SOCIALIZATION: MEANING OF SOCIALIZATION, STAGES OF SOCIALIZATION, AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION, TYPES OF SOCIALIZATION, FEATURES AND THE NEED FOR SOCIALIZATION
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Introduction: Every society is faced with the necessity of making a responsible member out of each child born into it. The child must learn the expectations of the society so that his behaviour can be relied upon. He must acquire the group norms. The society must socialize each member so that his behaviour will be meaningful in terms of the group norms. In the process of socialization the individual learns the reciprocal responses of the society.
Socialization is a processes with the help of which a living organism is changed into a social being. It is a process through which the younger generation learns the adult role which it has to play subsequently. It is a continuous process in the life of an individual and it continues from generation to generation.
Meaning of Socialization:
The newborn is merely an organism. Socialization makes him responsive to the society. He is socially active. He becomes a ‘Purush’ and the culture that his group inculcates in him, humanises him, and makes him ‘Manusha’. The process indeed, is endless. The cultural pattern of his group, in the process gets incorporated in the personality of a child. It prepares him to fit in the group and to perform the social roles. It sets the infant on the line of social order and enables an adult to fit into the new group. It enables the man to adjust himself to the new social order.
Socialization stands for the development of the human brain, body, attitude, behaviour and so forth. Socialization is known as the process of inducting the individual into the social world. The term socialization refers to the process of interaction through which the growing individual learns the habits, attitudes, values and beliefs of the social group into which he has been born.
From the point of view of society, socialization is the way through which society transmits its culture from generation to generation and maintains itself. From the point of view of the individual, socialization is the process by which the individual learns social behaviour, develops his ‘self.
The process operates at two levels, one within the infant which is called the internalization of objects around and the other from the outside. Socialization may be viewed as the “internalisation of social norms. Social rules become internal to the individual, in the sense that they are self-imposed rather than imposed by means of external regulation and are thus part of individual’s own personality.
The individual therefore feels an urge to conform. Secondly, it may be viewed as essential element of social interaction. In this case, individuals become socialized as they act in accordance with the expectations of others. The underlying process of socialization is bound up with social interaction.
Socialization is a comprehensive process. According to Horton and Hunt, Socialization is the process whereby one internalises the norms of his groups, so that a distinct ‘self emerges, unique to this individual.
Through the process of socialization, the individual becomes a social person and attains his personality. Green defined socialization “as the process by which the child acquires a cultural content, along with selfhood and personality”.
According to Lundberg, socialization consists of the “complex processes of interaction through which the individual learns the habits, skills, beliefs and standard of judgement that are necessary for his effective participation in social groups and communities”.
Peter Worsley explains socialization “as the process of “transmission of culture, the process whereby men learn the rules and practices of social groups”.
H.M. Johnson defines socialization as “learning that enables the learner to perform social roles”. He further says that it is a “process by which individuals acquire the already existing culture of groups they come into”.
The heart of socialization”, to quote kingsley Davis.” is the emergence and gradual development of the self or ego. It is in terms of the self that personality takes shape and the mind comes to function”. It is the process by which the newborn individual, as he grows up, acquires the values of the group and is moulded into a social being.
Stages of socialization
Socialization takes place at different stages such as:
v primary,
v secondary
v and adult.
The primary stage involves the socialization of the young child in the family. The secondary stage involves the school and the third stage is adult socialization.
Socialization is, thus, a process of cultural learning whereby a new person acquires necessary skills and education to play a regular part in a social system. The process is essentially the same in all societies, though institutional arrangements vary. The process continues throughout life as each new situation arises. Socialization is the process of fitting individuals into particular forms of group life, transforming human organism into social being sand transmitting established cultural traditions.
CHAPTER TWO
AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION
To facilitate socialization different agencies play important roles. These agencies are however interrelated.
1. Family:
The family plays an outstanding role in the socialization process. In all societies other agencies besides the family contribute to socialization such as educational institutions, the peer group etc. But family plays the most important role in the formation of personality. By the time other agencies contribute to this process family has already left an imprint on the personality of the child. The parents use both reward and punishment to imbibe what is socially required from a child.
