I apologize, but I do not have access to the text "Who do you think you are? Kinship, inheritance and identity?". The document provided in the prompt does not mention that text. Could you please clarify which document I should be summarizing?

1. SOC 462
IDENTITY&CULTURE
Asst. Prof. Dr. Fatma Altınbaş Sarıgül
İstanbul KEMERBURGAZ UNIVERSITY
Sociology

2. SOCIALIZATION
• It is the process by which individuals learn about
the culture, norms, values and expectations of the
society they live in.
• Childhood is the crucial time for socialization.
• Family is the agent of primary socialization.
• Socialization continues lifetime through education,
peer groups, the workplace, religion, the mass
media, etc.

3. SOCIALIZATION
• Functionalists It is crucial for social solidarity.
It enables the effective functioning of society.
• Marxists It is a process reflecting the power
of the bourgeoisie.
• Interactionists interested in how individuals
play a part in the process of socialization.
Individuals interpret the social world around them
differenetly, however they will be socialized into
the norms, symbols and language they interact
with.

4. ‘Generalized Other’
• There are competing interpretations and symbols
within the ‘generalized other’ with respect to
gender, class, sexuality and ethnicity and the
individual has to accept or reconcile these
conflicting socialization influences.

5. SELF-IDENTITY
• Awareness of others (which starts at early childhood)
leads to concern for others and that leads individuals
to a journey of self-discovery and self-development.
• One’s individuality comes from others.
• Identity also changes as the individual progresses
along what is referred to as the ‘life course’.
• The stages of life course: early infancy, late infancy,
childhood, youth, young adulthood, middle age, old
age.

6. ‘Escape Attempts’
• Because of the routines and patterns of everyday
life, interaction can become predictable and lose
its interest to those who crave creativity, so
individuals tend to ‘escape’.
• Solution:
Activity enclaves
New landscapes
Mindscaping

7. Pierre BOURDIEU
• He is concerned with what people in society ‘do’ in
their everyday lives.
• He points out that social practices are more
structured than simply the expression of free will,
but are less controlled than a simple response to
structural forces.
• Everyday life- practice- is characterized by four
distinctive and important elements: time, space,
unorchestration and improvization.

8. Pierre BOURDIEU
• To become a competent social practitioner, we
have to develop the skills of interaction and we
can only do this through practising interaction.
• Self-identity is important in becoming a competent
actor in society.
• ‘Habitus’ : While we are never totally free, we do
have choices- even though we are not always
aware of making such choices or conscious that
we will benefit from the choices we do make.

9. AGENCY
• Freedom to act, having free will.
• The ability of an individual to imagine the outcome of a
social encounter and to act in such a way as to
achieve that outcome.
• Central to the notion of agency is the idea of reflexivity,
which is people’s ability to think about themselves and
others around them.
• Culture provides us with the possibilities for action, but
we take responsibility- through our possesion of
agency- for what we actually do.

10. Erving GOFFMAN
• Humans are creative in a sense that they think
about the interactions they have and the contexts
in which these interactions take place, and about
their and others motives for action.
• They seek to take control of the situation by
presenting a mask.
• He compares social life to the theatre: ‘dramaturgical
analogy’
• ‘Impression management’

11. GOFFMAN’S strengths
• He sees human as active and creative.
• He has conducted a variety of studies based on
participant observation to back up his claims.
• The ‘dramaturgical analogy’ is a useful tool for
thinking about everyday life.
• Goffman relates human interaction to structures of
a sort.

12. GOFFMAN’S weaknesses
• If we act in a calculating way, how do we know who we
are?
• When we are with people who we are familiar with,
does our ‘real self’ come out?
• If we are always playing role, which role do we play
when we are alone?
• Do humans have a ‘real self’, or are we just a
collection of masks?
• What happens when people do not follow traditional or
expected roles?

13. Anthony GIDDENS
• ‘Symbiotic relationship’: attempt to unite
structure and agency.
• Structure cannot exist without the human beings
who create it through their actions and meanings.
• Example: language
• ‘structurational sociology’: humans must be
seen as skilled performers. They have agency,
since they can make choices, they are still in
some ways controlled.

14. Criticisms to GIDDENS
• He exaggerates the degree of choice that
individuals have over their own lives, and ignores
the fact that sometimes our lives are not our own
choosing.
• He ignores the fact that some individuals have
more agency than others in society, since they
have more power.

15. Jürgen HABERMAS
• Frankfurt School, ‘critical theory’
• He is interested in how and why people act as they do,
and in particular the role played by language or
communication in social relations.
• Acc. to him, there are 2 types of action: instrumental
and rational.
• Instrumental action is based on goals, rational action
allows a more critical way of thinking that can aid the
understanding of oneself and others.
• Habermas and ‘ideology’

16. REFLEXIVITY
• It is the internal dialogue we all maintain;
conversations and discussions inside our minds
that enable us to reflect, speculate, plan and take
actions, events, our roles and our identity.
• It is a form of mediation that enables individuals to
weigh up their concerns and the opportunities
faced by groups within society.

17. QUIZ
• Answer the questions considering the text
‘Who do you think you are? Kinship, inheritance
and identity?’
 Explain the importance of kinship relations in
Western societies while constituting identity.
 Are kinship relations nature or cultural?