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This article throws light upon the top six sources that provide knowledge about socialisation. The sources are: 1. Cultural Anthropology 2. Psychoanalysis 3. Other Unattached Empirical Studies 4. Research 5. Animal Studies 6. Direct and Indirect Sources.
Source # 1. Cultural Anthropology:
The first source and probably the major source of knowledge about socialisation, is cultural anthropology investigations by cultural anthropologists.
Cultural anthropologists were the earliest group of social scientists to study the variations in social behaviour from culture to culture. More crucial was their attempt to relate adult behaviour in a particular culture to child rearing practices. Cultural anthropologists attempted to relate adult behaviour in a particular culture to the ways in which children are reared.
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These early studies attempted to throw light on two points:
Firstly, they tried to explain similarities in behaviour within a particular culture in terms of child rearing practices.
Secondly they tried to understand differences between cultures. Thus, their points of concern were similarity within a culture and dissimilarity between cultures. However, these early studies did not pay any attention to differences within a particular culture, or what may be referred to as intra-cultural or intra-societal variations. This was quite natural, because anthropologists were primarily interested in studying and understanding ‘cultures’ as ‘whole entities’ and not variations within a particular culture or society, which is primarily a concern of the psychologist.
Further, it is also possible that since the cultures studied by the early cultural anthropologists were simple and small, there were not many striking individual variations. But, the same cannot be said of modern complex and advanced societies, where the socialisation process is complex and shows variations which depend on the kind of social stratification, both vertical and, horizontal. Modern societies are marked by sub-cultures, within a particular culture, which probably was not the case with the simple, homogenous cultures studied by the early cultural anthropologists.
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Some of the classical anthropological studies were those of Malenowski, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Abram Kardiner Wayne Dennis, Ralph, Linton and Whiting, to mention a few. These studies were primarily interested in arriving at a logical connection between child rearing practices and adult social behaviour patterns.
In fact, Kardiner even came up with a view that every culture develops an ‘Ethos’ or basic personality structure in all its members. The reader probably is familiar with the terms like ‘German character’, or Indian character’. The assumption here is that most adults, belonging to a particular socio- cultural groups, show certain striking similarities in behaviour, attitudes and values.
Source # 2. Psychoanalysis:
Our second major source of knowledge about the process of socialisation, particularly the role of child rearing practices and early childhood experiences are the psychoanalytic formulations on the development of the individual and the role of early childhood experiences on the development of the individual.
It may be noticed that unlike the studies of early cultural anthropologists who were concerned with similarities within a culture, psychoanalytic formulations were concerned with individual variations within a particular culture, in addition to cultural variations.
A practising analyst, clinician, or psychiatrist is primarily concerned with individual variations and typicality in behaviour. Psychoanalytic formulations therefore were primarily concerned with the relationship between child rearing practices and early childhood experiences and the development of individual character and personality.
Thus, they have complemented the cultural anthropological approach. While cultural anthropology helped us to understand the process of socialisation from the point of view of analysing uniformity and similarities between cultures, psychoanalytic formulations have helped us to focus our attention on variations within a culture. They have helped us to understand, how sub-cultural variations in the process of socialisation, particularly child rearing patterns, can result in individual differences in character, personality and social behaviour.
The emergence of psychoanalysis as an approach to understand the individual variations in relation to the socialisation process attracted the interests of cultural anthropologists. Very soon, there emerged a meeting ground between these two approaches.
Several anthropologists started using psychoanalytic theory and concept in understanding the dynamics of the process of socialisation. Psychoanalysis provided them with a frame of reference to relate observed child rearing practice on the one hand and adult personality and behavioural characteristics on the other.
While the earlier anthropological attempts to study the process of socialisation were wholistic, descriptive and perhaps, even comparative, the psychoanalytic approach was analytic and interpretative. Psychoanalytic theory started to look into the questions of the how and why of the processes of socialisation. It was felt that a combination of the approaches of traditional cultural anthropology and Freudian psychoanalysis would provide a more comprehensive basis for a wider understanding of the process of socialisation.
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Examples of such attempts for studying the process of socialisation combining the methodology of the traditional cultural anthropology and the formulations of psychoanalysis can be seen in the works of Edward Sapir, Geza Roheim, Abram Kardiner, Erikson, Dollard and Miller and others.
While many probably do not agree with all of the formulations of this theory on its development of character and personality, scarcely can anyone deny that the psychoanalytic formulations gave a fillip and provided a basic logic to undertake studies on child rearing, subsequently carried out by many others who were even critical of psychoanalysis and followed other theoretical perspectives.
There have also been those who have undertaken studies on the relationship of child rearing attitudes and practices on the one hand and behaviour on the other, who have been surely empirical in their outlook and were not attached to any particular theoretical orientation.
