UCSP

Becoming a Member of Society

. How can we become a part of the Society?

-The process of being socialized into a specific culture

-refers to the lifelong process of social interaction through which people acquire their
identities and necessary Socialization Enculturation
- Norms - are informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a
society.
- Values - are the criteria people use in assessing their daily lives which account for the
stability of social order.
Roles - refer to the characteristic way of behaving of an individual according to his/her
status.
Status - defined by Max Weber as the esteem or “social honor” given to certain
individuals or groups.
- Achieved Ascribed
What will happen if citizens oppose the norms, values, roles and even the status of the
society?
There will be a
Deviance - Defined as a behavior that elicits a strong negative reaction from group
members and involves actions that violate commonly held social norms.
Conformity - Altering one’s thoughts and actions to adapt to the accepted behavior.
Human Dignity - An idea that a person has an innate right to be valued, respected and
treated well .
- It is the legal, social, and ethical principles that consider the human person as
deserving of liberties and protection by virtue of human dignity.
Human Dignity Violations:
Humiliation
Degrading treatment
Poverty
Torture and war
Slavery
 Common Good - It aims to see the possibility of using politics, collective action, and
active citizens in realizing freedom, autonomy and self government for the self interest
of the society.

How Society is Organized ?

Socialization and Enculturation

Socialization refers to a lifelong social experience by which people develop their human
potential and learn culture. It is culturally specific:
People in different cultures are socialized differently to hold different beliefs and values and to
behave in different ways.
Enculturation , on the other hand, is the process by which people learn the requirements of
their surrounding culture and acquire the values and behaviors appropriate or necessary in that
culture.
In this process, the influences that limit, direct, or shape the individual include parents, other
adults, and peers. If successful, enculturation results competence (the ability to do something
successfully or efficiently.) in the language, values, and rituals of the culture.

2 Phases of Enculturation
1. Unconscious – early years of growth
2. Conscious – later year

2 Aspects of Enculturation Process

1. Formal – “education”
2. Informal – “child training”

3 Goals of Socialization
Socialization…..
1. Teaches impulse control and helps individuals develop a conscience. This first goal is
accomplished naturally. As people grow up within a particular society, they pick up on
the expectations of those around them and internalized these expectations to moderate
their impulses and develop a conscience.
2. It teaches individuals how to prepare for and perform certain roles---occupational roles,
gender roles, and the roles of institutions such as marriage and priesthood.
3. It cultivates shared sources of meaning and value. Through socialization, people learn to
identify what is important and valued within a particular culture.
Mead and the Development of the Social Mind (self)
The self is the sociological concept. It develops through social interactions----a set of
situations (i.e. Imitation, play, game, generalized others) where individuals learn to assume
roles and meet the increasing level of complexity of each situation.
In the absence of social interactions, a person may develop as biological entity, but
he/she will be without the sociality that makes individuals full-pledged members of the
society.
According to Maed’s assertion of self as emerging from the matrix of interactions and
not from the biological evolution. Ex. feral children-----children raised by animals and lived in
extreme social isolation. His I/Me duality reinforces the purely sociological facets of the self.
Mead proposed four-stage process of the development of the self. He believed that the self is
not something in-born, rather the self to evolve at the moment of interaction. The absence of
interaction the social self is compromised.
First stage - The child starts with mimicking behaviors and actions of significant others around
him/her.
- Human beings begin their understanding of the social world through “play or game”.
Play comes first in the child development. The child takes different roles he/she
observes in adult society and plays them out to gain an understanding of the
different social roles.
Game stage – it is required that a person develop a full sense of self. Whereas the play stage
the child takes on the role of distinct others, in this stage the child must take the role of
everyone else involved in the game. Organization begins and definite personalities start to
emerge. “the general one” (child’s first encounter).

Identities and Identity Formation

Identity formation is the development of an individual’s distinct personality, which is regarded
as a persisting entity in a particular stage of life which a person is recognized or known. This
process defines individuals actual identity include sense of continuity, a sense of uniqueness
from others, and a sense of affiliation. Individuals gain social identity and group identity by
social affiliations. Self-concept is the sum of a being’s knowledge and understanding of
his/herself. Self-concept is different from self-consciousness, which is an awareness of one’s
self.
Components of self-concept include
Physical
Psychological
Social attributes
 Which can be influenced by the individual’s attitudes, habits, beliefs, and ideas.
Cultural Identiity is one’s feeling of identity or affiliation with a group or culture. Similarly, an
ethnic identity is the identification with a certain ethnicity, usually on the basis of a presumed
common genealogy or ancestry.
National Identity is an ethical and philosophical concept whereby all humans are divided into
groups called nations. (common origin, ancestry, or parentage).
Religious Identity is the set of beliefs and practices generally held by an individual involving
adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and the study of ancestral or cultural traditions,
writings, history, and mythology, as well as faith and mystic experience.
*several identities can be embraced by a single person, but there is always dominant
identity which seems to orchestrate the operation of the other identities in the set.

Norms and Values

Norm is a rule that guides the behavior of members of a society or group. Norms have a
coercive power over us it shape our thoughts and behavior. Norms exert both good and bad.
Normal refers to that which conforms to norms, it is the act of abiding by the rules.
Normative refers to what we perceived as normal, it refers to beliefs that are expressed as
directives or value judgments. Example: a woman should always sit with her legs crossed
because it is “ladylike”.

Learning the norms of any given space or group allows us to function in that setting, and to
be accepted .
Some norms are
Proscriptive (stating what we should not do)
Prescriptive (stating what we should do)
These both are not equal in importance.
1. Mores that have great moral significance
2. Folkways the routine and casual interaction.
Example : if you decide to attend to a formal party wearing a suit without tie you violated
folkways, but if you attend the party wearing only a tie, you violated the mores.

Values are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good and
beautiful, and that serve as broad guidelines to social living.
The four (4) aspects of sociological concept of value.
1. Values exist at different levels of generality or abstraction
2. Values tend to be hierarchically arranged
3. Values are explicit and implicit in varying degree
4. Values often are in conflict with one another.
Status and Roles
Status is a position in social system
Ascribed
Achieved
Status Set
Master Status
Role refers to the behavior expected of someone who holds a particular status.
Role Set