Socialization
Overview
Welcome to Unit 3 of Sociology 101, an introduction to the study of how the social world influences the way people behave and vise versa. In this unit, we are going to continue to build the tools you will need to be successful in applying sociological concepts, theories, and approaches to the social world around you. In Unit 2, we learned about culture and diverse ways people and group live their lives around the world and across history. The one thing that they all have in common is culture. To continue an analogy used in that unit, if culture is like a game or a sport with rules, objectives, social interactions and strategies to succeed, then socialization is the process in which we learn how to play it. Remember the first time you learned how to play a new game or sport. Someone who already knew it well needed to teach you. At first you were not sure how to play, and you may have made mistakes or not known the proper terms or right strategies. As you continue to engage, you continue to improve and get better at what you are doing. That is socialization, only in life it applies to what it means to be a participating member of society. Areas like business, education, family and religion, all have skills and knowledge that we need to learn. In this unit we will learn about socialization, look at how that happens, and who or what shapes us to be who we are today.
Topics
This unit is divided into the following topics:
- What is Socialization?
- The Self, Identity and Social Roles
- Agents of Socialization
- Crime and Deviance
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:
- Consider the effects of digital technologies and social media on socialization compared to traditional forms of socialization.
- Consider the different levels of socialization and how they form, compliment, or challenge a person’s norms, values and beliefs.
- Identify key agents of socialization and examine different factors and mechanisms of socialization.
- Compare different theoretical perspectives sociologists use to study and understand processes and agents of socialization.
- Explore core concepts that help explain how people present themselves and their social roles, and how social media influences this process of self presentation.
- Examine the relationships between deviance, conformity, victimization, and crime and punishment.
Activity Checklist
Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.
Learning Activities
- Complete the activity Socialization over the Life Course
- Complete the activity: Who Am I?
- Watch the video Mods and Rockers (15 minutes).
- Read and discuss the Case Study (20 minutes).
- View the chart showing Homicide around the World and answer the questions listed. (15 Minutes)
- Fair Punishment? Watch the video and consider the questions provided. (15 Minutes)
Assessment
- See the Assessment section in Moodle for assignment details and due dates.
Resources
Here are the resources you will need to complete this unit.
- Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach by Anabel Quan-Haase and Lorne Tepperman.
- Other online resources will be provided in the unit.
What is Socialization?
We begin Unit 3 with another very important definition. What is socialization? As stated in the unit introduction, socialization is the process in which we learn about how to interact in the culture we are part of. Rather than using the game analogy, let’s imagine you are about to start a new job. A place of work has a culture. It has certain expectations for behaviour. It has a certain way of doing things, such as a unique vocabulary that people on the job take for granted. The place of employment may require special clothing, or they may require special training. All of this is to help new employees to become integrated into the work environment or work culture. This is socialization. Socialization happens all around us. Specifically, we see it in religions, and we see it in educational institutions. It is evident in learning to drive a car, or how to hold our utensils when we eat. We could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point. Socialization is at work all around us and allows us to know how we are to behave in the social world we live in.
Photo credit: Pixabay
Consider being the lone survivor of a shipwreck and you are now alone on a deserted island. What social expectation would be on you? When do you need to get up? What do you have to wear? What language skills do you need? Would you need to stand in line for anything? The point is, none of these issues apply when you are not in a social setting. Socialization is what allows humans to interact successfully.
The process of socialization happens at both the micro and macro level. At the micro level, socialization is helping us to development a sense of who we are. What do you think and do when no one is looking? Would we say the same thing to someone’s face as we would post anonymously on an online forum? Macro socialization is about how big institutions shape the way we behave and what we believe. How has the educational institution shaped the way you behave in a classroom? How has your faith institution shaped what you believe?
Diagram of the processes of socialization and core institutions.Photo credit: Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach
Figure 4.1 does an excellent job of putting the main pieces of the socialization process together in one place.
