Groups and stages of socialization
Depending on a person’s role in society, the process of his socialization can be divided into three groups: training, work and post-work (retirement age). Each of the groups has its own characteristics, for example, education at the same time is a preparatory and main period of socialization, since it is it that creates the necessary base of views, values and moral principles necessary to understand one’s function and overcome uncertainty. That is why pre-labor or educational socialization is called primary.
The period of work activity serves as the acquisition of practical skills of secondary socialization, as well as their direct application to achieve various goals. At the same time, despite the large age range, during work activity, even if in fact it is absent, auxiliary socialization of the individual occurs, which models the basic norms and models of human behavior transmitted during the learning process, depending on the external conditions of a particular society, environment, type activities and personal qualities of a person and the people around him who have a certain influence on him.
After labor socialization, this is a period of summing up. It is the final stage when established norms and principles of behavior can no longer be changed due to a decrease in brain activity, which generally leads to inhibition of learning processes.
It is worth saying that each age stage of socialization is accompanied by a reassessment of the knowledge and skills acquired in the previous period, among which some may fade into the background or be completely rejected.
In order to understand the process of socialization, as well as to avoid possible mistakes, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms of socialization and the factors influencing it.
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Primary socialization (early stage)
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In the study of childhood, three main emphases can be distinguished: the child as an object of socialization and enculturation; the child as a subject in relationships with others; culture from the perspective of childhood experience. The last aspect of the study is quite new and cognitively interesting, since it opens up additional opportunities in the study of culture at a more general level, in particular micro-changes in cultural patterns during their development in childhood and further use in adulthood, as well as the formation of personal prerequisites and predisposition to innovative searches.
From these three points of view, the study of the processes of personality formation in the early stages of the life cycle, or primary socialization, is associated with the solution of such problems as the study of the mechanisms of acquiring “early experience”; interpretation of a person's learning abilities; the ratio of innate and learned in the ontogenetic process; the structure of the processes of socialization and enculturation from the moment of birth to entry into adulthood. The solution to these problems is carried out in such subject areas as interpersonal communication, learning processes, and children's cultural activity.
Prerequisites for the formation of communication skills (contacts with parents). In the 80s the communicative aspects of primary socialization are brought to the fore, primarily the problems of communication between children and parents, from an early age until the moment they master articulate speech. Such communicative situations as “mother-child”, “parents-child”, “strangers-child” are considered as indicative ones. It has been found that lack of attention to a child at an early age can cause a number of diseases, including mental ones. Whereas close contact between the baby and the mother causes higher IQ scores. Such children solve problems better than those who have had weak contacts with their mother. It also turned out that feeding and hygienic care are not enough to form important prerequisites for the child’s further enculturation. It is necessary for parents to talk, play with him, and create an emotionally rich atmosphere of communication. During this period, parents’ orientation towards the desired behavior of the child is of particular importance. According to research results, a child begins to perceive such cultural expectations from the age of three months.
Experience in global comparative cultural research, creation of a world ethnographic atlas, which began in the 40s. under the leadership of G. Murdoch confirmed the scientific and practical significance of studying the processes of early socialization. Comparisons have allowed researchers to systematically understand the differences in the expression of parent-child relationships observed across cultures and subcultures. Based on the data from G. Murdoch's atlas, a theory of socialization was built related to parental permission - prohibition. Based on variations of these variables, according to a certain formal scheme, interpretation, explanation and prediction of behavior, intellectual, emotional reactions of a child and future adult in certain socio-cultural situations are carried out. The scheme is based on assessing the simultaneous influence of two parameters on the child’s type of behavior: the closeness and nature of the parental relationship, on the one hand, and the frequency of use of a certain type of relationship, on the other. According to the first parameter, four types of parental attitude towards the child are distinguished: understanding, warmth, love, hostility and aggressiveness; indifference; control. For the second parameter, a four-point scale for assessing the corresponding manifestations is established: rarely (in exceptional cases); sometimes: often; always (for the most part). In turn, the parental control variable has the following meanings: lack of control, weak, firm, monitoring, autonomy-limiting control. Analysis of data in accordance with this scheme allows not only to identify the distribution of types of family primary socialization in society and determine the dominant type here, but also to interpret or predict the behavior of adult individuals in certain stable sociocultural situations.
Socialization after early childhood The mastery of socially significant elements of the environment is not limited to the experience of early childhood. Such mastery with varying degrees of intensity occurs several times during a person’s life cycle and is also called socialization.
In the most general form, socialization after early childhood is understood as a set of culturally formalized and socially established processes of people acquiring knowledge and skills necessary for adequate, in particular conflict-free coexistence, that is, activity, interaction, behavior, communication in socially significant situations; expression of personally significant experiences and motivations in culturally acceptable forms; defining the boundaries of socially and culturally sanctioned actions and behavior and the degree of individual responsibility for maintaining or violating those boundaries. Socialization is an integral part of sociocultural life and a universal factor in the formation and development of the individual as a subject of society and culture.
Levels of development of the environment. Early socialization provides the basic prerequisites for further development of a complex sociocultural environment, social structure, presented in culture in the form of stereotypes and patterns of actions, behavior, interactions, normative regulations and prohibitions, value judgments that are either codified or specifically demonstrated in behavior as socially significant. In the process of socialization, the fundamental specific abilities and inclinations of a person are structured
The level of practical actions corresponds to the skills of search and stereotypic operation of objects and learning to operate in this way. The operational units here are individual actions, or acts of behavior, and the essence of the process is to build chains of such units corresponding to the achievement of a certain practical result. Socialization in this case is based on a person’s natural ability to organize his own activity in such a way as to interact with things that exist outside of him
The level of figurative mastery of the environment corresponds to the skills of identifying integral complex objects and plans of this environment, starting from the most general “background” (“picture of the world”, “definition of situations”) and ending with unstable units of perception on the selected “background”. An image can be taken as an operational unit, which allows people to perceive their environment with varying degrees of generality and stability. Socialization at this level is based on a person’s natural ability to form and recognize images.
The level of thought processes corresponds to the skills of pre-empirical operation of signs and symbols, as well as the skills of generalizing quantitative and qualitative elements of the environment. The operational units of such activity are signs and symbols, and its essence lies in recognizing or establishing connections that organize them into stable or unstable wholes that are important for practical activities for human adaptation in the sociocultural environment The possibility of socialization is provided by the natural intellectual ability of a person
The emotional level corresponds to the skills of differential assessment of one’s experiences, as well as elements and states of the sociocultural environment, one’s own ways of mastering and using cultural objects. The operational units are feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The first of them encourages a person to maintain existing relationships with the environment and their emotional equivalents, and the second stimulates them to change them. The natural ability of a person to build his relationships with the environment selectively is subject to socialization.
At each stage of the individual life cycle and in different spheres of culture, these levels are structured and develop in their own way. Socialization can be considered adequate if all of them are formed in accordance with the state of the sociocultural environment, its structure and dynamics.
Cultural-spatial dimension of socialization. When considering the processes of socialization in a certain society in a specific historical period, it is necessary to take into account that socially significant elements of culture here have their own spatio-temporal and socio-structural distribution, the boundaries of which are important to know in order to identify the loci of socialization (institutions, groups, information blocks) and their differential accessibility to members of society at different age periods. Identification of its specialized and everyday levels in culture makes it possible to distinguish the processes and institutions associated with the acquisition of professional knowledge and skills from those that are characteristic of general education and cultural forms of everyday life.
The content of socialization can be specified by turning to the concept of the lifestyle of members of society. As its structural components, modes of people’s socio-cultural life activity are identified, that is, culturally established “fields” of self-realization of people as representatives of society and culture. If we consider them from the point of view of the content of acquired and used knowledge and skills, we can distinguish the following:
— life support: professional activities, domestic work, acquisition and consumption of goods and services;
— personal development: acquisition of general and professional education, social activity, amateur activities;
— social communication: formal and informal communication, travel, physical movement;
- restoration of energy costs: food consumption, personal hygiene, passive rest, sleep.
Each of the listed modes has a cultural dimension, that is, it involves the development of associated methods of action, motivations, value concepts, and “correct” behavior. Consideration of socialization from this point of view allows us to record those forms of sociocultural life that are mastered more intensively by representatives of various groups in society, and those, the mastery of which becomes a distinctive sign of belonging to certain subcultures or sociocultural layers.
The temporal dimension of socialization beyond early childhood. In addition to the cultural and spatial dimension, the socialization process also has a temporal dimension. Several periods can be distinguished in this process. An exceptional place, as already noted, belongs to early socialization, when the baby first enters the world of artificial objects, technologies and symbolized relationships. Here the prerequisites for the remaining stages of socialization are formed, the periodization of which can be determined by which of the modes of sociocultural life are leading in each of the periods and, therefore, how knowledge and skills are supposed to be mastered and developed at their initial stages
First period
can be called primary socialization. It is associated with the acquisition, on the basis of early childhood experience, of socially obligatory general cultural knowledge and skills that are non-specific in professional terms. During this period, their acquisition and practical development becomes the leading mode in the individual’s lifestyle. The relevant institutions are preschool and school institutions. The individual devotes a significant part of his time and effort to staying in them. Introducing to professional subcultures is carried out in specialized schools and colleges that combine general education with training in a profession. The initial understanding of the existence of certain subcultures is acquired during this period through the family, communication with children from other sociocultural backgrounds, with educators and teachers. During adolescence, conscious involvement in a specifically youth subculture begins.
Second period
is professional socialization. It consists in mastering specialized labor knowledge and skills, in familiarizing with the appropriate professional culture. In the lifestyle of people at this stage, vocational training is the leading mode, institutionally involving significant expenditures of individual effort and time. The institutions that provide relevant knowledge and skills are special educational institutions - higher and secondary. This is where the cultural differentiation of young members of society begins, as they are introduced to different professional cultures with different worldviews and value concepts determined by the history and traditions of the profession. Socialization of a general cultural nature during the period of professional training is carried out, firstly, as the young man mastering a new, no longer childish status in the family; secondly, as the acquisition of new sociocultural knowledge and skills due to a significant expansion of the circle of social contacts during this period; thirdly, by discussing and interpreting their new status and new experience within the youth subculture. In this area, skills are also developed in using the signs of sociocultural differentiation and existence in a heterogeneous cultural environment.
Third period
characterized by the inclusion of the individual in the system of social division of labor. Here, socialization consists of mastering professional knowledge and skills in the workplace, trying to combine previously gained experience with them, as well as adapting to a professional subculture. Professional activity during this period becomes the leading mode in an individual’s lifestyle for many years. At this time, he becomes a full-fledged citizen of society, and his professional and civic adaptation no longer occurs on the basis of special institutions of socialization, but in direct contacts - formal and informal - in a wide range of socio-cultural situations.
In professional socialization during this period, it is advisable to distinguish between initial adaptation to the workplace and advanced training. In the first case, socialization takes place in the immediate work environment. For the second case, there are institutional forms that differ from the first two stages of training by focusing on narrow professionalization. The time costs associated with advanced training affect the structure of an individual's lifestyle until this retraining occurs. During the period of full inclusion of people in working and civil life, their sociocultural differentiation is consolidated according to professional qualifications, demographic characteristics, and the degree of socio-political activity. Moreover, the fewer socially significant contacts with other types of occupations a profession involves, the more limited the goals of an individual’s political affiliation group, the poorer these subcultures are, the less they contribute to the general socialization of the individual.
The general socialization of a person during the period of full inclusion in the system of social division of labor and full civil life occurs due to both subcultural and general social mechanisms. Adapting to the professional subculture and civil life, the individual, under the influence of positive and negative sanctions (rewards and punishments, approval and condemnation) from others, masters the patterns of activity, interaction, behavior, communication, value and normative ideas accepted here. Further, the life of an adult implies his involvement in a number of other subcultures: family, friendship groups, groups of common cultural interests, etc. Inclusion in each of them or a change in group membership necessarily involves additional socialization. Indeed, in these situations there is a need to master and apply sociocultural patterns, values, and norms that are different from existing experience. But along with this, members of society also use general cultural means: mass information, cultural institutions, etc. Professional activities and participation in membership groups characterize the structure and content of people’s lifestyles. Here, sociocultural differentiation is maintained due to differences in lifestyle and lifestyle characteristic of different sociocultural groups.
Fourth stage
socialization is associated with retirement age or loss of ability to work. During this period, a person leaves the system of social division of labor. He frees up time previously occupied by professional activities, and he has to restructure his lifestyle so as not to lose his face as a member of society. In different cultures, this period of socialization is not provided for institutionally in the same way. However, its significance both in the individual lifestyle and at the social level is undeniable. If people, with a sharp change in life circumstances, remain outside of active sociocultural life, and there are no special institutional structures that allow older people to adapt in the search for a new social and cultural identity, “sliding” of the personality to a more inferior state, its degradation.
These are the main periods of socialization and the skills and knowledge associated with each of them that need to be mastered when moving from one social-age status to another. In addition to this, special attention should be paid to the difference between three types of socialization: primary early (infancy), primary (first stage) and secondary (second, third, fourth stages). About infancy, as already noted, we can say that here the prerequisites are formed for the individual’s further development of the social cultural environment. During the period of primary socialization, learning occurs, that is, mastering initial practical skills and knowledge, as well as learning skills - and this is the goal of learning. Secondary socialization, in contrast, is characterized by the use of learning skills as a means to obtain personally and socially significant results, including broader cultural acquisition. At the stages of early and primary socialization, a person is necessarily an object of education, when socially obligatory elements of culture are “invested” in him. The basis of education is the child’s imitation of the actions and behavior of adults, on the one hand, and the directive instructions of adults, on the other. During the period of secondary socialization, changes in human behavior occur due to the independent choice of new knowledge and skills to master, as well as through the application of negative sanctions to him by others in various interaction situations.
