing Structure: Agents of Socialization
Socialization Through the Life Course
Culture and Biology: Setting the Stage for Social Life
Culture, Power, and the Social Self
A Changing World: Forming an Identity in a Digital World

Learning Objectives
1. List and summarize the agents of socialization in a modern society.
2. Explain what it means to say that the stages of the life course are socially constructed.
3. Summarize the life stages of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and aging and
retirement.
4. Describe the effect of historical context on socialization.

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 5. Describe how culture and biology interact to shape social life.
6. Summarize Mead’s and Cooley’s concepts of the social self.
7. Explain how power shapes our daily life and sense of self according to Foucault.
8. Explain the evolving concept of identity within the context of online communities.

Lecture Outline
A. Reproducing Structure: Agents of Socialization
• Socialization is the process through which people learn their culture’s basic
norms, values, beliefs, and appropriate behaviors.
• Agents of socialization are people and groups who teach us about our culture.
1. Family
• Melvin Kohn: working-class parents versus middle-class parents
• Cultural differences in parenting styles
2. School
• Schools convey a hidden curriculum of implicit lessons on appropriate behavior.
3. Media
• Media is arguably the most influential agent of socialization in contemporary
society.
• Children learn morals and values from commercial media companies selling
products and socializing children to be consumers.

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 4. Peer Groups
• Especially significant for young people whose sense of self is not yet firmly
developed and can be easily influenced by others
• Can act as surrogate families; and can provide opportunities to experiment with
values, beliefs, and behaviors
5. The Workplace
• Occupational socialization: the process of learning the informal norms associated
with a type of employment
6. Religion
• Can be a potent socializing agent; for some, it can supersede other socializing
influences
• In the U.S. in recent decades, religious organizations have expanded their use of
mass media.
7. Total Institutions
• Confining social settings in which an authority regulates all aspects of a
person’s life
o Orphanages and nursing homes; psychiatric hospitals; prisons and jails;
boarding schools and military barracks; monasteries and convents
• An extreme example of resocialization
B. Socialization Through the Life Course
• Life-course perspective: looks at how age, time, and place shape social identities
and experiences over a lifetime
• Rites of passage; anticipatory socialization
1. Childhood
• Changing views of childhood: “little adults” versus childhood as a period of life
distinct from adulthood
2. Adolescence
• Adolescence was not seen as a distinct period of life until the early twentieth
century.
o The affluence produced by industrialization created a new middle class,
whose young people stayed out of the workforce; continued their
education; and became consumers of youth-oriented products.
o A “generation gap” appeared between immigrant parents and their
children, who were socialized in their new country.
3. Adulthood
• The most common life-course pattern for men remains work-marriage-parenthood
(then possibly divorce or unemployment).
• Women’s life-course trajectories are more varied, with some following the same
stages as men, while others follow a gender-specific trajectory of work-marriage-
unemployment-parenthood.
• For many adults, parenthood is one of the most significant life changes they will
experience.

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 4. Aging and Retirement
• In the United States, with its cultural emphasis on youth, the process of aging
involves the negotiation of an evolving social identity in which one is no longer
young.
• Retirement involves a whole new set of norms and behaviors; can be traumatic for
those who’ve formed their identities around what they do; and is increasingly also
a financial challenge.
• Elder housing patterns vary across cultures.
5. Historical Events: Marking Generational Identity
• Major historical events can have a transformative effect on one’s identity.
Examples: the Great Depression; Freedom Summer; 9/11
C. Culture and Biology: Setting the Stage for Social Life
1. Beyond “Nature versus Nurture”
• Biological determinism versus social determinism
2. Epigenetics: Genes and the Environment
• Some features of human behavior and personality are influenced by genes; and
some behaviors reflect the interaction of genes and the social environment.
• Social and environmental conditions can trigger or counter a genetically linked
effect.
D. Culture, Power, and the Social Self
1. Humans without Culture
• Example: “Isabelle,” raised in seclusion by a deaf-mute mother
2. Reflexivity: Cooley’s “Looking Glass Self”
• Our interactions with others involve three steps that forge our sense of self:
o We imagine our image in the eyes of others.
o We imagine the others making some judgment about us.
o We experience a feeling as a result of the imagined judgment.
3. Spontaneity versus Social Norms: Mead’s “I” and “Me”
• “I” is the part of the self that is spontaneous, impulsive, creative, and
unpredictable.
• “Me” is the sense of self that has been learned from interaction with others.
4. Social Interaction: Developing a Self
• Mead proposed that children advance through four stages of social development:
o Pre-play stage
o Play stage
o Game stage
o Generalized other
5. Neurosociology and the Social Brain
• Understanding the brain’s role in influencing our unconscious, our emotions, our
sense of self, and our ability to interact with others
• Brain plasticity: the ability of the brain to restructure and reorganize itself,
especially in response to social experiences and learning