Primary Socialization refers to early socialization, or the influences and people who first shape our view of ourselves and the world around us. For most of human history, the family has been the primary socialization agent. Human survival is dependent on extensive care in infancy. Modern technology has removed some of this dependency and the future may affect this early bonding process even more. The family is also the primary socialization agent because it often determines the nature of secondary socializing agents like friends, schools, and religious communities. Parents can be selective in who they let their children play with. Where a family lives will often affect the school a child goes to or the daycare that they are placed in. Parents seek to perpetuate their religious beliefs and as a result immerse their children in a faith community to reinforce those family preferences.
Resocialization and anticipatory socialization are two other types of socialization you should be familiar with. When someone goes from being embedded in one culture to another, they need to unlearn the old ways of doing what they did and learn new ways of acting or believing. Changing from one company to another or one sport to another involves resocialization, or unlearning an old and relearning a new culture.
A total institution is one that aims to influence much of your life. It often involves physical or social isolation from competing socialization institutions as a means of gaining more control over behaviours and beliefs. Canada has a dark history of Residential Schools in which Indigenous children were removed from their homes and the support and influence of their families as a means to attempt dramatic resocialization in the lives of those students. By removing access to their family beliefs, language, and customs, the Residential Schools had all the hallmarks of a total institution. Prisons and the military are more well-known examples of where individualism is discouraged and group identity is promoted by similar clothing, hairstyles, residences, and values.
Photo by Menglong Bao on Unsplash
Activity: Socialization over the Life Course
Do the activity listed below and be prepared to engage in the discussion questions with your peers. (Note that you select the life stage and move up/down the list)
Socialization Across the Life Course
Theory Check
Take a moment to consider applying the main sociological theories to socialization:
- What function does socialization serve a society?
- Exercise your sociological imagination by considering the differences in the socialization process of children growing up in middle-class and working-class families? How might these differences create advantages or disadvantages towards a child’s ability to do well later in life?
- Consider the way males and females are socialized growing up. Think of some differences and their impact on later life opportunities.
Table 4.2 Theoretical Approaches to Socialization
The Self, Identity, and Social Roles
Who are we and what is our identity? Consider your social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn. How do they reflect who you are? Is your identity consistent across platforms? Would you put information about yourself on one platform but not the other? Why? These are all the types of questions that we try to answer about our identity and socialization. Erving Goffman described our identity by using a theatre analogy. He said we have a “frontstage self” and a “backstage self”. The frontstage self is how we present ourselves in public and the backstage self is how we present ourselves in private. The idea of impression management (how we want others to see us), has taken on a whole new meaning with technological advancement. We talked about social media, but what about making a video call? Are we now concerned about how we look when we make a video call? Because video calls are real time, we don’t have the luxury of deleting comments we wish we had not made, and we can’t filter to make us sound more intelligent or take multiple views to make sure we only present the best one.
Question to Consider
- If you had to describe to someone what a selfie is, how would you do it?
- Is a selfie just a portrait of ourselves or is it part of our self management or the way we can control how we appear to others?
To continue Goffman’s theater analogy, in society we often play many roles at once. This is why you may post something you did last weekend on Snapchat but not on LinkedIn. Your professional role may be one you are more careful with. Consider how one person can be living out many roles simultaneously. A person could be a father, a husband, a banker, a friend, a son, an uncle, and a coach. All these roles require different skills and are lived out in unique ways. Another way to understand social roles is the way we respond to different roles regardless of who fulfills the role. For example, when you see a law enforcement officer, are you more likely to make sure you abide by the law? When you go into a doctor’s office, do you trust what they say more than the person you talk to in the waiting room? What about your professor, do you assume that he or she knows what they are talking about? These are all examples of how we view roles in society.
The context in which we live out our roles helps define those roles. When we are at work, we may behave differently than when we are out with friends. The way we conduct ourselves at a sporting event is probably not the way we behave in a religious worship service. The context of socialization helps to guide our behaviour, but what happens when social contexts blur? What if you are at a sporting event with religious affiliates? Or how do you behave when your workplace puts on a party? Social media makes this blurring even more possible when our mother or father may follow us on Facebook or our boss has access to our Instagram account. Sociologists refer to this as context collapse and the queues for behaviour become confusing.
Activity: The Sacred Rac
Read the following Case Study on the Sacred Rac.
Consider the following questions:
- Why do you think the Asu tribe places so much importance on the Rac?
