Socialization, as a lifelong interactive process of cultural learning, involves different types of
social actors. Agents of socialization are the individuals, groups and institutions that create the
social context in which socialization takes place. It is through agents of socialization that
individuals learn and incorporate the values and norms of their culture as well as their various
positions in the social structure in such terms as class, race and gender
Family
Obviously, a major agent of socialization is the family. This is the first social institution and
group that shapes individuals’ selves and personality. Because there is a great diversity of
family structure and size, the impact of family on self-formation is not universal. Moreover,
cultural standards of nurturing, display of affection and standards of discipline vary
considerably worldwide. In western societies, research has shown that the number and order
of children impact the self: first-borns tend to receive more discipline, to be higher achievers
and to be more conformist. Children born last tend to be raised with more relaxed standards of
discipline. As a result, they tend to be more sociable and more accepting of unconventional
ideas and lifestyles.
from our families, we also inherit our position in the social culture. families all belong to some social class,racial,and ethnic group. this initial social positioning is central to ourself formation but also to our life-chances. According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, from our
families, we inherit our habitus, that is, the set of dispositions that mark us as part of our
social class: manners, speech patterns, vocabulary and articulation styles, bodily behavior and
postures. Our habitus defines the type of social interactions in which we feel comfortable.
Our families also transmit to us different forms of capital (resources): economic capital
(money), cultural capital (parents’ education level), and social capital (network of social
connections to which our family has access). In this sense, there is never equality at birth.
From the moment we are born, our life-chances are affected by our family’s position in the
social structure.
Working from a more microsociological perspective but using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of
habitus and capital, Annette Lareau (2003) has researched the (powerful yet largely invisible)
impact of social class on child-rearing practices and discovered that middle-class and
working-class parents tend to follow two different approaches to child-rearing. Middle-class
parents tend to practice concerted cultivation whereas working-class parent tend to practice
accomplishment of natural growth. Concerted cultivation refers to the child-rearing approach
where parents are heavily involved in their children’s education and in their extra-curricular
activities.
Middle-class parents make sure that their children participate in structured activities to give
their children a wide range of experiences. Also, middle-class parents tend to engage in
discussions and negotiations with their children, soliciting their opinions. As a result, these
children tend to grow up used to questioning adults, voicing their opinions and asserting their
self-interest. As Lareau puts it, they display a sense of entitlement: “[Children] acted as
though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings. They appeared comfortable in these settings: they were
open to sharing information and asking for attention” (2003: 6). These qualities are valued by
both the educational systems as well as sought after by employers who value autonomy,
creativity as well as assertiveness.
Accomplishment of natural growth – the child-rearing approach favored by working-class
parents – involves more unstructured leisure time. Working-class parents establish clear
boundaries between adults and children and enforce them through directives rather than
negotiation. They expect children to obey adults and to interact more intensely with kin. From
this approach, working-class children grow up with a sense of constraint in institutional
settings: “[Children] were less likely to try to customize interactions to suit their own
preferences. Like their parents, the children accepted the actions of persons in authority”
(2003:6)
Since schools and high-paying workplaces value the concerted cultivation approach, this
places working-class children immediately at odds with these institutions. In sum, for Lareau,
these different child-rearing approaches simply lead to the transmission of differential
advantages: middle-class children are equipped with cultural capital necessary to function
well in the educational system as well as in the well-paying segment of the labor market.
Working-class children are transmitted cultural capital valued in low-paying jobs.
Education
In modern societies, education is the most important agent of socialization after the family.
Schools are the first impersonal and collective environment that children encounter. Whereas
schools’ official function is the transmission of knowledge, they also promote certain values honesty, competition, respect and individualism – and norms, such as not cheating on tests or
being punctual or not arguing with teachers. Children also learn to deal with authority figures
other than their parents and with peers. Also, for the first time, schools introduce students to
impersonal assessment of their abilities through grades and official records that will follow
the students throughout their educational career.
as mentioned above, school aso contribute to reproduce the inequalities that are part of the social structure. educational education place more value the child-rearing style of the middle class parents. Working class parents and children find themselves at odds more often with
school administrators and staff. Working class children are more likely to be seen as lacking
the proper discipline and manners than their middle-class counterparts. As a result, as Pierre
Bourdieu’s research has shown, working-class children are more likely to internalize the idea
that school is not for them whereas middle-class children feel more “at home” in the school
environment since their cultural capital matches the institution’s expectations.
