For SHS

1. Unit III, Lesson 1
Socialization Process and Self-Making

2. Learning Objectives
At the end of this lesson, the students are expected to:
♦ Explain the development of one’s self and others as a product of
socialization and enculturation
♦ Demonstrate curiosity and explore how individuals acquire selves and
identities
♦ Explore the role of embodiment in self-constitution
♦ Explain the process of acquiring social roles
♦ Identify the context, content, processes, and consequences of enculturation
and socialization

3. SOCIALIZATION AS A PROCESS OF
BECOMING FULLY HUMAN
Human Beings as Necessarily Social
“Men make their own history, but they do not make
it just as they please in circumstances they choose
for themselves; rather they make it in present
circumstances, given and inherited.” Society
provides the pre-given environment and resources
by which individuals create and continuously
recreate themselves.

4. To be a full member of a society, an
individual has to acquire and learn
all the necessary social roles and
skills required of a competent
member of that society. The process
of learning these skills and social
roles is called socialization.
Socialization is traditionally seen as
a one way process in which society
molds the individual to conform to
established social norms and rules.

5. Social determinism is the doctrine that says
individuals have no choice but to follow certain factors or
causes that control their behaviors. This definition
however forgets how individuals also employ creative
means and ways to interpret the prescribed rules and
norms.
Society provides the individuals
with range of choices that
enable them do certain things
while forfeiting other choices.

6. In Western societies, the individual self, or the
part of the self that reflects the person’s own
thoughts and beliefs, is emphasized more than
the social self, or the part of the self-concept
that comes from group membership (Bordens
and Horowitz, 2008, p. 35).
The Filipino concept of kapwa is very close to
the Asian notion of self. Filipinos, like other Asian
people, emphasize tradition and family values over
and above individual’s choices. Thus the social self is
more important than the individual self. The Filipino
collectivist orientation is expressed in sakop mentality,
bayanihan, and damay.

7. In the dominant social scientific study
of the self, the traditional definition of
the self and identity in the West is
supposed to apply to all the peoples of
the world. This approach is referred to
by social scientists as
“essentialism”. Essentialist view
of the self equates the self with certain
pre-given and unchanging
characteristics such as gender and
sexuality, language, and rationality or
reasoning capacity.

8. Acquiring a Self, the Process of
Self-Constitution
The self is a product of socialization. According to George Herbert
Mead (1863–1931), an American sociologist and the father of
sociological tradition called symbolic interactionism,
our concept of the self is acquired through the use of symbolic
gestures. Mead points out, “The self is something which has a
development; it is not there, at birth, but arises in the process of social
experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a
result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other
individuals within that process” (Mead, 1934, p. 135).

9. For Mead, the earliest form of
communication between animals is called
gestures. Gestures are instinctive
behaviors displayed by animals in order
either to respond to another gesture or
send signal to another animal.
Human language emerges when
the individual is able to take the role of the other person
by reflecting on the meaning of the other’s gesture

10. The full development of the self therefore requires
the acquisition of language, the capacity for self-
reflection using meaningful gestures or
consciousness, and the ability to take into
consideration the role expectations of others.
Overall the self emerges through interaction with
others who also have the same capacities and skills.
The hallmark of the mind is the capacity to
use language and distinguish the boundary
between the self and the outside world.

11. The “I” and the “Me”
Significant others.
They are the individuals to whom the
person is very intimate with such as
immediate family members, relatives,
peer group, and friends.
Once the self develops, the individual is
able to assume the roles of others. She
constantly reflects upon the responses and
expectations of others.

12. The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole
community (Mead, 1934, p. 154). Thus, a self acts “not only in his
own perspective but also in the perspective of others, especially in
the common perspective of a group”
(Mead, 2002, p. 74).
The “me” of the self, consisting as it does of social and
interpersonal perspectives, is simultaneously an instrument of
social control and conformity.
The “me” that takes its cue from the attitudes and expectations of
the generalized others, however, does not necessarily overwhelm
human freedom or the capacity to invent new rules and pursue
other options.
The Median self has also an agentive (agency or the
power to do otherwise) side called the “I,” which
responds on an ongoing, moment-to-moment basis to
the “me”, as well as to those constantly emergent
circumstances within which particular social, interactive
conduct unfolds.

13. Social Roles and Identity
According to Harrè and Langenhove (1993; also
Davies and Harrè, 2001), identity is a product of
positioning within a discourse. What is relevant in
positioning theory that has bearing to narrative identity
being developed here is the assertion that, “People
present themselves, and others, as actors in a drama”
(Harre and Langenhove, 1999:8). Davies and Harre
(1999) define positioning as “the discursive process
whereby people are located in conversations as
observably and subjectively coherent participants in
jointly produced storylines” (p. 37).

