Becoming a Member of Society

Becoming a Member of Society

• Enculturation/Socialization is how humans acquire personal identity, norms, values, behaviors, habits, beliefs, social skills, and knowledge from infancy.
• This process transforms a helpless infant into a cooperative society member, lasting from birth to death.
• Individuals learn their culture's values, norms, and skills, and develop a sense of belonging through enculturation/socialization.

Theoretical Perspectives on Enculturation/Socialization

• Charles Horton Cooley's Looking Glass Self Theory states that a person's self-perception comes from how they think others perceive them.
• George Herbert Mead's Role-taking Theory links social awareness to early social interaction, like infants learning to get attention by crying.
• Mead's concept of self has two parts: "Me" which is the perception of others and "I" the independent, spontaneous self.

Agents of Socialization

• Family is a major influence, forming initial motivations, values, and beliefs.
• School is a primary agent and exposes individuals to different people, attitudes, values, and ways of seeing the world.
• Peers ease the transition from adolescence to adulthood by providing an identity separate from family.
• Mass Media, especially television, enables exposure to a wide range of role models and occupations.
• Workplace helps individuals fit into an occupation, indicating passage out of adolescence.

Conformity and Deviance

• Conformity shows behavior like most others in a group, society etc.
• Deviance is the recognized violation of cultural norms.
• Social Control helps ensure people behave as expected and approved.
• Internal Social Control is the socialization process that develops an understanding of right and wrong within an individual.
• External Social Control uses social sanctions or rewards and punishments to encourage desired actions.

Forms of Deviance

• Innovation rejects socially accepted means to achieve success. Examples include theft, burglary, and embezzlement.
• Ritualism rejects success goals but continues to work diligently.
• Retreatism involves withdrawal from society, like alcoholics, drug addicts, and gamblers.
• Rebellion attempts to change the goals and means of society, exemplified by terrorists, leftists, and guerrillas.

Human Dignity, Human Rights, and The Common Good

• Human Dignity is inherent, invaluable, and protects against slavery, manipulation, and exploitation.
• Central to fundamental human rights and international law, as highlighted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Human dignity is the heart of human identity, central to protections, including those for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals.
• Human Rights are inherent, interrelated, interdependent, indivisible, and universal.
• They protect individuals and promote peaceful coexistence.
• Lack of awareness can lead to abuses like discrimination, intolerance, oppression, and slavery.

The Common Good

• The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed in 1948, emerged from World War II to define universal rights for freedom, justice, and peace.
• The Common Good is the moral justification of social systems but can be an undefined concept that prioritizes some over others.
• When considered superior to individual good, it can mean the good of the majority outweighs that of the minority or individual.