The family has informal control over its members. Family being a mini society acts as a transmission belt between the individual and society. It trains the younger generation in such a way that it can take the adult roles in proper manner. As family is primary and intimate group, it uses informal methods of social control to check the undesirable behaviour on the part of its members. The process of socialization remains a process because of the interplay between individual life cycle and family life cycle.
According to Robert. K. Merton, “it is the family which is a major transmission belt for the diffusion of cultural standards to the oncoming generation”. The family serves as “the natural and convenient channel of social continuity.
2. Peer Group:
Peer Group means a group in which the members share some common characteristics such as age or sex etc. It is made up of the contemporaries of the child, his associates in school, in playground and in street. The growing child learns some very important lessons from his peer group. Since members of the peer group are at the same stage of socialization, they freely and spontaneously interact with each other.
The members of peer groups have other sources of information about the culture and thus the acquisition of culture goes on. They view the world through the same eyes and share the same subjective attitudes. In order to be accepted by his peer group, the child must exhibit the characteristic attitudes, the likes and dislikes.
Conflict arises when standards of the peer group differ from the standards of the child’s family. He may consequently attempt to withdraw from the family environment. The peer group surpasses the parental influence as time goes on. This seems to be an inevitable occurrence in rapidly changing societies.
3. Religion:
Religion play a very important role in socialization. Religion instills the fear of hell in the individual so that he should refrain from bad and undesirable activities. Religion not only makes people religious but socializes them into the secular order.
4. Educational Institutions:
Parents and peer groups are not the only agencies of the socialization in modern societies. Every civilised society therefore has developed a set of formalised agencies of education (schools, colleges and universities) which have a great bearing on the socialization process. It is in the educational institutions that the culture is formally transmitted and acquired in which the science and the art of one generation is passed on to the next.
The educational institutions not only help the growing child in learning language and other subjects but also instill the concept of time, discipline, team work, cooperation and competition. Through the means of reward and punishment the desired behaviour pattern is reinforced whereas undesirable behaviour pattern meets with disapproval, ridicule and punishment.
In this way, the educational institutions come next to the family for the purpose of socialization of the growing child. Educational institution is a very important socializer and the means by which individual acquires social norms and values (values of achievement, civic ideals, solidarity and group loyalty etc) beyond those which are available for learning in the family and other groups.
5. Occupation:
In the occupational world the individual finds himself with new shared interests and goals. He makes adjustments with the position he holds and also learns to make adjustment with other workers who may occupy equal or higher or lower position.
While working, the individual enters into relations of cooperation, involving specialisation of tasks and at the same time learns the nature of class divisions. Work, for him, is a source of income but at the same time it gives identity and status within society as a whole.
Wilbert Moore has divided occupational socialization into four phases:
(a) Career choice,
(b) anticipatory socialization,
(c) conditioning and commitment,
(d) continues commitment.
(a) Career Choice:
The first phase is career choice, which involves selection of academic or vocational training appropriate for the desired job.
(b) Anticipatory Socialization:
The next phase is anticipatory socialization, which may last only a few months or extent for years. Some children inherit their occupations. These young people experience anticipatory socialization throughout childhood and adolescence as they observe their parents at work. Certain individuals decide on occupational goals at relatively early ages. The entire adolescent period for them may focus on training for that future.
(c) Conditioning and Commitment:
The third phase of occupational socialization takes places while one actually performs the work-related Role. Conditioning consists of reluctantly adjusting to the more unpleasant aspects of one’s job. Most people find that the novelty of new daily schedule quickly wears off and realise that the parts of the work experience are rather tedious. Moore uses the term commitment to refer to the enthusiastic acceptance of pleasurable duties that come as the recruit identifies the positive task of an occupation.