Source # 3. Other Unattached Empirical Studies:
Another source of our understanding of the process of socialisation is the host of research studies done on various aspects of socialisation. Some of these studies have been carried out from specific theoretical perspectives and others not so. Some investigators have tried to study the process of socialisation from the point of view of learning theory or S.R-theory or reinforcement theories as they are variously called.
We may consider all of them as more or less subscribing to the “stimulus-response” approach. Sears, one of the leading workers in the area is of the view that the term Stimulus-Response approach is adequate to cover the various shades of the approach. Among some of the outstanding studies are those of Sears, Dollard and Miller and Bandura and Walters.
These investigations ironically have revived a discarded concept from the debris of instinct theories, but coated with a different type of sugar, i.e. the term ‘imitation’. Similarly the famous studies by Baldwin and others can be cited as not belonging to any specific theoretical perspective. Investigations have been carried out based on cognitive and field theoretical models, to understand the process of acquisition of social behaviour through the process of socialisation.
Source # 4. Research:
Research studies on the process of socialisation have been undertaken from sociological, psychological and anthropological perspectives, and very often considerable difficulty has been experienced in integrating these. One exception to this general pattern is the classical study of Whiting & Child, the former being an anthropologist and the latter a psychologist.
As a result of these investigations from varied angles, some important theoretical issues have emerged. Some of these issues are, the relative importance of early childhood and late childhood, the role of individual drives, needs etc., as opposed to group influences, the importance of processes as opposed to contents in predicting behaviour, the relative contributions of idiosyncratic as against similar experiences, and finally the emphasis that should be placed on deviations as opposed to conformity with normative expectations.
Source # 5. Animal Studies:
Study and observation of animal behaviour certainly have relevance for understanding the process of socialisation of the human child. In the words of Palmer “Harlow’s graphic documentation of the behaviour of infant monkeys reared with manmade surrogate mothers, made it virtually important for his audience to learn without any speculation about the implications of these data on the intellectual and emotional development of the child”.
Some of the areas of animal investigations that have emerged to be of relevance in understanding the process of socialisation of the human child are:
(a) Studies on drive deprivation:
In general, these studies have shown that drive deprived dogs, tend to exhibit more “approach behaviour” towards familiar and even non-familiar humans, than non-deprived dogs.
(b) Experiments on stimulus deprivation:
Reissen’s studies on infant chimpanzees on the effects of extreme visual deprivation showed that chimpanzees reared under extreme light deprivation were less able to acquire postural and motor skills and also avoidance responses compared to normally brought up animals.
(c) Studies involving both drive and stimulus deprivation:
Studies like those of Harlow and Zimmerman resulted in certain findings. According to Palmer, information derived from animal studies of the above categories certainly have considerable relevance for pre-school educational programmes.
An attempt has been made to make the reader understand how the process of socialisation has been studied from different angles. The reader may very well be surprised, amused, or even confused and get the impression that psychologists are like the proverbial blind men looking at an elephant and trying to describe it.
If he gets this impression, he is perhaps, more than justified. But, in this volume we would not like to get involved with these blind men. Socialisation or social learning is possible because of the integrated activation of all basic psychological processes, perception, learning, motivation etc. All the processes play crucial roles. Ultimately, it is the total individual who perceives, learns and is motivated. There is an organismic unity and interdependence among these processes.
The process of socialisation cannot be effective unless you have a motivated and perceiving organism which is capable of learning. The controversies among the various approaches are often meaningless and even where it is meaningful, not very relevant to the reader. The young reader can afford to avoid verbal quibbling for some more time.
Source # 6. Direct and Indirect Sources:
The process of socialisation is not a straight-jacketed process. The child, as he grows, comes under the influence of different “significant others, in different ways”. During early childhood, he is mostly under the control and influence of his parents, and perhaps, a few others at home. Later on, as he is able to move out, he comes under the influence of others in the neighbourhood.
As he grows older and starts attending school, the peer group or other children come to play a very important role in shaping his social behaviour. Then there are others like friends, neighbours, teachers and other people with whom he comes into contact. The social world expands. He enters and interacts with continuously expanding world.
All of them have an influence on his social behaviour. He learns from them through active interaction. Thus, during the early years of childhood the process of socialisation occurs through direct and enduring interaction.
This phase of socialisation is marked by personal involvement and contact of the child with others who influence him or her. But, as he grows older, he comes under the socializing influence of other agencies, what he hears and reads about and which operate indirectly. Media like newspapers, cinema and television begin to influence him though there is no direct contact or inter-contact.
This symbolic environment comes to have a great influence on his interests, habits, values, attitudes, beliefs and, in fact several aspects of his social behaviour very often with disastrous effects. He gradually gets exposed to people, events and units located far away from him, and not inviting any direct and personal interaction. But these far-off agencies also influence social behaviour.
The stories we hear, the books we read, the television and all act as effective influences. Their effectiveness however, depends to a considerable extent on the growth, development and level of maturity of the individual particularly the cognitive abilities and capacities like thinking, imagining, remembering learning etc. These later socializing influences may be described as indirect or secondary.