Socialization

Lifelong process of interaction as member of an associating group - a society.
How a human becomes a person
How a male becomes a man
How do you get to be President of the United States - "Open your eyes, take your first breath, cry...."

Personality Development

 

	Freud - id, ego superego - development and integration distinguished at different ages/stages - oral, anal, latent, phallic.
	Erikson - lifecycle, stages. During a lifetime there are similar crises that we all go through. Resolving these challenges prepares us for the next stage and its challenges: trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, intimacy, generativity, integrity.
	Piaget - cognitive development of children. -Sensorimotor - initially children receive or know the world as sensory input -Preoperational stage- beginning to use language and symbols; distinguish between dream and reality. -Concrete operational - causal connections. Multi-valent understanding - things, people can have different significances (daddy can also be Mr Ferry, a man) -Formal operational - abstract and critical thinking - metaphorical appreciation, handles ideas as ideas rather than objects they represent.
	Charles Horton Cooley- The Looking-glass Self We shape our self-conciousness in response to our sense of how others see us. Refer - medieval optics - pupil/pupilla Primary groups/secondary groups - interaction in intimate encounters vs with those outside the threshold. Dyads, Triads - effect of number of participants in groups
	George Herbert Mead - The "I" and the "me"capacity to imitate, to play, then to game; . Our actions are spontaneous but influenced by how others react. Infants can imitate. Later, children can play, for example, 'mommy' - creatively imitating a role/script/performance that has been internalized. And later, to play a game is to be able to imagine the role of another - 'cops and robbers' requires a capacity, if you are the cop, to know what to expect of the robber. 'Generalized Other' - understanding of widespread cultural norms and values we use as references in evaluating ourselves. Mead is most 'social' of the theorists explaining personality. Freud would be at the other end - personality is a more a manifestation of biological force that social experience could frustrate.
	Erving Goffman - Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Social interaction is a drama played in earnest Stigma - spoiled identity, 'face-work', impression management.

Social Experience

Nature and Nurture: a fruitful distinction often. Separated at birth - identical twin studies

Examples of the impact of social isolation ("feral" and "wolf"- children); Genie, Isabelle.

Agents of Socialization

Parents and Family

School

Church, Neighborhoods

Peers

MEDIA

- Toys, Radio, TV, Books, Net, Comics, Papers, Nintendoonies.

Construction of childhood in modern societies; creating adolescence as a social group - planned adolescence! Making the old into retirees, pensioners, permanent patients.

Resocialization

Sub-cultures - orientation, hazing, rites of passage,
Total and semi-total institutions - special cases of socialization.

"Who's your momma"

Older Stories about Becoming a Person/Persona/Somebody

• Latins - Homunculus - the little me that is in the thou. Pupils and Pupilla
• Roman soldiers -suck face and Osculum of Early Christians - Pax Christi,the scandalous kiss.
• Medieval wisdom - Conspiratio - breathing one another's life -the conversation versus the interview of modernity,the encounter versus the show of today - Oprah is my friend?