Module 6

Understanding Culture, Society and Politics

BECOMING A MEMBER OF SOCIETY

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify the context, content,

processes, and consequences of
socialization and enculturation.
2. Explain the development of the
self as a product of socialization
and enculturation
3. Analyze the role of groups and
institutions as agents of social
control
“The human mind at birth is nothing but a blank state, or tabula rasa” – John Locke

Socialization and Enculturation

Socialization
● Refers to a lifelong social experience by which people develop their human
potential and learn culture
● Although it is general in process, socialization always takes place in specific
context.
● It is culturally specific: people in different cultures are socialized differently to
hold different beliefs and values and to behave in different ways.

Three Goals of Socialization

● It teaches impulse control and helps individuals develop a conscience.
● It teaches individuals how to prepare for and perform certain social roles.
● It cultivates shared sources of meaning and value.

Enculturation
● Is the process by which people learn the requirements of their surrounding
culture and acquire the values and behaviors appropriate or necessary in that
culture.
● In this process, the influences that limit, direct, or shape the individual
(whether deliberately or not) include parents, other adults, and peers.

Mead and the Development of the Social Mind (SELF)

George Herbert Mead

● He is regarded as one of the founder of social psychology and of what has
come to be referred to as the Chicago sociological tradition.
● The “self” is a sociological concept.
● According to him, it develops through social interactions—as set of situations
(i.e. imitation, play, game, generalized others) where individuals learn to
assume roles and meet the increasing level of complexity of each situation.
 ● The cases of “feral child”—children raised by animals and lived in extreme
social isolation—gave credence of Mead’s assertion of the self as emerging
from the matrix of interactions and not from biological evolution.
● His “I/Me” duality reinforces the purely sociological facets of the self.
● The “I/Me” is best captured by the cliché—“put yourself in another person’s
shoes.” By doing it, social actors can anticipate what the others could feel and
think if they were in the same situations or predicament.
● The “me” is the social self and the “I” is the response to the “me.” In other
words, the “I” is the response of an individual to the attitudes of others, while
the “me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which an individual
assumes.

Four-stage process of the development of the self:

Imitation – the action of using someone or something as a model.

● The child starts with mimicking behaviors and actions of significant others
around him/her.
Play
● The child takes different roles he/she observes in “adult” society, and plays
them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles.
● The child learns to become both subject and object and begins to become
able to build a self.
Game
● The child must take the role of everyone else involved in the game.
● Organization begins and definite personalities start to emerge.
●
“The Generalized Other”
● The individual understands what kind of behavior is expected or appropriate in
different social settings.

Identities and Identity Formation

Identity Formation
● Is the development of an individual’s distinct personality, which is regarded as
a persisting entity in a particular stage of life by which a person is recognized
or known.

Self-Concept
● Is the sum of a being’s knowledge and understanding of his/herself.
● Components of self-concept include physical, psychological, and social
attributes, which can be influenced by the individual’s attitudes, habits, beliefs,
and ideas.

Cultural Identity
● It is one’s feeling of identity or affiliation with a group or culture.

Ethnic Identity
● It is the identification with a certain ethnicity, usually on the basis of a
presumed common geneology or ancestry.

National Identity
 ● Is an ethical and philosophical concept whereby all humans are divided into
groups called nations.

Religious Identity
● Is the set of beliefs and practices generally held by an individual involving
adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and the study of ancestral or cultural
traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as faith and mystic
experience.

Norms and Values

Norm
● Is a rule that guides the behavior of members of a society or group.
● Emile Durkheim considered norms to be social facts, that is, things that exist
in society independent of individuals and that shape our thoughts and
behavior.

Normal
● Refers to that which conforms to norms
● The act of abiding rules.

Nomative
● Refers to what we perceive as normal, or what we think should be normal,
regardless of whether it actually is.
● Refers to beliefs that are expressed as directives or value judgments.
● The process of socialization is guided by norms and taught to us by those
around us.
● Social sanction “we will face sanctions if we break them.”

Some norms are:

● proscriptive (stating what we should not do), and

● some are prescriptive (stating what we should do).
● These norms are not equal in importance.

William Graham Summer coined the terms:

● Mores – refer to norms that are widely observed and have great moral
significance, and
● Folkways – refer to norms for routine and casual interaction

Values
● Are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable,
good, and beautiful, and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.

Four aspects of the sociological concept of value:

1. Values exist at different levels of generality or abstraction;

2. Values tend to be hierarchically arranged;
3. Values are explicit and implicit in varying degrees; and
4. Values often are in conflict with one another.

Jaime Bulatao identified four basic Filipino values namely:

 1. Emotional closeness and security in a family,
2. Approval from authority and of society,
3. Economic and social betterment, and
4. Patience, endurance, and suffering.

