SOC SCI
a greater whole.
LESSON 1: SOCIALIZATION PROCESS & SELF-
MAKING
SOCIALIZATION AS A PROCESS OF BECOMING
FULLY HUMAN
 Society is created and constantly reproduced by
individual members.
 While society is inside the individual, it is also
equally true that the individual is also in a
society.
 Individuals in society are not just passive
members who just simply obey and follow social
norms and rules. They also contribute in
changing it.
 People are capable in changing the society
because they have autonomy and freedom. But
this freedom, however, is not absolute.
 It only means that society provides the pre-
given environment and resources by which
individuals create and continuously recreate
themselves.
 What do we need to do in order for us to
become a full member of the society?
 An individual has to acquire and learn all the
necessary social roles and skills required of a
competent member of that society.
 This process is called socialization.
 Socialization is traditionally seen as one-way
process in which society molds the individual to
conform to established social norms and roles.
Ex. traffic- no accident and gender- strait-
deviation/ discrimination.
 Social Determinism is a doctrine that says
individuals have no choice but to follow certain
factors or causes that control their behaviors.
Ex. student- no choice but to attend class- have
choice to absent/ drop.
 In short, Society provides the individuals with a
range of choices that enable them do certain
things while forfeiting other choices.
 Sometimes, with the absence of parental or
surrogate caregivers, Feral or wild children
were grown.
 They are like Tarzan or jungle boy who lacks
necessary skills and knowledge such as
language to be a competent member of society.
 The usual description of “modern self” is “self-
contained individual” or bounded masterful self.
This is also called sovereign self. This self as
existing independent from other selves.
 In western text and belief systems, persons
are separate from the world and society, and
can be understood apart from the situation,
context, or environment in which they are
found.
 In contrast, Confucian and Buddhist made a
holistic worldview, in which persons and
objects are understood and perceived as part of
 The Filipinos concept of kapwa is close to Asian
notion of self. Thus, social self is more
important than the individual self.
 The Filipino collectivist orientation is expressed
in sakop mentality, bayanihan, and damay.
 According to Leonardo Mercado, an SVD
priest who extensively studied Filipino Culture
“The Western concept of the self is similar
to the Filipino concept of “sarili”.
 “Sarili points not to man (tao) but to his being
a man (pagkatao or personhood).
 When sarili is used for action; paggalang sa
sarili, pagpapahalaga sa sarili, pagmamahal sa
sarili, and even makasarili… still pertains to the
personhood.
 According to Markus & Kitayama, “a disjoint
model of agency is common in North America.
 It emphasizes the importance of action that is
freely chosen and based on one’s own wishes,
preferences, and goals, not those of other
people.
 In contrast, a conjoint model of agency is
common in the East and in South Asia.
 In this model, actions are responsive to
obligations and expectations of others role, and
situations; preferences, goals, and intentions are
interpersonally anchored.
 In short, Asian concept of selfhood emphasizes
the value of kinship structure more than the
freedom of the individual.
 In collective societies, the individuals are
willing to sacrifice their personal happiness
and comfort for the sake of promoting the well-
being of the family or clan.
 Virgilio Enriquez, the father of SP makes a
fine distinction between Filipino sense of
kapwa and Western individualism:
 The ako (ego) and iba saakin (others) are one
and the same in kapwa psychology: Hindi ako
iba sa aking kapwa (I am no different from
others).
 In the dominant social scientific study of the
self, the traditional definition of the self and
identity in the west is supposed to apply to all
the people of the world. This approach is
referred to by social scientists as essentialism.
 Essentialist view of the self equates the self
with certain pre-given and unchanging
characteristics, such as gender and sexuality,
language, and rationality or reasoning capacity.
 Today, essentialist definition of the self is no
longer popular among psychologists and social
scientists.
 Self today is perceived as storied self, that is, a
self is always located and situated with the
larger context place and spaces.
  Subjectification is a product, neither of the
psyche nor the language, but a heterogeneous
assemblage of bodies, vocabularies, judgement,
technique, inscriptions, practices (Nikolas Rose).
 That is, the self is always created within a
specific group and place or geographical
location.
 Subjectification entails that our life are
necessarily linked, interweaved, and implicated
with the life stories of others and the
community.
