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Socialization

Socialization refers to the process through which people learn skills, knowledge, values, motives, and roles appropriate to their position(s) in a social group or society, resulting in a particular identity or identities relevant to that social group or society. Socialization takes place through communicative interaction with others whenever new roles are engaged as part of a group or society. One basic assumption of socialization theory is the internalization of group or social requirements. During socialization, one learns to take on an identity associated with a particular group and perform it in a competent manner.

Disciplinary and Contextual Engagement

The process of socialization involves multiple disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, communication theory, psychology, social psychology, and sociology, with a common pool of intellectual ancestors (e.g., Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, George Herbert Mead). The academic concept of socialization as the relationship of the individual to society or collectives can be traced from its emergence in the late 1800s to current theory and research, including work on self-socialization, moving from a focus on stages tied to biological development to increased focus on the interaction of person and environment through language. Persons are socialized to identities based on their connection to and membership in particular social groups.

Socialization takes place in multiple life contexts, including family socialization, occupational/professional socialization, and organizational socialization. Gender and sex role socialization, language socialization, parental role socialization, political socialization, racial socialization, and consumer socialization tap particular identities drawn from a given domain of social life. Primary socialization refers to family and school socialization, where children learn behaviors appropriate to a particular culture, secondary socialization refers to socialization into particular groups during adulthood (for example, to an organization or occupation), and resocialization refers to learning patterns of behavior different from previously learned onesfor example, joining the military.

From the social collective's perspective, socialization is the individual's adaptation and conformity to role expectations, others’ opinions, and the norms and values of the collective. This structuralist/functionalist approach stresses the transmission of group culture. Socialization involves adaptation to the group for which the person will develop an identity. From the individual's perspective, socialization is the development of personal and social identity and associated attitudes and behaviors resulting from social influences. Symbolic interaction is the theoretical tradition of this view. Through interaction with others, one is socialized to norms and rules relevant to identity as a member of a particular gender, race, class, or other group.

Theories of Socialization

Theories of socialization can be organized according to life stage, life span, and life course perspectives. Life stage perspectives (e.g., Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson) focus on a biological basis for socialization. Life span perspectives (e.g., Orville Gilbert Brim and Stanton Wheeler) emphasize the role of both biology and experience. The life course perspective (G. H. Mead, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Erik Erikson) highlights the influence of social norms, role prescriptions, and group processes on age-related life transitions. Karl Mannheim suggested that one's generation defines a unique socialization experience.

Much subsequent theoretical work on socialization was a reaction to Freud, who assumed that movement from one stage to another is ordered, basically fixed or invariant, and biological in origin. Most sociological research until the late 1960s and the 1970s emphasized childhood socialization, as did Freud, though its basis was no longer believed to be related to psychosexual stages. Socialization theorists came to recognize the role of environmental influences on the person's movement through stages, along with the shaping influence of communicative interaction on identity formation during the socialization process.

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