Lecture 3: Norms, Culture, Socialization

Impact of anthropology on perceptions of “primitive” societies:

End of 19th: social anthropology challenges:
● “Savage” – primitive communities organised by
norms + have social order
● Racialist explanation of diversity → dif are
social, not natural/divine
Atitudes in primitive com NOT primarily determined by:
● Normative: “lower morals” – do not believe in
Christianity
● Evolutionist: inferior stage of dev
● Diffusionist: lack of contact w Western
civilization
a social order beyond common (exterior) images of
organization
Bronislaw Malinowski:
● “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” (1922) –
fieldwork in PNG → ethnographic fieldwork
○ “governed by authority, law and order in
their public and personal relations”
○ Repel idea of “savages”
● Systematic participatory observation – sci
method in sociology
● Rebuttal of:
○ exoticization of Oceanians – “cannibals”
○ naturalisation of differences through
racial theories → sci racism by Arthur de
Gobineau (social hierarchy)

Margaret Mead:
● Vision of gender, sexual freedom – intellectual engine for sexual rev of 1960s
● Social constructivust view – all norms are socially constructed
● “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies” (1935) – PNG
○ Men = naturally violent, aggressive VS women = gentle, emotional
○ Compares 3 societies in PNG:
■ Arapesh → both gentle, sensitive and peaceful
■ Mundugumor → both violent, aggressive and competitive.
■ Chambri → men gentle + involved in aesthetic activities VS women aggressive
and authoritarian → reliance on bow and arrow = force not that important
○ Counters biological determination of male and female dispositions → “temperament”
socially determined
○ Adrienne Mayor “The Amazons Amazon”: women fighters cuz agility + dexterity

● 20th: Levi Strauss – structuralists → there are rigid rules for all societies that
provided solid foundations for all social life
● Cultural relativism – community’s culture should be understood in context of source

Evolution of Culture:
● 1950-60s: deterministic relationship btwn culture and individuals (no deviation)
○ Culture – abstract belief system that hovers over human society and
automatically influences Individuals at birth without their knowing
○ Ppl become cultural dopes – active carriers – act out standardised directives
provided by culture
○ Explains reproduction of culture
○ Ex. Talcott Parsons
● 1960s-70s: nuanced relationship btwn macro culture and indv agents → society not
an integrated whole/organism = more conflictual
○ Toolkit approach – culture not abstract beliefs but practice-oriented
○ not only restricts actions but allows one to see/act in way that otherwise cant
 What is culture?
● Culture as a system of norms and representations of the world
● Culture: “is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (E.B. Tylor)
● Culture = a “tool-kit” from which people build their actions and through which they attribute
meanings (A. Swidler, “Culture in action”) – includes

Practical routines: Systems of evaluation and justification (Boltanski &

● Drinking tea in morning/evening
● Eating with a fork
Interactional roles (Goffman):
● How to act like an employee, student
● different use of the title doctor
Frame (Goffman):
● associating characteristics with others
● Low pants = delinquency
Representations of the world
● existence of angels and devils
● Racial hierarchy
● way in which we interact and
engage with our environment
Interactional repertoires (Swidler)
Narratives (Frazer):
● Way ppl see the world constructed by
stories told by community or
themselves
● Social mobility = work ethic
Thévenot):
● axiology (moral system of evaluation)
● hierarchization of ppl according to their
greatness → def depends on culture + context
(loyalty vs hard work)
Symbolic boundaries (Lamont)
● Econ boundary – rich vs poor
● Moral boundary – good person vs bad
● Cultural boundary – what is acceptable and
what is not
Grammars and regimes of action (Boltanski):
● Grammars – regime of action in which
we follow routine cuz know norms
● Regime of critique – when change
norms
● Rwandan genocide → how does it go
from routine to genocide? And from
genocide to routine?
○ Double path from violence to
routine → truce (enter a situation
of critique) and reconciliation
(enter a situation of peace)
(abandon violence)
Many cultures in a given society:
● Differ by sex, age, social class, occupation, lifestyle
● Hierarchies based on culture legitimacy + cultural transfers
● countercultures, subcultures (pertain to a specific domain of reality)

Subculture: Gun Culture in the US (Harel Shapira)

● National Gun Association prevents teachers from using the word weapon → becomes a tool
● Narrative: fear, response to “bad ppl” is to kill them (defence >murder)
● 67% of gun owners grew up in a home w a gun
● 67% state reason as protection
● 51% of gun owners know smn who has been shot (vs 40%)
● Most gun owners in South rural → distrust of federal gov

Culture can be constructed on purpose → German unification in 1866 + immersion of the idea of a
nation state in 18th-19th century

Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus and hysteresis

● Habitus – set of dispositions and usual routines that a person has incorporated from
their socialisation
○ “a property of actors that comprises a “structured and structuring structure”
● Hysteresis – times of dislocation and disruption between field and habitus
○ Ex. 40s-50s: good econ = higher ed not necessary to become rich
○ Ex. transition to service econ – men who joined the workforce couldn’t
comply
● Indv has a cleft habitus if social mobility
○ Not comfortable cuz field not congruent with habitus
○ Hysteresis effect – persistent anxiety and unease about their social position
due to inability to fully shed the primary habitus
○ Means that society self-reinforces

The life of Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg:

● 12: “I love money” → definition of happiness tied to stocks + wanted to be rich since
4, made a will at 9, 9 bank accounts
● When 7, inherited 50 pounds from distant cousin → father reinvested in GSC +
shares for bday → social reproduction through econ capital
● Intelligent discussions (recession, Thatcher)
● If my father had done the same as his father, he would never have become editor of
the times → squire from a place in the country (yet working class continue cycle)
● Do not want to get divorced to have the woman take away money
 The Incorporation of Culture: Socialisation
● Socialization – process by which individuals incorporate the social norms
AND process by which a society (or a group) produce its individual members
When does socialisation occur?
● Berger & Luckman (1967) – primary and secondary socialization
Primary socialisation:
● During childhood
● Imposed, involving strong emotional relations
● deeper, long-lasting effects
● Builds foundations of the unconscious and of
the psychological personality of the individual
○ Donald Winnicott: early childhood
attachment
○ Result: hierarchy of attachment
for babies – able to recognize the
people taking care of them
○ will cry when the higher person in
the attachment leaves
○ Cycle of suffering → if indv keeps
on leaving, child will lose all
attachment to that individual →
unable to build emotional
attachement to people
● Builds the first skills to be a “normal”
member of a society (speaking, eating,
interacting properly) and to conform to
assigned identity markers (gender,
nationality, age group, etc.)
● gender-normative toys for children:
Gender is a social system that
establishes a distinction and a hierarchy
between the sexes and between the
practice, values and representations
associated to them (Bereni, Chauvin,
Jaunait & Revillard, 2012)
Secondary socialisation:
● During teenage years and adulthood
● Generally outside of the family
● more specialised areas of life (edu, work,
politics.)
● Ideal-typical because: boarding schools
provide both
● ppl are much more conscious of the fact
they are being socialized = ↑
possibilities to be reflexive upon it +
challenge its norms
● Examples of secondary socialization:
○ medical school – to “play the part
of the physician in the drama of
medicine” (H. Becker)
○ Learning how to box (L.
Wacquant, Body & Soul, 2004)
○ Upwardly socially mobile
customers learning through
interactions with luxury hotels’
personnel how to act as upper
class (R. Sherman, Class acts,
2007) – newly rich ask old rich
staff how to be rich
 How does socialization occur?
(Merton’s distinction between manifest and latent functions)

● Manifest → results from deliberate, systematic educational efforts

○ school teachers teaching kids to be “well-behaved”, parents reading
educational books to their toddlers
● Latent → results from diffused, unintentional influence
○ school teachers reacting differently to boys’ and girls’ misbehaviour,
images of male and female characters conveyed by books for toddlers
○ Evicted: shaping what women seek + subjective expectations of
objective probabilities
■ Doreen + Patrice → never a dependable bf
■ “We didn’t have a daddy. My kids don’t have no daddy. And your kids
don’t need no daddy”

Agents of socialization:
● Family, nannies, teachers, higher education
● Media, workplace structure, political groups
● Total institutions (cf. Goffman’s Asylums): institution that controls almost all
aspects of its members’ lives
○ Resocialization: radically changing an inmate’s personality by
carefully controlling the env
1. Erode residents’ identities and independence
2. systematic attempt to build a dif self → reward (TV) and
punishment

E Goffman, “Embarrassment and Social Organization”

● Functionalist argument: means to conserve social norms

○ Embarrassment = acknowledgement of deviance + self-punishment = shows depth of penetration
of social norms (policing comes from within)
○ Negative feedback loop → uphold social norms
○ Functionalist – essential for existence of society

● Structural argument: means to conserve social order BUT undermined in modern society
○ Dif social hierarchy → equality in eyes of law (public space) vs hierarchy in office
○ Role friction btwn citizen and superior in public (neutral) spaces (ex. Elevator, coffee machine)
cuz role + audience segregation
○ Embarrassment = reflection of destabilisation of hierarchies