SOCI201-012Tuesday, September 17, 2019Socialization and Interaction Culture · Important questions about culture · Who decides what is and is not included in our material culture? · Who decides the values, norms, and sanctions included in a society’s culture? · Who decides when culture changes? Key and Peele- “Substitute Teacher” Nature vs. Nurture Socialization · The process of learning a society or social group’s culture, including how to “properly” interact · Begins in childhood but persists throughout the life course · Occurs between generations · E.g., gender socialization Agents of Socialization · Individuals or groups that provide socialization into culture · People: Family, Peers · Institutions: school, government, religion, workplaces, mass media · Total institutions · Resocialization George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) · American sociologist/psychologist · Children learn how to “take the role of the other” through: · Imitation · Play · Team games · The “generalized other” Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) · American sociologist · The “Looking-Glass Self” · We imagine how we appear to other people · We interpret others’ reactions to us · We develop a self-concept based on that interpretation · Zhao (2005) “The Digital Self: Through the Looking Glass of Telecopresent Others” · How do we develop our self-concept online if others are disembodied? · “Analyses of the online experience of teenagers have shown that telecopresent others in the online world do constitute a unique looking glass which generates a digital self that is different from the self constructed offline. The digital self has been found to be oriented inward, narrative in nature, retractable, and multiplied” (p. 400) Symbolic Interactionism · Society is composed of symbols that people use to establish meaning, develop their views of the world, and communicate with others · Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) · American sociologist · coined the term “symbolic interactionism” but was heavily influenced by Mead and Cooley Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011) · American sociologist · Ethnomethodology: an analytical method in the social sciences that examines how meaning is created in everyday interaction/communication · Social breaching experiment: disrupting taken-for-granted knowledge in order to understand the nuances of social life Berger and Luckmann · “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966) · Social constructionism: meaning-making is a social event- things only have meaning because we assign them meaning Erving Goffman (1922-1982) · American sociologist · The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life · Dramaturgical perspective of social interaction · The (idealized) performance · Regions- front and back · The team · Setting · Impression management · Things we “give” vs “give off” · Role Performance: we all inhabit different statuses, and each of these statuses comes with different roles; these roles become part of what is expected of us during interaction · Rol.

1. SOCI201-012Tuesday, September 17, 2019Socialization and
Interaction
Culture
· Important questions about culture
· Who decides what is and is not included in our material
culture?
· Who decides the values, norms, and sanctions included in a
society’s culture?
· Who decides when culture changes?
Key and Peele- “Substitute Teacher”
Nature vs. Nurture
Socialization
· The process of learning a society or social group’s culture,
including how to “properly” interact
· Begins in childhood but persists throughout the life course
· Occurs between generations
· E.g., gender socialization
Agents of Socialization
· Individuals or groups that provide socialization into culture
· People: Family, Peers
· Institutions: school, government, religion, workplaces, mass
media
· Total institutions

2. · Resocialization
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
· American sociologist/psychologist
· Children learn how to “take the role of the other” through:
· Imitation
· Play
· Team games
· The “generalized other”
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
· American sociologist
· The “Looking-Glass Self”
· We imagine how we appear to other people
· We interpret others’ reactions to us
· We develop a self-concept based on that interpretation
· Zhao (2005) “The Digital Self: Through the Looking Glass of
Telecopresent Others”
· How do we develop our self-concept online if others are
disembodied?
· “Analyses of the online experience of teenagers have shown
that telecopresent others in the online world do constitute a
unique looking glass which generates a digital self that is
different from the self constructed offline. The digital self has
been found to be oriented inward, narrative in nature,
retractable, and multiplied” (p. 400)
Symbolic Interactionism
· Society is composed of symbols that people use to establish
meaning, develop their views of the world, and communicate
with others
· Herbert Blumer (1900-1987)
· American sociologist

3. · coined the term “symbolic interactionism” but was heavily
influenced by Mead and Cooley
Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011)
· American sociologist
· Ethnomethodology: an analytical method in the social sciences
that examines how meaning is created in everyday
interaction/communication
· Social breaching experiment: disrupting taken-for-granted
knowledge in order to understand the nuances of social life
Berger and Luckmann
· “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966)
· Social constructionism: meaning-making is a social event-
things only have meaning because we assign them meaning
Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
· American sociologist
· The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
· Dramaturgical perspective of social interaction
· The (idealized) performance
· Regions- front and back
· The team
· Setting
· Impression management
· Things we “give” vs “give off”
· Role Performance: we all inhabit different statuses, and each
of these statuses comes with different roles; these roles become
part of what is expected of us during interaction
· Role conflict: when two of your roles directly conflict with

4. one another
· Role strain: when you feel strain within one role
· “On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social
Interaction”
· Line
· Face and the role of the face in interaction
· Face-work
· Ritual
SOCI201-012Tuesday, September 10, 2019Culture and
Consumption
Culture
Culture
· The defining features of a particular social group
· Passed down from generation to generation
· Both material and symbolic
· Material: Physical things that make up a culture:
· Non-material (symbolic): A group’s way of thinking about or
doing things
Material Culture
Physical things that make up a culture:
· jewelry/clothing/hairstyles
· art
· architecture
· technological devices
· leisure activities (sports)
· food
· media
Consumption
· How we utilize material culture
· material culture is directly related to our consumption as a
society
· Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
· Sociologist and economist
· Wealth is seen as a status symbol

