SOCIALIZATION

Outline
• Defining socialization
• Schools of socialization
• Primary socialization
• Satges of socializtion
• The origin of socialization
• Secondary socialization
• Adulthood
• Beyond adulthood
 Socialization: Any definition
• Franklin Gidding(1897) concieves it as
• ‘’the development of a social state of mind’’

• Ekin(1960) defines socialization ‘’ the process by which someone learns the way of a given

society or social group well enough so that he can function within it’’

• Theodorson(1969) views it as ‘’ the basic social process through which an individual

becomes integrated into a social group by learning the group’s culture and his role in the group
 Schools of socialization

Neobehaviourists see socialization as the learning of behaviours that are rewarded through positive
reinforcements.

E.g. Clark Hull views socialization as the piece by piece accretion of small behavioural increments or habits.
Gestalt psychologists note that each new experience not only adds an increment to the self but actually changes
its entire Gestalt or configuration.

Freudian approach, known for advocating theory of childhood determinism, maintains that early childhood
socialization determines your subsequent behaviour such as mental health, intelligence, and your personality as
a whole.
Symbolic interactionism theory endorsed the centrality of language in human development. That is, the self is
developed and acquired by virtue of interaction( your identity) and language( the emergence of the self by
mastering possessive behaviours)
 Shortcomings

These schools suffer from a number of defects and pitfalls.

As for neobehaviourists failed to recognize that the behaviour of the self is a response to symbolic rewards to
such things as respect, self esteem, sentiments and other subjective values. Moreover, accretions of small
habits is rather the continuous reorganization and readjustment of the self to the environment.

As for Freudian paradigm, a person does not stop changing his early life; a person’s behaviour is not
necessarily determined by early childhood experience
As Heraclites once said ‘’nothing is permanent except change’’
 Primary socialization
What is chidlhood?

we all tend to view chidlren as mere protoadults, humunculi, Little people, who omly waits socialization to
adulthood.

However, as Phillip Aries(1968) said ‘’ childeren is not a universal condition but the product of a sociocultural
definition of the situation.

Case studies of childern who act and behave like adults.

Louis in 17s, sang and played the violin at 17 months, danced at three and read and wrote at four.
The painting of Brueghel and other Flemish primitives refelct that childern of commoners look like Little adult
and participate in such adult settings as tavern and wine shop
 Play as a subculture of children

The dramatization of child’s identity

Fantastic socialization
Five themes
Incomplete knowledge in childhood
Satisfying tabooed curiosity
play
Testing of poise
Play as a means of child’s creativity
Play as part of satisfying personal needs
 Schools of childhood
• Ethnomethodologists focus on the organization of children’s culture
• They study the conversational recources available to children and to their interlocutors in their routine
conversation.
• Turner(1970) argues talking is doing, similarly, Speier argues that words to children are not in the first place
categorical concepts or ideas, but tools in action.
• E.g. to a young child, the meaning of ‘’ball’’ is not is not the idea of a ball but the fact that by uttering tht sound he
will probably obtain that desired object-ball. Thus words for children are actions
• Jane Austin theory of pragmatic
• Anthropologists conclude that childhood come to an end and this necessitates some Rite of Passage, which refers
to a test of courage, of one’s ability to endure excruciating pain.
• E.g. circumcision rite.
 How are children socialized

• Primary socialization is the necessary condition for successful integration of new-born to society.
• The child has no choice to what to internalize.

• The child is rather destined to imbibe the beliefs, internalize cultural elements that have a character of absolutes
such as language, program of behaviour, and other patterns of social norms.

• At this stage, there is nor room for doubt, questioning, or interpreting. Every thing is normalized and naturalized for
the child.
 Socializing
agents

shcool Parents

Nurses Media
 Stages of socialization
• Freud’s stages of psychosexual development sheds light on the organism management of sexuality
• The oral stage(0-2) The phallic stage(3-7)
• The infant achieves gratification the child learns the diffe

• Through oral activities such as feeding. -rence between males an

• Thumb sucking, and babbling. . d females And becomes

The anal stage(2-3) Bbbb. Aware of sexuality.

The child learns to respond to some of. Latency
The demands of sociey Such as bowel the child’s continues
His development But
Bladder And control. ... . Sexual urges remain
Quiet.
• Genetial and Adult stage
• The growing adolescence shakes off old
. Dependencies And learns to deal maturaly
With the opposite sex
James Mark Bawdwin(1861-1934) distinguished between three stages of child developed.

Projective stage: the child is shaped by various suggestions of his significant others(motets)

Subjective stage: the child becomes aware of himself, devolps volition and is capable of effect.

Ejective stage: the child becomes able to identify with others, becomes able to say in effect what I feel other
must feel.
Harry slack Sullivan theory(1953)
The child’s symbolic Development

• According to Sullivan , child development proceeds through 3 stages:

• Paratoxic satge and it consists essentially of unconscious experiences.

• Parataxic stage: it consists of partial communication with others.

• Syntaxic stage sists of experiences that are fully encompassed by symbolic formulations.
Thses can be thought about oneself as commmunited with others
 Sullivan’ seven stages of human development

• Infancy
•
lasts from birth to the emergence of articulate speech.