- How is their society influenced by the Rac?
- What would you ask a tribe member about the rituals involving the Rac?
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
Agents of Socialization
Table 4.3 highlights three main agents of socialization: family, school, and workplace. These are important social institutions that shape us to better integrate into society but they are not the only sources of socialization. Religion, peers, economic forces, and the government are a few other ways in which are lives shaped in ways we don’t normally think about.
Photo credit: Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach
Socializing agents do not act independently on the life of individuals. When we look at inequality in Unit 4, we will see how the institutional experience that people have is often clustered together in packages. For example, if someone is born to parents who are economically well off, their experience with friends, education, the law, and vocation are all going to be different than the child born to parents with less economic resources. The idea of upward social mobility is the process of raising in social status. This mobility is typically achieved by increased economic opportunities like better jobs which are often the result of better education. Let’s not forget the idea of social capital from Unit 2 that suggests that when we have a strong network of people to rely on, that network can give us job leads that we might not know about otherwise. The higher the status of those in our network, the better jobs we are probably made aware of. Socialization is the process of coming to competency in the cultures we live in but don’t think that all people experience that socialization the same way.
Question to Consider
- Consider your own upbringing and family dynamics. Are you the eldest or the youngest in your family?
- Did you find that birth order had an influence on socialization in your family? If so, in what way?
Crime and Deviance
Crime and deviance are topics that are closely related to socialization. For the purposes of this course, deviance is any behaviour that diverges (or deviates) from social norms or acceptable social behaviour. The greater the deviance, the more likely the behaviour will not be acceptable. It is important to note that deviance is not a moral label in this case. It is a description of the variance of an action or behaviour from what is normally considered acceptable behaviour. Deviance is not good or bad, it is different. Imagine a class writes an exam and the average grade is 70%. You would probably consider 60%-80% to be a normal grade. Someone who got 45% or 95% would deviate from what is normal. However, most of us wouldn’t mind being deviants with 95%!
Social deviance is a fascinating social concept. Who defines what is normal and what is not? How is deviance dealt with by society? What role does deviance play in social change? These are a few of the questions that we will try to address in this section. Remember, if socialization is the process in which we learn how to behave in society, how do we make sense of those who don’t behave according to social standards? Social responses can vary from stigmatization which can be as simple as ignoring someone’s behaviour, or honking our horn when someone’s driving needs adjusting, to legal consequences such as going to jail for theft or violent acts.
Deviance, then, is a concept applied to social action that is out of the ordinary. It typically has a negative connotation but that is because society in general is uncomfortable with change. Deviance can be used to better understand many controversial social issues such as sexuality and substance abuse. What is considered normal sexual activity, and what substances are considered socially acceptable? Consider the international rise in cohabitation of a couple living together without being married. At the beginning of the 20th century, very few people lived together before they were married and if they did, they were considered to be deviants. Today in the Western world, a majority of people live together without being married at one point in their life. This trend is growing in the East as well. So many people in the West live together without being married that it has now become deviant to go straight into a marriage relationship without living together first. Deviance can apply to fashion, and it can apply to political, social, and religious views. Moral Panic is a way in which a group tries to highlight the potential harm of a change in what society considers normal. If a case can be made that portrays a certain belief or behaviour as morally wrong, then it will carry more weight with the rest of public than if it appears to be just the opinion of a fringe group. Figure 5.2 shows the process of creating a moral panic.
Activity: Moral Panic
Watch the video Mods and Rockers which summarizes the idea of moral panic in the context of two rival youth groups in 1960s Britain. (5 minutes)
Questions to Consider
After watching the video, discuss or journal about what was happening in society at that time. Discuss the “different” versions the events as portrayed by the researcher.
Theory has been presented as central to navigating the social world. Each section has used theory to help explain the concepts of research, culture, and socialization. The subject of deviance provides the opportunity to see major theoretical difference in explaining the concept. It is worth a more detailed look.
