Week 1 - Becoming a Member of Society

Week 1 - Becoming a Member of Society

• Becoming a member of society involves learning cultural pride, volunteering, effective communication, and sharing beliefs/values/culture. Community participation fosters personal growth.
• Socialization is the process of learning societal norms, values, and behaviors; it begins in childhood and continues.
• Socialization has three significant aspects:
  • Social context: culture, language, social structures (e.g., social class, ethnicity, gender).
  • Content and Process: content transmitted (ideas, beliefs, behaviors), process of transmission (methods of interaction).
  • Results: adopted behaviors, attitudes, and values that enable effective societal functioning.
• Enculturation is the transmission of cultural practices, beliefs, and values within a specific group.
• Acculturation is learning through another culture.
• Agents of Socialization and Enculturation:
  • Family: primary agent, teaching attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and ideals.
  • Schools: second home, teach interests, goals, and impart knowledge.
  • Peer groups: influence attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs.
  • Mass media: shape attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and culture.
  • Pluralist Model: emphasizes diverse groups and individuals in shaping political decision-making.
  • Market Model: emphasizes competition and market forces in shaping economic outcomes.
  • Dominant Ideology Model: widely accepted and promoted ideas, beliefs, and values by those in power.
  • Elite Values Model: wealthy and powerful individuals have disproportionate political influence.
  • Religion: shapes views, legitimizes practices, can cause social change, and provides stability.
  • State: reinforces appropriate behavior, upholds rights and responsibilities.
  • Major Social/Historical Events: shape societies (wars, revolutions, social movements, technological advancement).

Week 2 - Conformity, Deviance, and Social Control

• Conformity is aligning actions, beliefs, and attitudes with others.
• Factors affecting conformity:
  • Cohesiveness: higher attraction to a group leads to higher conformity.
  • Group size: conformity increases with size, up to around 3, then decreases.
• Descriptive norms: rules based on common behaviors.
• Injunctive norms: rules based on expectations.
• Causes of conformity:
  • Normative social influence: desire for acceptance and avoidance of disapproval.
  • Informational social influence: desire to be correct.
• Types of conformity (Kelman):
  • Compliance: public change in behavior to avoid disapproval.
  • Identification: public and private change to fit in temporarily.
  • Internalization/Acceptance: permanent public and private change.
• Deviance: violating societal norms.
• Views on deviance:
  • Structural-Functionalist: deviance results from structural tensions and lack of moral regulation.
  • Structural Strain Theory: inability to achieve societal goals leads to deviance.
  • Subcultural View: different subcultures create different values and behaviors.
  • Symbolic-Interactionist: deviance is socially constructed (labeling theory).
  • Conflict Perspective: deviance results from conflicts between major groups.
  • Control Theories: deviance stems from inadequate societal control.
• Social control: techniques to prevent deviant behavior.
• Sanctions: means of social control.
  • Formal sanctions: official consequences (positive or negative).
  • Informal sanctions: consequences from smaller groups (positive or negative).
• Human dignity: inherent right to respect and fair treatment.
• Human rights: freedoms and protections based on inherent worth.
• UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights): 30 articles, a common standard for human rights.
• Characteristics of human rights: universal, fundamental, indivisible, absolute.

Week 3 & 4 - Social Institutions, Family, and Kinship

• Social institutions: organized sets of norms, beliefs, rules to maintain order.
• Perspectives on social institutions:
  • Institutional Approach: ordered sets organizing human behavior.
  • Relational Approach: social relationships are prioritized.
• Social institutions include family, economy, religion, education, health.
• Filipino family: oriented towards family, filial attachment, centrality.
• Issues related to Filipino family: declining marriage rates, increasing annulment rates, domestic violence.
• Kinds of families:
  • Nuclear family: parents and children.
  • Extended family: multiple generations.
  • Reconstituted family: spouses and children from previous marriages.
• Kinship: social structure based on blood or marriage ties.
• Family and Rules of Descent: classifications based on descent lines, maintaining solidarity.
  • Matrilineal: descent through female line.
  • Partilineal: descent through male line.
  • Bilineal: descent through both male and female lines.
• Marriage residence rules: affect family structure (neolocal, patrilocal).