Course Code: CORE15

Course Title: UNDERSTANDING CULTURE, SOCIETY AND

POLITICS
Course Type: CORE
Pre-requisite: NONE
Co-requisite: NONE
Quarter: 1st
Course Topic: Becoming a Member of Society
Module: #4 Week: 7-8
Course Subtopic: Enculturation/Socialization
Conformity and Deviance
Course Description: At the end of the course, students should acquire
ideas about human cultures, human agency,
society and politics; recognize cultural relativism
and social inclusiveness to overcome prejudices; and
develop social and cultural competence to guide their
interactions with groups, communities, networks,
and institutions.
Course Outcomes (COs) and Relationship to Student Outcomes
Course Outcomes SO
After completing the course, the student must a b c d
be able to:
3. Identifies the development of one‘s self and
others as a product of socialization and D D D
enculturation.
* Level: I- Introduced, R- Reinforced, D- Demonstrated

BECOMING A MEMBER OF SOCIETY

ENCULTURATION/SOCIALIZATION

“The Human Mind at Birth Is Nothing But A Blank State, or Tabula

Rasa” - JOHN LOCKE

SOCIALIZATION
o Lifelong process of social interaction through which people acquire their
identities and necessary survival skills in society.
o It is considered as the central SOCIETY IS ORGANIZED

GROUPS WITHIN SOCIETY: PRIMARY AND SECONDARY

Primary groups
Are small and characterized by close, personal, and intimate relationships that
last a long time, maybe a lifetime. These relationships are deeply personal and
loaded with emotion. The members typically include family, childhood friends,
romantic partners, and members of religious groups who have regular face-to-
face or verbal interaction and a shared culture and frequently engage in
activities together.

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Secondary groups
Comprise relatively impersonal and temporary relationships that are goal- or
task-oriented and are often found in employment or educational settings. While
the relationships within primary groups are intimate, personal, and enduring,
the relationships within secondary groups are organized around narrow ranges
of practical interests or goals without which these groups would not exist.
Secondary groups are functional groups created to carry out a task or achieve
a goal.

Three Goals of Socialization

1) It teaches impulse control and helps individuals develop a conscience.
2) It teaches individuals how to prepare for and perform certain social roles
3) It cultivates shared sources of meaning and value

Enculturation
o Process of being socialized into a specific culture. Individuals learn
cultural symbols, norms, values, and language by observing and
interacting with family, friends, and the rest of society.
o The ‗self‘ is a sociological concept.
o George Herbert Mead- He is regarded as one of the founders of social
psychology and of what has come to be referred to as the Chicago
sociological tradition. This process is characterized by Mead as the "I"
and the "me. " The "me" is the social self and the "I" is the response to the
"me. " In other words, the "I" is the response of an individual to the
attitudes of others, while the "me" is the organized set of attitudes of
others which an individual assumes.

Identity formation (identities, disciplines, and aspirations)

 Which a person may use to adapt to the social world.
 Cote & Levin 2002, pp. 3–5developed a typology which investigated the
different manners of behavior that individuals may have. Their typology
includes:

Self-Concept- The sum of a being‘s knowledge and understanding of

his/herself. Components: – Physical – Psychological – Social attributes

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 o Cultural Identity- It is one‘s feeling of identity or affiliation with a group
or culture.
o Ethnic Identity - The Identification with a certain ethnicity, usually on
the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry
o National Identity- Is an ethical and philosophical concept whereby all
humans divided into groups called nation.
o Religious Identity- Is the set of beliefs and practices generally held by
an individual involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals

Norms and Values

Norms
a) Norms are standards of group behaviour: An essential characteristic of
group life is that it is possessed of a set of values which regulate the
behaviour of individual members. As we have seen already, groups do
not drop out of the blue with stabilized relationships among members.
Groups are the products of interaction among individuals.
b) Norms incorporate value judgements: Secord and Buckman say ―A
norm is a standard of behavioural expectation shared by group members
against which the validity of perceptions is judged and the
appropriateness of feeling and behaviour is evaluated.‖Members of a
group exhibit certain regularities in their behaviour.
c) Norms are related to factual world: It may not, however, be presumed
that norms are abstract representing imaginary construct. Sociologists
are interested mainly in ―operative‖ norms, that is, norms that are
sanctioned in such a way that violators suffer penalties in the group. For
example, most of the norms of the Sermon on the Mount, although often
referred to as norms, are not sanctioned; one is not punished sociality for
refusing to ―turn the other cheek‖.
Values
In sociology our concern is with social values. Social values are cultural
standards that indicate the general good deemed desirable for organised social
life. These are assumptions o what is right and important for society. They
provide the ultimate meaning and legitimacy for social arrangements and social
behaviour. They are the abstract sentiments or ideals. An example of an
important social value is, ―equality of opportunity‖. It is widely considered to be
a desirable end in itself. Aspects of the sociological concept of value
o Values exist at different levels of generality of abstraction
o Values tend to be hierarchically arranged
o Values are explicit and implicit in varying degrees
o Values often are in conflict with one another Filipino Values

