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A-level notes: Sociology paper 1 section A: socialisation, culture and identity-
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SocialisationSocialisation is the process by which an individual learns the way of life including the norms and values of
society. It is the way we learn to be members of our society. Socialisation includes the process of nurturing,
the way in which individuals are taught and learn the rules and regulations of social life and the norms of the
group or society they live in.
Agencies of socialisation: these are the groups and institutions that play a part in our socialisation. These
social institutions teach us the norms and values of society. Parents, teachers, friends and work colleagues are
all involved in the learning process, and they all play a part in ensuring that culture is transmitted from one
generation to the next.
Primary socialisation:
Primary socialisation is the first initial stage of learning the culture, norms and values of our society. The early
years of life, our infancy aged 0-5, are very important in the learning process and personal development, having
a profound impact upon social learning. During this time, we are normally in intimate and prolonged contact with
our family. Our family plays a key part in teaching us the basic norms and values of society and this process
begins as soon as children become aware of their circumstances.
Family: agent of primary socialisation
The family is the most important agent of primary socialisation. As part of the
child rearing process, parents transmit the dominant cultural values and norms
that children need to learn in order to take their place in society.
- The family teaches the basic norms and values of everyday life. This is
often through a process of imitation where children copy the behaviour
of family members. For example, we may copy the way our parents talk
or their table manners.
- Children learn social roles expected of them by looking at role models within the family unit.
Baumeister (1986) notes that family socialisation provides children with an identity. A very young child
has no life apart from its role in the family, and so a child would believe that the family would love and
care for it as long as it does what is supposed to do. Many children successfully learn what they are
supposed to do through imitative play. Significant roles played by parents provide children with
blueprints for action illustrating to them how to behave so that they can copy. Parents act as role
models and consequently they may encourage their children to imitate their behaviour so that they
subscribe to moral codes, acceptable masculine or feminine behaviour and a work ethic.
- Sanctions are reactions to behaviour that either encourage or discourage certain behaviours. Children
learn what is acceptable and unacceptable from their parents through a process of trial and error.
Morgan (1996) suggests that a great deal of socialisation is concerned with social control and
encouraging conformity. Parents often use sanctions to reinforce and reward socially approved
behaviour and to discipline and punish deviant behaviour. Positive sanctions might include praise and the
promise of leisure activities, while negative sanctions include punishment, denying privileges and a
threat to withdraw love. Sanctions encourage the development of a conscience in the child. It is
culturally expected that a child will eventually know the difference between good and bad behaviour and
that guilt will act as a deterrent, preventing further deviant behaviour. Socialisation is seen to be
successful and effective when the child realises that the costs in terms of parental punishment
outweigh the benefits of deviant actions, and so exercises self-control. The family teaches what is
right and wrong.
- Gender roles: Families start the process of constructing gender roles through primary socialisation.
From birth, parents treat boys and girls differently in the way they are dressed, the toys they are
given, the activities they take part in and even the way they are treated and spoken to. Girls are more
likely to be dressed in pink and given dolls and prams while boys are more likely to be dressed in blue
, and given toy soldiers and construction kits. Ann Oakley identifies 4 different ways gender socialisation
takes places during primary socialisation in the family:
Manipulation - The encouragement of behaviour that is seen as stereotypically normal and
acceptable for a child’s gender and the discouragement of behaviour seen as abnormal or
normal for the other gender. For example, parents might take a lot of time over their
daughter’s hair, giving out the message that girls should take care of their appearance while
discouraging such behaviour from their son.
Different Activities - Promoting different activities between boys and girls. Parents may
expect their daughters to help with housework and their sons to help with DIY.
Verbal Appellations - Using different words and phrases with different sexes, for example
‘my beautiful princess’ and ‘my brave soldier’ reinforcing gender expectations.
Canalisation – Giving different toys. This involves the 'channelling' of children towards toys
and activities seen as normal for their sex. The different toys give different gendered
messages. For example, girls may be given baby dolls and kitchen sets which will encourage
them to be caring and look after people. Whereas boys will be given guns, trucks and
soldiers which encourage them to be powerful and masculine.
Theoretical views on primary socialisation
Functionalism
Parsons described the family as a ‘personality factory’ because parents produce children with identities and
social qualities that fit the social expectations of the society to which they belong. The child is seen as a blank
state at birth and the function of parents, especially the nurturing mother, is the train and mould the passive
child in the image of society. The child is to be filled up with a shared cultural values and norms, so that it
assumes that these cultural values are somehow naturally its own values. This ensures that the child subscribes
to the value consensus and so feels a strong sense of belonging to society. Therefore, functionalist believe
through the process of primary socialisation in the family create shared understanding of common culture
producing stability and social order in our society.
Marxism
Marxists are critical of the process of primary socialisation in the family arguing that it creates a sense of
false class consciousness and ultimately benefits the ruling class in capitalist society. Zaretsky (1976) argues
that the family is used by the capitalist class to instil values such as obedience and respect for authority that
are useful to the capitalist class. Children are brought up to do as they are told by their parents. This prepares
them for accepting authority in the workplace, abiding by the rules and regulations of the bourgeoisie.
