INTSOCI REVIEWER

Socialization: Becoming Human and Humane

Socialization process in which individuals acquire the
knowledge, language, social skills and value to conform to the
norms and roles required in the community.
Interaction action that occurs when two or more objects have
an effect on one another.
Social Self Its the self that you show the world, you interacting
with others.
Nature vs Nurture Debate
Question where human traits come from being born with it
(nature) or learning it over time (nurture)
Study in which how a human grows up is influenced by genetics
or is influenced by the experiences they obtained over time.
Agents of Socialization
Family (Social class, gender, race, etc.)
Peers
School
Social Stratification
Stratification classification of classes
Systems of Stratification
Ascribed status inherited status
Achieved status capabilities/talents
Slavery
Caste System the most popular example is in India (Bhramin,
Untouchables, etc.)
o Open Caste mobility is possible, you can go up if you
have money
o Closed Caste once an untouchable, always an
untouchable
Estate System feudal lords, servants
Class System lower, middle, upper. Social mobility is possible.
Understanding Stratification
Karl Marxs View on Stratification (conflict perspective):
Capitalism is an economic system. Means of production
(factories, money, etc.) is owned by private institutions. Marx
wants to change the structure.

o Bourgeois and the Proletariat

Max Webers View on Stratification: no single characteristic
defines a persons position within the stratification system.
o Its not about the wealth, but the ability to exercise power
amongst others

The economic discussion

What is Power?
Power is the ability to exercise your will amongst others
Adolf Hitler did not come from a high class, but has risen to
power because of his charisma and talent
What is Prestige?
Same group of people, sharing the same lifestyle
The Mafia is an examble
Max Weber says that in order to analyze stratification, you need an
intersection of power and prestige.
Explanations of Stratification
Functionalist Theory: The people on top deserves their place,
they are wealthy and intelligent, they earned it.
Conflict-Perspective: The people on top are willing to exploit the
working class/other people.
Symbolic Interactionalism: Your capabilities are based on your
status.
o False consciousness: not exerting effort because you think
you are not worthy of being in power because you are not
rich/smart.
Review of the Three Main Concepts in Sociology
Conflict theory states that human behavior in society results
from conflicts between competing groups.
The symbolic interaction perspective relies on the symbolic
meaning that people develop and rely upon the process of social
interaction. They are influenced by their interactions.
Functionalism is when everything and everyone should work
together in order for society to be better. Everyone has a role
that they need to portray.
Social Mobility
Movement of an individual from one class to another
Horizontal Mobility

o Change in occupation but not in social class

Vertical Mobility (intergenerational mobility)
o Possibility to move upward or downward
Caste System
o No possibility of social mobility
Open Class System

Stratification by Gender and Sexuality

o Sex determined by biological birth, sexual organ (penis, vagina)
o Gender sexual preference, socially and culturally constructed
(bi, gay, lesbian)
o Intersex born with both genitals, certain abnormalities
(hermaphrodite) or looks like a male but genitalia is female
David Reimer
o Was subjected to gender reassignment at 18 months old
o Originally named Bruce, had to undergo construction of a vagina
due to his penis being burned off. Grew up as a girl, but then
chose to undergo another procedure and turned back into a boy.
Constructionist Approach to Gender Identity
o Constructionists believe that gender is constructed through
interactions with others.
Stratification in Gender
o Gender Inequality
o Theories in Gender Inequality
o Functionalism maintaining social order; the role that was
given to you should be what you are doing because you are
suited for that role (father is instrumental, mother is
expressive).
o Conflict Perspective access to ecomomic power is to
male, domestic is to female. Men are stronger therefore are
the breadwinners. They believe that all throughout history
men has been in power therefore shoul maintain as the
dominant sex.
o Symbolic Interactionism emphasizes that the concept of
gender is socially constructed, maintained, and reproduced
in our everyday lives.
Gender Role Stratification