● The main section against diverging from these values are the concepts of
“hiya,” roughly translated as “a sense of shame,’ and “amor propio” or self-
esteem.

Status and Roles

● Are important concepts in socialization because the behaviors of young

members of society are controlled by assigning them certain status which they
will enact.

Status
● Defined as a position in a social system, such as a child or parent.
● Refers to a social position that a person holds.
● A person’s status can either be ascribed or achieved, given or accomplished,
respectively.

Status Set
● Refers to all the statuses a person holds at a given time.

Ascribed Status
● Is a social position a person received at birth or takes on involuntarily later in
life.

Achieved Status
● Refers to a social position a person takes on voluntarily that reflects personal
identity and effort.

Role
● Refers to the behavior expected of someone who holds a particular status.
● A person holds a status and performs a role.

Role Strain
● Conflict among the roles connected to two or more statuses.
● Results from the competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our
time and energy.

Role Manipulation
● Through impression management has bearing on the formation of a person’s
self-identity.

Impression Management
● It is a concept to be taken very seriously. It has the power and influence to
create a favorable public opinion of a particular person.
● It can break or repair a damaged persona.

Conformity and Deviance

Conformity – involves the acceptance of the cultural goals and means of attaining those goals.

Deviance – is a behavior that violates the standard of conduct or expectations or social norms of
a group or society. Alcoholics, gamblers, sex deviants, drug addicts or latecomers in the class
are all classified as deviants or deviant acts.

Forms of Deviance

Ritualism
● Is a concept developed by American sociologist Robert K. Merton as a part of
his structural strain theory.
● It refers to the common practice of going through the motions of daily life even
through one does not accept the goals or values that align with those
practices.

Retreatism
● Is the attitude of being resigned to the abandonment of an original goal or the
means of attaining it (as in political or cultural matters).

Rebellion
● Is a special case wherein the individual rejects both the cultural goals and
traditional means of achieving them but actively attempts to replace both
elements of the society with different goals and means.

Innovation
● Involves the acceptance of the goals of a culture but the rejection of the
traditional and/or legitimate means of attaining those goals. For example, a
member of the Mafia values wealth but employs alternative means of attaining
his wealth; in this example, the Mafia member’s means would be deviant.

Social Control – involves teaching, persuading, and or forcing members and non-members of a
group to comply with and not deviate from its norms and expectations.

● The idea of criminal behaviors are learned; criminals are considered

conformists when they tend to conform to the groups in which they associate
themselves.
● In other words, one may learn deviant behavior based on their association.

Gossip for social control in natural and artificial societies. In this work, we propose a theory of
gossip as a means for social control. Exercising social control roughly means to isolate and to
punish cheaters.

Social Ostracism increases social susceptibility. Ostracism, the act of ignoring and excluding, is
a universally applied tactic of social control. Individuals who detect ostracism often change their
behaviors to be readmitted into the group, even if it means becoming excessively socially
susceptible to influence.

Law. Social control entails rules of behavior that should be followed by the members of society.
Some of the rules of conduct fall into the realm of good manners as the culture defines them.
Other rules of conduct are not optional and are enforced by-laws.

Reward and Punishment. Informal controls reward or punish acceptable or unacceptable

behavior (i.e. deviance) and are varied from individual to individual, group to group, and society
to society. For example, at a Women’s Institute meeting, a disapproving look might convey the
message that it is inappropriate to flirt with the minister. In a criminal gang, on the other hand, a
stronger sanction applies in the case of someone threatening to inform the police of illegal
activity.

● Social control by the use of reward is known as positive reinforcement. In

society and the laws and regulations implemented by the government tend to
focus on punishment or enforcing negative sanctions to act as a deterrent as
a means of social control.

Human dignity, rights, and the common good

Human Dignity – refers to an individual or group’s sense of self-respect and self-worth, physical
and psychological integrity and empowerment.

Bill of Rights – natural rights, civil rights, political rights, economic rights as well as rights of the
accused before, during and after trial.

Human Rights – are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of
residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status.

Common good, which benefits society as s whole, in contrast to the private good of individuals
and sections of society. In effect, the notion of the common good is a denial that society is and
should be composed of atomized individuals living in isolation from one another.

Summary

Socialization is a form of interaction through which people acquire personality and learn
the way of life of their society. Enculturation and socialization results to identity formation,
develops norms and values, and establishes statuses and roles in a society. Deviance is a
behavior that violates the standard of conduct or expectations or social norms of a group or
society. Ritualism, retreatism, rebellion, and innovation are the forms of deviance. The most
popular means of social control are gossip, social ostracism, laws and punishment.