Agents and Stages of Socialization

Agents of Socialization

• Family serves as the initial source, teaching norms, values, and love.
• Schools impart discipline, time management skills, and competitiveness.
• Peers exert influence on aspects like style, interests, and slang.
• Media shapes worldviews, trends, and opinions.
• Religion provides morals, beliefs, and a sense of community.

Socialization Across the Life Course

• A role model is someone whose behavior you admire and try to emulate.
• Anticipatory socialization involves practicing for future roles, like job shadowing.
• Reverse socialization occurs when younger people teach older generations, such as tech skills.
• Resocialization is the process of adopting new norms to adjust to a new environment or life change.
• Total institutions are settings where individuals are isolated and heavily controlled.
• Degradation ceremonies strip away an individual's identity to facilitate rebuilding it within a new context.

Rites of Passage

• Events like graduation, marriage, or starting a first job mark significant life transitions.

Master Status

• The master status is the primary way one is perceived by others, overshadowing other statuses.

Roles

• A role is the expected behavior associated with a particular status.
• Role models are individuals admired for their behavior or status, serving as examples to follow.
• Role conflict arises when there are conflicting expectations between different statuses held by an individual.
• Role strain involves the challenges and difficulties experienced within a single status.
• Role exit is the process of disengaging from a significant role in one's life.

Groups

• Groups are comprised of people who share a common identity, norms, or goals.

Non-Groups

• An aggregate consists of individuals in the same place without a significant connection.
• A category includes people who share a common characteristic but do not interact.

Types of Groups

• Primary groups feature close, personal relationships.
• Secondary groups are more goal-oriented and less personal.
• In-groups are groups to which an individual feels loyalty.
• Out-groups are those seen as rivals or outsiders.
• Reference groups are groups individuals compare themselves to.

Group Leadership

• Instrumental leaders focus on tasks and keeping the group on track.
• Expressive leaders are focused on maintaining morale and emotional needs.

Social Network

• A social network encompasses the web of social connections, including friends, family, and colleagues.

Social Institutions

• Social institutions are established systems that fulfill fundamental societal needs.

Formal Organizations

• Formal organizations are large, structured groups created for specific purposes.

Bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy is a structured system characterized by adherence to rules and procedures.
  • Division of labor involves the specialization of jobs.
  • Trained incapacity refers to over-specialization leading to an inability to adapt.
  • Hierarchy of authority establishes a clear chain of command.
  • Explicit rules ensure standardized procedures.
  • Goal displacement occurs when adherence to rules becomes more important than achieving the organization's objectives.
  • Impersonality ensures fair and unbiased treatment.
  • Alienation refers to individuals feeling disconnected and insignificant.
  • Employment based on qualifications emphasizes hiring based on skills.
  • The Peter Principle suggests individuals are promoted to a level where they are no longer competent.

Deviance, Crime, and Social Control

• Social control refers to the methods a society uses to regulate behavior.
• Conformity is aligning with group norms or rules.
• Obedience is following directives from authority figures.
• Deviance involves violating social norms.
  • According to Emile Durkheim deviance clarifies norms and promotes unity.
• Anomie is confusion in norms that leads to deviance.

Robert Merton’s Strain Theory

• Conformity involves accepting both societal goals and the approved means of achieving them.
• Innovation arises from accepting societal goals but rejecting the traditional means.
• Ritualism involves rejecting societal goals but adhering to the approved means.
• Retreatism entails rejecting both societal goals and the approved means.
• Rebellion involves creating new goals and means.
• Social disorganization theory states that weak institutions correlate with higher deviance.
• Cultural deviance theory suggests deviance arises when the values of certain groups clash with those of the mainstream.
• Differential justice refers to inequalities in how the justice system treats different groups.
• Labeling theory proposes deviance is a result of societal labels.
• Differential association theory posits that deviance is learned within groups.

Crime

• Crime involves violating laws, not just norms.
• Victimless crimes lack a clearly identifiable victim.
• Organized crime refers to criminal activities by structured groups.
• Corporate crime involves illegal actions by large businesses.
• A professional criminal earns a living through crime.
• Hate crimes are motivated by bias against a victim's race, gender, religion, or other characteristic.

Crime Stats

• The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program is based on FBI data derived from police reports.
• The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) relies on victim surveys.
• Self-report surveys involve individuals anonymously reporting their own criminal activities.

Sociology Final Study Guide Add-On

• Sociology is the scientific study of society and social behavior.
• The sociological perspective involves a systematic approach to understanding social life and identifying patterns in human behavior.
• The sociological imagination is the ability to link personal experiences to broader social forces.

Major Theoretical Perspectives

• The functionalist perspective sees society as a system of interconnected parts working together for stability.
• The conflict perspective views society as marked by competition for power and inequality.
• The interactionist perspective focuses on how individuals assign meaning to actions and symbols.

Culture

• Culture encompasses the shared products of human groups, like beliefs, values, behaviors, and physical objects.
  • Material culture includes tangible objects.
  • Nonmaterial culture encompasses abstract creations like language and ideas.
• Norms are rules that define appropriate behavior.
  • Folkways are norms of minor moral significance.
  • Mores are norms of great moral significance.
  • Laws are written rules enforced by the government.
• Values are shared beliefs about what is good or bad.
• Symbols are objects, words, or images that represent something else.
• Cultural relativism is judging cultures by their own standards.
• Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own culture is superior.

Socialization

• Socialization is the process through which individuals learn the norms and values of society.
• Agents of socialization include family, peers, school, and mass media.
• Resocialization involves learning new norms when entering a new group or institution.
• Total institutions are places where individuals are isolated and controlled.

Social Structure

• Status is a socially defined position within a group or society.
  • Ascribed status is assigned at birth.
  • Achieved status is earned through individual effort.
  • Master status is the most important status that shapes a person's identity.
• Role is the expected behavior associated with a particular status.
• Role conflict occurs when there are conflicting expectations between two or more statuses.
• Role strain arises from conflicting expectations within a single status.

Deviance and Social Control

• Deviance is behavior that violates social norms.
• Social control promotes conformity through:
  • Internal control (self-control).
  • External control (laws and sanctions).

Theories of Deviance

• Strain theory posits that a gap between goals and means leads to deviance.
• Control theory suggests weak social ties increase the likelihood of deviance.
• Labeling theory argues that people become deviant when labeled as such.
• Cultural transmission theory suggests that deviance is learned.

Types of Sanctions

• Positive sanctions are rewards for conforming to norms.
• Negative sanctions are punishments for violating norms.
• Formal sanctions are given by an authority figure.
• Informal sanctions are spontaneous expressions of approval or disapproval.

Social Stratification

• Social stratification is the division of society into categories, ranks, or classes.

Types of Stratification

• Caste systems are closed systems based on birth.
• Class systems are open systems based on achievement.
• Socioeconomic status (SES) is a composite ranking based on income, education, and occupation.

Bonus Concepts

• A group consists of two or more people who interact based on shared expectations.
• A social institution is a system that organizes societal needs.