SOC100H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: George Herbert Mead, Symbolic Interactionism, Crystallization
1 “Chapter 3”
Social Isolation and Socialization
⇒ Socialization: The process by which people learn their culture.
- (1) entering into and disengaging from a succession of roles
- (2) becoming aware of themselves as they interact with others.
- Role: A set of behaviours, expected of a person occupying a particular position in society.
⇒ There is convincing evidence of the importance of socialization in unleashing human potential by René
- He compared children who were being raised in an orphanage with children who were being raised in a nursing
home attached to a women's prison.
- Depriving the infants of social stimuli for most of the day apparently made them less demanding
- Orphans were more susceptible to infections and had a higher death rate than the babies in the nursing home
- In totality, children without childhood socialization, their human potential remains undeveloped
The Crystallization of Self Identity
⇒ Formation of a sense of self continues in adolescence
- Adolescence is a particularly turbulent period of rapid self development
- Sociologists once wrote that the central growth process in adolescence is define the self through the clarification of
experience and to establish self esteem.
⇒ The crystallization of self-identity during adolescence is just one episode in a lifelong process of socialization
⇒ Socialization process:
(1) Review main theories of how a sense of self develops during early childhood
(2) Discus operation and relative influence of society's main socializing institution or agents of sociology
- Families, peers, media
⇒ In these settings we learn among other things:
- How to control our impulses
- How to think of ourselves
- Value certain ideals
- Perform various roles
⇒ These institutions don’t always produce happiness:
- They teach children and adolescents different and even contradictory lessons
⇒ Decreasing supervision and guidance by adult family members, increasing assumption of adult responsibilities
by youths, and declining participation in extracurricular activities are changing the nature of childhood adolescence
The Symbolic-Interactionist Foundations of Childhood Socialization
⇒ Self: A set of ideas and attitudes about who one is as an independent being
⇒ Socialization begins after birth:
- At birth infants needs are usually satisfied immediately they do not at first seem able to distinguish themselves from
their main caregivers
- Social interaction enables infants to begin developing a self image or sense
of self
Sigmund Freud
⇒ Proposed first social scientific interpretation of the process by which the self emerges
⇒ He noted:
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2 “Chapter 3”
- Infants demand immediate gratification
- Though, when denied after a while, infants start to soon learn to eat more before sleep
- Go sleep if wake up
- It begins to sense that its needs differ from those of its parents
- It has existence independent of other
- Must somehow balance it needs with the realities of life
- With this approach the child develops a constitute behavior and moral sense of right and wrong
- Soon personal conscience crystallizes
- Learns the culture and adapts to it
⇒ Id: Freud's term for pleasure - seeking component of the self
⇒ Superego: Freud's term for restraining component of the self
⇒ Ego: Freud's term for mechanism that balances the id and the superego
- In short Freud said only social interaction can allow self to emerge
Charles Horton Cooley
⇒ Introduce look-glass self
- Looking-glass self: Cooley's description of the way our feelings about who we are depend largely on how we see
ourselves evaluated by others
- Making him a founder of the symbolic-interactionist tradition and an early contributor to the sociological study of
socialization.
⇒ Observed when we interact with others, they gesture and react to us:
- This allows us to know how we appear to them
- Then we judge how others evaluate us
⇒ From these judgement: We develop self concept from this, or a set of feeling and ideas about who we are
- Our feeling for our self depend on other evaluation of us
⇒ Body reflect in mirror/social selves reflect with other people gestures
- Negative self - image causes student to do poorly in school
- Poor performance - cause from negative evaluations by teacher
⇒ Symbolic Interactionism: idea that in the course of face to face communication, people engage in a creative
process of attaching meaning to things
George Herbert Mead
⇒ Took up and Developed Cooley idea
- Freud and mead noted subjective and impulsive aspect of the self is present from birth “I”
- Freud and Mead argues that a store hour of culturally approved standard emerges as part of the self during social
interaction.
- Called this ME
- Freud focused on denial of impulses as mechanism that generate self objective side
- Mead did unique human capacity to take the role of the other as source of me
⇒ Understood human communication involve seeing you from other POV
- Mead: You must see yourself as me to understand other people communication about you mean
⇒ All human communication depends on being able to take the role of the other
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3 “Chapter 3”
- The self thus emerges from people using symbols, such as words and gestures, to communicate.
- Me not present from birth, comes from social interaction.
⇒ Mead’s Stages of Development:
(1) Significant others: The people who play important role in early socialization experiences of children
- At first children learn to use language and other symbols by imitating important people in their life such as their
mother and father. Mead called such people significant others
(2) Children pretend to be other people: Using their imagination
(3) The time they reach the age of seven children play complex roles which require the role of several other people
(ex defence offence)
(4) Involves taking the role of Generalized others:
- Generalized Others: a person image of cultural standard and how they apply to them
⇒ Style, complexity, and abstractness of thinking develop in distinct stages of late teenage years
- Other analyze how ability to think morally develops in stages
- Important to realise, development of cognitive and moral skills is more than just the unfolding of a person's innate
characteristics
- Persons society structure and position in it influence socialization
Gender Differences
⇒ Gilligan showed that sociological factors help explain differences in sense of self
that boys and girls usually develop
- Parents and Teacher pass on different cultural standards to each gender
- Adult authorities usually define ideal woman as eager to please and therefore not assertive
- Girls usually encounter more male and few female teacher and other authority figures as they grow up reinforces the
lesson
- Girls tend to develop lower self esteem than boys
Civilization Differences
⇒ Sociological factors help explain the development of different ways of thinking or cognitive styles of different
civilizations (Example China and Greece)
⇒ China:
- Rice agriculture of ancient southern China required substantial cooperation among neighbours
- Had to be organized and harmonic
- China tends to stress important of mutual social obligation rather than debates
- Focused on whole system not the different categories and process and events
⇒ Greece:
- Less socially complex
- Political decentralized
- Gave citizens more personal freedom
- Philosophies tended to be analytical, meaning discrete categories of the whole system were analyzed
❏ Ways of thinking depended less on people's innate characteristic that on the structure of society
❏ Markedly different civilizations grew up on these different cognitive foundations
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Document Summary
Socialization: the process by which people learn their culture. (1) entering into and disengaging from a succession of roles (2) becoming aware of themselves as they interact with others. Role: a set of behaviours, expected of a person occupying a particular position in society. There is convincing evidence of the importance of socialization in unleashing human potential by ren . He compared children who were being raised in an orphanage with children who were being raised in a nursing home attached to a women"s prison. Depriving the infants of social stimuli for most of the day apparently made them less demanding. Orphans were more susceptible to infections and had a higher death rate than the babies in the nursing home. In totality, children without childhood socialization, their human potential remains undeveloped. Formation of a sense of self continues in adolescence. Adolescence is a particularly turbulent period of rapid self development.
