McGraw-Hill/Irwin

1. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

2. Chapter Two: Culture and Socialization

3. Culture and Socialization • What is Culture? • Development of Culture Around the World • Cultural Variation • Language and Culture • Norms and Values • Global Cultural War • Culture and the Dominant Ideology • Culture and Socialization • The Self and Socialization • Agents of Socialization • Socialization throughout the Life Course

4. Culture and Socialization • Socialization: process through which children learn basic attitudes, values, and behaviors • Personality: individual characteristics, attitudes, needs, and behaviors that set one person apart from another

5. What is Culture? • Culture: totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior • Culture includes ideas, values, customs, and artifacts of groupsof people

6. What is Culture? • Society: large number of people who live in same territory, who are relatively independent of people outside that area, and who participate in a common culture • Common culture simplifies day-to-day interactions • Adorno: worldwide culture industry standardized the goods and services demanded by consumers

7. Cultural Universals • All societies develop common practices and beliefs, known as cultural universals • Adaptations to meet essential human needs • Innovation • Diffusion

8. Ethnocentrism • Tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others • Have complicated U.S. efforts at democratic reform of the Iraqi government • In Iraqi culture loyalty to the family and the extended clan comes before patriotism and the common good

9. Cultural Relativism • Evaluation of a people’s behavior from the perspective of their own culture • Employs a kind of value neutrality in scientific study • Requires a serious and unbiased effort to evaluate norms, values, and customs in light of their distinctive culture

10. Development of Culture around the World • Innovation • Process of introducing a new idea or object to a culture • Discovery • Making known or sharing the existence of some aspect of reality • Invention • Results when existing cultural items are combined into a form that did not exist before

11. Development of Culture around the World • Globalization: worldwide integration of government policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade and the exchange of ideas

12. Development of Culture around the World • Diffusion: process by which cultural item spreads from group to group • Can occur through • Exploration • Military conquest • Missionary work • Mass media • Tourism • Internet

13. Development of Culture around the World • McDonaldization: process through which principles of fast-food industry dominate certain sectors of society • Technology: “Cultural information about how to use the material resources of the environment to satisfy human needs and desires” (Nolan and Lenski)

14. Development of Culture around the World • Materialculture: physical or technological aspects of daily lives • Nonmaterialculture: ways of using material objects as well as: • Customs • Beliefs • Philosophies • Governments • Patterns of communication • Food items • Houses • Factories • Raw materials

15. Development of Culture around the World • CultureLag: period of maladjustment when nonmaterial culture struggling to adapt to new material conditions

16. Cultural Variation • Each culture considers its own ways of handling basic societal tasks as “natural” • Cultures adapt to meet specific sets of circumstances

17. Cultural Variation • Subcultures • Segments of society that shares a distinctive pattern of customs, rules, and traditions that differ from the pattern of the larger society • Argot • Specialized language that is developed that allows insiders to understand words with special meanings

18. Cultural Variation • Counterculture • When a subculture conspicuously and deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture • Thrive among the young • Hippies, political radicals

19. Cultural Variation • Culture Shock • Feeling of disorientation, uncertainty, being out of place, or fearful when immersed in an unfamiliar culture

20. Language and Culture • Language: abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture • Includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, and gestures and expressions of non verbal communication

21. Figure 2-1:

22. Norms and Values • Norms • Established standards of behavior maintained by a society • Formalnorms: generally written; specify strict punishments • Informalnorms: generally understood but not precisely recorded • Mores: norms deemed highly necessary to the welfare of a society • Folkways: norms governing everyday behavior

23. Norms and Values • Sanctions • Penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social norm • The entire fabric of norms and sanctions in a culture reflects that culture’s values and priorities

24. Table 2-1: Norms and Sanctions

25. Norms and Values • Collective conceptions of what is good, desirable, and proper—or bad, undesirable, and improper Influence people’s behavior Criteria for evaluating actions of others Values may change

26. Figure 2-2 Life Goals of First-Year College Students in the U.S.

27. Global Culture War • Culture war: polarization of society over controversial elements of culture National: In 1990s, referred to political debates over abortion, religious expression, gun control, and sexual orientation Global: By 2003, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, foreign opinion of the United States has become quite negative

28. Culture and Dominant Ideology • Dominant ideology: set of cultural beliefs and practices that help maintain powerful interests, including: • Social interests • Economic interests • Political interests

29. Table 2-2: Major Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

30. Culture and Socialization • Nature versus Nurture • Today’s social scientists acknowledge the interaction of the two • Sociobiology: systematic study of the biological bases of human social behavior • Sociobiologists apply Darwin’s principle of natural selection to the study of social behavior

31. Social Environment:The Impact of Isolation • Interaction of heredity and environment shape human development • Cases of Isabelle and Genie • Importance of earliest socialization experiences for children • Researchers increasingly emphasize importance of early socialization experiences who grow up in more normal environments

32. Figure 2-3: Genie’s Sketch

33. The Self and Socialization • Self: distinct identity that sets us apart from others The self is not a static phenomenon Continues to develop and change

34. Cooley: Looking-Glass Self • View of ourselves comes from contemplation of personal qualities and impressions of how others perceive us Looking-glass self: the self is product of social interactions with other people

35. Mead: Stages of the Self • PreparatoryStage: children imitate people around them • Symbols: gestures, objects, and language that form basis of human communication

36. Mead: Stages of the Self • PlayStage: become more aware of social relationships and role taking occurs • Role Taking: process of mentally assuming perspective of another and responding from that imagined viewpoint

37. Mead: Stages of the Self • GameStage: children of about 8 or 9 consider several actual tasks and relationships simultaneously Generalized others: attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of society as a whole that a child takes into account

38. Mead: Theory of the Self • Self begins as privileged, central position in a person’s world • As person matures, the self changes and begins to reflect greater concern about reactions of others Significant others: individuals most important in the development of the self

39. Table 2-3: Mead’s Stages of the Self

40. Goffman: Presentationof the Self • Impressionmanagement: individual learns to slant presentation of self to create distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences • Also known as dramaturgical approach

41. Psychological Approaches to the Self • Freud • Stressed role of inborn drives • Natural impulsive instincts in constant conflict with societal constraints • Personality influenced by others (especially one’s parents) • Self has components that work in opposition to each other Art to come

42. Psychological Approaches to the Self • Piaget • Emphasized stages that humans progress through as the self develops • Cognitive theory of development identified 4 stages in development of children’s thought processes Social interaction key to development

43. Table 2-4: Theoretical Approaches to Development of the Self

44. Agents of Socialization • Family • Gender role • Expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males or females • School • Peer Group • Harassment as well as support

45. Agents of Socialization • Mass Media and Technology • Online social media networks • Workplace • Religion and the State • Impacting life by reinstituting rites of passage one observed in agricultural communities and early industrial societies

46. Figure 2-4: The New Normal: Internet at Home

47. Socialization throughoutthe Life Course • Rites of passage: means of dramatizing and validating changes in a person’s status • Life course approach: looking closely at social factors that influence people throughout their lives

48. Anticipatory Socializationand Resocialization • Anticipatorysocialization: person “rehearses” future occupations and social relationships • Resocialization: discarding former behavior patterns and accepting new ones as transition in one’s life

49. Anticipatory Socializationand Resocialization • Totalinstitution: regulates all aspects of a person’s life under a single authority Degradationceremony: ritual where individual becomes secondary and rather invisible in overbearing social environment