People in core countries take mass and mandatory education for granted. However, in
peripheral countries, such as Ethiopia, basic schooling is costly and therefore out of reach for
most families. Parents understand that education is a valuable resource, so, if they are able to
send a child to school, they are more likely to send a son rather than a daughter. School, for
girls, is a socializing experience that can end abruptly as girls are married very young. This
social practice treats boys as an economic asset worthy of education investment when possible
and girls as an economic burden whose cost should be minimized. Both boys and girls
incorporate these differential social views as part of their selves.
Such unequal treatment in education is not limited to peripheral countries. Core countries no
longer limit school access for girls. However, differences exist in the ways schools treat boys
and girls. For instance, in her study of US pre-schools, Karin Martin (1998) shows that
teachers create gender differentiations in pre-schoolers by the way they physically interact
with children. For instance, girls were limited to formal behavior such as raising one’s hand
before speaking or sitting up (as opposed to lying down on the floor) or putting one’s hand in
front of one’s mouth when sneezing or coughing. On the other hand, teachers allowed and
encouraged boys to engage in relaxed behavior whereas girls would be reprimanded.
When teachers sorted children for different activities, boys would be placed in activities that
involve standing up, walking or running whereas girls would be place in activities requiring
sitting in different places. Girls were often told to lower their voices more often than boys.
When teachers gave bodily instructions, they gave negative but vague instructions (“don’t
run”, “stop crying”), but they gave girls very precise bodily instructions (“give this to me”,
“put the toy on the shelf”) that involve engaging in substituting one behavior for another
rather than just stopping one. However, when teachers physically handled children (tapping to
get attention, turning a child’s face toward them to give them instructions) to control them,
such handling was largely directed at boys. This usually happened because boys were more
likely to ignore verbal commands. Research has shown that patterns of gendered behavior
persist at all schooling levels
Mass Media
In our discussion of culture, we examined the process of homogenization of culture, that is,
the spread of American culture to other parts of the world and its social impact. The mass
media are the main conduit for the diffusion of American popular culture to semi-peripheral and peripheral areas. This diffusion is seen as particularly threatening to children who are
exposed to it through the media before they learn their own native culture. In other words, the
fear of cultural homogenization is based on the idea that the mass media are a powerful agent
of socialization.
The mass media cover a wide range of means of communication, information and
entertainment, such as books, music, newspapers and magazines, radio, television, the Internet
as well as video games. Access to these media is a matter of income such that there is wide
inequality in media use. For instance, in peripheral areas, the radio still represents the main
medium (Osama bin Laden still records his speech on tapes for his peripheral audience but
records televised messages for his core audience).
More recently, the expression “digital divide” has been used to express the great inequality in
access to electronic media. In other words, discussion of recent media trends as part of
socialization concerns mostly children in core areas. The major trend in the media in relation
to socialization is what media analyst Todd Gitlin (2001) calls supersaturation. According to
Gitlin, “the American child lives in a household with 2.9 televisions, 1.8 VCRs, 3.1 radios, 2.6
tape players, 2.1 CD players, 1.4 video game players and 1 computer. Ninety-nine percent of
these children live in homes with one or more TVs, 97 percent with a VCR, 97 percent with a
radio, 94 percent with a tape player, 90 percent with a CD player, 70 percent with a video
game player, and 69 percent with a computer.” (17)
In addition, on an average, American children watch over two hours of television every day
and as much time playing video games. Supersaturation refers to the state where we are so
completely surrounded by various mass media and they are so embedded in our lives that we
no longer find that fact remarkable or noticeable. At the same time, mediated experience
becomes central to our perception of the world and our selves.
The effects of living in a media-supersaturated environment have been the subject of a lot of
discussion and controversy: does the content of television programs and video games make
children less sensitive to violence and more prone to aggressive behavior? Is intense media
exposure detrimental to academic success? In trying to answer such questions, one should
avoid exaggerations and simplifications. Human behavior is almost never the product of one
variable (such as playing video game).
Aggressive behavior has many roots. What research shows is that children who watch large
numbers of hours of television are more likely to have stereotypical views of women and
minorities. Also, children who watch television or play video games for long hours are less
likely to exercise and more likely to be overweight. Although video games are less passive
and more participatory than television watching, they result in the same increase in violent
and aggressive behavior, especially in boys. Boys play video games twice as much as girls.