Conflict theory and feminist theory (its gendered sub theory), have at its premise that something is wrong with society. That problem can be economic or gendered and usually both. As a result of seeing something wrong with society, conflict theory sees deviance as a positive step toward change. Conflict theorists see the world as being the way it is because the ruling class is advantaged by it. Therefore, they see the need to critique the status quo. They are more likely to protest and promote change. Functionalists take a contrary view of society. They argue that society moves towards more structure and organization because it is best for the majority. They don’t like protests; they resist change and try to conserve the status quo. Symbolic interactionists are micro theorists and take yet another unique approach to deviance. They are more interested in how deviance gets defined, who is doing the defining and for what gain? They would not see deviance as a moral absolute but as something that is socially constructed by individuals and society. They are also interested in how labels like deviant, trouble maker or criminal shape how a person views themselves and how society views them.
Activity: Applying Theory to Deviance
Read the following case study. Focus on the different ways theories approach the case.
A twenty-year-old man lives in poverty and has just been laid off from his work. While he still lives at home, he can no longer contribute to the family financially, and no longer has money for discretionary spending. He cannot afford to go to college. He is spending his free time with friends from his neighbourhood who are in a similar situation. They are frequently harassed by police. Within a few months, the group decide to break and enter homes and then businesses, stealing what they can and sharing the profits.
At first, they are not caught despite a few close calls end encounters with angry homeowners and large dogs. After a year, the man is arrested and imprisoned.
- How is this behaviour deviant?
- Why is there stigma associated with this behaviour?
- How would a sociologist approach this incident?
- How would a conflict theorist explain this crime?
- How would a functionalist theorist explain this crime?
- How would a symbolic interactionist explain this crime?
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
Crime is a special form of deviance because society has formulated a response to minimize or eliminate the behaviour. Crime defines a behaviour that is a codified in a law to be against the public’s best interests. Criminal behaviour varies from society to society and across history. The crime funnel presented at the beginning of chapter 5 shows the fluid nature of crime statistics. What would happen if you added two additional categories to the inverted pyramid? At the top you could add Laws Defining Crime and at the bottom Crimes Prosecuted in order to see how there could be even more variability in the reporting and categorizing of crime.
Diagram of a crime funnel
Activity: Homicide around the World
View the following chart that shows the rates of homicides in selected countries in 2013.
Bar diagram of rates of homicides in selected countries in 2013
Questions to Consider
- What, besides the availability of firearms, might explain these variations between countries?
- Use your sociological imagination to try to list other variables that you hypothesize would correlate to gun violence by country.
Activity: Fair Punishment?
Crime is something defined by a society and so is the punishment. Punishment has been theorized to fulfill a variety of purposes. For some, punishment is meant to be a deterrent to the perpetrator and to the general public who sees the perpetrator being punished. In this case the punishment is said to fit the crime when it is severe enough to deter but not destroy the one thinking of committing the crime.
Watch the following clip from the musical version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable about a man who ended up in prison for 15 years because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his family.
A second purpose of punishment is to rehabilitate the criminal. The logic is that if a criminal were provided with social skills and the ability to earn an honest living that they would be less like to return to a life of crime. A third purpose of punishment is restorative. In many penal codes the victim of a crime is entitled to compensation. This compensation is meant to restore a right relationship with all the parties involved.
Questions to Consider
Summary
In this third unit, you had the opportunity to learn about socialization, while at the very same time – be socialized. Education is an agent of socialization and it is designed to help you be better prepared to be contributing members of your society. You learned about how socialization helps us to understand who we are and gives us an identity. As primary socialization agents, you saw how your parents make choices for you that influence the type and quality of further socialization that you receive. The values and norms that shape our society become a part of us in a way that seems natural but varies across time and place.
Deviance and crime provided a clear illustration of what happens when people do not embrace or practice the socialized norms and values that the majority of society agree to. Deviance is a descriptive term but is often has a negative connotation. Depending on your theoretical outlook, deviation may be good or bad. Some social deviation is informally sanctioned and some is formally sanctioned. Punishment for a crime is a formal sanction designed to deter, rehabilitate, or restore the offender and in some cases the victim. Deviance and crime, like socialization, is not static but changes over time and cultures.
Assessment
Quizzes 4 & 5
After completing this unit, including the learning activities, you are asked to complete the two online quizzes reviewing material from chapters 4 and 5.