o Families primary source of socialization and greatly impacts

gender role socialization
o Social Learning Theory we learn gender through our
interactions with others and how society thinks that a boy/girl
should act. We were not born knowing who should wear pink.
o School
o Peer Groups
o Media stereotypes, especially in media
Feminism belief in the social, political++ equality of the sexes. First
wave (voting), Second wave (equal access to employment), Third wave
(issues of diversity)
Homophobia fear or discrimination towards Homosexuals
Heterosexism antihomosexual beliefs and practices
Stratification by Age
Aging and Society
Varies from culture to culture
Chronological Age
Mental Age (maturity)
Being old in the US can be labeled as a master status
o Senior citizens in the ph
o Aging group is a minority group
o When you are 65 up the membership to senior citizen is
automatic
Explaining the Aging Process
Gerontology scientific study of the sociological and
psychological of the aging population
Increase in life expectancy led to people referring to those in
their 60s as the young old
Functionalism
o Disengangement Theory society and aging individuals mutually
sever many of their relationships
o Social role of the aging is reduced (no more taxes, forced
retirement)
o The aging population is socialy isolated
Symbolic Interactionalism
o Activity Theory elderly who remain active are the best adjusted
o If they used to stay at home, they are now active in their
community (chuch, mahjong, etc.)
o Involve in new networks, or else they will hate their lives

Conflict Perspective
o Elders are victims of social structure
o Social role is unchanged, tumanda lang
o They can still work, but ayaw lang because capitalism. Why hire
an elder that is prone to issues, health care pa gagastos.
Role transition throughout Life Course
Midlife Crisis your friends are more successful, life regrets
The Sandwich Generation adults who are torn between
responsibilities to new family, and to parents
Adjusting to Retirement Retirement, like being born, death, is a
rite of passage. Rite of passage: Critical transition from one
phase to another.
Death and Dying insurance plans,
o Hospice Care good death by improving last days
o Euthanasia marcy killing
o Senilicide killing the people who are aging
Deviance and Social Control

Social Control techniques and strategies are imposed to

prevent any deviant behavior
Conformity going along with peers who have no right to direct
behavior
Obedience compliance to higher authorities in an hierarchical
strucuture
Sanctions penalties or rewards for conduct concerning a social
norm

Informal Social Control: used casually to enforce norms

Formal Social Control: carried out by authorized agents
Law and Society: Some norms are so important to a society that they
are formalized into laws
Law: governmental social control
Control Theory: our connection to members of society leads us to
systematically conform to societys norms
Deviance: behavior that violates the standards of conduct or
expectations of a group or society
Involves violation of group norms, which may or may not be
formalized into law (Religious beliefs, traditions, practices)
Subject to social definition within a particular society and at a
particular time
Deviance and Social Stigma

Stigma: labels society uses to devalue members of certain social

groups
Deviance and Technology: Technological innovations can redefine
social interactions and standards of behavior related to them
o Explaining Deviance: Functionalist Perspective
Deviance common part of human existence, with positive as
well as negative consequences for social stability.
Durkheim Legacy
Anomie: loss of direction felt in society when social control of
individual behavior becomes ineffective
In Durkheim's usage, anomie referred to a situation in which cultural
norms break down because of rapid change. Anomic suicide, for
example, can occur during a major economic depression, when people
aren't able to achieve the goals that they have learned to pursue, but it
can also occur when the economy experiences a boom and suddenly
the sky's the limit--people don't know how to limit their goals and be
satisfied with their achievements.
Mertons Theory of Deviance
Anomie Theory of Deviance: how people adapt in certain ways by
conforming to or by deviating from cultural expectations, including
conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion
Merton changes the concept slightly, to refer to a situation in which
there is an apparent lack of fit between the culture's norms about what
constitutes success in life (goals) and the culture's norms about the
appropriate ways to achieve those goals (means).
Conflict Theory
Agents of social control and other powerful groups can impose their
own self-serving definitions of deviance on the general public
Feminist Perspective
Society tends to treat women in stereotypical fashion
Emphasizes deviance, including crime, tends to flow from economic
relationships
Theories of Deviance: Conflict Theory
Why are some people's behaviors more apt to be negatively labeled by
the criminal justice system? Labeling theorists point to the role of
moral entrepreneurs or social movements, but what about the forces
that underlie a particular moral crusade? Why, for example, would
American society want to criminalize the production, sale, and
consumption of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s? Why the increased
penalties for domestic violence in the 1970s, or the War on Drugs in

