Socialization into Extremism

orphans, heinous, depicted, mosque, variance, continuum, interpenetrates.

You are who you are because of the people, institutions, and social structures that have surrounded you since birth (and even before). You have been socialized to look, think, act, and interact in ways that allow you to live harmoniously.

Discovering how socialization and social interaction shape who we are and how we act, as we will do in this chapter, is the most basic level of sociological analysis.

This chapter and the next will introduce you, at least briefly, to the full range of sociological concerns along the micro–macro continuum.

The Individual and the Self

most sociologists believe the essential difference between humans and other animals is the distinctive interaction humans are capable of having with other humans.

The concept of feral children relates to the fundamental question of the relationship between “nature” and “nurture.” The nature argument is that we are born to be the kinds of human beings that we ultimately become; it is built into our “human nature” (Settle et al. 2010). The nurture argument is that we are human beings because of the way we are nurtured—that is, the way we are raised by other human beings, who teach us what it is to be human. Of course, both nature and nurture are important. However, the cases of feral children indicate that nurture is in many ways more important than nature in determining the human beings we become.

Symbolic Interaction and Development of the Self

In general, the interaction that takes place between parents and children is loaded with symbols and symbolic meaning.

One early symbolic interactionist, Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), explained how parents help children develop the ability to interact with others with his famous concept of the looking-glass self. This is the idea that as humans we develop a selfimage that reflects how others see and respond to us. We imagine how we appear to others and how they evaluate our appearance. Based on that, we develop some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or embarrassment. Since children’s earliest interactions are typically with their parents, it is those interactions that are most important in the formation of a self-image. This helps explain why feral children and others who spend their formative years in prolonged social isolation are unlikely to form a fully developed self-image: There are no others to respond to them. It is as we interact with others, especially when we are young, that we develop a sense of our selves.

Humans and Nonhumans

Both are capable of making gestures (such as by raising a limb). Both animals and humans are also capable of conversations of gestures whereby
they use a series of gestures to relate to one another. In addition to physical gestures, animals and humans are both capable of vocal gestures.

It is the vocal gesture that truly begins to separate humans from animals. In humans, but not other animals, the vocal gesture can affect the speaker as much and in the same way as the hearer. Thus, humans react to and interpret their own vocal gestures and, more important, their words. Furthermore, humans have a far greater ability to control their vocal gestures.

Symbolic Interaction

Of greatest importance in distinguishing humans from animals is a kind of gesture that can be made only by humans. Mead calls such a gesture a significant symbol, a gesture that arouses in the individual making it a response of the same kind as the one it is supposed to elicit from those to whom it is addressed. It is only with significant symbols, especially those that are vocal, that we can have communication in the full sense of the term.

According to Mead, language involves significant symbols that call out the same meaning in the person to whom an utterance is aimed as they do in the person making the utterance. The utterances have meaning to all parties involved. In a conversation of gestures, only the gestures are communicated. With language, both the (vocal) gestures and the meanings are communicated. One of the key functions of language is that it makes the mind and mental processes possible. To Mead, thinking (and the mind; see below) is nothing more than internalized conversations individual humans have with themselves. Thinking involves talking to oneself. It is little different from talking to other people.

Symbols also make possible symbolic interaction, or interaction on the basis of significant symbols. Symbols allow for much more complex interaction patterns than those that occur where interaction is based only on gestures. Because people can think about and interpret significant symbols, they can interact with large numbers of people and make complex plans for some future undertaking. They can interpret the symbolic meaning of what others say and do and understand, for example, that some of them are acting in accord with their own plans. Animals lack the ability to make and understand complex plans.

Mind and Self

Central to Mead’s ideas about the development of human beings and the differences between humans and nonhumans are the concepts of mind and self. As pointed out above, the mind is an internal conversation using words (and also images, especially, but certainly not only, for the autistic and the deaf; Fernyhough 2014; Grandin 2000).

The self is the ability to take oneself as an object. The self develops over time. Key to the development of self is the ability to imagine being in the place of others and looking at oneself as they do. In other words, people need to take the role of others in order to get a sense of their own selves. There are two key stages in Mead’s theory of how the self develops over time, the play stage and the game stage:

Play stage. Babies are not born with the ability to think of themselves as having a self. However, as they develop, children learn to take on the attitudes of specific others toward themselves. Thus, young children play at being Mommy and Daddy, adopt their parents’ attitudes toward the children, and evaluate themselves as do their parents. However, the result is a very fragmented sense of the self.
Game stage. Children begin to develop a self in the full sense of the term when they take on the roles of a group of people simultaneously rather than the roles of discrete individuals. Each of those different roles comes to be seen as having a definite relationship to all the others. Children develop organized personalities because of their ability to take on multiple roles—indeed, the entirety of roles in a given group.

