Socialization

● Socialization: comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual into the objective

world of a society or a sector of it
○ Process by which society enters the individual, enters their sense of self
○ Your realization of society around you comes simultaneously with realization of
yourself
○ Objective world: everything outside of subjective world, culture, social structure
■ Subjective world is our inner world, the world of our minds, our thoughts,
only the individual has access to the subjective world
○ Culture is like our second nature because it becomes part of our mental
categories
● Socialization occurs simultaneously with the development of self (identity)
○ Self is this ability to step outside of our immediate experiences and reflect on
ourselves as an object from the outside
○ How are we able to do this?

Cooley: Looking-glass self

● The way we escape our immediate circumstance is by:
○ imagining how we appear to others
○ We interpret their reactions
○ We develop a self concept
● We need other people to see our social selves from the outside, we need society to do
self ability
● We have the ability to guess what is going on in what is going on inn toher people’s
subjective realities thru interpreting cues
● It is a lifelong process as we are continuously involved in the development of self
○ As we move thru different social institutions and move thru various people, our
self changes because we are reflecting off of different people and societies

Mead: Role Taking; Primary Socialization

● George Herbert Mead: Father of symbolic interactionism
○ Philosopher, sociologist
○ Mind, self, and Society book based off his teaching
● Mind self and society book
○ Argues that Society comes first, every self and mind has grown up in society
○ Without society you can’t become a coherent self
● Believed that children go thru three stages in the development of the self (similar to
berger and luckmann; they were influenced)
○ Imitation: children have capacity to imitate significant others (adults)
■ We are hardwired to imitate from birth
● A newborn can mimic facial expression
 ● We can read and mimic emotional states of others, and feel them
too (empathy)
■ That's why we are able to read minds
○ Play-pretend to be significant others
■ Ie dressing up, playing super heroes, playing house
■ They have the ability to be someone ellse; that means you are able to
take on their perspective and imagine how they are able to see me
■ They can start to reflect off of other people at this stage, but its not
coherent
○ Games- generalized other-
■ Move from notion that there is a significant other to a generalized other
■ What the group things about the individual; the individual takes on
multiple roles
●
■ Ie. when you can play baseball, you have to simultaneously understand
all the roles of the game (pitcher, batter, basers)
■ Reflecting off of others becomes coherent; apple to have a more coherent
self
● What does society think about me
● The external world becomes generalized and the self becomes
generalized; we start to have self concept
■ Only humans are able too reflect off of generalized other and abstract
concepts about society
■ Primary socialization is not fixed, your self concept changes; they can
be modified and altered, but it never goes away; The initial induction to
the world is important

Socialization and Social Location

● Socialization does not provide us with neutral vantage point (god's eye view of society)
● Socialization largely depends on our social location
○ There is no objective view of society
○ Our social location that we are brought into makes us see society in a certain
way, and gives us a particular sense of self simultaneously
○ Berger and luckmann: (the social construction of reality) reality is filtered thru the
social world; it is real tho; the way we see it is very particular
■ That’s why society seems so natural to us and not artificial and why its
hard to talk to others; this is due to a deep level of socialization
undergone by individuals

Agents of Socialization
● Who socialize the individual
○ The family: part of primary socialization (initial induction of the world)
■ Family of orientation vs Family of procreation
 ■ The way i bring my child into the world will have a huge effect on how
they see themselves and the world
○ Religion:
■ It shapes how we think about the world, how we behave, and our identity
■ Religion orients us to a belief about ultimate reality;
● thru this our social reality is interpreted by this ultimate realty
● It tells us What society should look like
○ Educational system
■ The educational system socializes us in particular ways
■ The system is different by social class and socializes different social
classes in different ways
● Tells us what it means to be a good citizen,
● how we think about authority and how we should treat them, and
that is different based on your social class (lareau)
○ Gendered
■ All prepare
○ Peer groups
■ We assign ourselves to certain peer networks, and these are influential
■ Do peers or parents matter more for adolescent formation?
■ They shape our understanding
■ We are secondary socialized by peer groups
○ Mass media
■ Mass media frames external world outside ourselves
■ Most of the world we see is immediate, but the broader world (other
countries) is experienced thru mass media (tv, internet, news papers)
■ Mass media influences how we see the world and how we see ourselves
in this broader world
■ Mass media frames the facts, don’t just present them; this is socialization
● Secondary socializations, are the other factors besides family, they shape how we see
the world around us, and therefore how we see ourselves as well

Socialization and the Life Course

● The life course: the way we move thru oour own lives after we are socialized by primary
socialization
○ Culturally defined stages of life
● Physiological development
○ We age and move thru life
● The culture defines certain aspects od the life, and they are not fixed, they are particular
to our culture and time, an that affects how we see ourselves too
● Childhood (0-12)
○ Time line is universal, but How we understand childhood and what it means to be
a child is not universal
■ In medieval europe, children were mini adults NOW in US, childhood is a
protective distinct phase from adulthood
 ■ (clay) Children need to be formed and actively altered and trained into
adults OR (flower) do children just bloom into adults on their own
● Adolescence (13-17)
○ Adolescence is Not universal
○ Not every society has adolescence
■ Adolescence emerged 100 years ago
■ The culture that you are in shapes the way your brain develops, Brain is
■ Teenager was not always there; american teen notion
● Emerging adulthood (18-29)
○ People in their 20s are not full adults but not teens either
○ This is a new cultural category
○ In the past, people went from adolescence to full adulthood immediately
■ Inn 1960, the five markers of adulthood was You had to leave home, get
married, and have kids, adn finish school
■ Ths happened in a certain order
■ NOW these markers have become later, and don’t happen in order
● The middle years (30-65)
○ This range creeps older and older as people redefine what it means to enter into
late life
○ The middle years is where there is stability of identity and career
○ Pressures to
■ Caring for kids and caring for parents cause stress
● Older years (65+)
○ Retirement
○ What defines elderllly and end of life changes
○ The way people think about religion, shifts, they become more spiritual and
internally oriented; this changes how wee think; this \
○ In our society we don’t think of elderly period as least value
■ In other societies, they value elderly period

Transition to adulthood
● What are the traditional markers of transition from adolescence to adulthood
○ Finish school
○ Leave home
○ Get school
○ Get married
● Broad historical trends
○ Standardization vs individualization
○ The transition was very standardized b/w 1900-1960
● Leaving home
○ Now is increasingly delayed and impermanent
○ Roughly half of 18-24 yrs olds live with parents
● Finish school and get full time job
○ Less defined
 ● Age of marriage and parenthood has been increasing
○ Timing of first marriage is much more diverse
○ Cohabitation is increasing
○ Increased rate of out of wedlock births
It is less and less important to hit these markers to become an adult and its more important that
you feel like an adult