Status and Roles

o Are important concepts in socialization because the behavior of young
members of society is controlled by assigning them a certain status
which they will enact.
o ―We can deal with anyone, we need to know who the person is‖

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Status:
‗Status‘ is the position that an individual is expected to hold in a group or a
community; and the behaviour that we expect from the person holding such a
person is his ‗role‘. Society itself works out into an orderly division of labour by
giving different persons different positions in it and assigning to each such
position of behaviour that would generally be expected of such person.
Sociologists find that status can be mainly of two types:
1. Ascribed status or inherited land ‗achieved‘ or acquired. If an
individual‘s status is determined at his birth, it would be regarded as an
ascribed status. Birth determines the sex and age of the child finally and
conclusively, as also his ethnic and family background. While age is a
changing factor in life, the, others remain unchanged; and in the United
States a baby born into a black family will have certain limitations which
the white baby will not suffer from.
2. Achieved Status will be important in such societies only which are not
very rigid about maintaining the differences between inherited statuses;
and on the question of rigidity no uniform observation can be made,
since standards, norms and ideas vary from one status to another.
However, now that inherited as well as acquired statuses are important
in most societies, we can even talk in terms of ‗multiple statuses‘.

Role:
In some sense of the word or the other, every individual adorning a status has
to play a role as if he were dramatizing it. An individual‘s role is the behaviour
expected of him in his status and in the determination of his relationship with
other members of his group. Two types of role conflict:
1. Role strain occurs when a person has difficulty meeting the
responsibilities of a particular role in his or her life. If you're reading this
right now at a time when you are having trouble keeping up with the
expectations on you as a student, learning all you need to learn, keeping
on top of the work involved, this means you are experiencing strain on
your role as a student.
2. Role manipulation ―Manipulation is an emotionally unhealthy
psychological strategy used by people who are incapable of asking for
what they want and need in a direct way,‖ says Sharie Stines, a
California-based therapist who specializes in abuse and toxic
relationships. ―People who are trying to manipulate others are trying to
control others.‖

CONFORMITY AND DEVIANCE

Social control
The active or passive process of a group regulating itself according to its beliefs,
principles, and values. A major purpose of social control is to stop or prevent
negative deviance, which is a break from established laws and values that may
be damaging to others. Just keep in mind that what is considered normal,
moral, valuable, ethical, or deviant varies from social group to social group.
That being said, there are two types of social control: informal and formal. Let's
take a closer look at both of these.

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 1. Informal Control Family, friends, and colleagues are three types of
people that exert informal social control, a type of social control that
stems from the approval or disapproval of people we associate with and
consider important.
2. Formal social control. This refers to organizations or systems that use
strict and delineated rules, values, morals, and the like that we are
commonly told or compelled to obey.

Forms of deviance
Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions or behaviors that violate
informal social norms or formally-enacted rules. Among those who study social
norms and their relation to deviance are sociologists, psychologists,
psychiatrists, and criminologists, all of whom investigate how norms change
and are enforced over time. Deviance is often divided into two types of
activities:
1. Formal Deviance: Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions
or behaviors that violate social norms, including formally-enacted rules
(e.g., crime), as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting
folkways and mores).
2. Informal Deviance: Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions
or behaviors that violate social norms, including formally-enacted rules
(e.g., crime), as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting
folkways and mores).

Human dignity, rights, and the common good

HUMAN DIGNITY
Human dignity can denote the special elevation of the human species, the
special potentiality associated with rational humanity, or the basic
entitlements of each individual. There are, by extension, dramatically different
normative uses to which the concept can be put. It is connected, variously, to
ideas of sanctity, autonomy, personhood, flourishing, and self-respect, and
human dignity produces, at different times, strict prohibitions and
empowerment of the individual. It can also, potentially, be used to express the
core commitments of liberal political philosophy as well as precisely those duty-
based obligations to self and others that communitarian philosophers consider
to be systematically neglected by liberal political philosophy.

HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex,
nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights
include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom
of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more.
Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.
 International Human Rights Law International human rights law lays
down the obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain

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 from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and
fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.
 The Human and Peoples' Rights Declaration of the Philippines We
assert that human and peoples‘ rights are our fundamental, inherent
and inalienable rights to life, dignity and development. We recognize that
these rights are universal, interdependent and indivisible and are
essential to fulfill and satisfy our civil, political, economic, social,
cultural, spiritual and environmental needs. They are what make us
human.

COMMON GOOD
From the era of the ancient Greek city-states through contemporary political
philosophy, the idea of the common good has pointed toward the possibility
that certain goods, such as security and justice, can be achieved only through
citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the public realm of
politics and public service. In effect, the notion of the common good is a denial
that society is and should be composed of atomized individuals living in
isolation from one another. Instead, its proponents have asserted that people
can and should live their lives as citizens deeply embedded in social
relationships. The notion of the common good:
 In Book I of the Politics, Aristotle asserted that man is political by
nature. It is only through participation as citizens in the political
community, or polis, provided by the state that men may achieve the
common good of community safety—only as citizens and through active
engagement with politics, whether as a public servant, a participant in
the deliberation of laws and justice, or as a soldier defending the polis,
that the common good can be achieved. Indeed, Aristotle argued that
only matters of the common good are right; matters for the rulers‘ good
are wrong.
 The notion of the common good was next taken up in the late 15th and
early 16th centuries in the work of Machiavelli, most famously in The
Prince. Machiavelli contended that securing the common good would
depend upon the existence of virtuous citizens. Indeed, Machiavelli
developed the notion of virtù to denote the quality of promoting the
common good through the act of citizenship, be it through military or
political action.
 For Rousseau, writing in the mid-18th century, the notion of the
common good, achieved through the active and voluntary commitment of
citizens, was to be distinguished from the pursuit of an individual‘s
private will. Thus, the ―general will‖ of the citizens of a republic, acting as
a corporate body, should be distinguished from the particular will of the
individual. Political authority would only be regarded as legitimate if it
was according to the general will and toward the common good. The
pursuit of the common good would enable the state to act as a moral
community.
 The importance of the common good to the republican ideal was
notably illustrated with the publication of the Federalist papers, in which

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 Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay provided a
passionate defense of the new Constitution of the United States.
Madison, for example, argued that political constitutions should seek out
wise, discerning rulers in search of the common good.
 In the modern era, instead of a single common good, an emphasis has
been placed upon the possibility of realizing a number of politically
defined common goods, including certain goods arising from the act of
citizenship. The common good has been defined as either the corporate
good of a social group, the aggregate of individual goods, or the ensemble
of conditions for individual goods.

Reference Book:
Ederlina D. Balena, Dolores M. Lucero, Arnel M Peralta Juanito Philip V.
Bernard, Jr. Understanding Culture Society and Politics

Online References:
 Socialization and enculturation - SlideSharewww.slideshare.net ›
edwardbenalet › socialization-and-enculturation
 Understanding Primary and Secondary Groups in Sociology
www.thoughtco.com › Sociology › Key Concepts
 Values and Norms of Society - Sociology Discussion
www.sociologydiscussion.com › Society
 Chapter 7. Deviance, Crime, and Social Control –
Introduction ...opentextbc.ca › introductiontosociology › chapter7-
deviance-crime-a...
 Human Dignity | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyiep.utm.edu › hum-
dign
 Human Rights | United Nationswww.un.org › sections › issues-depth ›
human-rights
 Common good | philosophy | Britannicawww.britannica.com › ... › Social
Movements & Trends

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 ACTIVITY 4:
SCENARIOS

Instructions: Read the following scenario and answer the questions

that follow.
Name: _____________________________ Grade &Section: ________________

Scenario 1
Your best friend chat you on Facebook; she said that she will no longer
go to school because she‘s pregnant. She badly wanted to continue
school however her parents wouldn‘t let her, they said she was a
disgrace to the family. What would you do?
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Scenario 1
Early morning you saw your friend at his seats sitting alone and
crying. You asked him why but he‘s not answering then you noticed
that again he has a bruised on his left lip and other part of his body.
What would you do?
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OPTIONAL
Paper Size: Short Bond Paper (Handwritten/Ttypewritten)
Font Style: Times New Roman/ Calibri (Body)
Font Size: 11

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