In my current post I work with people of different personalities, religions, backgrounds and experiences. They display different types of behaviour and have formed their own perspectives on life including their perceived identity. Therefore I have chosen the sociological topic of socialisation in order to establish an understanding of my clients’ behaviour, self concepts, and faiths. I intend to investigate what socialisation is, the types of socialisation, the different perspectives and how it affects us as individuals.
Socialisation is the term used for the process by which individuals learn and perform behaviour expected of them by society or to become a contributing citizen. In order to survive and work together, people have to agree on certain common values, and conduct themselves accordingly. They learn most of this from other people. As people interact with each other, all involved are affected and in varying degrees change their attitudes and behaviour accordingly. Habits, ideologies/beliefs, attitudes, traditions, motives, social roles, language and moral values are developed through this socialisation process. Durkheim,(1910) suggests that through the transmission of language we influence the development of our individual identities, as cited by, Robinson (1981), P:47. We do sometimes believe what we hear, therefore it is important that we do not impose our values and opinions on our service users’.
Socialisation begins at birth and continues throughout life. Socialisation is deliberate when individuals are told what to do or how to act. Much socialisation is indirect and simply learned by being with other people. The family is a principal agent in socialising a child. This called the general social theory. Berger and Luckmann argue that we are each born into an objective social structure, a network of relationships existing before birth and people who are responsible for us, such as our parents are responsible for our socialisation, (Berger and Luckmann,(1967), P:155 The family conditions and is where; most children learn speech, basic health and hygiene, eating habits, beliefs, and a prescribed set of core family values. The people with autism that I work with in particular have inherited their family values, faiths and attitudes as they learn the language but do not understand the relevance or importance. They are products of their parents or immediate guardians. The cultures they have developed have been imprinted by the people closets to them and culture can be more powerful than instinct in my opinion. This is known as primary socialisation. This leads on to secondary socialisation that refers to the process of learning from smaller groups in larger society. Developmental socialisation takes place in schools and social institutes such as my work place, where they develop social skills based on the influences in these institutes. I have established that some residents enter a period of resocialisation where they unlearn and discard former behavioural patterns and maladaptive thinking by means of support and therapy. This indicates that behaviour is learned and not instinctive and that we as individuals learn and form our concepts on the behaviour/beliefs of other people. We all experience political socialisation where we acquire political norms and values based government ideologies and legislation. As our roles change we must learn the new requirements. This is the process of anticipatory socialisation. This where we begin to learn what is expected of us as a support work or within an occupation. Tertiary socialisation occurs mainly in adults, and is ongoing, because individuals consistently encounter new social situations. People who are not socialised lack most of the attributes we normally associate with a human being. This can be identified in the cases of feral children. Socialisation can be negative and have undesired affects on people such as some criminals and some of my clients that have been institutionalised for most of their lives. Their learned behaviour is not typical to their condition or diagnoses. Erving Goffamn,(1956), suggests that patients in mental health hospitals build new lives centered on the institution and that institutions are geared to standardise behaviour as cited in O, Donnell,(1997) P:291. This theory was based on his total institutions where he discovered the effects institutions can have on a person’s identity. Most of us have private lives where we can escape from the bureaucratic world, however people in mental health hospitals on a medium to long-term placements can not and adjust to the bureaucratic structure in institutions.