(d) Continues Commitment:
According to Moore, if a job proves to be satisfactory, the person will enter a fourth stage of socialization. At this stage the job becomes an indispensable) art of the person’s self identity. Violation of proper conduct becomes unthinkable. A person may choose to join professional associations, unions or other groups which represent his or her occupation in the larger society.
6. Political Parities:
Political parties attempt to seize political power and maintain it. They try to win the support of the members of the society on the basis of a socio-economic policy and programme. In the process they disseminate political values and norms and socialize the citizen. The political parties socialize the citizen for stability and change of political system.
7. Mass Media:
The mass media of communication, particularly television, play an important role in the process of socialization. The mass media of communication transmit informations and messages which influence the personality of an individual to a great extent.
In addition to this, communication media has an important effect in encouraging individuals to support the existing norms and values or oppose or change them. They are the instrument of social power. They influence us with their messages. The words are always written by someone and these people too – authors and editors and advertisers – join the teachers, the peers and the parents in the socialization process.
To conclude, environment stimuli often determine the growth of human personality. A proper environment may greatly determine whether the social or the self-centered forces will become supreme. Individual’s social environment facilitates socialization. If his mental and physical capacities are not good, he may not be able to make proper use of environment. However, the family plays perhaps the important part in the process of socialization.
The child learns much from the family. After family his playmates and school wield influence on his socialization. After his education is over, he enters into a profession. Marriage initiates a person into social responsibility, which is one of aims of socialization. In short the socialization is a process which begins at birth and a continues unceasingly until the death of individual.
Importance of Socialization:
The process of socialization is important from the point of view of society as well as from the point of view of individual. Every society is faced with the necessity of making a responsible member out of each child born into it. The child must learn the expectations of the society so that his behaviour can be relied upon.
He must acquire the group norms in order to take the behaviour of others into account. Socialization means transmission of culture, the process by which men learn the rules and practices of social groups to which belongs. It is through it that a society maintain its social system, transmits its culture from generation to generation.
From the point of view of the individual, socialization is the process by which the individual learns social behaviour, develops his self. Socialization plays a unique role in personality development of the individual.
It is the process by which the new born individual, as he grows up, acquires the values of the group and is moulded into a social being. Without this no individual could become a person, for if the values, sentiments and ideas of culture are not joined to the capacities and needs of the human organism there could be no human mentality, no human personality.
The child has no self. The self emerges through the process of socialization. The self, the core of personality, develops out of the child’s interaction with others.
In the socialization process the individual learns the culture as well as skills, ranging from language to manual dexterity which will enable him to become a participating member of human society.
Socialization inculcates basic disciplines, ranging from toilet habits to method of science. In his early years, individual is also socialized with regard to sexual behaviour.
Society is also concerned with imparting the basic goals, aspirations and values to which the child is expected to direct his behaviour for the rest of his life. He learns-the levels to which he is expected to aspire.
Socialization teaches skills. Only by acquiring needed skills individual fit into a society. In simple societies, traditional practices are handed down from generation to generation and are usually learned by imitation and practice in the course of everyday life. Socialization is indeed an intricate process in a complex society characterised by increasing specialisation and division of work. In these societies, inculcating the abstract skills of literacy through formal education is a central task of socialization.
Another element in socialization is the acquisition of the appropriate social roles that the individual is expected to play. He knows role expectations, that is what behaviour and values are a part of the role he will perform. He must desire to practise such behaviour and pursue such ends.
Role performance is very important in the process of socialization. As males, females, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, children, student’s teachers and so on, accepted social roles must be learned if the individual is to play a functional and predictable part in social interaction.
In this way man becomes a person through the social influences which he shares with others and through his own ability to respond and weave his responses into a unified body of habits, attitudes and traits. But man is not the product of socialization alone. He is also, in part, a product of heredity. He generally possesses, the inherited potential that can make him a person under conditions of maturation and conditioning.
CHAPTER THREE
TYPES OF SOCIALIZATION
Although socialization occurs during childhood and adolescence, it also continues in middle and adult age. Orville F. Brim (Jr) described socialization as a life-long process. He maintains that socialization of adults differ from childhood socialization. In this context it can be said that there are various types of socilisation.