These quizzes are meant to be formative, and a tool to help you measure your own understanding of the course material.
Go to Quizzes in the main Assessment tab for access to Quiz 4 and Quiz 5. Note that the quizzes will be administered in the Learning Lab.
Be sure to practice with the online quizzes from the textbook.
Assignment: Reflective Journal
The Reflective Journal assignment is a chance to present your understanding and application of the course material, ask questions, and clarify issues. We are looking for evidence that you are engaging the course material. Examine the learning outcomes for each unit and ensure that your journal addresses each outcome. Include your thoughts from the learning activities and how you apply the concepts to your life and current events.
Refer to the Assessment section in Moodle for all other assignment details and due dates.
Checking your Learning
Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to:
- Think about the effects of digital technologies and social media on socialization compared to traditional forms of socialization.
- Consider the different levels of socialization and how they form, compliment, or challenge a person’s norms, values, and beliefs.
- Identify key agents of socialization and examine different factors and mechanisms of socialization.
- Compare different theoretical perspectives sociologists use to study and understand processes and agents of socialization.
- Explore core concepts that help explain how people present themselves and their social roles, and how social media influences this process of self presentation.
- Examine the relationships between deviance, conformity, victimization, crime, and punishment.
Unit 3 Socialization
Overview
Welcome to Unit 3 of Sociology 101, an introduction to the study of how the social world influences the way people behave and vise versa. In this unit, we are going to continue to build the tools you will need to be successful in applying sociological concepts, theories, and approaches to the social world around you. In Unit 2, we learned about culture and diverse ways people and group live their lives around the world and across history. The one thing that they all have in common is culture. To continue an analogy used in that unit, if culture is like a game or a sport with rules, objectives, social interactions and strategies to succeed, then socialization is the process in which we learn how to play it. Remember the first time you learned how to play a new game or sport. Someone who already knew it well needed to teach you. At first you were not sure how to play, and you may have made mistakes or not known the proper terms or right strategies. As you continue to engage, you continue to improve and get better at what you are doing. That is socialization, only in life it applies to what it means to be a participating member of society. Areas like business, education, family and religion, all have skills and knowledge that we need to learn. In this unit we will learn about socialization, look at how that happens, and who or what shapes us to be who we are today.
Topics
This unit is divided into the following topics:
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:
Activity Checklist
Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.
Learning Activities
Assessment
Resources
Here are the resources you will need to complete this unit.
3.1 What is Socialization?
We begin Unit 3 with another very important definition. What is socialization? As stated in the unit introduction, socialization is the process in which we learn about how to interact in the culture we are part of. Rather than using the game analogy, let’s imagine you are about to start a new job. A place of work has a culture. It has certain expectations for behaviour. It has a certain way of doing things, such as a unique vocabulary that people on the job take for granted. The place of employment may require special clothing, or they may require special training. All of this is to help new employees to become integrated into the work environment or work culture. This is socialization. Socialization happens all around us. Specifically, we see it in religions, and we see it in educational institutions. It is evident in learning to drive a car, or how to hold our utensils when we eat. We could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point. Socialization is at work all around us and allows us to know how we are to behave in the social world we live in.
Photo credit: Pixabay
Consider being the lone survivor of a shipwreck and you are now alone on a deserted island. What social expectation would be on you? When do you need to get up? What do you have to wear? What language skills do you need? Would you need to stand in line for anything? The point is, none of these issues apply when you are not in a social setting. Socialization is what allows humans to interact successfully.
The process of socialization happens at both the micro and macro level. At the micro level, socialization is helping us to development a sense of who we are. What do you think and do when no one is looking? Would we say the same thing to someone’s face as we would post anonymously on an online forum? Macro socialization is about how big institutions shape the way we behave and what we believe. How has the educational institution shaped the way you behave in a classroom? How has your faith institution shaped what you believe?
Diagram of the processes of socialization and core institutions.Photo credit: Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach
Figure 4.1 does an excellent job of putting the main pieces of the socialization process together in one place.
