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Lecture: 3
Socialization
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 training to its new born members so that they may develop their own
personality. This social training is called „Socialization‟.
The concept of Socialization
Little of man‟s behavior is instinctive. Rather, man‟s behavior is „learnt‟ behavior.
The human child comes into the world as a biological organism with animal
needs. He is gradually moulded in society into a social being and learns social
ways of acting and feeling. The continued existence of society becomes
impossible without this process. No individual could become the person and no
culture could exist without it. This process of moulding and shaping the
personality of the human infant is called „socialization.
Definition
W.F. Ogburn: “Socialization is the process by which the individual learns to
conform to the norms of the group”
Bogardus: Socialization is the “process of working together, of developing
group responsibility, or being guided by the welfare needs of others”
Peter Worsley explains socialization as the process of “transmission of culture,
the process whereby men learn the rules and practices of social groups”
The agents of socialization
Personalities do not come ready-made. They are moulded or shaped through
the process of socialization. This process of socialization is operative not only in
childhood but throughout life. It is a process which begins at the birth and
continues till the death of the individual. The following are the agencies that have
been established by culture which socialize the new born child.
Family and Parents:
The process of socialization begins for every one of us in the family. Here, the
parental and particularly the maternal influence on the child is very great. The
intimate relationship between the mother and the child has a great impact on the
shaping of child‟s abilities and capacities. The parents are the first persons to
introduce to the child the culture of his group. The child receives additional
communications from his older siblings, i.e. brothers and sisters, who have gone
through the same process-with certain differences due to birth order and to the
number and sex of the siblings.
Peers or Agemates:
‘Peer groups‟ means those groups made up of the contemporaries of the child,
his associates in schools, in playground and in the street. He learns from this
children, facts and facets of culture that they have previously learnt at different
times from their parents. The members of the peer groups have other sources of
information about the culture-their peers in still other peer groups-and thus the
acquisition of culture goes on.
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Teachers:
The teachers also play their role in socialization when the child enters the
school. It is in the school that the culture is formally transmitted and acquired, in
which the lore and the learning the science and art, of one generation is passed
on to the next. It is not only the formal knowledge of the culture that is
transmitted there but most of its premises as well- its ethical sentiments, its
political attitudes, its customs and taboos. The children in the earlier school may
uncritically absorb the culture to which their teachers give expression. They may
in the high school respond with increasing scepticism. But wherever they are,
and at whatever age the communications they receive from their teachers help
to socialize them and to make them finally mature members of their societies.
Religion:
Religions institution influences the human life in various ways. A person who
belongs to a religion will respect rites and rituals. It helps man to internalize such
qualities as truthfulness, dutifulness, uprightness and fellow feeling etc. It guides
man to follow honest path discarding the evil one and teaches him to be honest
and fair in behavior.
Political parties:
Political parties attempt to seize political power and maintain it. They try to win
the support of the members of society on the basis of a socio-economic policy
and programme. In the process they disseminate norms and values for the
citizen to use in his own process of evaluation of the existing social system.
They teach value positions and thus may socialize the individuals for sociability
or change.
Literature and Mass Media of Communication:
There is another source of socialization. This is, of course, found only in literate
societies and that is the literature. The civilization that we share is constructed of
words or literature. “Words rush at us in torrent and cascade; they leap into our
vision, as in billboard and newspaper, magazine and textbook, and assault our
ears, as in radio and television”. The media of mass communication give us their
messages. These messages too contain in capsule form, the premises of our
culture, its attitudes and ideologies. The words are always written by some one
and these people too-authors and editors and advertiser-join the teachers, the
peers and the parents in the socialization process. In individual cases, of course,
some of these influences are more important than others. The response can
also differ. “Some of us respect tradition, others fear the opinions of their peers,
and still others prefer to listen to the „thousand tongues‟ of conscience”. But all
these modes of socialization result in conformity of a kind and all these thus
contribute to the transmission of a culture by some and its acquisition by others.