 Therefore, one can only answer the question
“Who am I” if I can answer the question “Of
what story or stories do I find myself as
part?”
 One self-identity is ultimately derived from the
community is also, in a sense, a product of the
individual in interaction with the other selves.
 According to George Herbert Mead, the
concept of the self is acquired through the use
of symbolic gestures is called symbolic
interactionism.
 For Mead, the earliest form of communication
between animals is called gestures.
 Gestures are instinctive behaviors displayed by
animals in order to respond to another gesture
or send signal to another animal. Ex. Dog tail,
infants
ACQUIRING SELF, THE PROCESS OF SELF
CONSTITUTION
 Mead distinguishes between play and games…
for these activities that children acquire their
own selves.
 In play “the child is continually acting as a
parent, a teacher, a preacher, a police man, etc.
 Games, the child begins to take into
consideration the various roles of participants
simultaneously. Ex. Being an umpire.
 The full development of the self, therefore,
requires the acquisition of language, the
capacity for self-reflection using meaningful
gestures or consciousness, and the ability to
take into consideration the role-
expectations of others.
 Overall, the self emerges through interaction
with the others who also have the same
capacities and skills.
 On the other hand, the mid emerges from the
interactions to highly evolved biophysical human
organisms caught in an inescapable social,
interactional social, international social web.
 Mind develops through the use of symbolic
gestures, and later through language.
 The hallmark of the mind, therefore, is the
capacity to use the language and distinguished
the boundary between the self and the outside
world.
THE “I” AND “ME”
 Once the self develops, the individual is able to
assume the role of others.
 Ex. pass exam- tapped shoulder- the same with
other… Mead calls group of people as the
significant others.
 They are the individuals to whom a person is
intimate with immediate family members,
relatives, peer, group, and friends.
 The same student may also behave in proper
way towards his or her teachers because he or
she knows how the school will respond to his or
her impolite and rude behaviors towards
teachers and other authorities.
 This is called organized attitudes derived from
the generalized others.
 The median self has also an agency or to do
otherwise side called the “I” which responds on
an on-going moment to moment basis to the
me as well as to those constantly emergent
circumstances within which particular social
interactive conduct unfolds.
SOCIAL ROLES AND IDENTITY
 According to Harre and Langenhove, Identity is
a product of positioning within the discourse.
 Positioning refers to the discursive process
whereby people are located in conversation as
observably and subjectively coherent
participants in jointly produced storylines.
 In general, an identity designates a commonly
recognized set of persons.
 Ex. Teacher, doctor, athlete, janitor. Each
constitutes a social position but they have in
characteristic ways.
 Persons who shares roles are also likely to share
a common identity but identity could also mean
personal identity.
 Personal identity is the most elementary type
of identity. It refers to the social classification of
an individual with self-description drawn from
one’s biography and singular constellation of
experiences.
 Personal identity, of course does not rise out of
nowhere. It is a product of unique social
biography of the individual.
 Positioning can be two kinds: one position
one’s self in a discourse – first order
positioning or contest one’s position second
order positioning.
 If one narrates one’s position it is called
accountive positioning.
 Positioning is reciprocal. Ex. Daughter to
parent teacher to student.
 The study of roles is called role theory, a
science concerned with the study of
behaviors that are characteristics of persons
within contexts and with various processes that
presumably produce, explain, or are affected by
those behaviors.
  Problems may be encountered with the roles a
person takes on, too.
 Some roles are difficult to perform and take
grate native ability of years of practice to learn.
 Sometimes the person is subjected to
incompatible role expectations (or role
conflict) wherein he or she is required to do
two or more things that cannot all be done.
 Sometimes he or she suffers from role
overload, when too much is asked of the
person.
 Sometimes his or her role behavior is judged as
deviant by the society, and the person is
subject to punishment or institutionalization until
he or she learns more appreciate roles.
GENDER AND SOCIALIZATION
 One of the most significant of a person’s identity
is gender.
 Woman creates naturally from within her own
being, whereas man is free to, or forced to,
create artificially, through cultural means, and in
such a way to sustain culture.
 Mothers are expected to feed infants… sa
bahay… magluto. This view is mainly responsible
for devaluation and subordination of women.