Primary Socialization refers to early socialization, or the influences and people who first shape our view of ourselves and the world around us. For most of human history, the family has been the primary socialization agent. Human survival is dependent on extensive care in infancy. Modern technology has removed some of this dependency and the future may affect this early bonding process even more. The family is also the primary socialization agent because it often determines the nature of secondary socializing agents like friends, schools, and religious communities. Parents can be selective in who they let their children play with. Where a family lives will often affect the school a child goes to or the daycare that they are placed in. Parents seek to perpetuate their religious beliefs and as a result immerse their children in a faith community to reinforce those family preferences.
Resocialization and anticipatory socialization are two other types of socialization you should be familiar with. When someone goes from being embedded in one culture to another, they need to unlearn the old ways of doing what they did and learn new ways of acting or believing. Changing from one company to another or one sport to another involves resocialization, or unlearning an old and relearning a new culture.
A total institution is one that aims to influence much of your life. It often involves physical or social isolation from competing socialization institutions as a means of gaining more control over behaviours and beliefs. Canada has a dark history of Residential Schools in which Indigenous children were removed from their homes and the support and influence of their families as a means to attempt dramatic resocialization in the lives of those students. By removing access to their family beliefs, language, and customs, the Residential Schools had all the hallmarks of a total institution. Prisons and the military are more well-known examples of where individualism is discouraged and group identity is promoted by similar clothing, hairstyles, residences, and values.
Photo by Menglong Bao on Unsplash
Activity: Socialization over the Life Course
Do the activity listed below and be prepared to engage in the discussion questions with your peers. (Note that you select the life stage and move up/down the list)
Socialization Across the Life Course
Theory Check
Take a moment to consider applying the main sociological theories to socialization:
Table 4.2 Theoretical Approaches to Socialization
3.2 The Self, Identity, and Social Roles
Who are we and what is our identity? Consider your social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn. How do they reflect who you are? Is your identity consistent across platforms? Would you put information about yourself on one platform but not the other? Why? These are all the types of questions that we try to answer about our identity and socialization. Erving Goffman described our identity by using a theatre analogy. He said we have a “frontstage self” and a “backstage self”. The frontstage self is how we present ourselves in public and the backstage self is how we present ourselves in private. The idea of impression management (how we want others to see us), has taken on a whole new meaning with technological advancement. We talked about social media, but what about making a video call? Are we now concerned about how we look when we make a video call? Because video calls are real time, we don’t have the luxury of deleting comments we wish we had not made, and we can’t filter to make us sound more intelligent or take multiple views to make sure we only present the best one.
Question to Consider
To continue Goffman’s theater analogy, in society we often play many roles at once. This is why you may post something you did last weekend on Snapchat but not on LinkedIn. Your professional role may be one you are more careful with. Consider how one person can be living out many roles simultaneously. A person could be a father, a husband, a banker, a friend, a son, an uncle, and a coach. All these roles require different skills and are lived out in unique ways. Another way to understand social roles is the way we respond to different roles regardless of who fulfills the role. For example, when you see a law enforcement officer, are you more likely to make sure you abide by the law? When you go into a doctor’s office, do you trust what they say more than the person you talk to in the waiting room? What about your professor, do you assume that he or she knows what they are talking about? These are all examples of how we view roles in society.
The context in which we live out our roles helps define those roles. When we are at work, we may behave differently than when we are out with friends. The way we conduct ourselves at a sporting event is probably not the way we behave in a religious worship service. The context of socialization helps to guide our behaviour, but what happens when social contexts blur? What if you are at a sporting event with religious affiliates? Or how do you behave when your workplace puts on a party? Social media makes this blurring even more possible when our mother or father may follow us on Facebook or our boss has access to our Instagram account. Sociologists refer to this as context collapse and the queues for behaviour become confusing.
Activity: The Sacred Rac
Read the following Case Study on the Sacred Rac.
Consider the following questions:
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
3.3 Agents of Socialization
Table 4.3 highlights three main agents of socialization: family, school, and workplace. These are important social institutions that shape us to better integrate into society but they are not the only sources of socialization. Religion, peers, economic forces, and the government are a few other ways in which are lives shaped in ways we don’t normally think about.
