Socialization in Sociology from HelpWithAssignment.com

Socialization

Socialization may be broadly defined as the inculcation of the skills and attitudes necessary for playing given social roles. In this light, it has unquestionable theoretical relevance for social anthropology. Roles and role systems are central to the anthropological field of study however one chooses to approach it and they can scarcely be conceived of as existing or functioning without some provision for socialization.

Socialization is more than the training of children and the immature. There are cultures where it is normal for a person to remain marginal to all the major social systems up to the age of thirty or forty. But even where that is not the case, certain roles are normally recruited from among people who are grown up already. Further, social mobility and or major social changes, such as ongoing urbanization or industrialization, involve the resocialization of people of all ages. By and large, then, it is rare for individuals not to have to confront actual or potential new roles in adult life, which would require from them the acquisition of new role-playing skills and attitude.

Today many parts of the world are undergoing a socialization crisis, owing to the scope and momentum of social change. In developing countries more and more children go to school, in developed countries formal education takes longer and longer, but there is much painful uncertainty about the roles for which the young are being or ought to be prepared, and about how the task should be divided between family, school and peer groups. Resocialization of adults appears equally problematic. In regard to the study of developing countries especially, socialization would seem as much a key theme today as political structure was in the past generation for the study of countries then under colonial rule.

A dominant point of view in the 20^th century was that socialization is a process of instilling in a child a set of desired behavioral habits. Parents and other adults serve as teachers, the children as learners. Young children need to learn table manners, how to dress themselves, habits of personal hygiene, proper ways to speak to older people, and myriad, other things – things that increase in complexity as children grow older. From the “socialization as habit building” point of view, a well-socialized child is one who has accumulated a large store of the habits needed for acceptable social behavior and acceptable levels of skills, while not having acquired bad habits. By making progress with the acquisition of good habits, the child is presumably enabled to become more and more self-reliant.

An important research program emerging during the 1970s from the behavioral perspective of parenting is the one organized and led by Gerald Patterson at the Oregon Social Learning Centre. This program continues actively to the present time. Patterson and colleagues focused on the families of aggressive children, comparing the interactive sequences between parent and child that occurred in these families to those in the families of non-aggressive children. They noted that parents could inadvertently build children’s aggression by backing away from their control efforts when the child was aggressively defiant. They stressed that parents needed to provide consequences for desired or undesired child behavior and noted that in order to do so, parents needed to be vigilant in detecting infractions and keeping track of whether children have complied with parental directives. Thus parental monitoring was a crucial element in parental management of children – a variable that has since been adopted by many other researchers studying parent-child interaction.

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Sociology Groups and Organizations at HelpWithAssignment.com

Sociology Groups and Organizations

the study and understanding of social groups and organizations is central to sociology. We live most of our lives within social settings, so sociology is actually a study of our experiences within groups. Sociologists devote much attention to groups of all sizes and characteristics. Much sociological study investigates “how individuals are shaped by their social groups, from families to nations, and how groups are created and maintained by the individuals who compose them” – Kimmel 1987

Social Groups

The term group has a specific definition in sociology that differs from everyday usage. In everyday language, almost any collection of people might be called a group. However, two or more people being in close physical proximity does not constitute a group in the sociological meaning of the word. Sociologically speaking, a group is a collection of people who interact regularly based on some shared interest and who develop some sense of belonging that sets them apart from other gatherings of people. They form a social relationship. This is sometimes referred to as developing a sense of “we-ness”. All groups share this factor of interdependence. – Lewin 1948.

People who just happen to be in the same place at the same time are not a group. Rather, they are an aggregate. Individuals riding the bus or walking their dogs in park are examples of aggregates. If these people interact and develop some sort of shared interests or sense of themselves as a group, then they become a group by definition. For example, the individual dog walkers might begin to talk with each other about their pets, start to walk their dogs on the same schedule and even plan events together, such as an obedience class. Through these shared interests and interactions, the dog walkers may begin to identify themselves as members of a group. They might even adopt some sort of name to identify themselves. Another, albeit tragic, example of an aggregate developing very quickly into a group was on September 11, 2001, when hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania started as an aggregate and became a group when they joined together to fight the hijackers.

Another term that is often confused with group is category. A category refers to people who share some common characteristic or status. Categories are often used by sociologists and other researchers interested in studying social life. Age, race, gender, income level, religious affiliation, being a musician, owning a pet, or living in an apartment are all categories. People in a category do not necessarily interact or share any sense of belonging and may not even know each other.

Researchers have also pointed out that sometimes categorizations are as basic in our minds as those groups with which we identify and feel a sense of belonging and loyalty. In-groups and those with which we do not identify or toward which we may even feel animosity, out-groups. We also tend to develop a bias in which we favor our in-groups, perceiving them in a better light than those “others” – Summer 1906. We often prefer our fraternity or sorority, our church, or people from our ethnic group, for example, over others for this reason.

This in-group/out-group distinction works to build group identity and solidarity. Groups use a variety of means to distinguish who is “in” and who is “out”. Rituals such as secret handshakes or symbols such as team uniforms, gang colors, or awards honoring member’s accomplishments are all ways to exhibit group identity and reinforce membership.

Conflict with another group can also strengthen group solidarity. The members of one group draw together to challenge a common enemy – the age old idea of “us” against “them”. Thus, having an out-group to focus on can strengthen that sense of belonging and support the development of a sense of group identity as members tend to focus on differences between groups rather than any similarities.

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Sociology Perspective, Theory and Method at HelpWithAssignment.com

Sociology Perspective, Theory and Method

Sociology is study of social structure. Sociologists concentrate on the pattern of behavior of individuals share with others in their group or society. The starting point for sociology is the predictability and recurrence of social behavior. Sociologists are interested in the patterns of social relationships referred to as social structures.

