Chapter 5

I. Social Experience: The Key to Our Humanity.

A.  Socialization is the lifelong social experience by which individuals develop their human potential and learn culture.

B.  Social experience is also the foundation for the personality, a person’s fairly consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.

C.  In the nineteenth century there was an intense debate regarding the relative importance of nature (biology) and nurture (socialization) in the shaping of human behavior. Modern sociologists view nurture as much more important than nature in shaping human behavior.

C1. Darwin: influence in late 19^th Century leads to Social Darwinism: people are “born” criminals,  capitalism is an outgrowth of natural drives, etc.  People from other cultures were biologically less developed, thus should be ruled via colonization.

C2. Watson, behaviorism:

D.  Research on the effects of social isolation has demonstrated the importance of socialization. This research includes:

1. Harry and Margaret Harlow’s experimental work with rhesus monkeys.

a, Importance of skinship: why no family bed in U.S.?

2. Studies of isolated children such as Anna, Isabelle, and Genie.

            a.         Anna: without social experience, a child is not able to operate or communicate in a meaningful way.

3. All evidence points to the crucial importance of social experience in

    personality development.

II. Understanding Socialization.

A.  Sigmund Freud: The elements of personality:

1.   The personality is shaped by two opposed forces: eros, the life instinct (sexuality, affiliation), and thanatos (aggressiveness, war, violence), the death instinct. 

2.   The personality includes three basic components:

a. The id, the human being’s basic drives. Desire

b. The ego, a person’s conscious efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives with the demands of society.  Rationality

c. The superego, the operation of culture within the individual. Morality

                          3.    The id and superego remain in conflict, but in a well-adjusted person,         the ego manages these two opposing forces.

                                    a. Conflict is childhood can lead to problems later.

                                    b. Superego serves to repress id, hopefully can lead to sublimation of drives into socially positive channels (work, education).

 4.  Critical review.

a. Freud’s notion that we internalize norms and his idea that childhood experiences have lasting importance in the socialization process remain critical.

b. Being “well adjusted” to whatever society is desirable to avoid neurosis.

B.  Jean Piaget: Cognitive development.

                        Cognition: how we make sense of the world.  Developmental stages correspond to brain development.  

1.   Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development:

a. The sensorimotor stage, the level of human development in which individuals experience the world only through sensory contact.  First two years.

b. The preoperational stage, the level of human development in which individuals first use language and other symbols.  Imagination.  2-6.

c. The concrete operational stage, the level of development at which individuals first perceive causal connections in their surroundings. 7-11.

d. The formal operational stage, the level of human development at which individuals think abstractly and critically. 12 and up.

                        1a. Point: Not stages, just notion of cognitive development.

2.   Critical review.

a. Piaget showed that human beings’ ability to shape their social world unfolds gradually as the result of both biological maturation and social experience.

b. His theory may not apply to people in a society.  Formal stage may not be necessary in pre-industrial society.  Research indicates 30 percent never reach formal stage.

C.  Lawrence Kohlberg: Moral development.

1.   Kohlberg suggests that the moral development of children passes through the preconventional (right is what feels good to me), conventional (teenager) (right is what pleases others, authority), and postconventional (abstract ethical principles) stages.

2.   Critical review.

a. Kohlberg’s model presents moral development in distinct stages.

b. Culturally specific.  Middle-class subjects.

D.  Carol Gilligan: The gender factor

1.   Gilligan found that boys’ moral development reflects a justice model which stresses formal rules, whereas girls put more emphasis on caring and responsibility and less on the rules.

           a. Rights over harmony.

2.   Critical review.

a. Gilligan’s work enhances our understanding of gender issues.  Associates difference with public and private spheres.

b.   However, she does not adequately address the issue of the origin of the gender-based differences that she has identified.  Nature or nuture?

E.  George Herbert Mead: The social self.

1.   The self is a dimension of personality composed of an individual’s self-awareness and self-image.

a. It emerges from social experience.

b. This social experience is based on the exchange of symbols.

c. Understanding someone’s intentions requires imagining the situation from that person’s point of view, a process called taking the role of the other.

d. Humans develop understanding of what another has in mind.  Not animals, computers.  Fuzzy logic.

e. Fully developed self requires ability to put oneself in the other person’s shoes.

f. By taking the role of the other, we become self-aware.

2. The Looking Glass Self - Cooley - As we interact with others, they become a "looking glass" in which we can see ourselves. What we think of ourselves, then, depends on how we think others see us.

3.   The self has a dual nature:

a. The “I” is the self as subject.

b. The “me” is the self as object.

4.   The self develops through several stages:

a. Imitation.

b. Play, in which children take the roles of significant others.

c. Games, in which they take the roles of several other people at the same time.  Life’s a game.

d. Acquisition of the generalized other, defined as widespread cultural norms and values we use as references in evaluating ourselves.  Being able to see ourselves in any role in the game.

