Assess sociological theories of socialization

Values, norms and beliefs are also a key part of the process of socialisation and the way we have learnt our norms, values and beliefs depends a lot on the person we become in later life. We learn our norms from our parents when we are younger they are the unspoken and unwritten rules of behaviour in everyday life, and therefore they are simple rules which we follow every day, and these norms carry on developing through our primary and secondary education. Norms Like values they differ from person to person and society to society. The values and beliefs of a child depend on their upbringing. Our belief system helps to socialise us also. Values are the beliefs that we all share that form the basis from our norms. Talcott Parsons wrote that all human societies have certain problems that have to be solved if life is to be maintained. Such problems can be approached and solved in a variety of ways, and the choice of how to solve them is governed by our values.

Conflict and consensus theories also look at socialisation and the society. The consensus theories are considered to be focused on the social order. They view the social change as occurring in a slow and orderly fashion and considered shared norms and values as fundamental factors towards society. It is being considered in these theories that the social order in society should be maintained, based upon the accepted norms and values that are accepted by the society in general. Conflict theories however emphasize that the order in society are based upon control of dominant groups. Its looks at the different types of classes such as higher more powerful classes and less powerful lower down classes. Conflict theories look at how some institutions of society such as the government, media and religion as well as parts of education help maintain some privileges of the different types of groups. Consensus theories concentrate more on the integration of values in society whereas conflict theories look at conflicts of interest between social groups in society.

The interactionalist theory is a theory in which they believe socialisation is an active process based on interaction between children and adults. Parents and teachers are agents of socialisation in preparation for adult society but they have different backgrounds themselves. Children are not all raised to have the same values and norms. Children are also socialised in peer groups which allows them to make their own rules that may conflict with adult norms and values. But not everything in this theory shows that it is based on an active process and it just concentrates on day to day interaction with children and adults and doesn’t make any reference to what else makes socialisation so key, there is nothing about the impact of social structure or how institutions impact on children’s or adults socialisation, so therefore this weakens the interactionists theory of socialisation.

Overall there are many different types of theories which could be broken down and looked at, but sociologists believe that primary and secondary socialisation is key to a child’s life in how they develop into the country in later life and for them to be able to interact and communicate, but there are many different views on how it should be controlled and therefore it depends more upon which theory a certain person thinks is best for explaining primary and secondary socialisation.