Photo credit: Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach
Socializing agents do not act independently on the life of individuals. When we look at inequality in Unit 4, we will see how the institutional experience that people have is often clustered together in packages. For example, if someone is born to parents who are economically well off, their experience with friends, education, the law, and vocation are all going to be different than the child born to parents with less economic resources. The idea of upward social mobility is the process of raising in social status. This mobility is typically achieved by increased economic opportunities like better jobs which are often the result of better education. Let’s not forget the idea of social capital from Unit 2 that suggests that when we have a strong network of people to rely on, that network can give us job leads that we might not know about otherwise. The higher the status of those in our network, the better jobs we are probably made aware of. Socialization is the process of coming to competency in the cultures we live in but don’t think that all people experience that socialization the same way.
Question to Consider
3.4 Crime and Deviance
Crime and deviance are topics that are closely related to socialization. For the purposes of this course, deviance is any behaviour that diverges (or deviates) from social norms or acceptable social behaviour. The greater the deviance, the more likely the behaviour will not be acceptable. It is important to note that deviance is not a moral label in this case. It is a description of the variance of an action or behaviour from what is normally considered acceptable behaviour. Deviance is not good or bad, it is different. Imagine a class writes an exam and the average grade is 70%. You would probably consider 60%-80% to be a normal grade. Someone who got 45% or 95% would deviate from what is normal. However, most of us wouldn’t mind being deviants with 95%!
Social deviance is a fascinating social concept. Who defines what is normal and what is not? How is deviance dealt with by society? What role does deviance play in social change? These are a few of the questions that we will try to address in this section. Remember, if socialization is the process in which we learn how to behave in society, how do we make sense of those who don’t behave according to social standards? Social responses can vary from stigmatization which can be as simple as ignoring someone’s behaviour, or honking our horn when someone’s driving needs adjusting, to legal consequences such as going to jail for theft or violent acts.
Deviance, then, is a concept applied to social action that is out of the ordinary. It typically has a negative connotation but that is because society in general is uncomfortable with change. Deviance can be used to better understand many controversial social issues such as sexuality and substance abuse. What is considered normal sexual activity, and what substances are considered socially acceptable? Consider the international rise in cohabitation of a couple living together without being married. At the beginning of the 20th century, very few people lived together before they were married and if they did, they were considered to be deviants. Today in the Western world, a majority of people live together without being married at one point in their life. This trend is growing in the East as well. So many people in the West live together without being married that it has now become deviant to go straight into a marriage relationship without living together first. Deviance can apply to fashion, and it can apply to political, social, and religious views. Moral Panic is a way in which a group tries to highlight the potential harm of a change in what society considers normal. If a case can be made that portrays a certain belief or behaviour as morally wrong, then it will carry more weight with the rest of public than if it appears to be just the opinion of a fringe group. Figure 5.2 shows the process of creating a moral panic.
Activity: Moral Panic
Watch the video Mods and Rockers which summarizes the idea of moral panic in the context of two rival youth groups in 1960s Britain. (5 minutes)
Questions to Consider
After watching the video, discuss or journal about what was happening in society at that time. Discuss the “different” versions the events as portrayed by the researcher.
Theory has been presented as central to navigating the social world. Each section has used theory to help explain the concepts of research, culture, and socialization. The subject of deviance provides the opportunity to see major theoretical difference in explaining the concept. It is worth a more detailed look. Conflict theory and feminist theory (its gendered sub theory), have at its premise that something is wrong with society. That problem can be economic or gendered and usually both. As a result of seeing something wrong with society, conflict theory sees deviance as a positive step toward change. Conflict theorists see the world as being the way it is because the ruling class is advantaged by it. Therefore, they see the need to critique the status quo. They are more likely to protest and promote change. Functionalists take a contrary view of society. They argue that society moves towards more structure and organization because it is best for the majority. They don’t like protests; they resist change and try to conserve the status quo. Symbolic interactionists are micro theorists and take yet another unique approach to deviance. They are more interested in how deviance gets defined, who is doing the defining and for what gain? They would not see deviance as a moral absolute but as something that is socially constructed by individuals and society. They are also interested in how labels like deviant, trouble maker or criminal shape how a person views themselves and how society views them.
Activity: Applying Theory to Deviance
Read the following case study. Focus on the different ways theories approach the case.