5.   Critical review.

a. Mead showed that symbolic interaction is the foundation of both self and society.

b.  Mead: “No hard-and-fast lines can be drawn between our own selves and the selves of others.”

c. Is this the behavior that society really rewards?

d. Unlike Freud and Piaget, no biological role for Mead.

            F.  Erik H. Erikson: Eight stages of development.

1.      Erik Erikson viewed development as occurring throughout life by facing eight challenges:

a. Stage 1 — Infancy: the challenge of trust (versus mistrust).

b. Stage 2 — Toddlerhood: the challenge of autonomy (versus doubt and shame).

c. Stage 3 — Preschool: the challenge of initiative (versus guilt).

d. Stage 4 — Preadolescence: the challenge of industriousness (versus inferiority).

e. Stage 5 — Adolescence: the challenge of gaining identity (versus confusion).

f. Stage 6 —Young adulthood: the challenge of intimacy (versus isolation).

g. Stage 7 — Middle adulthood: the challenge of making a difference (versus self-absorption).

h. Stage 8 — Old age: the challenge of integrity (versus despair).

                        2.  Critical review.

a. Erikson’s theory views personality formation as a lifelong process.

b. Not everyone confronts these challenges in the exact order; nor is it clear that failure to meet the challenge of one stage means that a person is doomed to fail later on. And his theory may not apply to all peoples in all times.

    1) Cultural bias.  Japanese notion of otonashii.

III. Agents of Socialization

A.  The family is crucial. Socialization within the family varies markedly by social class.

            1) No substitute for caring parents (or others).

            2) Why decline of stay-at-home mom?

            3) Explicit lessons not as important as example, type of environment:

                        a) Includes role-modeling, explicit/implicit social learning

                        a) Safe, trustworthy or dangerous, chaotic?

            4) Family gives children a social identity:

                        a) Gender: what does it mean to be a boy/girl?

                        b) Race: but dominant race is different

                        c) Class: obedience (lower) vs independent judgment (upper)

                        d) Notion of cultural capital.  Differs according to class.

                           1) Advantage of wealthy not just money.  Social connections.  Ways of doing things.

B.  Schooling introduces students to being evaluated according to universal standards.

                         1.   Schools join with families in socializing children into gender roles.

2.   The hidden curriculum passes on important cultural values, such as competitiveness and a society of winners and losers, mostly implicitly.

3. First experience with bureaucracy, not being special.  How important is charm?

C.  Peer groups are also important, whose members have interests, social position, and age in common.

                        1. Children learn how to form relationships on their own.

1.   Anticipatory socialization, the process of social learning directed toward gaining a desired position, commonly occurs among peers.

2. Do peer groups line up according to race, ethnicity, class?  What else?

D.  The mass media, impersonal communications directed at a vast audience, also shape socialization. Television has become especially important in this regard.

1.   Virtual world becoming more and more important.

2.   Cable, Internet segments mass audience.

            E. Workplace, Military, all institutions can play a role in process of socialization that results in each person’s unique personality.

IV. Socialization and the Life Course.

A.  Childhood became an increasingly separate phase of life with industrialization; it is currently becoming shorter, more stressful, kids are growing up faster.

1.   Child Labor in Global Perspective. Industrialization prolongs childhood and discourages children from work.

B.     Adolescence is often a period of social and emotional turmoil reflecting cultural inconsistency. It is a time of social contradictions when people are no longer children but not yet adults. Like all phases of the life course, it varies with class position. Increasingly extends into twenties: Adultescent.

C.     Adolescence is a time when people are concerned about identity.  Grace Kao documented the importance of racial and ethnic stereotypes in students’ developing sense of self.

D. Adulthood is divided into several stages:

1.   Early adulthood involves working toward goals set earlier in life.  Increasingly chaotic.

2.   Middle adulthood is characterized by greater reflectiveness.  Is this still true?

E.  Old age begins in the mid-sixties. The U.S. is currently experiencing an increase in the elderly population.

                        1) Cult of youth.  Old age no longer associated with wisdom.

F.  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identifies five stages in coming to accept death: denial, anger, negotiation, resignation and acceptance. Death uniquely hidden in our society.

G.  The life course: Patterns and variations:

1.   Although linked to the biological process of aging, essential characteristics of each stage of the life course are socially constructed.

2.   Each stage presents characteristic problems and transitions that involve learning something new and, in many cases, unlearning what has become familiar.

3.   General patterns relating to age are always modified by social variables such as race and gender.

4.   People’s life experiences vary depending on when they were born. A cohort is a category of people with a common characteristic, usually their age.

V. Resocialization: Total Institutions.

A.  Total institutions are settings in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff.

B.  Their purpose is resocialization: radically altering an inmate’s personality through deliberate control of the environment.

C.  This is a two-stage process:

1.   The staff breaks down the new inmate’s existing identity.

                                    2.         The staff tries to build a new self.

            D. Rehabilitation or punishment?

            E. Foucault’s notion of panopticon.