Childhood: lasts up to the emergence of the need for playmates.

It is at this stage sensible communication with others emerges.
• The juvenile era:
. Lasts Up to the appearance of the need for intimate relations with others of equal status.
During this stage, both peers and new authority figures appear. Parents no longer appear
To be perfect. Belonging and being accepted is acquire crucial importance.
The youngster’s confidence becomes a reflection of his relations with his peer groups.
Preadolescence : is the period when the nned of intimate relations with others of the same sex appear. There
May be homosexual tendencies at this point but the intimacy is a platonic one.
• Adolescence:
• starts when sexual lust and genital errupt.

• Late adolescence: is when sexual activity becomes patterned.

• Adulthood: consists essentially of further growth insyntaxic experience(e.g) through education, work And
• Civic participation
 Where does socialization come from?
• The development of human self ineherntly implies others with whom it interacts. In other words, the
individual’s socialization reflects his family, his social class, media, the institutions and culture in which he
grows up.

• According to Mead, the sefl is is developed under the impact of significant and generalized others.

• The significant others are the individual’s immediate others, their parents, peers, those people who exert
their infleuce during primary socialization.

• The generalized other is the total community or group into which the individual is eventually socialized.
Hyman(1942) concept of reference group

• Hyman distinguished between a membership group and a reference group.

• Membership group: the group to which someone actually belongs.

• Refernce group: the group which someone employs as a basis of comparison for self-appraisal.
• E.g individual mayboreibt themselves to groups other than their own. This explains why the attitudes and
behaviour of individuals may deviate from what would be predicted on the basis of their group membership.
• In a nutshell, a reference group is an identification group.
• Merton coined the concept of anticipatory socialization.

• It refers to the process whereby an individual adopts the attitudes of a group to which he does not yet
belong- a reference group- but which he hopes to join at a later point.
• E.g. A graduate student who anticipate becoming a proffesor, the student body is the membership group,but
the faculty is his reference group
Revision of socialization theory
• Thomas and Znaniecki distinguished between three types personality types
• The Philistine person: is characterized as excessively conforming to others’ expectations.
• The bohemian person: is insufficient conformity to others.
• The creative person: is capable of responding to others in a selective and constrictive fashion.

• However, Hughes pointed out that the self’s responsiveness is variable. That is, there manybcases in which
the individual rejects and objects To abide by the opinions as well as normative behaviors of others
• Manford Kuhn(1934) also reconsidered the concept of other and the reference group.
• Instead, he proposed the orientational other and the role specific other.
• Orietational other: Is the kind if person who is important to the individual trans situationally, who provides
his with basic vocabulary, self concept and thenlike
• The role specific other: is only significant to the individual in a highly pecificrole sense
• E.g. An individual’s parents may be among his oreintational others, whereas his teacher or his employers
may only be role-specific other.
• Another refinement of reference group was made by Sgibutani(1955), he saw it as an audience as that
group, real or imaginary, whose standpoint, is being used as the frame of reference by the actor.
• Kemper suggested three types of reference group and its relation to achievement.
• The normative group: defines the role individual is to assume.
• The model group: provides exemplification of how the role is to be assumed
• The Audience : provides anticipation of rewards for outstanding performance in the role.
 Secondary Socialization

• How does socialization work?

• What does socialization provide?
• Later Stages of socialization
How does Socialization work?

• «Man conforms to societal expectations not only because he has

internalized those expectations but also, as Sullivan stressed, because
of a fundamental anxiety and need for acceptance»

Dennis Wrong 1961

Durkheim

• Believed that man learns to conform to the norms and morality of his culture
by gradually internalizing them .
• This is a process of gradual substitution of internal forces for external forces.
• Example: we obey the law out of our internal conscience, not out of our fear
from the police
Sigmund Freud
•he believed that human’s mind
consists of three parts: the id, ego, and superego.

•The development of these biological forces helps

shape an individual’s personality.
For Kando
• All men who grow up in a human society are socialized
• Being socialized does not mean that we inevitably internalized a
culture. And we do not need to be perfect role-players
• Stone and Farberman: Human behavior must be approached
dialectically by understanding the mechanisms of producing social
order/integration and the principles of individuality.
What does socialization provide?
• 1. Language
• 2. Roles
• 3. Morality
• 4. Culture, personality and even a national character
 Primary institutions Secondary Institutions
Basic Personality (government, religion…
( child rearing patterns)
 Later Stages of socialization

• 1. Adolescence
• 2. Adulthood and Beyond
Conformity to who?
• Parents?
• Peers?
 Adulthood and beyond
• Three major areas of Adult socialization by Brim in 1968:
• 1. Occupational: Localites and Cosmopolites
• 2. Family
• 3. Community socialization
 organizational socialization:
examining the individual‘s
participation in social organizations
where change is ongoing
Mannin 1970
Other instances of socialization
• A growing identity
• Status
• Rite of Passage
• Adjustment to death: Awareness of Dying
Conclusion:
• The socialization process determines the quality of a society and
therefore the well-being of its members.
• Socialization is education in its broader sense.
• The Western troubles are due to the socialization process failure.