The Generalized Other

Mead also developed the concept of the generalized other, or the attitude of the entire group or community.

That is, they look at themselves and what they do from the perspective of the group or community. “What would people think if I . . . ” is a question that demonstrates the role of the generalized other.

In the classroom example, the generalized other is the attitude of the group working on the collaborative project. In the family, to take still another example, it is the attitude of all family members.

The “I” and the “Me”

Critical to understanding the difference between conformity and creative thinking and acting is Mead’s distinction between two aspects, or phases, of the self—the “I” and the “me.” Bear in mind that the “I” and the “me” are not things; they do not exist in a physical sense. We would not find the “I” or the “me” if we dissected the brain. Rather, the “I” and the “me” are subprocesses that are involved in the larger thinking process. An individual sometimes displays more of the “I” aspect of the self and sometimes more of the “me” aspect. In any given instance, the relative mix of “I” and “me” determines the degree to which an individual acts creatively

The “I” is the immediate response of an individual to others. It is that part of the self that is unconscious, incalculable, unpredictable, and creative.

The “me” is the organized set of others’ attitudes and behaviors adopted by the individual. In other words, the “me” involves the acceptance and internalization by the individual of the generalized other.

The Individual as Performer

Erving Goffman is another important contributor to the symbolic interactionists’ understanding of the self and how it develops. In Goffman’s work, this distinction takes the form of the tension between what we want to do spontaneously and what people expect us to do (Goffman 1959).

Goffman’s notion of dramaturgy views an individual’s social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those that take place on a theatrical stage. To Goffman, the self is not a thing possessed by the individual but the dramatic product of the interaction between people and their audiences (Manning 2007).

Impression Management

When people interact with others, they use a variety of techniques to control the images of themselves that they want to project during their social performances. Through impression management they seek to maintain these impressions even when they encounter problems in their performances (Goffman 1959; Manning 2005).

Front and Back Stage

Every performance there is a front stage, where the social performance tends to be idealized and designed to define the situation for those who are observing it. When you are in class, you are typically performing on your front stage. Your audience is the teacher and perhaps other students.

In the back stage people feel free to express themselves in ways that are suppressed in the front (Cahill et al. 1985). Thus, after class you might well confess to your friends in the cafeteria that you had been partying and faked your answer to a question asked in class.

Socialization

Socialization is the process by which an individual learns and generally comes to accept the ways of a group or a society of which he or she is a part.

Childhood Socialization

A central concern in the study of socialization is those who do the socializing, or the agents of socialization (Wunder 2007).The first and often most effective agents of socialization are the child’s parents as well as other family members and friends.

Primary Socialization and the Family

In primary socialization, newborns, infants, and young children acquire language, identities, cultural routines, norms, and values as they interact with parents and other family members (Lubbers, Jaspers, and Ultee 2009).

In addition to a great deal of primary socialization, parents provide anticipatory socialization—that is, they teach children what will be expected of them in the future. Anticipatory socialization is how parents prepare children for the very important developmental changes (puberty, for example) that they will experience.

Peers

A good deal of socialization within the schools takes place informally, through children’s interaction with fellow students.

Gender

Sociologists devote a great deal of attention to gender socialization (McHale, Crouter, and Whiteman 2003; Rohlinger 2007), or the transmission of norms and values about what boys and girls can and should do. Even before babies are born, their parents (and many others) start to “gender” them.

Mass Media and New Media

Until recently, much of the emphasis on the role of the mass media in socialization has been on the effects of television and the enormous number of hours per week children spend in front of their TVs (Comstock and Scharrer 2007).

Consumer Culture

Children need to be socialized in order to become consumers, and especially in order to devote a significant portion of their lives to consumption (Atkinson, Nelson, and Rademacher 2015). Like many other types of socialization, much of this socialization takes place early on in the family, in schools, and in peer groups. Of course, we must not ignore the role of marketing, especially to children, in how people learn to consume (Schor 2005). For instance, many younger people who have grown up with online shopping are adept comparison shoppers. They are likely to compare products online and to search out the best possible deals before making purchases.

Adult Socialization

A great deal of adult socialization takes place at that point in life when people enter the work world and become independent of their families.

Workplaces

At one time socialization into a workplace was a fairly simple and straightforward process. Many workers were hired for jobs in large corporations (General Motors, U.S. Steel) and remained there until they reached retirement age. Especially for those who held jobs in the lower reaches of the corporate hierarchy, socialization occurred mainly in the early stages of a career. Each time workers change jobs, they need resocialization to unlearn old behaviors, norms, and values and to learn new ones.