14. In general, an identity designates a commonly
recognized set of persons. The terms physician,
schoolteacher, janitor, professional athlete, criminal
all refer to recognized sets of persons. Each
constitutes a social position. But physicians, school
teachers, janitors, and the like each behaves in
characteristic ways. Physicians write prescriptions,
school teachers lecture in classrooms, janitors sweep
up, and so forth. Thus, each social position is said to
exhibit a characteristic role. Persons who share roles
are also likely to share a common identity.

15. Personal identity is the most elementary type
of identity. It refers to the social classification of an individual
into a category of one (Rosenberg 1979). It denotes a
unique individual with self-descriptions drawn from one’s
own biography and singular constellation of experiences.
One’s personal identity is primarily derived from one’s
position within the social field. Positions are clusters of
rights, duties, and obligations to perform specifiable kinds of
acts—and thus, in psychological reality, positions exist as
expectations, beliefs, and presuppositions. Positioning can
be of two kinds: one either position one’s self in a
discourse (first order positioning) or contest one’s position
(second order positioning). If one narrates one‘s position it
is called accountive positioning (Langenhove and
Harre, 1999:20-21).

16. Positioning is reciprocal. One cannot
position one’s self without positioning
other(s) and vice versa.
Sometimes the person is subjected to
incompatible role expectations (or role
conflict) wherein he or she is required
to do two or more things that cannot all
be done. Sometimes he or she suffers
from role overload, when too much is
asked of the person. Sometimes the
role the person is asked to perform is
inconsistent with his or her needs or
basic values.
Sometimes his or her
role behavior is judged
deviant by the society,
and the person is
subject to punishment
or institutionalization
until he or she learns
more appropriate roles.
And to help the person
do this latter, he or she
may be exposed to
various professionals
(such as doctors and
social workers) whose
roles are to aid in the
relearning process.

17. GENDER AND SOCIALIZATION
Becoming a Man/Woman
Women, traditionally, have been
considered by many cultures as
closer to nature because of their
biological nature.
Feminists argue that this devaluation of women is a product of patriarchy.

18. Literally, patriarchy means rule by the
male head of a social unit (a family or tribe, for
example). The patriarch, typically a societal
elder, has legitimate power over others in the
social unit, including other (especially, younger)
men, all women and children. However, since
the early twentieth century, feminist writers
have used the concept to refer to the social
system of masculine domination over women.
Patriarchy has been a fundamentally important
concept in gender studies, leading to the
development of a number of theories that aim
to identify the bases of women’s subordination
to men (Pilcher and Whelehan, 2004, p. 93).

19. Sexual and gender scripts are
learned in everyday life through
interaction with others. The
earliest and most influential
factor that contributes to
learning sexual scripts is in the
family. Later, what the child
learns from primary socialization
in the family is reinforced in
schools and mass media.

20. Steven Goldberg, a
sociobiologist, contends, “men
and women differ in their
hormonal systems.... every
society demonstrates
patriarchy, male dominance and
male attainment. The thesis put
forth here is that the hormonal
renders the social inevitable.”
CULTURE AGAINST NATURE

21. Edwin Segal (2003), an American anthropologist, lists four different
forms of gender variation among cultures:
1. Some societies construct gender so as to contain distinct categories that
are neither masculine nor feminine.
2. Some societies construct gender in ways that are bipolar, but in which
the boundaries are markedly different from those common in Western
Europe and North America.
3. Some societies construct gender so that, while the basic pattern is
bipolar, people with one set of biological characteristics are able, under
specific circumstances, to step outside of the society’s ordinary construct
and enter the other construct.
4. A residual category—instances that do not quite fit our neatly created
typology. This category is necessary to highlight the purely heuristic nature
of the other three and to avoid sterile typological debates and arguments.

22. THE SELF, GENDER AND BODY
Rom Harrè states, “Our sense of ourselves
as particular individuals is based in part on
our sense of the continuous spatio-temporal
trajectories of our bodies through which we
are located in the material world. But our
social identities, the kind of persons we take
ourselves and others to be from time to time,
are also closely bound up with the kinds of
body we believe we have.” (1991: 14).

23. Embodiment means selves
and identities are located in specific
social and cultural position. And this
position is always defined in terms
of power, hierarchy, and social
status. Female bodies, for instance,
are often treated as inferior to male
bodies in athletic competition and
sports. Women are pressured in
modern societies to have slim
contours and small bodies.
Bodies are continuously shaped
by cultural forces and social
definitions of gender roles. From
social constructionist
perspectives, the physical body
is not something given. It does
not exist outside the symbolic
and cultural world of society. A
hand, for instance, can have
multiple meanings and
interpretations depending on the
cultural context upon which it is
presented. A facial expression
will vary in its meaning
depending on the age of the
person, the sex of the person,
and the social occasion that
defines it.