Gender Socialisation

· Gender roles are socialised into children in the family and reinforced at school.

· It refers to the way how a child learns to act in manner which society appropriate to his or her sex.

· Parents expect their children to behave according to their sex.

· Males should be active, while females should be passive.

· Identity had been decided according to specific gender, e.g. blue for boys and pink are for girls.

Age as a social process

• Norms might be different according to age.
• The main idea, age is socially constructed.
• Because of age, we treat people differently.
• However, according to interactionists age is a symbol.
• Age divisions:

1. childhood
2. youth
3. adulthood
4. old age
   

Important key terms

• The Age status - the way that people receive different amounts of income and social prestige depending upon their age.
• Rite of passage - the ceremony that signifies leaving one stages of life and entering another.
• Transition - in sociology this means the period of change from being one age status to another, e.g. the period of change from being a child to being a youth.

Gender

• Definition: in terms of the particular cultural characteristics that people give to different biological sexes. We simply organize biological differences as the basis of sex labeling.
• In sociology gender differences are presented by labels such as: masculine and feminine. Labels- tell us how to behave.
• Males play instrumental role, females play expressive role.
• Male or female in our society means confirming to various cultural rules and expectations around what it means to the male or female. Rules develop because we live in a capitalists and patriarchal society.
• Glass ceiling - we can see ourselves but it is hard to reach, e.g. females has little opportunity in getting promoted.

Self , identity, socialisation and culture.

Case studies on socialisation

Evidence for the importance of socialisation

Anna and Isabella

· 1940s- Anna and Isabella were separately discovered who had been living totally isolated from human contact.

· Neither of the girls could walk, talk or feed themselves.

· They had difficulty in understanding everything that was explained or done for them.

· Both of them made a good progress, after being taken care of.

· They able to feed themselves and speak a few sentences.

· It shows the essential role played by the environment and education in the stages or child development.

Wolf children of Midnapore

• There was several cases where children had been raised by animals.
• Two females, aged two and eight were found in wolf den in Bengal, 1920.
• They walked on all four, eat raw meat and lack any form of speech.
• However, it is still unclear that weather they were raised by a wolves or simply abandoned and left to their own devices.

Reference

• According to Parsons (1951) socialization serves to maintain social order.
• Deviant behaviour- behaviour that goes against social norms, e.g. student don’t wear school uniform properly.
• However, according to C.H. Cooley, socialization is where the child’s identity is formed. Also, in this way we learn to be human.

Socialisation ,part 2

Interactionist, George Herbert Mead argued that our behaviour is conditioned by 2 aspects.

The main idea is that how we behave in the society and affect how people see us.

1. An 'I' aspect - based on your opinion and act as what we like (we don't care what other people say);
2. A 'me' aspect - have control over ourselves.

Charles Cooley - We use the way other people interpret our behaviour as evidence of who and what we are (looking - glass self).

Postmodernism

• Metanarratives : any set of theories that claim to offer the 'truth'. E.g. scientific theories and religions.
• Hyperreality : use to describe the difference between the reality and the one portrayed by the media.

References:-

• Postmodernist Lyotard (1993) argues that there are no truths and thus, metanarratives do not help explanations about identity.
• Anthony Giddens (1990) argues that we are in 'late modernity' and not 'post modernity'.
  

Interactionism

• Symbolic Interactionism: People interact in terms of symbol, in which language is the most important.
• Impression Management: How to impress others about ourselves. E.g. the way we dress.

According to interactionists, we are social actors. We act upon the situation. Also, we could understand response of others.






References:-

• Erving Goffman analyses the techniques we use in order to influence how others see us.
• W.I.Thomas stated that people act in terms of the way they define situations.

Feminism

1. Gender inequality between male and female in the society;
2. Focuses more on oppression and exploitation which faced by the women in the society.

• Patriarchy: society which involves male domination.

Other type of feminism:-

• Liberal Feminism
• Radical Feminism
• Post-modern Feminism
• Block Feminism

Women had less opportunity given in the society. For instance, in terms of job position (which still happen until now), male tend to be promoted easily compare to female.

Marxism

• Capitalism : A type of society in which the private ownership of the means of production in providing the means to live.
• Ideology: Set of beliefs and values which distorts reality.

Social Class

• Ruling Class (Bourgeoisie)
• Subject Class (Proletariat)

Marx predicted that working class will slowly overthrow the capitalism, which leads to the communist society.

• False consciousness: A situation in which working class people is 'unaware' that they are being exploited.