A twenty-year-old man lives in poverty and has just been laid off from his work. While he still lives at home, he can no longer contribute to the family financially, and no longer has money for discretionary spending. He cannot afford to go to college. He is spending his free time with friends from his neighbourhood who are in a similar situation. They are frequently harassed by police. Within a few months, the group decide to break and enter homes and then businesses, stealing what they can and sharing the profits. At first, they are not caught despite a few close calls end encounters with angry homeowners and large dogs. After a year, the man is arrested and imprisoned.
Note that you may be asked to discuss this activity with your peers. Be sure to take notes and reflect on what you have learned.
Crime is a special form of deviance because society has formulated a response to minimize or eliminate the behaviour. Crime defines a behaviour that is a codified in a law to be against the public’s best interests. Criminal behaviour varies from society to society and across history. The crime funnel presented at the beginning of chapter 5 shows the fluid nature of crime statistics. What would happen if you added two additional categories to the inverted pyramid? At the top you could add Laws Defining Crime and at the bottom Crimes Prosecuted in order to see how there could be even more variability in the reporting and categorizing of crime.
Diagram of a crime funnel
Activity: Homicide around the World
View the following chart that shows the rates of homicides in selected countries in 2013.
Bar diagram of rates of homicides in selected countries in 2013
Questions to Consider
Activity: Fair Punishment?
Crime is something defined by a society and so is the punishment. Punishment has been theorized to fulfill a variety of purposes. For some, punishment is meant to be a deterrent to the perpetrator and to the general public who sees the perpetrator being punished. In this case the punishment is said to fit the crime when it is severe enough to deter but not destroy the one thinking of committing the crime.
Watch the following clip from the musical version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable about a man who ended up in prison for 15 years because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his family.
A second purpose of punishment is to rehabilitate the criminal. The logic is that if a criminal were provided with social skills and the ability to earn an honest living that they would be less like to return to a life of crime. A third purpose of punishment is restorative. In many penal codes the victim of a crime is entitled to compensation. This compensation is meant to restore a right relationship with all the parties involved.
Questions to Consider
What are some social skills or programs that aim to rehabilitate criminals? What is an example of restorative justice that aims to amend the broken relationship between a victim and the criminal?
Look up an article online that discusses the topic of unfair punishment. Why do you think it is fair or unfair? The following two links provide a Canadian example:
Alberta boy, 12, who chased youth with knife sentenced to practise basketball
Is Canada tough on crime or doing just fine?
Summary
In this third unit, you had the opportunity to learn about socialization, while at the very same time – be socialized. Education is an agent of socialization and it is designed to help you be better prepared to be contributing members of your society. You learned about how socialization helps us to understand who we are and gives us an identity. As primary socialization agents, you saw how your parents make choices for you that influence the type and quality of further socialization that you receive. The values and norms that shape our society become a part of us in a way that seems natural but varies across time and place.
Deviance and crime provided a clear illustration of what happens when people do not embrace or practice the socialized norms and values that the majority of society agree to. Deviance is a descriptive term but is often has a negative connotation. Depending on your theoretical outlook, deviation may be good or bad. Some social deviation is informally sanctioned and some is formally sanctioned. Punishment for a crime is a formal sanction designed to deter, rehabilitate, or restore the offender and in some cases the victim. Deviance and crime, like socialization, is not static but changes over time and cultures.
Assessment
Quizzes 4 & 5
After completing this unit, including the learning activities, you are asked to complete the two online quizzes reviewing material from chapters 4 and 5.
These quizzes are meant to be formative, and a tool to help you measure your own understanding of the course material.
Go to Quizzes in the main Assessment tab for access to Quiz 4 and Quiz 5. Note that the quizzes will be administered in the Learning Lab.
Be sure to practice with the online quizzes from the textbook.
Assignment: Reflective Journal
The Reflective Journal assignment is a chance to present your understanding and application of the course material, ask questions, and clarify issues. We are looking for evidence that you are engaging the course material. Examine the learning outcomes for each unit and ensure that your journal addresses each outcome. Include your thoughts from the learning activities and how you apply the concepts to your life and current events.
Checking your Learning
Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to: