Socialisation - The Nature-Nurture Debate PDF

SOCIALISATION THE NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE Key ideas The extent to which human behaviour influenced by socialisation. The role played by socialisation in shaping human behaviour has been overstated. Socialisation rather than instinct is the most important influence on human be...

SOCIALISATION THE NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE Key ideas The extent to which human behaviour influenced by socialisation. The role played by socialisation in shaping human behaviour has been overstated. Socialisation rather than instinct is the most important influence on human behaviour The main arguments Some sociologists suggest that human behaviour may be guided by instincts. That is people are born with certain abilities that are part of human nature (i.e. genetic determinism) However, most sociologists believe that the way people behave is due to socialisation (nurture) i.e. cultural determinism The key debates The Nurture arguments In the debate about whether humans behave ‘naturally’ or are ‘nurtured’, sociologists are firmly on the side of nurture. These sociologists believe that socialisation is more important than instinct in shaping human behaviour. The evidence For the functionalists society functions as a result roles performed by members of the society. The roles are learnt through socialisation. It takes place because people learn that sanctions exist to encourage behaviour appropriate to their roles and to discourage inappropriate behaviour. For the functionalists society functions as a result roles performed by members of the society. The roles are learnt through socialisation. It takes place because people learn that sanctions exist to encourage behaviour appropriate to their roles and to discourage inappropriate behaviour. Gender role for example can be maintained informally by calling people names such as ‘tomboy’ for girls and ‘sissy’ for boys. Persistent offenders may be ridiculed or even excluded from those around them. According to Emile Durkheim, socialisation is seen as a one way processes in which society, through agencies of socialisation inculcate individuals into the roles already prescribe for them by those agencies. For Durkheim society is larger than the individual. Any behaviour which is not the result of socialisation is punishable. According to Parsons, individual learn to desire what the culture of a society provides, and in doing so their personalities becomes structured by social roles they internalize. Further evidence of the importance of socialisation is the fact that different cultures develop different ways of doing things. If human behaviours were governed by human instinct, we will expect very little differences between societies. The interactionists take this argument further. G.H mead (1934) argued that that how people behave is conditioned by the social context in which behaviour occurs. He claimed that while self-awareness is often seen as an instinctive human attribute, it is in fact learned. According to him, a person becomes a self- conscious individual only through interaction with others. Its ‘I’ becomes the socialised ‘me’, where the socialised part of the self is seen as its identity. Moreover, the importance of socialisation can be seen in children who do not undergo socialisation. The feral children are a good example. These children have usually grown up with minimal human contact because they have been confined and isolated, and in some cases been raised by animals. As a result, they have tended to behave like their animal foster parents walking on all fours, making animal noises, being unable to talk, smile or laugh, biting and being aggressive, eating raw meat, urinating and defecating in public. An example of this is Oxana Malaya, a Ukrainian girl, spend a large amount of her childhood surrounded by dogs. During the time Oxana spent with the dogs she began to develop characteristics which were more like the dogs rather than a human. Instead of walking on two feet like a human would, Oxana crawled on her hands and knees.Because Oxana had very little human contact she hadn’t learnt language so she communicated in barks and growls. These cases are proof that our parents play a major role during the crucial learning stages in a person’s childhood, as they teach primary socialisation which includes complicated skills which many people would take for granted such as language / speech. Feral children often find it extremely difficult to master these skills. The nature argument Those who support the nature argument claim that human behaviour is conditioned by instinct. They argue that there things that we are born knowing, such as mothering instinct and that our cultural environment plays little or no role in the development of these instincts. Tiger and Fox argue that through 99% of history men have been hunters and that the aggression, power and leadership qualities required for this pursuit have been built into their genes by a process of ‘biogramming’. Women, according to them are programmed for softness, affection and non-aggression. To go against this biogrammer is to go against nature. Tiger and fox believe biogrammer overrides the influence of culture. Thus the roles of men and women are biologically shaped and socially functional. There are others who take a similar position, believing a woman’s biological constitution predetermines her for household and child-caring tasks. George Murdoch (1965) presented a survey of 224 societies from around the world; his results showed that men and women tended to undertake different social duties. He concluded that gender must be a Product of biology. The kibbutz experiment in Israel is another case that illustrates that instinct plays a major in determine human behaviour. The experiment was done in order to prove whether gender roles are learned through socialisation. A group of boys and girls at the age of five were put in different camps and introduced to different forms of socialisation. The girls were socialised into male roles while the boys were socialised into female roles. At the age of ten they were released into the society. To the surprise of the community the boys exhibited male behaviour and the girls female behaviour. They did not conform to the roles in which they were socialised. This shows that socialisation has little influence on people’s behaviour.