The description of socialization processes will be incomplete without mentioning the so-called resocialization . This concept applies to institutions such as penitentiary and psychiatric institutions, and to such categories of people as delinquents (people with deviant behavior), offenders, and the mentally ill. In this case, adolescents and adults are subjected to special coercive influences that contribute to the destruction of previous, socially unacceptable patterns of behavior and ideas, and the formation of others that do not conflict with the patterns and norms established in society and culture
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Mechanisms of socialization
- Identification is a person’s definition and identification of himself as a member of a certain social group that is different from the rest. For example, women and men, adults and children, etc.
- Copying or imitation is the repetition of adopted patterns of behavior, conscious and unconscious. This includes gestures, facial expressions, manner of communication, etc.
- Impression and suggestion - expressed in the reflexive use of the experience and experiences of other people in a close circle of communication.
- Social facilitation is the influence of the behavior of one member of society on the activities of another, which facilitates socialization. For example, parents help a child have children.
- Understanding contradictions is the individual’s awareness of the causes and consequences of stress and conflict situations, followed by the search for a compromise.
What is human socialization: concept
Socialization
Socialization of a person is the process of obtaining a set of character qualities, without which a full existence in society is impossible. It occurs through human interaction with the external environment, as well as other members of society.
The result of the process is the transformation of a person into a full-fledged personality. Thus, throughout life, a person accumulates experience and knowledge that force him to change and develop his own traits and manners of behavior and communication. At the same time, it cannot be said that socialization is a process that has some kind of completion. The fact is that it passes throughout life. Moreover, regardless of age, people tend to overestimate their views.
It is also necessary to take into account that socialization is two-way. That is, a person not only accumulates certain knowledge and experience, but also ensures the formation of relationships between people. In the process of communication, people begin to form personal preferences and preferences. At the same time, the individual always takes on the functions characteristic of society.
Since people very rarely find themselves alone and live in a group life, the question of a person’s entry into society never loses its relevance. And it is socialization that is the process that allows you to join existing social groups.
Socialization factors
Factors influencing the socialization process are divided into three types:
- Microfactors - inherent in primary socialization in small groups (distribution of roles in the family, team at work, in an educational institution)
- Mesofactors - socialization of the individual in the middle group of society: ethnic and religious characteristics, environment or place of residence (city, village).
- Macrofatcores - belonging to a large group of society: state, cultural values.
Agents of Socialization
Based on the foregoing, it is quite clear that socialization cannot occur on its own, because the transfer of skills and knowledge requires structures that act as agents of information transfer. This role can be played by both individuals and various institutions (kindergartens, schools, universities, religious communities, military units, etc.).
In this case, we can distinguish agents of primary socialization (parents, close friends, coaches, teachers), as well as agents of secondary socialization (representatives of the administration of educational institutions, enterprises, law enforcement agencies, the media).
Types of socialization
Since socialization is a process that accompanies us all our lives, it is quite clear that at different periods it takes one form or another, in other words, socialization has several types:
- Complete socialization of the individual - the individual’s complete compliance with the chosen social group, as well as the effective performance of given functions.
- Incomplete or partial socialization of the individual - the correspondence of the acquired skills and abilities necessary to belong to the chosen social group.
- One-sided socialization of an individual is when a person has acquired the full amount of knowledge and skills in only one area of his life, for example in a career, or only in family relationships.
- Desocialization - rejection of developed skills, roles and behavior patterns
- Resocialization is the acquisition of new concepts, norms and rules of behavior to replace the rejected old ones, which is necessary to achieve set goals.
Socialization - what is it in simple words
Socialization refers to the process of an individual becoming a member of society . In order to become part of the social structure, to take one’s position in it (obtain status) with the corresponding functions (social role), one must assimilate the norms and values that exist in a given society.
Thus, the success of socialization depends on how firmly social skills are ingrained in a person. This means that the following factors must appear:
- a person must respond to the expectations of society , i.e. understand what rules exist in him and what others expect from him;
- based on these expectations, he must change his behavior if a discrepancy is detected ;
- the individual himself must strive to bring his behavior into conformity with the norms of society