Total Institutions

At some point in their lives, many adults find themselves in some type of total institution (Gambino 2013; Goffman 1961a). A total institution is a closed, all-encompassing place of residence and work set off from the rest of society that meets all of the needs of those enclosed in it. A major example of a total institution is the prison (another is the military). On initial entry into prison, inmates undergo formal resocialization in the form of being told the rules and procedures they must follow.

Other Aspects of Adult Socialization

Adult socialization and resocialization also take place in many other ways and in many other settings. For example, medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools of various types socialize their students to be doctors, lawyers, and members of other professions (Becker and Geer 1958; Granfield 1992; Hafferty 2009).

Interaction

Socialization generally involves interaction, or social engagement involving two or more individuals who perceive and orient their actions to one another (vom Lehn 2007). Interaction has generally been seen as involving face-to-face relationships among people, but in the twenty-first century interaction is increasingly mediated by smartphones and social media.

Personal interaction occurs throughout our lifetimes. Examples include interactions between parents and children, between children and their siblings, between teachers and students, between coworkers, and between medical personnel and patients. Interactions early in the life cycle, especially in the family and in schools, tend to be long-term and intense. Later in life, many interactions tend to be more fleeting (a quick hello on the street or a brief conversation at a cocktail party), although interactions with family members tend to remain intense.

Reciprocity and Exchange

Reciprocity /ˌresəˈpräsədē/. To sociologists who theorize about exchange, interaction is a rational process in which those involved seek to maximize rewards and minimize costs. Interaction is likely to persist as long as those involved find it rewarding, and it is likely to wind down or end when one or more of the parties no longer find it rewarding. An important idea in this context is the social norm of reciprocity, which means that those engaged in interaction expect to give and receive rewards of roughly equal value (Gouldner 1960; Molm 2010). When one party feels that the other is no longer adhering to this norm—that is, not giving about as much as he or she is receiving— the relationship is likely to end.

“Doing” Interaction

Another interactionist theory of great relevance here is ethnomethodology, which focuses on people’s everyday practices, especially those that involve interaction. The basic idea is that interaction is something that people actively “do,” something that they accomplish on a day-to-day basis. For example, the simple act of two people walking together can be considered a form of interaction. Engaging in certain practices makes it clear that you are walking with a particular someone and not with someone else (Pantzar and Shove 2010; Ryave and Schenkein 1974). You are likely to walk close to, or perhaps lean toward, a close friend. When you find yourself walking in step with a total stranger, you probably behave differently. You might separate yourself, lean away, and say “Excuse me” to make it clear that you are not walking with that stranger and are not engaged in interaction with her.

Ethnomethodology also spawned conversation analysis, which is concerned with how people do, or accomplish, conversations (Heritage and Stivers 2012). For example, you must know and utilize certain practices in order to carry on a successful conversation: You must know when it is your turn to talk and when it is appropriate to laugh at a comment made by someone else (Jefferson 1979). Conversation analysts have taken the lead in studying conversations, and interaction more generally, in great depth. They typically record conversations using audio or video devices so they can study them in detail. Later, they transcribe the conversations to create written records of them.

Interaction Order

While every instance of interaction may seem isolated and independent of others, each is part of what Erving Goffman (2000) called the interaction order. One example of an interaction order is a group of students who form a clique and develop their own norms to govern their interaction. The interaction order can be seen in many settings and contexts. One particularly good example is the way people spontaneously form queues and wait for the doors to open at a rock concert or at Walmart on “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving). Some sociologists suggest that human interaction with animals is another place to observe the interaction order (Jerolmack 2009).

Status and Role

Status and role are key elements in the interaction order, as well as in the larger structures in which such interactions often exist. A status is a position within a social system occupied by people. Within the university, for example, key statuses are professor and student. A role is what is generally expected of a person who occupies a given status (Hindin 2007). Thus, professors are expected to show up for class, to be well prepared, to teach in an engaging manner, and so on. Students are also expected to attend class, to listen and sometimes to participate, to avoid texting and checking their Facebook pages during class, to complete the required assignments, and to take and pass examinations.

The concept of status can be broken down further into ascribed and achieved status. An ascribed status is one that is not chosen; it is beyond the individual’s control. In some cases individuals are born into an ascribed status—for example, the status associated with race, ethnicity, social class, sex, or gender. In contrast, an achieved status is a position that a person acquires on the basis of accomplishment or the nature of the individual’s capacities. It may be based on merit or earned, or the person may choose it—for example, by seeking out and finding someone who will be a mate for life. Spouse, parent, and “successful” entrepreneur are all achieved statuses

Reference

Ritzer, G. (2016). Essentials of sociology.(2nd ed., pp. 73-96)