(4) Socialization Process and Self-Making

The Mind

1. emerges from the interactions of highly evolved biophysical human organisms caught up in an inescapable social, interactional web. 2. develops through the use of symbolic gestures, and later through language.

The self is not given.

It is something that is acquired through the process of socialization. Through socialization, a person not only becomes a member of a society or community, but more importantly, he/she also acquires identity, mind, social roles, and gender roles.

Gender

One of the most significant aspects of a person's identity

Confucian and Buddhist text view

The person and objects as continuous with and are necessarily embedded in the environment. This resulted in a holistic worldview, in which persons and objects are understood and perceived as part of a greater whole, inseparable from the context in which they are found (Cross and Gore 2012, 589)

The "me" of the self

consisting of social and interpersonal perspectives, is simultaneously an instrument of social control and conformity

Simone de Beauvoir. In her book The Second Sex (1949)

1. A French Radical Feminist 2. she mentioned that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". This statement polarizes the difference between sex and gender. Many people equated sex with biology, while gender is equated with culture. One becomes a woman through the process of socialization. Therefore, while a person is categorized as female (biological), one learns how to be a woman (cultural).

Filipino concept of kapwa

1. Integration of self and others 2. The Filipino collectivist orientation is expressed in sakop mentality, bayanihan, and damayan.

Problems with roles

1. Some roles are difficult to perform and take great native ability or years of practice to learn. Sometimes, the person is subjected to incompatible role expectations or role conflict, wherein he/she is required to do two or more things that cannot all be done. 2. a person suffers from role overload, when too much is asked from the person. 3. the role the person is asked to perform is inconsistent with his/her needs or basic value.

Personal identity

1. The most elementary type of identity. It refers to the social classification of an individual into a category of one (Rosenberg 1979). 2. denotes a unique individual with self-descriptions drawn from one's own biography and singular constellation of experience. 3. a product of the unique social biography of the individual. Hence, personal identity points to the continuity of one's life story.

Subjectification

1. The process of acquiring a self. 2. a product neither of the psyche nor language, but of a heterogeneous assemblage of bodies, vocabulary, judgment, techniques, inscriptions, and practices (Nikolas Rose).

socialization

1. The process of learning these skills and social roles (to be a full member of society, you must learn and acquire and learn all the necessary social roles and skills required of a competent member of that society) 2. traditionally seen as a one-way process in which society molds the individual to conform to the established social norms and rules. 3. if all competent members of the society successfully socialized to follow every rule that is set in their society there will be no problems

Gestures

1. are instinctive behaviors displayed by animals in order to respond to another gesture or send a signal to another animal. 2. Infants display this kind of behavior toward their mothers or primary caregivers. When infants, however, learn how to utter words and associate them with certain responses, symbolic gestures become a form of language.

Bodies

1. cannot be divorced from their lived experiences. 2. continuously shaped by cultural forces and social definitions of gender roles. From social constructionist perspectives, the physical body is not something given. It does not exist outside the symbolic and cultural world of society.

Feminist social scientist

1. challenges the traditional equation of women's nature with what is biologically "natural". This view is responsible for devaluation and subordination of women. 2. They argue that this devaluation of women is a product of patriarchy.

An identity

1. designates a commonly recognized set of persons. For example, the terms school teacher, and physicians, janitor, professional athlete, and criminals all refer to recognized sets of persons. (Each constitutes a social position, and behave in characteristic way. each social position is said to exhibit a characteristic role.Persons who share roles are likely to share a common identity.) 2. could also mean personal identity 3. products of positioning within a narrative or story-plot prescribed by the community (then it can be understood as acquisition of roles.)

feral children or wild children

1. human beings fail to be socialized owing to the absence of parental or surrogate caregivers. 2. like the character of "Tarzan" or "Jungle Boy" lacks the necessary skills and knowledge such as language to be competent members of society

Essentialism view of the self

1. it equates the self with certain pre-given and unchanging characteristics, such as gender and sexuality, language, and rationality or reasoning capacity. 2. the traditional definition of the self and identity in the West is supposed to apply to all the peoples of the world. This approach is referred by social scientists as essentialism.

Embodiment

1. means selves and identities are located in a specific social and cultural position, and this position is always defined in terms of power, hierarchy, and social status. 2. the physical and mental experience of existence- is the condition of possibility for our relating to other people and to the world. Embodied social relations serve both as the starting point for any social interactions while being the outcome of social relations themselves. 3. Different cultures have different ways of expressing embodiment.

George Herbet Mead (1863-1931) "symbolic interactionism"

1. our concept of the self is acquired through the use of symbolic gestures. 2. earliest form of communication between animals is called gestures. 3. "The full development of the self" (requires the acquisition of language, the capacity for self-reflection using meaningful gestures or consciousness, and the ability to take into consideration the role-expectation of others. the self emerges through interaction with others who also have the same capacities and skills.)

