Course: Intro to Sociology

Prof: Jannick Demanet

Date: November 15, 2022

Lecture VI: Institutionalization and Socialization

I. Institutionalization

Defining Institutions: Behavioral patterns, being a collection of role expectations (structure),

that guide people’s behavior, according to the norms (culture) of the society, to satisfy
certain needs

Needs and Institutions

 Procreation – family and marriage are institutions of the need for procreation
 Socialization – education: institution for socialization; our behavior is patterned to
this need
 Division of power – politics is the institution for the need of separating power in
society
 Division of goods – economy is the institution for the need of separating goods in
society
 Belief system – religion is the institution for the need of a belief system

- For the most part, people in society don’t see the strangeness in their lives because
of institutionalization. Institutionalization is socializing people into the institutions
that are dominant in a given society

Institutionalization (Berger and Luckmann)

1. Externalization
- The birth of an institution (a way of doing things)
- People still know the person that made the custom – human origin is known
- Adaptive Human Praxis: this is a process of trial and error. If successful it leads to a
process of adaptation. Marx – if people see that something works, they partake

2. Objectivation
- When the root (inventor) or the origin of the institution is unknown.
- For instance, the children of the people from Externalization; they experience the
institution, they see the way things are done but the human origin of the isn’t known
- Therefore, this phase is called objectivation. In this stage things can be questioned
- If things are questioned, there then needs to be someone who legitimizes it

3. Internalization
- Happens after multiple generations have passed and taken for granted
- In this phase, things are no longer questioned; people do not consciously choose to
conform to or not – People are unaware of the constructed character it is what it is
 - It is now the desired way to do things

Thomas Theorem

- If we define situations as real, they start to become real in their consequences

- For instance, the concept pf the self-fulfilling prophesy
- The subjective interpretation of something is much more important that the
objective interpretation

Social Constructionism

- Reality is understood through subjective definitions, which are shared through

interaction, and therefore seem objective appraisals
- There is no reality; we cannot penetrate to the objective layer of reality
- Our subjective accounts of reality do not necessarily have a link to objective reality
- Applies to:
i. Social institutions
ii. Natural objects
iii. Sociology itself

II. Socialization

Defining Socialization: a process by which people come to internalize society; it is when you
make society part of your inner self; it is essential for continuity and cohesion in society

Nature vs Nurture

- Biology
 The ‘human nature’ biological composition of genetic and hormonal influences
- Behaviorism
 Everything can be learned. People are the way they are because they have been
brought up in a certain way (different ways of socialization)
 Done through conditioning (sanctions): reward good behavior and sanction bad
- Contemporary view
 We are born with biological seeds (capabilities) that develop through interactions
 If they are not developed (attention, social interaction etc.) they remain dormant

Stages of Socialization

- Primary socialization: Your family is the most important type of socialization

compared to what you receive outside; genetics and they’re your primary socializers
(political orientations, attitudes, convictions, post materialist values & so on)
- Secondary Socialization: What happens in school, friends
- Tertiary Socialization: socialization that occurs as soon as you stop going to school

Sigmund Freud
 - We are constantly unconsciously driven by our desires, aggression and sex
- The Eros (sex, and desire to be loved, belong) and Thanatos (aggression, what
propels people away from us)
Id (Es)
- These drives are part of our minds, found in our Id (Es) part of all of us
- A cauldron of seething excitation (the need for fulfilling desires, impatience)

Super-Ego (Uber-Ich)
- A construct within ourselves that curbs our needs based on what society wants from
us. The operation of culture on the individual

- These two things are present and part of us all the time. They are constantly fighting
with each other. Freud believes it’s a frustration, a conflict between the two

Ego (Ich)
- The socially conditioned version of yourself based on the conflict of the two
- The story of a successfully socialized individual (someone who has been socialized)

Id-superego conflict
- Repression helps uber ich to win; a society based on this will not function because as
soon as the means of repression is lifted people revert to their Id
- Sublimation is where we can act out on our Id (i.e., sex workers, sports)

Oedipus Complex

C.H Cooley

- The Looking Glass Self: the self is defined by our self-image and is inherently social
1. We imagine how we come across, our appearance towards others (physical)
2. We imagine how other people evaluate the appearance we think we have to the
other person (their judgement)
3. Results in some sort of feeling towards ourselves
- Critique: society is in the mind

Id and Superego in conflict

Mead

- Social Behaviorist – if we talk about how people see themselves, we must talk about
how they act; how society relates to individuals through interaction
- Interaction – an act has an internal element (an attitude which is the first seed of an
act, where it comes from internally) and an external element (gestures)
- Conversation of gestures – when someone has a gesture and someone else has an
almost instinctive reaction to that gesture. It goes so fast that there is no time for a
conscious manipulation of what you are going to do (not symbolic/meaningful)
- Significant Gestures – gesture that has symbolic meaning basis of actual interaction
 - Taking the role of the other: In a conversation after someone has finished speaking
and you have milliseconds in between your response and what they had just said.
This is when you take the mid of the other and inspect the situation from their pov.
Knowing what is about to happen based on a symbolic gesture someone made
- Internal Conversation – I is the subjective part of yourself, seeking/active part, the
knower, the impulsive part of you. Me is the objective part of yourself, the known,
the object, the socially determined part (takes account of social surroundings)

I and Me in Cooperation

Development of the Self

- Imitation Stage - babies are not able to take roles, so they only imitate. Imitation is
not social behavior, there is no role taking
- Play Stage – when you can take on only one role (age of 2/3)
- Game Stage – when you have to be able to take the role of multiple people at the
same time; everyone at the same time (age of around 6/7/8)
- Internalization generalization other – any kind of other that is part of the same
society. Not an individual, but an abstract person. You know how everyone in society
would react in any situation (full socialization)

Symbolic Interactionalism
- Micro cultural approach in which meanings originate and change through interaction

Postulates (Herbert Blumer)

- Postulates are the starting statements made before research
- People act according to meaning; the meaning of an object does not lie in the object
- Meaning is given by interaction
- Meaning is adapted to immediate context

Dramaturgical Analysis (Goffman)

- Impression management and interaction order
- Everything we do is a play in a theater because we are constantly aware of how we
come across to others and we constantly manage how we come across to people
- Things that are undesirable, what we don’t want people to see, we keep in the
backstage. We show them what we want them to see. Social life is a performance
- Costumes and props; we always play our part (interested friend, good son, etc.)
- Embarrassment is when we slip up – falling asleep in class, peeing yourself in public
- Other people know when we slip up and they help us with that
- Tact – we help each other to play our parts

Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel)
- Social Constructionism – casts down between subjective and objective reality
- Applies that to our everyday lives and concerns the things we experience
- It looks at how things happen in specific context; how we manage social life
- Methods, procedures to organize social life; it is taken for granted, it is unconscious
 - Breaching is breaking the conventions that allow us to engage in social interactions.
By breaking them, we reveal the rules

Conversation Analysis
- Look at the methods of everyday speech and analyze them
- Looking at the rules of everyday speech in a certain context
- Sequencing: how do we know when it is our turn to talk
- Adjacency pairs (question is always followed by an answer)