 Feminist argue that this devaluation of women is
a product of patriarchy.
 Under patriarchy, women, to construct and
maintain their gender, try to live up to dim-
witted, acquiescent, money-hungry, sexual
standards imposed on them by men, who
control the culture.
 Yet some feminist scholars argue that sexual
and reproductive capacities of women make
them superior to men.
 Alice Rossi identified biological differences in
the responsiveness of women and men to
children.
 As consequence, equality between sexes should
not be achieved through women and
abandoning childcare responsibilities to others.
 Women can gain power and equality by
developing their unique traits and personal
capabilities.
 According to de Beavoir, one becomes a
woman through the process of socialization.
 Even if the infant is born without the
consciousness of her sexuality through the
family and medical institution.
 Acquiring gender identity and learning sexual
scripts is like learning and acquiring roles,
people learn and acquire what John Gagnon and
William Simon call as “sexual scripts”.
 Sexual and gender script are learned in
everyday life through interaction with others.
CULTURE AGAINST NATURE
 Many people think that gender is something
cultural and sex is biological.
 But Anne Sterling, explains that there are at
least 5 biological sexes, not 2 that we normally
think. These are called intersexed… which
means that they share some characteristics of
both male and female.
 There are 3 general categories of
intersexed persons.
1. True hermaphrodites – people who
have one ovary and one testis.
2. Male pseudo hermaphrodites –
people who have testis, no ovaries, but
some elements of female genetalia.
3. Female pseudo hermaphrodites –
people who have ovaries, no testis, but
some elements of male genetalia.
GENDER AND SOCIALIZATION
 In other words, a person’s primary sex
characteristics may not match his or her sex
chromosomes (genetic).
 Edwin Segal, an American anthropologist, list
four different forms of gender variation among
cultures.
 But most people in Western societies have been
socialized to believe that there are only 2 exes
and that these categories are natural and
normal.
 By acknowledging the diversity of expressions of
sexuality, many sociologists define sexuality not
as a fixed trait but rather as doing.
THE SELF, GENDER AND BODY
 Based on the previous discussion, it is admitted
that self and identity cannot be divorced or
separated from the concept of the material
body.
 Embodiment means selves and identities are
located in specific social and cultural position.
 …women- sexy malaking tiyan are corrupt
politicians and policeman.. magkapantay and
paa- patay na. Collective shoulders- balikatan.
 The intestine shows the social dimension.
Kaputol or utol (part of the umbical chord)
means brother or sister.
 Kapatid or patid (part of the umbilical chord)
 Offspring “flesh of my flesh” laman sa aking
katawan
 With embodiment perspectives, the body is
conceptualized simultaneously both as a natural,
physical entity and as produced through cultural,
symbolic practices.
LESSON 2: SOCIALIZATION & ASSERTION OF
AGENCY
SELF-MAKING AND AGENCY
 Based on the previous discussion of Mead’s
analysis of emergence of the self that
socialization is not a one-way process.
 Erving Goffman, the father of
dramaturgical sociology, in his study of total
 institutions, or institutions that completely molds
its members like convents, prisons, and asylums,
put forward the idea that socialization has two
kinds…
1. Primary Socialization refers to
molding of the members according to
the norms and rules of the group.
2. Secondary Socialization refers to a
situation “when an individual
cooperatively contributes required
activity to an organization and under
required conditions.”
 He is transformed as co-operator, becomes the
normal, programmed, built-in member.
 In secondary socialization, the individual
uses what he or she has learned from primary
socialization and uses it to circumvent the rules
of society for his or her own advantage. Ex.
Borrowing books, student pretending listening
 Resistance – according to Foucault, a
rebellious attitudes of people towards social
norms and rules. “Whenever there is power,
there’s resistance.”
 This means that social norms and regulations
are not totally repressive. They do not
completely extinguish people’s capacity to resist
those norms imposed on them.
 Ex. Student told to be quiet… for him to be
disciplined
 Agency – refers as the capacity to possess
internal powers and capacities, which, though
their exercise, make her an active entity
constantly intervening in the course of events
ongoing around her.
SOCIALIZATION AND DEVIANCE
 When daily resistance of people against social
norm or regulation breaks into a moral panic, it
turns into a form of deviance.