5. · Conspicuous leisure
· Conspicuous consumption
· Pecuniary emulation
Consumption
Dr. Juliet Schor (1955-)
· Professor in Sociology at Boston College
· There has been a shift in culture between:
· Horizontal emulation: “people are aspiring to lifestyles like
other people in their economic bracket” (p. 589)
· Vertical emulation: aspiring to be like those above your
economic bracket; “in which a high-end, affluent, media driven
norm of consumption prevails” (p. 589)
“People have to consume. Consuming is a very legitimate, and
very important, life activity. The literature has been very
polarized into very pro- and anti-consumer society and culture
positions: the formulation in the literature is that you’ve got the
critics and you’ve got the defenders. But really the question is:
what kind of consumers do we want to be? And that’s a better
articulation, I think, because people are identified so much with
being consumers. The possibility of not being a consumer no
longer really exists. So I think the questions that we want to be
asking are: where is my clothing coming from? What is its
symbolic meaning?” (Schor, 2008:594)
Technology and Material Culture
Technology has impacted culture in 2 specific ways:
· Cultural Diffusion
· Sites for new aspects of culture to emerge
Non-Material (Symbolic) Culture
A group’s way of thinking about or doing things:
· Language
· Gestures
· Values

6. · Norms
· Sanctions
· Folkways
· Mores
· Taboos
Are there any universal norms?
· Murder?
· Pedophilia
· Cannibalism?
· Treason?
Key Aspects of Culture
· There is nothing “natural” about either material or non-
material culture
· Culture is deeply ingrained
· Culture becomes a base for our decision-making process
· Material and non-material culture often interact with one
another
Culture in the U.S.
· Achievement and success, especially through hard work
· Freedom, democracy, and equality
· Efficiency and rational thought
· Devotion to country and Patriotism
· Value clusters
· Value contradiction
Regional Differences in Culture
Select one of the regions listed on the map. Then, in groups of
1-3 people, answer the following questions:
1. What are your perceptions of the culture (material and non-
material) of the region? What are some of the stereotypes of
that culture and how have they been presented to you? (5

7. things)
2. Conduct an internet search and make a list of the most
common cultural traits (material and non-material) discussed
online (5 things)
Key Aspects of Culture
· Ethnocentrism: using one’s own culture as the comparison for
the cultures of other individuals or societies; it often leads to a
negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors
· Culture shock: the jarring feeling when experiencing a culture
different than your own
· Cultural relativism: examining a culture on its own without
evaluating it against other cultures
SOCI201-012Thursday, September 19, 2019Deviance and
Subcultures
Subcultures vs. Countercultures
· Subcultures: the values and related behaviors of a group that
distinguish its members from the larger culture; a world within
a world (could be based on geography, interests, class,
occupation)
· Countercultures: a group whose values, beliefs, norms, and
related behaviors place its members in opposition to the broader
culture
Defining Deviance
· Common definition: the violation of society’s norms
· Ways of defining deviance
· Statistical
· Moral
· Societal reaction
· Normative

8. · Legal
· Medical
Statistical Definition of Deviance
· Durkheim: deviance is something that is statistically different
than the average
Moral Definition of Deviance
· Deviance is a violation of moral absolutes- there are sets of
universal morals (often set by religious institutions), and
deviance is a violation of them
· Kai Erikson’s Wayward Puritans (1966)
· Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1933) “Defining deviance down”
Societal Reaction Definition of Deviance
· No behavior is inherently deviant- something becomes deviant
when society reacts to it and labels it as such
· Howard Becker’s (1960s) labeling theory
Normative and Legal Definitions of Deviance
· Normative definition: the members of different groups come to
some sort of agreement of what behaviors are acceptable, and
any violation of these norms should be considered deviance.
· Legal definition: an approach most often used in criminology
that argues that a behavior should be defined as deviant if it
violates an established law
Medical Definition of Deviance
· Medicalization of deviance: re-defining deviance as medical
conditions that should be treated as such (deviance as

9. pathology)
· Alcoholism, gambling addiction, anxiety disorders
· Functions to diminish the culpability of the deviant individual
· Transition from sanctions to treatment
Martin, Pescosolido, and Tuch (2000)
· Examined five factors that influence the public’s willingness
to interact with people with mental health problems
· The nature of the behavior described
· Causal attributions of the behavior’s source
· Perceived dangerousness of the person
· The label of “mental illness”
· The sociodemographic characteristics of respondents
Symbolic Interactionism
· Differential Association (Edwin Sutherland): we associate
with different groups that all give us different definitions of
deviance and conformity
· Control Theory (Walter Reckless)
· We are controlled by two systems: Inner controls (internalized
morality, sense of right and wrong) and outer controls (people
that influence us to not deviate)
· Travis Hirschi: The stronger our bonds are with society, the
more effective our inner controls are
· Labeling Theory (Howard Becker)
· Society labels an individual or behavior as “deviant”
· That label affects how a person is viewed (by both themselves
and by others), and that perception leads them to be deviant
(Self-fulfilling prophecy)
· Sykes and Matza’s “Techniques of Neutralization”
· Denial of Responsibility
· Denial of injury
· Denial of a victim
· Condemnation for the condemners

10. · Appeal to higher loyalties
Structural Functionalism
· Durkheim- deviance serves 3 important functions in society:
· Deviance clarifies moral boundaries and affirms norms
· Deviance encourages social unity
· Deviance promotes social changes
· Illegitimate Opportunity Structures- opportunities for crime
and deviance are woven into the fabric of everyday life
· Strain Theory (Robert K. Merton)
· Non-deviant: conformity
· Deviant: innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion
Conflict Theory
· Focuses less on what causes deviance and more on how
deviance is handled in society
· Conflict theory is often applied in criminology to critique the
criminal justice system as a system of oppression
· Michelle Alexander- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration
in the Age of Colorblindness