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 6. Foucault’s Regimes of Power
• The terms and concepts we use to think about ourselves are produced and
promoted through various regimes of power.
E. A Changing World: Forming an Identity in a Digital World
• Digital communication has changed the process of identity formation in young
people, yet it does not appear to be that different from identity formation in the
offline world.
F. Through a Sociological Lens: Learning Politics
G. Sociology Works: Kate Corrigan, Teaching at a School for Blind Children and Young Adults
H. Sociology in Action: The Use and Abuse of Biological Explanations of Social Life

Lecture Summary
1. Socialization is the process whereby norms and role expectations are transmitted from
one generation to another. A variety of persons and groups provide us with information
about cultural and social expectations. These agents of socialization include family, peer
groups, schools, religion, mass media, and the workplace.

2. A life-course perspective on socialization considers how social identities, personal

experiences, and social expectations change over time. Stages of life include childhood,
youth and adolescence, adulthood, and aging and retirement. Particular stages of life and
what they mean can vary over time and across cultures. When groups share a social
context or experience a transformative historical event, they may develop a collective
identity framed by that context or event.

3. Biology and the social environment—nature and nurture—interact in complex ways to

produce behavior. The influence of human genes on behavior is intricate and often
indirect, and depends to a great degree on the social and environmental context in which
genes are expressed. Social conditions can trigger or suppress the impact of genes on
behavior.

4. Studies of children who experience extreme social isolation or other forms of inadequate
socialization reveal the importance of culture and social interaction for human
development. Indeed, a person’s core sense of self-awareness is only developed and
experienced through social interaction. From a sociological perspective, self-identity is
shaped by how we believe others perceive us. Recent findings in neuroscience confirm
that our ability to interpret the feelings and intentions of others, and many of our
emotional responses, are built-in brain functions.

Additional Lecture Ideas

1. “Feral children” and children that grew up without significant social contact often capture
the imagination of students. These examples are dramatic demonstrations of the

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 importance of socialization. A modern story of an isolated child can be found on the
Tampa Bay Times website, showing what the unsocialized child looks like in a more
modern setting. See www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece.

2. Explaining the non-sociological theories of socialization or theories of social

development often helps students to understand from where sociological theories of
sociology develop and how sociology approaches the issues differently. Freud’s theory of
Id, Ego, and Super-ego and Piaget’s work will likely be known by psychology and
education majors and can be put into the context of sociological theories on socialization.

3. Have students review the Pew research on religion and the Internet at
http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/religion-and-society/2014/. We are socialized by
religion and by the media. What happens when religion uses the media for socialization?
Can we still form community and identity through online religion?

4. Have the students read an article about home-schooling and socialization, such as this one
from The Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/13/home-
schooling-socialization-not-problem/. Students might also check out the Home School
Legal Defense Association website (http://www.hslda.org/). How are we socialized by
education? We learn a lot more than what our classes teach us when we attend school. So
what about students who learn at home? Do they not learn the same social lessons as
those who go to public or private school? How do home-school advocates suggest that
their students are equally socialized?

Classroom Discussion Topics

Family Socialization
1. Have students break into groups of no more than four. Have them make a list of all of the
cultural “lessons” they learned from their family or other social group in which they were
raised. Then have students make a list of cultural “lessons” they learned from another
subculture in which they are a member. What did students learn about language, symbols,
values, beliefs and norms from their family and other groups that they belong to?

Early Gender Socialization

2. Bring in several children’s toys, including some that are traditionally seen as boys’ toys
and girls’ toys, and some that would be considered neutral. Which toys are which? Why?
Often students will argue that these distinctions are no longer made or that they played
with all kinds of toys. That may be the case; however, if you go to the toy section of any
store, you will still see toys classified by gender; toy designers still make the same toy in
both blue and pink; and you still know how to classify toys by gender. If students grow
up playing with toys designed for either gender, why does society still classify toys by
gender?

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Later Gender Socialization
3. Have students break into groups of four or five. Make sure that there are men and women
in each group. Have the students discuss how they prepare for a date. What do they do to
get ready? What are their expectations? How do preparations and expectations differ for
men and women? How much of the date experience is dependent on expectations of
gender roles? What would happen if the woman tried to fulfill the expectations of the
man or vice versa? How have gender roles in dating changed over time?

Media Influence
4. Have students generate a list of the ten television shows that they and their friends most
often watch (it can be less depending on how much time you have). Have students write a
brief description of each show. What is it about? Do these shows adequately depict
society? Why are they appealing? How do these shows reflect the norms and values of
society? How have television shows changed over time? Why? How have your television
tastes changed over time? Why?

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