 Moral panics are social currents that mobilize
the majority of the people to condemn certain
acts and groups that are considered to be
threats to social orders.
 Deviance is often the root of moral panics.
Deviance encompasses a variety of forms of
human conduct that have been defined or
reacted to by the members of society.
 The sociology of deviance is the study of
social forces and processes involved in the
formulation of such evaluative standards,
violations of those standards and reactions to
such violations.
 Sociologists generally defined Deviance as
violation of society’s norms and rule that calls
forth censure, condemnation, or a punishment
for the violator.
 Ex. Rape, crimes, sexual perversions, drug base,
abortion, etc.
 The earliest attempt to define and examine
deviance falls under the rubric of essentialism.
 In this theory, deviance is an inherent property
of an individual or the act that merits social
control and regulation. Theories that fall under
this school tend to argue that deviance is an
objective aberration in the normal development
of individuals.
 Historically, the earliest attempt to explain
deviance is through religious language and
imageries.
 Ex. Demonology, criminals where possessed
by demons… then women alleged as witch or
being in league with the devil.
 Reductionism happens when one explains a
phenomenon or an event purely on a single
cause or in a single perspective to the exclusion
of other explanations.
THE BIOLOGICAL MODEL OF DEVIANCE
 The biological model of deviance is the
earliest attempt to come up with a scientific
explanation of deviant behavior.
 The biological view has been used extensively in
criminology or the scientific study of crimes
and their control.
 In this view, crimes are the products of
biological factors like the shape of the body,
the shape of the skull, hereditary, and
genes.
 Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) – an Italian
physician and criminologist, provided the earliest
attempt to explain the nature of criminal
behavior.
 According to Lombroso, criminals are
distinguished from non-criminals by their
atavistic characteristics.
 Criminals are people who have reverted back
their primary animal instincts.
 Physically, they could identified such items as a
sloping forehead, ears of unusual size,
symmetry of the face, excessive length of arms,
asymmetry of the cranium and other physical
stigmata.
 The criminal man used racial hierarchy theory
to explain criminal behavior… Four categories of
criminals.
o Born criminals – people with physical
primitive-like characteristics.
o Insane criminals – includes idiots,
imbeciles, paranoiacs, epileptics, and
alcoholics.
o Occasional criminals or criminaloids
– people of have pre-dispositions to
commit crimes.
o Criminals of passion – are those
motivated to commit crime because of
emotional motivations.
 The significant contribution of Lombroso is that
he begun to look at deviance from a scientific of
view. This is called positivist criminology.
  Rather than tracing criminal behavior to demonic
possessions, positivist criminologist based their
theories and explanations on the findings of
biology and evolutionary theory.
 Later, Lombroso, influenced the modern
Eugenics Movement or those scientists who
advocate the improvement of the condition of
the human race through biological means.
 Later, W. Sheldon, proposed a theory of crime
which traces criminality and deviance to certain
body types. He associated temperaments to
body types.
 First, endomorphs, tended to be soft, fat
people.
 Second, mesomorphs, muscular and athletic
build
 Third, ectomorphs, skinny, flat and fragile
 Sheldon concluded that most offenders tended
to be belong to the second type.
 He believed that criminals behavior were
inherited from the family.
 Another biological explanation is called
phrenology that explains the existence of
deviance through the shapes of the skull.
 It is believed that the mind was made up of
specific functions or faculties: lower or active
propensities (crime causation), moral
sentiments, and intellectual faculties.
 In this view, crime is caused by
overdevelopment of some parts of the
brain and underdevelopment of other
parts.
 Lastly, the more recent attempts to ground the
study of deviance, especially crimes, are based
on hereditary, hormones, brain structure, blood
sugar level, substance abuse and even diet.
 Senator Tito Sotto delivered a privilege
speech urging his colleagues to bring back the
death penalty for heinous crimes.
 Early this year, Sotto filed Senate Bill No.
2080 or the Act Imposing Death Penalty in
the Philippines.
 “whether it is murder, rape, drug
manufacturing, pushing or using, the
numbers are on rise. Criminals have more
fun in the Philippines,” he said, with
reference to the country’s tourism slogan “It’s
more fun in the Philippines.”