The average person tends explain human behavior in individualistic or personal terms: a young man goes to war to prove his patriotism, woman divorces her husband to develop her potential, a college student commits suicide to escape depression. Sociologists attempt to explain these same events without relying on the personal motivation of individuals.

They look for social rather than personal explanations when they examine war, divorce, or suicide; young men go to war because they were taught by the society to be patriotic. More women divorce because of the social trend toward sexual equality; college students commit suicide because of pervasive societal expectations of academic performance. Sociologists do not speak of a young man, a woman or a college student. They concentrate on categories of people – young men, married women, college students.

As we know college students in a classroom do not behave exactly alike. Some attempt to write down everything professors say, some just listen to the lecture, some use tape recorders and some tune in and out. Yet, if you visit almost any college or university, you will find patterned relationships. Professors lecture, students remain in their seats, professors give examinations, students take them. Although, the individual characteristics of students and professors relate in similar patterned ways, it is the recurrent patterned interaction between people and the social structures created by such interaction that capture the attention of sociologists.

Sociologists assume that social relationships are not solely determined by the particular characteristics of the individuals involved. Emile Durkheim, a pioneering nineteenth century sociologist, argued that we do not attempt to explain bronze in terms of its components parts, but we treat it as an alloy, a unique metal produced by the synthesis of several distinct metals. Even the consistency of bronze is not predictable from its components; bronze is hard, where as lead, copper and tin are soft and malleable. Durkheim resorted that if a combination of certain metals produces a unique metal, some similar process might happen in groups of people.

Indeed, people’s behavior within group setting cannot be predicted from the characteristics of individual group members. Something new is created when individuals come together as a collective. For example, after winning the Super Bowl, some exuberant and rowdy Denver Branco fans tipped over trash cans and cars, spilled newspaper boxes, broke windows in buildings, tore down street signs, and started bonfires – behavior they would not have exhibited as lone individuals.

When the World Trade Organization met in Seattle, many protestors peacefully demonstrated their opposition to its global economic effects, while others broke shop windows and looted stores. In 2005, civil unrest in French cities, involving for the most part French Arab rioters, destroyed more than 1000 vehicles and many buildings. When hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, terror from crime, both real and imagined, delayed evacuation of the dead and injured, causing some police officers to quit and grounded helicopters.

We live in groups ranging in size from a small family to an entire society and they all encourage conformity – often, conformity promoted by social forces that individuals do not create and cannot control. Because of this accommodation, people who belong to similar groups tend to think, feel, and behave in similar ways. American, Russian and Chinese people for instance, have distinctive eating habits, type of dress, religious beliefs and attitudes toward family life. Groups of teenagers tend to listen to the same music, dress alike and follow similar dating customs.

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Culture Race & Ethnicity Assignment help

The words Culture, Race and Ethnicity are different aspects in the subject of Sociology. The above concepts might seem similar to a layman but, for a Sociologist the three terms mean differently.

Culture: The word Culture is derived from a Latin word “Cultura” meaning to cultivate. Over 17th, 18th, and 19th century, the word was used differently, but in the early 20th century, the word was used to mean “the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols and act imaginatively and creatively”. The emergence of the above definition of culture emerged because of the increased interest in the study of anthropology. This concept became central to the subject of anthropology.

It has been observed that culture has a very important role to play in human society. The need to learn behavior and use it in a creative manner is the key factor that separates us from many animals and primates. In fact, there is a debate among the primatologists. Some argue that primates have a culture and others argue that they do not. Culture is the behavior, trait, education and perception that people learn from their childhood.

Race: Race is the classification of humans into groups based on various factors such as culture, language, social practice or heritable characteristics. Even, race can be defined biologically. It denotes a genetically divergent population that can be marked by common observable traits.
Broadly, human population is divided into many races like Caucasian, Hispanic, European, Asian, Australian Aborigines, etc. There are many sub races which can be identified based on the country that the people live in.

Ethnicity: The concept of ethnicity is very similar to that of race but there are subtle differences between them. Ethnicity refers to people who identify themselves with sharing a common heritage, often a common language, common culture and common religion. The word ethnic and ethnicity are derived from the Greek word, “ethnos” translated as nation. The modern meaning for the word ethnic evolved in the 19th and 20th century. One of the important traits of ethnicity is that an ethnic group does not want to forgo its cultural identity, the distinctiveness.

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Sociology at HelpWithAssignment.com

Sociology is the study of society. It is the scientific study of collective human behavior. The study of sociology is concerned with all group activities like economic, political, social and religious. Sociologists study various areas such as bureaucracy, community, family, public opinion, social change, etc. The subject tries to determine the laws governing human behavior in social contexts.

The subject ranges from the humble micro level of agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and social structures. The subject is both topically and methodologically a very broad discipline. Traditionally, sociology was limited to the study of social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion and law. Gradually, the focus expanded to include subjects such as health, military and penal institutions and the Internet.

The concept of sociology can be traced back to the time of Aristotle. With his famous quotation, “man is a social animal.” However, the real and concrete study about sociology began only in the 18th century.

The word Sociology was derived from two words, Latin word “socius” and Greek word “logos”. Significant contributions to the subject were made by Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim.

The subject has seen the introduction of topics like Positivism, Anti-positivism, Functionalism, Conflict Theory, Computational Sociology, Culture, Criminality, Deviance, Law and Punishment, Economic Sociology, Environment, Education, Family, Gender and Sexuality, Health and Illness, Media, Military, Political Sociology, Race and Ethnic Relations, Religion, Social Networks, Social Psychology.

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