Sociology

B.A. 1 Semester
st

(Major) SOC UG – 101

Basic Concepts in
Sociology
Topic : Socialization
 THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALISATION

Little of man’s behaviour is instinctive. Rather, man’s

behaviour is ‘learnt’ behaviour. The human child comes into
the world as a biological organism with animal needs. He is
gradually moulded in society into a social being and learns
social ways of acting and feeling. The continued existence
of society becomes impossible without this process. No
individual could become the person and no culture could
exist without it. This process of moulding and shaping the
personality of the human infant is called ‘Socialization’.
Definition of Socialization
1. Socialization is the “Process of working
together, of developing group responsibility,
or being guided by the welfare needs of
others.” - Bogardus
2. “Socialization is the process by which the
individual learns to conform to the norms of
the group.” – W. F. Ogburn
3. “Socialization is the process whereby one
internalizes the norms of his groups, so that a
distinct ‘self’ emerges, unique to this
individual”. – Horton and Hunt.
 Socialization is a Continues Process
Socialization is a process of inducting the individual into the
social world. It consist in teaching culture which man must
acquire and share. Socialization is social learning. This
learning is not intermittent but continuous.

Man belongs to different groups at different stages of his

life. As these groups change, so man must learn new rules,
new patterns of behaviour. Even though, we are members of
family all our life, we are constantly changing our rules within
it, acquiring new roles, dropping or modifying old ones. We
begin as children, pass through adolescence into adulthood,
marry, become parents, enter middle age, retire and grow old.
With each role come new patterns of behaviour that we must
learn. Thus, throughout our life, we are involved in the
socialization process.
 Stages of Socialization

Socialization consists of four stages from infancy

to adulthood. They are –
1. The Oral Stage
2. The Anal Stage
3. The Oedipal Stage, and
4. The Adolescence Stage.
1. The First Stage - The Oral Stage
This stage begins with the birth of the child and
continues up to the completion of one year. For
everything the child cries a great deal. By means of
crying the child establishes its oral dependency. The
child here develops some definite expectations about
the feeding time. The child also learns to give signals
for his felt needs. In this stage the child is involved in
himself and his mother. For the other members of the
family, the child is little more than a ‘possession’.
Freud called this stage – the stage of “primary
identification”. It means the child merges his identity
with that of the mother. The child only tries to
establish some control over the hunger drive.
2. The Second Stage - The Anal Stage
The second stage normally begins soon after the first
year and is completed during the third year. It is here that
the child learns that he cannot depend entirely on the
mother and that he has to take some degree of care for
himself. ‘Toilet training” is the main focus of new concern.
The child is taught to do some tasks such as toileting,
keeping clothes clean, etc.
The child in this stage internalizes two separate roles
– his own role and that of his mother. The child receives
‘care’ and also ‘love’ from the mother and learns to give
love in return. The child is enabled to distinguish between
correct and incorrect actions. The correct action is
rewarded and the incorrect action is not rewarded but
punished.
3. The Third Stage -The Oedipal Stage
This stage mostly starts from the fourth year of the child and extends
up to puberty (the age of 12 or 13 years). It is in this stage the child
becomes the member of the family as a whole. It is here the child has
to identify himself with the social role ascribed to him on the basis of
his sex.
According to Freud, the boy develops the ‘Oedipus Complex’ –
the feeling of jealousy towards father and love towards mother. In the
same way, the girl develops the “Electra Complex” – the feeling of
jealousy towards the mother and love towards the father.
In this stage sufficient social pressures are brought on the child
to identify with the right sex. Boys begin to be rewarded, for behaving
like boys and girls are rewarded for acting like girls. After the age of
six the child is able to understand the sexual difference. The boy tries
to identify himself with the father and the girl with the mother.
4. The Fourth Stage -The Adolescence
Stage
The fourth stage starts with the period of adolescence. Due to the
physiological and the psychological changes that take place within
the individual this stage assumes importance. During this stage the
boys and girls try to become free from parental control. At the same
time they cannot completely escape from their dependence on their
parents.
In the modern society the parents intend to give more freedom to
the boys and girls to do some of their activities independently. The
parents try to lessen the open expression of their emotional
attachment towards the adolescent children. They encourage them to
select their line of education, their occupation and their life-partners.
They expect the adolescent children to accept responsibility and
learn new roles assigned to them. The adolescents thus learn new
roles and new behaviour patterns and internalize new social norms
associated with them.
 Agents of Socialization
Peers or
Age
Mates

School
Agents of State
and
Teachers Socialization (Government)

Mass Family
Media of Religion and
Communi Parents
-cation
Family and Parents
The process of socialization begins for every one of
us in the family. Here, the parental and particularly
the maternal influence on the child is very great. The
intimate relationship between the mother and the
child has a great impact on the shaping of child’s
abilities and capacities. The parents are the first
persons to introduce to the child the culture of his
group. The child receives additional communications
from his older siblings, i.e., brothers and sisters, who
have gone through the same process – with certain
differences due to birth order and to the number and
sex of the siblings.
Peers or Age Mates

‘Peer groups’ means those groups made up of the

contemporaries of the child, his associates in school,
in playground and in street. He learns from these
children, facts and facets of culture that they have
previously learnt at different times from their parents.
The members of peer groups have other sources of
information about the culture – their peers in still
other peer groups – and thus the acquisition of
culture goes on.
School and Teachers
The school is the second agency of socialization. In
the school the child gets his education which moulds his
ideas and attitudes. Education is of great importance in
socialization. A well-planned system of education can
produce socialized person.
The teachers also play their role in socialization when
the child enters the school. It is in the school that the
culture is formally transmitted and acquired, in which the
lore and the learning, the science and art, of one
generation is passed on to the next. The communications
they receive from their teachers help to socialize them
and to make them finally mature members of their
societies.
 Mass Media of Communication

Radio, Television, Newspapers etc., is also another

source of socialization. The media of mass
communication give us their messages. These
message too contain in capsule form, the premises
of our culture, its attitudes and ideologies.
Religion
Religion has been an important factor in society for
molding our beliefs and ways of life. In every family
some or the other religious practices are observe on
one or the other occasion. The child sees his parents
going to the religious places and performing religious
ceremonies. The child's listens to religious sermons
which may determine his course of life and shape his
ideas. Through religious code it can even control the
behaviour of the individuals.
State (Government)

State also works as a secondary agent of socialization. It

makes laws for the people and lays down the modes of
conduct expected of them. The people have to
compulsorily obey these laws. If they fail to adjust their
behaviour in accordance with the laws of the state, they
may be punished for such failure. Thus, the state also
moulds our behaviour.
Suggested Readings

1. Abraham, M. Francis, 2006, Contemporary

Sociology : An Introduction to Concepts and
Theories, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
2. Giddens, Anthony, 2013, Sociology (7th Edition),
Polity Press , Cambridge.
3. Johnson, Harry. M., 1973, Sociology, Allied
Publishers, Bombay.