Social Interaction: What influences our interactions?
Socialization is a process of learning to interact with others and establishing behaviors and rules for us to follow based on these established interactions. It’s an ongoing process throughout our lives. These are “guidelines” presented to us by society teaching us how to function productively as a member of a society based on a collection of “standards” we are presented with. Ultimately your exposure to these interactions helps you develop your personality and who you become as a person.
When does Socialization Begin?
Socialization begins from the moment you are born. From the choice of name, your parents give you, to the outfit color you are dressed in and the toys we are given that have predefined gender roles. Most commonly your outfit color will match your name and biological anatomy of male or female and even that new toy will be associated with a role to perform or expectation of behavior associated with it. Meaning: That new doll defines you as female or that new toolset like dad’s is giving you expectations and ideas of behavior that is expected to go with the object. That’s right, it’s a social construct beyond basic biological anatomy that labels our genitalia and certain sexual traits. Before society gave it a meaning and association with a gender and certain roles and traits that we modernized it simply was just an object.
Nature versus Nurture: The age-old debate.
Which wins? The answer is both have a hand in how we develop. Our bodies, for example, may have a reaction to dust and result in sneezing. That's natural. Nurture however is when we are trained to cover our mouths and nose and when someone responds with a “bless you.” The nurture part may change when you are in a different location that doesn’t say “Bless you” or where you aren’t taught the same behaviors. There are limitations to both nurture and nature although they tend to work in conjunction with one another during socialization. Without socialization, the human aspect won't fully develop.
We are heavily influenced by agents of socialization.
Primary sources:
1- Family/siblings
*Note: Demographics, social class, and even birth order can change roles and traditions.
2- School and other institutions: Now peers and teachers also influence us and possibly religious leaders.
3-Media: What is being presented in magazines, on ads, what are we hearing in music and what cultural aspects and changes are we acquiring that help to define us as we become consumers of this media source?
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
Wray, P. (2016, May 19). JUDGEMENT DAY: PRISON TO PAROLE [Digital image]. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/judgement-day-prison-parole-pamela-wray/
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