#desocialization

As time passes we experience other forms of socialization. 

Erving Goffman coined the term: Total Institutionalism: which consist of locations such as prison, branches of the military, monasteries, concentration camps, colleges, mental health facilities or any other location that’s designed to break down your currently defined identity and replace it with ones that are rigorous and the same as everyone around you. You wear the same clothing, eat the same foods, are conditioned to believe the same beliefs and undergo almost identical experiences. Events are planned, controlled and isolated from those outside this institution for an extended period of time.

Resocialization- This is the process by which a person learns to adapt to new norms, behaviors, and values. This occurs in several ways. Leaving a total institution and re-entrance back into society is a good example as it also is responsible for your desocialization process since your old values are broken down and the goal is to establish new behaviors. You are then left taking them into the world and learning how to apply them on the outside. Moving to a new country, traveling abroad, or a terrible accident where memory loss is experienced is just a few examples of ways you may need to learn to resocialize. 

Will your new behaviors alter your behavior outside of an institutionalized structure and could you easily conform back? As we seen many times in the prison system resocialization can be hard for many and an area where the system seems to be lacking in helping those through that process and often many reverts back to old habits and find themselves in a similar situation but with modified methods of how to commit a new crime.

As we continue socializing through life our experiences and exposure to events in our lives will vary on an individualized more personal level but we share a few things in common and one of them is based on the dramaturgical theory. 

In this theory, we are merely actors on a metaphorical stage.We have roles and scripts that we adhere too and our the location that it is occurring is our set. We all act in these roles and present ourselves to society based what we want the world to see or what we believed is expected of us.Many times our roles overlap and in some cases, we experience role strain while trying to achieve them. 

It’s important from a sociological point to understand how the macro level of socialization can change society as a whole based on these social cues and signals we give off even if unknowingly we set the stage for what we deem acceptable and “normal”. On the other hand, it’s also important to realize on an individual level that our experiences will vary greatly from a person to person yet collectively they coincide with one another since both factor in to how we come to define ourselves and percieve one another.

Sources:

[Agents of Socialization]. (n.d.). Retrieved December 8, 2017, from http://slideplayer.com/slide/6327110/21/images/32/Agents of Socialization.jpg

Conley, D. (2017). You may ask yourself: an introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W.W. Norton.

Kubrick, S. (2017, May 26). Full Metal Jacket Close up [Digital image]. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2017/close-up-on-stanley-kubrick/full-metal-jacket