Moreover, boys are more likely to play violent simulations involving shooting and fighting
whereas girls are more likely to play board games, puzzles and trivia (Wagner, 2004). At the
same time, since high-paying careers are available in the technological industries, early
familiarity with computers might stimulate children’s interest in computer-related careers and
open the doors to them. As Cynthia Wagner suggests, girls should be encouraged to play
video games so that they too gain access to these careers where they would probably create less violent games. However, so far, the video game industry produces mostly for a male
audience.
The Market
“Kids can recognize logos by eighteen months, and before reaching their second birthday,
they’re asking for products by brand name. by three or three and a half, experts say, children
start to believe that brands communicate their personal qualities, for example, that they are
cool, strong, or smart. (…) Upon arrival at the schoolhouse steps, the typical first grader can
evoke 200 brands. And he or she has already accumulated an unprecedented number of
possessions, beginning with an average of seventy new toys a year” (Schor, 2004:19). As
these statements of facts by sociologist Juliet Schor illustrate, one of the first identities
children understand they have and integrate deeply into their selves is that of consumer
In other words, more than at any other point in history, the market has become a significant
agent of socialization. An entire business sector has developed globally to turn children into
consumer as early as possible and then at every stage of their development. She calls this
process “the commercialization of childhood.” The commercialization of childhood is
accompanied by two other phenomena: (1) the increase in children’s purchasing power, and
(2) kid-fluence: the increasing influence children exercise on adults’ purchases. Worldwide,
kid-fluence is estimated to have topped $1 trillion in 20
The commercialization of childhood exploded in the 1980s along with the mass media.
Advertising companies soon understood that children-specific media, such as Nickelodeon,
could generate vast revenues. Using the expertise of child development specialists,
psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists, they set out to develop advertising targeted
specifically at children of different developmental ages. The goal was to understand children’s
developmental needs – such as sensory stimulation – and to send the message that such needs
can be best fulfilled through consumption: growing up became learning to consume. In
addition, according to Schor, marketers use advertising tools specifically in the direction of
children (see table). (rujuk spectrum kalo rajin)
http://spectrum.um.edu.my/pluginfile.php/100919/mod_resource/content/1/Agents%20of%20Socialization.pdf
sambung
Advertisers are fairly candid about the values promoted by their advertising campaigns to
children. Juliet Schor (2004:65) quotes one of them: “Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you’re a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them
to buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them that they’ll be a dork if they don’t,you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities and it’s very easy to do with
kids because they’re the most emotionally vulnerable.” These different advertising strategies
produce controversial effects: for instance, the marketing of cool drives a wedge between
adults and children, by presenting parents and teachers as incompetent and un-cool and therefore easily tricked and exploited for personal gain; age compression encourages age inappropriate behavior.
One of the explicit goals of advertisers is to create a world where there is no space that is not
colonized by advertising so that there is no escape. With this goal in mind, advertising
companies have started to colonize public schools through Channel One, a network of
educational programs loaded with ads that teachers are not allowed to fast forward through.
Similarly, food and beverage companies pay under-funded schools to introduce vending
machines whose products consist mostly of junk food and soft drinks. Moreover, friendship
itself has been commercialized. Advertising companies recruit children and teenagers as well
as college students and pay them to get their friends to try and adopt various products.
Schor cites the examples of the Girls Intelligence Agency (GIA). The agency created a
network of 40,000 girls (or “secret agents”) from eight to eighteen ready to generate buzz for
any product. The GIA’s trademark is the Slumber Party in a Box where an agent invites her
friends over but the real goal is to feature and promote particular products, such as a movie, a
CD, beauty products. As payment, the agent and her guests receive free samples, other
agencies pay stipends to their agents. The strategy here is to teach children that friends are a
source of income and products. By invading private relationships, advertising agencies try to
overcome the resistance that most people have developed toward traditional ads. By
colonizing non-commercial relationships, they have opened a new front in the
commercialization of everyday life and the growing construction of a global commercial self
Virtual communities
In his best-selling book, Bowling Alone (2000), political scientist Robert Putnam deplores
the loss of American community. For Putnam, the decline in American participation in
bowling leagues symbolizes the increasing disconnection between people as they retreat from
all sorts of civic and community participation and engage in more isolated activities, such as
passive television watching. Indeed, data regarding membership in associations, political
participation, and volunteering show a decline. Putnam deplores such a state of affairs as such
community activities were essential to civic-minded socialization where social norms were
transmitted.
