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Essay questions on social control, youth subcultures and socialisation
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Explain the meaning of the term social control.Social control is the study of the mechanisms, in the form of patterns of pressure, through which
society maintains social order and cohesion, the goal of social control is to maintain conformity to
established norms and values. For example in education if a student does well the teacher would
congratulate him on his work and praise him, this is called positive reinforcement negative
reinforcement is also used to maintain social control an example of this would be if your mum
grounds you when you were younger for doing something that deviates from the norms and values
of society.
Explain how any two agents of socialisation control behaviour.
Agents of socialisation, or institutions that can impress social norms, include the family, religion,
peer groups and education.
Family controls your behaviour as everything you are taught growing up is passed down from your
parents, their norms and values will become yours, they do this through negative and positive
reinforcement, maintaining social control. Family is your primary socialisation, which means when a
child learns the attitudes, values and actions of how to act in general society. Malcom Gladwell has a
book called Outliers which supports this, He looks at how wealthy parents raise their children and
how less fortunate parents raise their children, One example he uses is a trip to the doctor’s office,
the wealthier children were asking more questions about what the doctor was doing but the less
fortunate children didn’t question anything. This shows first-hand that due to their up bringing from
their families their interactions in the real world are different. However, you could also link this to
the economic system taking part in the role of socialisation here as it shows the differences between
families with money and those without and how socialisation is different between the two.
Schools are also a massive part of socialisation, schools don’t just teach children subjects they also
teach them something called the hidden curriculum, which is a concept that describes the
unarticulated and unacknowledged things students are taught, like how they should interact with
peers, teachers, and how to obey with authority. Schools massively control behaviour as you whole
education period you are being taught to obey to authority, to do things you don’t want to because
you’re being told to, to be quiet when other people are talking and to act as you care about
something when you don’t. Social control through education is very regulated and maintained, from
2013 young people are required to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18,
raised from the previous age of 16, the 90% of pupils who attend state schools will spend at least six
hours a day in formal education. Both of these points show how strong social control is in education
due to the amount of time you spend in education.
In conclusion family and education are very important agents of socialisation that control behaviour
which have been proven to be very affective.
Evaluate Marxist explanations of youth subcultures.
A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviours and interests.
One explanation Marxists have is they’re acting out against capitalism as they are getting sick of
being exploited. Hall and Jefferson support this as they suggest that young people were reacting
against the crisis of capitalism but were unable to articulate this in a formal way so chose to do this
through their subcultural styles. This means that working class youths were getting sick of the
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