Agents of Socialization:

Groups and organizations

SOC10500 INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETY (FALL 2020)
PROF. BILES
Week 5: Key questions

 What factors influence the process of socialization? How do we develop a

sense of self?
 What is primary socialization? Secondary socialization?
 What are total institutions? What is resocialization? Conformity?
 What are the characteristics of primary social groups? Secondary groups?
 What are social networks? Are they primary or secondary groups? Why?
 What are the different types of leadership and leadership styles?
 What are formal organizations? What are the different kinds of organizations?
 What is rationalization? What does the McDonaldization of society refer to?
 What are bureaucracies? What are the characteristics of bureaucracy?
How does socialization take place?

 Development of self (Mead)

 Distinct identity that is developed through
social interaction
 Sense of “self” by being able to view
oneself through eyes of others
 Through socialization we put ourselves in
someone else's shoes and look at the
world through their perspective
 Race, gender and class socialization
 Moral development perspectives
 Age (Kohlberg) and gender (Gilligan)
Who are the primary agents of socialization?

 Primary socialization
 Small, informal groups closest to us
 Family
 First agent of socialization
 socialization depends on specific
context
 Peer groups
 Comprised of people similar in age,
social status, share common interests
 Provide first socialization experience
outside the realm of the families
Secondary socialization

 Larger and more impersonal groups that are

task-focused and time limited
 Workplace
 Religion
 Media
 Schools
 Socializing children into behaviors like
practicing teamwork, following a schedule
 Hidden curriculum
 informal teaching done in schools that
socializes children to societal norms
Socialization across the lifespan

 Five milestones that define

adulthood (Henig)
 Completing school
 Leaving home
 Becoming financially independent
 Marrying
 Having a child
 Millennials vs. baby boomers?
Total institutions and resocialization

 Group members live a controlled lifestyle

and in which total resocialization occurs
 Resocialization
 Process by which old behaviors are
removed and new behaviors are learned
in their place
 Examples
 Military
 Clergy
 Cults
Social groups

 A group is a collection of at least two people who interact with some

frequency and who share some common sense of identity
 Aggregates
 collection of people who exist in the same place at the same time, but who
don’t interact or share a sense of identity
 Primary groups
 Small, people who engage in long-term emotional ways
 Serve emotional needs, (expressive) rather than pragmatic, functions
 Secondary groups
 Larger and more impersonal, often task-focused and time-limited
 Serve instrumental functions
Social networks

 Groups as set of “nodes” who

are interconnected in different
ways
 Strength of weak ties
 Are networks primary or
secondary groups?
 Primary and secondary groups?
 Examples
 Private Facebook group
 Online SOC105 class at CCNY
Leaders and group leadership

 In primary groups, leadership can be informal; in secondary groups,

leadership is often formal
 Types of leadership
 Instrumental
 Goal-oriented and largely concerned with accomplishing set tasks
 Expressive
 Concerned with process and ensuring people’s emotional wellbeing
Leadership styles

 Democratic
 Encourages group participation
and consensus-building
 Authoritarian
 Issues orders and assigns tasks
 Laissez-faire
 Hands-off, allows members of the
group to make their own decisions
Conformity

 Extent to which an individual

complies with group or societal norms
 Milgram experiment
 Measured willingness of diverse groups
of people to obey an authority figure
who instructed them to perform acts
conflicting with their personal
conscience
 Group think
 Narrowing of thought, group members
think there is only one correct answer
Theoretical perspectives on groups

 Functionalist perspective
 What macro-level needs does the group serve?
 For example, the NRA advancing second amendment rights
 Conflict perspective
 How does one group use its power for its benefit at the expense of the
rest of society
 For example, CEOs and pharmaceutical companies
 Symbolic Interactionist perspective
 Day-to-day interactions of groups, focusing on leadership and group
dynamics
Formal organizations

 Modern life is dominated by

large, impersonal organizations
 Schools,hospitals.
corporations, government
agencies
 Highly bureaucratized
 Bureaucracies an as “ideal”
organizational type
Types of formal organizations (Etzioni)

 Utilitarian organizations
 People join in search of a specific
material reward or goal
 Normative (voluntary) organizations
 Based on shared interests,
participation is voluntary
 Coercive organizations
 People must be forced to join
 Tend to be total institutions
Characteristics of modern formal organizations

 Modern formal organizations are premised on rationalization

and a rational worldview
 Traditional worldview
 Takes status quo of society as given
 Rational
 Critical thinking and the pursuit of efficiency
 Rationalization
 Belief modern society should be built around logic and
efficiency rather than morality or tradition
McDonaldization of society (Ritzer)

 Increasing presence of the fast food

business model in formal organizations
 Efficiency
 Customer orientation
 Division of labor
 Predictability
 Calculability,
 Control (monitoring).
 Irrationality of rationality
Bureaucracies

 Formal organization constructed rationally to do things efficiently

 Characteristics (Weber)
 Hierarchy
 Centralized authority
 Specialized roles
 Clear division of labor
 Explicit rules
 Impersonality
 Meritocracy
Oligarchy

 Role of the many by the few

 Iron law of oligarchy
 Although bureaucracy may
be democratic in theory, its
structure leads to
concentration of power
 Theory that an organization is
ruled by a few elites rather
than through collaboration
Scientific management (Taylorism)

 Application of rationalization to organization of industrial

production
 Determine the best way for worker to do job
 Break down job into individual steps or components, determine
essential functions, eliminate superfluous activities, observe and
time workers
 Provide proper tools and training
 Provide incentives for good performance
 Increase productivity