However, if participation in traditionally household-based activities, such as bowling leagues
and PTAs, show a marked decline, other forms of sociability have increased. New
communication technologies allow for new and different forms of sociability. For instance,
virtual or online communities are on the rise. The best example of a rising online communities
are Facebook, MySpace or Flickr. Such communities are different in that they are not
household-based but individualized. They provide a different type of socialization than
traditional communities
Virtual or online communities show that far from disappearing, communities are changing.
Traditional communities are neighborhood or village-based. In the age of globalization,
disappearing borders and unprecedented movements of population around the globe,
communities are not disappearing but reconfiguring into geographically dispersed networks.
According to Jeffrey Boase and al (2006), such geographically dispersed communities are
facilitated by new electronic communication technologies, such as emails and the Internet.
Moreover, research shows that new communications technologies extend our social
connections but deepen them as well. People who interact face-to-face also tend to call each
on the phone and exchange messages via emails or instant messages or text messages. This
phenomenon of using multiple media to communicate is called media multiplexity.
New communication technologies promote what sociologist Barry Wellman calls networked
individualism. Networked individualism refers to the fact that, thanks to the Internet,
individuals can get in touch with other individuals for all sorts of purposes. In this sense,
online communities do not replace traditional communities but supplement them. People can
find information or help or simply create relationships from traditional sources, such as
relatives or they can tap into extended networks of other individuals.
In this sense, being socialized into the competent use of new communication technologies
becomes an essential skill not only to be able to access the wealth of information available but
also to be able to be able to build individual networks of relationships with and (not or)
without face-to-face interactions.
In her study of the virtual community Cybertown™, Denise Carter (2004) challenges the notion that virtual communities are only poor and shallow imitation of the “real thing”, face to-face interaction. First, Cybertown™ is an elaborate virtual environment, not just a chat
room or message board. It has more than a million citizens from all over the world earning
citycash from jobs. It is designed like any large city in the world, with plaza, cafes, post office
and police. The residents live in the suburbs in private homes and they can have (virtual) pets.
It is truly a social space where people develop friendships and throw parties at their houses, or
go to clubs. Residents usually maintain consistent personae, keeping the same username and
avatar (virtual character). Frequently, people who meet and become friends at Cybertown™
end up meeting offline.
For Carter, virtual communities are appealing because they do not rely on traditional kinship
bonds (based on blood ties) but allow the development of chosen friendship ties. Friendship is
not based on hierarchy. Moreover, where kinship ties are defined by tradition and customs,
friendship persists based on the quality of relationships. In Cybertown™, people are
specifically looking to build new relationships where gender, race and other ascribed statuses
are irrelevant and where the quality of the relationship is the only criterion that matters.
Moreover, the fact that many residents are able to sustain such friendship offline suggests that
relationships developed online are not shallow but free from cultural and social constraints
In sum, virtual communities are not an inferior form of sociability compared to face-to-face
interaction in traditional settings. In global times, they are a more individualized and flexible
form of sociability. They tend to provide an informal socialization where individuals can
develop social skills necessary for competent functioning where achieved statuses and
traditional constraints become less relevant.
In Cybertown™ or MySpace™, chosen relationships are managed based on computer skills
(such as uploading and downloading multimedia materials) and whatever characteristics
individuals users choose to disclose or portray. Such virtual communities allow individuals to
gain access to a much broader pool of people and resources that they can tap into for different
purposes. As they navigate online, individuals are informally socialized into the development
of networks of connections, an essential skill and resource for global times. And like many
resources, it is unequally distributed.
The unequal distribution of the hardware and unequal access to the Internet is commonly
called the global digital divide. This divide is especially pronounced between core areas
(extremely well-connected) and the periphery (where the most basic hardware is often simply
not available). This means that a large segment of the world population has no access not only
to a wealth of information, but also to means of connecting to Internet networks that could be
useful. To be deprived of access to the information superhighways is another undeserved
disadvantage that children of the periphery endure whereas children from core areas gain an
additional unearned advantage.
aku pon xfhm sbb xbaca lagi..nnt aku trnslate kalo rajin.
No comments:
Post a Comment