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DEVIANCE
 Social Constructionism is a theory that states
objects can only be known through some
theoretical assumptions, and these assumptions
are themselves relative to a given historical and
cultural context.
 Howard Becker in Outsiders (1963) states
that deviance “is created by society…social
groups create deviance by making the rules
whose infraction constitutes deviance and by
applying those rules to particular people and
labelling them as outsiders.
 From this point of view, deviance is not the
quality of the act the person commits, but rather
a consequence of the application by other rules
and sanctions to an “offender”.
 The deviant s one to whom that label has
successfully been applied. Deviant behavior is a
kind of behavior that people so label.
DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL
 Social control by E.A. Ross is a central and
important concept in sociology. The term was
used to describe the processes societies
developed for regulating themselves.
 Social control meant social regulation. The
greatest social control power comes from having
the authority to define certain behavior,
persons, and things.
 A conflict approach sees definition of deviance
that exists to a given society as ideological
products of interest group competition or class
conflict.
 Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white
collar crime”. In his book, he defined it as “a
crime committed by a person of respectability
and high social status in the course of his
occupation.”
 When criminologists think of criminals, they too
casually think of males, and for reasons that are
not just imaginary.
 Another less discussed deviance us hate
crimes. Barbara Perry, defines hate crimes as a
“mechanism of power intended to sustain
somewhat precarious hierarchies, through
violence and threats of violence.
 Lesbians, gays, transgender, white vs. black
 Deviance designations are produced and
influenced more by the powerful and applied
more to the powerless.
 The same explanation applies to those labelled
by society as sick such as those with HIVs and
AIDs.
DEVIANCE, IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER?
 Sociologist argue that deviance is culturally and
socially relative. Ex. sexuality in Greece…legal
use of marijuana…pornography is legal…violence
of women
 Hence, sociologist of deviance do not only study
the process of labelling and constructing of
deviant identities and labels, but also focus on
how certain power relations enable others to
label other groups as “outsiders”
 With the growing proliferation and rise of many
forms of subculture around the world, life styles
and behaviors that have been considered taboo
in the past are now openly displayed by people.
 If deviance is relative, and if culture is changing
and dynamic then one can safely conclude that
 what is deviant today might be normal  Cosmopolitan consciousness results when
tomorrow. people become aware that there are other
THE SELF IN AGE OF 2.0 TECHNOLOGY cultures than their own. They welcome
 Fast capitalism refers to the accelerated opportunities to know their cultures as cultural
movement of people, information and goods enriching.
through technological innovations and internet-
mediated communications.
 Politics of Identity or life politics is a new
political trend emerging in globalization which
concerns political issues which flow from the
processes of self-actualization in post-traditional
context.
 Kenneth Gergen coined the term “saturated
self” used to describe the identities of people
living in the globalized world.
 People can adopt multiple personalities and
identities through engagement in social media
and other social networks.
VIRTUAL SELF
 Another challenge to traditional view and
definition of self is the rise of “digital self” or
“virtual self”.
 Ben Agger defines virtual self as “referring to
the person connected to the world and to others
through electronic means, such as internet,
television, and cellphones.
 Virtuality is the experience of being online and
using computers; it is the state of being,
referring to a particular way of experiencing and
interacting with the world.
 The virtual self is the product of cyberspace.
 Through the mediation of the Internet people
can interact with one another in
“telecopresence” (Zhao 2003) without being
physically copresent.
 Telecopresence is an electronically mediated
social context for human interaction.
 Cyber self is gradually effacing the pace of self
(Waskul and Douglass 1997). Online chat
dissolves the vestiges of the embodied self.
Databases digitalize identity (Poster 1996).
Surveillance through CCTVs and other similar
devices is no longer forcibly enforced on
obedient subjects.
GLOBALIZATION AND THE HYBRID SELF
 Cultural globalization tends to produce one of
the three outcomes: differentiation,
assimilation, or hybridization.
 Cultural hybridization refers to the “ways in
which forms become separated for existing
practices and recombine with the new forms
new practices then Hybridization of Self
refers to the processes in which individual
combines different symbolic forms and styles
from different cultural forms to produce highly
flexible or protean self.
 Glocalization or the mixing of local and global.
Ex. fliptop