the 1980s? For the conflict theorists, the answer has to do with the
balance of power and privilege in society. Everything from material
goods to quality education to religious freedom is in short supply, and
therefore the typical relationship among groups in society is
competition and conflict. Conflict theorists are typically categorized
according to which inequalities they prioritize.
I. Marxist theory. Marx gives priority to economic inequalities. In his
view, all societies are marked by the conflict of social classes,
sometime overt, sometimes hidden, but always the major source of
stability and change in society. Those who control the productive
property of any society (land, factories, equipment) use their economic
power to dominate other spheres--culture, religion, education, politics,
and certainly the criminal justice system. There may be laws that
benefit everybody, but mostly "the general interest" is a fiction that
covers up class interest. "Justice" and "fair play" are public relations for
a system that actually protects private property and treats
transgressions against the upper classes much more seriously than
transgressions against the lower classes.
Differential Association Theory
Edwin Sutherland set out to develop a theory which would have the
same characteristics as other scientific theories, namely, that "the
conditions which are said to cause crime should be present when crime
is present, and they should be absent when crime is absent."
Sutherland recognized that while some types of crime are more
prevalent in minority communities, many individuals in those
communities are law-abiding. Similarly, among the powerful and
privileged, some are lawbreakers; some are not. His theory is intended
to discriminate at the individual level between those who become
lawbreakers and those who do not, whatever their race, class, or ethnic
background.
His theory gives priority to the power of social influences and learning
experiences and can be expressed in terms of a series of propositions,
which I am going to condense as follows:
1. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a
process of communication.
2. That learning takes place primarily in intimate personal groups and
includes not only the techniques of committing crime but the motives,
rationalizations, and attitudes which accompany crime.
3. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority,
and intensity, and a person becomes delinquent because of an excess
of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable
to violation of law.
4. The learning process involves the same mechanisms whether a
person is learning criminality or conformity.

Neutralization theory: Gresham Sykes and David Matza

One of my favorite social psychologists, Elliot Aronson, in his book, The
Social Animal, raises the question of whether humans are a rational
animal (making the choices that maximize rewards and minimize costs,
in relation to their current state of knowledge) or whether they are a
rationalizing animal (doing things for all kinds of crazy and not-so-crazy
reasons and justifying themselves after the fact). Sykes and Matza
support the second option. They developed their original theory in an
effort to explain delinquent behavior.
In the first place, they argued, many delinquent youth do not hold
unconventional values, or if they do, those values are layered onto
conventional ones. They too grow up learning thou shalt not steal,
covet, kill, etc. The idea that delinquent youth inhabit a subculture
where those values just don't apply is not something they find
supported in their research. Their contention is that delinquent youth
are almost as likely as their more conformist counterparts to feel guilt
and shame over behaviors that violate the basic norms of our society,
BUT THEY FIND A WAY TO JUSTIFY IT. They and their friends develop
rationalizations (another word would be justifications) that neutralize
their potential guilt BEFORE THEY BREAK THE LAW. What's more, those
rationalizations fall into several typical patterns, which Sykes and
Matza call "techniques of neutralization."
1. Denial of responsibility. It wasn't really my choice. "I succumbed
to peer pressure," or "she made me so angry," or "I was drinking or
high on drugs," or perhaps a combination of these factors. Forces
beyond my control, or mostly so, made me do it.
2. Denial of injury. There's no real victim, and therefore there's no
harm. "Women like strong men; they just play at being victims." (Scully
and Marolla, in a study of violent rapists, find them justifying their
behavior by rationalizations that fit well with the Sykes and Matza
categories.) "That store is insured." "I was just borrowing the car."
3. Denial of the victim. "Women who hitch-hike are asking for it."
"xxxxxx (some ethnic or racial or religious group) deserve whatever
they get."
4. Condemnation of the condemners. "The police break the laws."
"Judges are corrupt." "How do you think the rich got their money?"
5. Appeal to higher loyalties. There's a hierarchy of moral values,
such that some are more important than others. If you're familiar
with Ain't No Making It, by Jay MacLeod, you'll remember the Hallway
Hangers, who say they put loyalty to their group above just about
anything else.
Clearly we all do some rationalizing when we've done behaviors that
we know are wrong, but the really critical part of the Sykes and Matza
argument is that these rationalizations come first and are a key factor
in making deviant behavior possible. What's more, what makes their

theory very sociological, is the idea that these ideas are developed in
groups, or transmitted from older boys to younger boys. They may in
fact be viewed as one of the key products of differential association,
and Sykes and Matza say their theory is consistent with Sutherland's
theory--in effect, giving it more substance and detail.
Crime: violation of criminal law, for which some governmental
authority applies formal penalties
Categories of crime: Severity of offense, Age of offender, Potential
punishment, Jurisdiction
Victimless Crimes: willing exchange among adults of widely desired,
but illegal, goods and services
Professional criminal: person who pursues crime as a day-to-day
occupation
Organized Crime: group that regulates relations between various
criminal enterprises involved in illegal activities
Corporate Crime: any act by a corporation that is punishable by the
government
Computer Crime: use of high technology to carry out illegal activity
Transnational Crime: rime that occurs across national borders