Such values ensure that individuals can be exploited later in life by the ruling class, because power, authority
and inequality are viewed as normal and natural by the working masses. Therefore, Marxist believe that the
function of primary socialisation in the family is to ensure that children grow up excepting inequality, hierarchy
and exploitation of natural facts of life.
Feminism
Feminists believe that the function of primary socialisation in the family is to teach children to accept
patriarchal inequality and male dominance as natural facts of society. Socialisation is therefore a beginning
process of girls learning conformity and subordination. Gender inequality begins in the family who create and
reinforces stereotypical gender expectations.
,Secondary socialisation:
As children become older, social influences become increasingly significant in the lives of individuals. A range of
social institutions become involved in the process of secondary socialisation. This occurs after early children,
when the child becomes more independent and is exposed to different situations outside of the home. This
does not mean that the family is no longer important in the process of socialisation and how an individual learns
the culture of the society but rather the process of socialisation has become multidimensional. Secondary
agents of socialisation build on what has been learned through primary socialisation in order to help the child to
take their place in wider society. This modifies primary socialisation teaching us that the norms and values we
have learned from our families may need to be adapted as we encounter new situations. The external agencies
of secondary socialisation include the PA group, the education system, media, religion and the workplace
1. Education:
Within the education system individuals begin to interact and socialise with a wider number and diverse types
of people. The education system as an agent of secondary socialisation teaches children the norms and values of
society through the formal and informal curriculum:
- The formal curriculum compromises the subjects that are taught in
the school including the content of lessons. Subject knowledge is likely
to impact what children learn about the culture of the society plus the
content of lessons plays an important role in the socialisation process.
- The hidden informal curriculum is responsible for teaching children
the everyday rules and regulations of social life. This compromises all
the other norms and values you are learning at school outside of your formal lessons. This plays a crucial
role in the socialisation of pupils as it is responsible for the transmission of the norms and values
significant to survival in a classroom setting. For example, you learn:
- There are sanctions for those who disobey
- That society values achievement, learning how that is measured.
- About the school structure such as hierarchy between different gendered teachers.
Teachers play a crucial role in this process, acting as role models and using positive and negative sanctions to
discourage deviancy and encourage acceptable behaviour. Teachers are the main people who pass on these
norms and values, and you will also learn about your own place in society by the way they interact with you.
Theoretical views
Functionalism
Functionalists see the education system as essential in transmitting shared cultural values and producing
conformity and consensus. Functionalists believe that the hidden curriculum operates in a positive and
beneficial fashion because socialisation by schools produces model pupils and model citizens.
- Durkheim believe that subjects such as history, language and religious education linked the individual to
society as well as the past and the present. By encouraging a sense of pride in the historical and
religious achievements of the nation, the education system reinforces a sense of belonging to society
creating social solidarity.
- Parsons argued that the main function of education was the act as a social bridge between the family
unit and wider society. Education socialises children into important values such as achievement,
competition and individualism. Functionalists see the transmission of these values as essential in
preparing young people for the world of work and creating social order in our society.
, Marxism
In comparison, Marxists are extremely critical of education as the agency of secondary socialisation arguing
that it ideologically functions to encourage conformity to ruling class ideas and creates in individuals and
unquestioning acceptance of the organisation of the capitalist system of society.
- Bowles and Gintis (1976) agreed that the hidden curriculum exists but did not think that was just
about learning shared norms and values. They argue that the education system was a giant mythmaking
machine which brainwashed children through the hidden curriculum into the obedience and unquestioning
attitude needed in capitalist society. Pupils are taught to accept their place in society and believe that
they’re achievements and failures out of their own making that because society is fair and based on
merit. The education system perpetuated a myth of meritocracy which justifies the subordinate
position of working-class individuals. In particular, working class pupils are socialised to see their
underachievement as their own fault and deserved rather than because they are part of oppressive
system that thrives on their failure. Capitalism needs a relatively uneducated manual labour force that
does not ask critically sophisticated questions. Bowles and Gintis are therefore incredibly critical of the
education system in the process of secondary socialisation suggesting that this perpetuates false class
consciousness, acting as an agent of social control.
- Althusser claimed that few students are allowed to access educational knowledge that challenges the
existence of capitalism. It is claimed that when the national curriculum was introduced in 1988, critical
subject to this chat Sociology, Economics and Politics were deliberately excluded from mainstream
education because the ruling class believe that socialisation into such ideas commonly taught by these
subjects might lead to students becoming too critical of capitalist inequality.
Neo-Marxism
- Willis argues that pupils can successfully resist the influence of the hidden curriculum. The persistence
of in-school problems such as classroom disruption, truancy, high rates of exclusion from school and
anti-school subcultures, as well as wider social problems such as crime, riots, antisocial behaviour and
industrial action such as strikes, suggest that the critics of the hidden curriculum may have
exaggerated its influence.
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