One's self-identity

1. ultimately derived from the community so that the community is also, in a sense, a product of the individual in interaction with other selves. 2. it does not mean that one's community produces a homogenous "reality" or pure sameness without unique differences among individuals and selves because the self could be subjected to conflicting interpretations of realities.

The Mind

3. From the use of symbolic gestures, it gradually emerges from the awareness of the individual that he/she is a separate entity of object from the world. 4. The hallmark of it is the capacity to use language and distinguish the boundary between the self and the outside world.

Culture against Nature

Many people think that gender is something cultural and sex is biological. Human biology is everywhere the same and follows the basic mammalian sexual pattern. There are some truths to this assertion.

"modern self" is "self-contained individual" or bounded, masterful self./ "sovereign self"

The self in this view is born into this world already equipped with complete personality, dispositions, and consciousness. The self is seen as existing independent from other selves.

Many social scientists view the self today as "storied-self"

a self that is always located and situated within the larger context of places and space

Selves and identities

are always embodied-ways of inhabiting the world.

evolutionary psychologists and biologists

argue that homosexuality is common in most animal species.

Many sociologists (Argument on distinction between gender and sex)

argue that the polarized distinction between gender and sex is not as rigid as people might seem to think. Rather than seeing gender and sexuality as something imposed on individuals or something that inheres in the individual by nature, many sociologists suggest that sex and gender are products of cultural negotiations.

west and Zimmernam

argue, "Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the essentialness of gender".

The differing traits of men's and women's bodies

brought about, in part, through cultural practices in which boys and men are encouraged, more than girls and women, to be physically strong and confident.

Narrative validity

depends strongly on the affirmation of others. We are all entangled in the "network of reciprocating identities".

The philosophical and religious text of the West and the East.

differ fundamentally in their definition of the person's place in the world and society

Filipinos

emphasize tradition and family values over and above the individual's choice. Thus, the social self is more important than the individual self

he Asian concept of selfhood

emphasizes the value of kinship structure more than the freedom of the individual.

SUBJECTIFICATION

entails that our life stories are necessarily linked, interweaved, and implicated with the life stories of others and the community. One's relies on other's narrative to validate his or her narrative

Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000)- Biologist

explained that there are at least five biological sexes. Male and female and those who are born intersexed. Intersexed have three general categories: 1. true hermaphrodite- it is the people who have one ovary and one testis. 2. male pseudohermaphrodite-people who have testes, no ovaries, but have some elements of female genitalia. 3. female pseudohermaphrodite- people with ovaries, no testis, but have some elements of male genitalia.

Women

have been considered by many cultures closer to nature because of their biological nature.

The feminist social scientists

have contributed a lot to the discussion on the study of the formation of self and identity. They made many social scientists admit and recognize the self and identity are inevitable from the concept of material body.

Social determinism

individuals have no choice but to follow certain factors or causes that control their behaviors. This definition, however, forgets how individuals also employ creative means and ways to interpret the prescribed rules and norms.

significant others (According to Mead)

individuals to whom a person has an intimate relationship, such as immediate family members, relatives, peer groups, and friends.

The process of making the self and personal identity

is the product of the complex interaction between the cultural environment and biological adaptation.

the essentialist definition of the self

no longer popular among psychologists and social scientists

sociologists define sexuality (By acknowledging the diversity of expression of sexuality)

not as a fixed trait, rather as "doing". Sex and gender, therefore, are accomplished or achieved categories. Gender and sex are done and performed. Being male or female is what one does.

Individuals in society

not just passive members who simply obey and follow social norms and rules. They also contribute to transforming it. People are capable of transforming society because they have autonomy and freedom.

Female bodies

often treated as inferior to male bodies in athletic competition and sports. Women are pressured in modern societies to have slim contours and small bodies.

western texts and belief systems

persons are separate from the world and society and can be understood apart from the situation, context, or environment in which they are found

the SELF

product of socialization.

The median self has also an agentive (agency or the power to do otherwise) side called the "I"

responds to an ongoing, moment-tomoment basis to the "me", as well as to those constantly emergent circumstances within which particular social, interactive conduct unfolds.

Sociobiologists

sociologists who argue that the social interactions of human beings are rooted in biological evolution and adaptation.

Clifford Geertz (1983)

summarized this dominant Western view of the individual self, argued that this is peculiar to Western culture: "The western conception of the person as bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background, is however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world's culture".

In Western societies

the individual self, or part of the self that reflects the person's own thoughts and beliefs, is emphasized more than the social self, or the part of the self-concept that comes from group membership.

If the self is always embodied

then, the body is simultaneously both a natural, physical entity and is produced through cultural, symbolic practices. The self as embodied always bears the imprint of different social and cultural power relations within the society