1. Primary Socialization:
Primary socialization refers to socialization of the infant in the primary or earliest years of his life. It is a process by which the infant learns language and cognitive skills, internalises norms and values. The infant learns the ways of a given grouping and is moulded into an effective social participant of that group.
The norms of society become part of the personality of the individual. The child does not have a sense of wrong and right. By direct and indirect observation and experience, he gradually learns the norms relating to wrong and right things. The primary socialization takes place in the family.
2. Secondary Socialization:
The process can be seen at work outside the immediate family, in the ‘peer group’. The growing child learns very important lessons in social conduct from his peers. He also learns lessons in the school. Hence, socialization continues beyond and outside the family environment. Secondary socialization generally refers to the social training received by the child in institutional or formal settings and continues throughout the rest of his life.
3. Adult Socialization:
In the adult socialization, actors enter roles (for example, becoming an employee, a husband or wife) for which primary and secondary socialization may not have prepared them fully. Adult socialization teaches people to take on new duties. The aim of adult socialization is to bring change in the views of the individual. Adult socialization is more likely to change overt behaviour, whereas child socialization moulds basic values.
4. Anticipatory Socialization:
Anticipatory socialization refers to a process by which men learn the culture of a group with the anticipation of joining that group. As a person learns the proper beliefs, values and norms of a status or group to which he aspires, he is learning how to act in his new role.
5. Re-socialization:
Re-Socialization refers to the process of discarding former behaviour patterns and accepting new ones as part of a transition in one’s life. Such re-socialization takes place mostly when a social role is radically changed. It involves abandonment of one way of life for another which is not only different from the former but incompatible with it. For example, when a criminal is rehabilitated, he has to change his role radically.
CHAPTER FOUR
FEATURES AND THE NEED FOR SOCIALIZATION
Socialization not only helps in the maintenance and preservation of social values and norms but it is the process through which values and norms are transmitted from one generation to another generation.
Features of socialization may be discussed as under:
1. Inculcates basic discipline:
Socialization inculcates basic discipline. A person learns to control his impulses. He may show a disciplined behaviour to gain social approval.
2. Helps to control human behaviour:
It helps to control human behaviour. An individual from birth to death undergoes training and his, behaviour is controlled by numerous ways. In order to maintain the social order, there are definite procedures or mechanism in society. These procedures become part of the man’s/life and man gets adjusted to the society. Through socialization, society intends to control the behaviour of its-members unconsciously.
3. Socialization is rapid if there is more humanity among the- agencies of socialization:
Socialization takes place rapidly if the agencies’ of socialization are more unanimous in their ideas and skills. When there is conflict between the ideas, examples and skills transmitted in home and those transmitted by school or peer, socialization of the individual tends to be slower and ineffective.
4. Socialization takes place formally and informally:
Formal socialization takes through direct instruction and education in schools and colleges. Family is, however, the primary and the most influential source of education. Children learn their language, customs, norms and values in the family.
5. Socialization is continuous process:
Socialization is a life-long process. It does not cease when a child becomes an adult. As socialization does not cease when a child becomes an adult, internalisation of culture continues from generation to generation. Society perpetuates itself through the internalisation of culture. Its members transmit culture to the next generation and society continues to exist.
CONCLUSION
Man is not only social but also cultural. It is the culture that provides opportunities for man to develop the personality. Development of personality is not an automatic process. Every society prescribes its own ways and means of giving social training to its new born member so that they may develop their own personality. This social training is called socialization.
The human child comes into the world as a biological organism with animal needs. He gradually moulded in society into a social being and learns social way of acting and feeling.
The process of moulding and shaping the personality of the human infant is called socialization.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Meaning of Socialization:
Stages of socialization
CHAPTER TWO
AGENNTS OF SOCIALIZATION
CHAPTER THREE
TYPES OF SOCIALIZATION
CHAPTER FOUR
FEATURES AND THE NEED FOR SOCIALIZATION
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES