How Culture and Socialization Interact in a Sociological Context - Essay Example

How Culture and Socialization Interact In a Sociological Context Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Code and Name University Date of Submission How Culture and Socialization Interact In a Sociological Context Introduction Culture is a term used to describe a set of values that members of a particular group hold dear and norms that this group chooses to follow as well as the material goods that the group creates. On the other hand, society refers to a system of relations that connect people who share a similar culture. Culture and society have an inevitable nexus with each other. The cultural variants that exist amongst human beings are responsible for varying societies. A society cannot exist without a culture just as a culture cannot exist without a society. Crime is one of the different elements that manifest in a society, and it too is affected by culture. The dynamics of culture hold within them the meaning that people attach to crime. Given this connection, there are numerous ways that cultural and socialization forces interweave in a sociological context to influence the nature of deviant behavior including the mixture of meanings and symbols that blur, blend and cross real and imagined boundaries such that they may coalesce, conflict and hybridize with changing sociological contexts. Body Socialization and culture share similar agents including the family peer groups, the school and the mass media. Henslin, Possamai and Possamai- Indesedy (2011) posit that the social experiences that individuals go through are the causes that underlie the behaviors the exhibit. The interaction between culture and socialization within a social context is constituent of different characteristics one of which is the centrality of representation, power and meaning in the constantly contested construction of deviance or crime. Within the sociological context, several constructions of deviance and crime develop through culture and socialization. Crime can be understood as a form of video entertainment. This can be witnessed in instances where people commit a crime with no other apparent reason except to make a video of the crime, and subsequently get attention from the social media. This culture is endorsed by some individuals as seen by the hundred who respond positively to such videos on the internet. Crime is sometimes seen as a political protest such as the cases where people would bomb abortion clinics with the hope of changing the government’s mind on abortion policies. The society can also construct crime as a form of subcultural subversion or as an ephemeral event. In some cases, it is constructed as state sanctioned violence or as state danger. These are a few of the results of socialization and culture interacting in a sociological context with respect to crime. The only way through which culture and socialization can affect crime construction is by influencing human behavior. The sociological perspective provides a means through which one can look at the world using a different focal point that contributes to understanding the nature of humanity. Culture is part of the sociological perspective as it helps us understand why there are variations amongst cultures. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis gives one of the many explanations as to why cultures vary. According to the hypothesis, perception and thinking are not only expressed using languages, but are also the produce shaped by language (Henslin et al 2011, pp. 28-40). This is because within a sociological context, people of a certain culture are not just taught a language, but are also socialized to a certain way of thinking and perception. Events and objects do not force their way into our consciousness; language molds our consciousness through various elements. In this view, the subject matter of any attempt to understand criminology has to move from narrowly constructed notions of criminal justice and crime in order to incorporate the symbolic manifestations of control, transgression, emotions and feelings that manifest in criminal events. This modified manner of perception allows one to delve into cultural criminology, which is more companionable to the prevailing conditions – such as socialization and the sociological context – possesses a greater capability to confront and conceptualize contemporary manifestations of crime and crime control. Thus, cultural criminology endeavors both to comprehend crime as a representative human activity and to review the perceived insight that surrounds contemporary issues of criminal justice and crime. Culture provides a means through which people can understand the socialization. Culture is the symbolic environment that individual people and groups occupy and through socialization, it is transmitted. Socialization – in the sociological context – refers both to the process of taking part in social activities and to the training one undergoes to belong to a certain culture (Plummer 2010, pp. 96-124). This training does not happen like what takes place when one is seeking to acquire a skill, but rather happens subconsciously as the individual dwells within a particular culture and society. Cultural forces are sequences of collective meaning that go through and around daily challenges of social actors stimulating the sociological context within which their challenges play out. The cultural conditions and social dynamics of a multicultural environment such as a school create a conflict relationship with each side shaping as well as reshaping the other. While all students within the school experience some form of pain or challenge of schooling, the exact nature of these challenges surface from various cultures of gender, age, ethnicity and class that the students have been socialized into from their sociological contexts. The students bring all these with them to the school. Following this, the challenges – given different meanings with respect to their collective meanings and preexisting contexts – in turn model the cultures of the school that come up as the students attempt to overcome the challenges of school life. As they face common problems and share similar circumstances in their schooling, the students will draw on collective understanding and develop new ones. This example shows how the cultures and socializations of different students interact within a school sociological context. The values that people hold, their norms as well as their sanctions are components of cultural interactions. Students within a school will be drawn to those who share their understandings of particular aspects of culture, and they will use that to build another, which they will be socialized into. Deviant behaviors such as bullying and other forms of delinquency stem from cultures and socialization of particular students interacting in such a manner that, they come to a collective understanding that perpetrating delinquent behavior becomes their culture. Values represent the standards that people utilize in perceiving and defining what is bad, good, ugly or beautiful. Rules and expectations that emerge from these values called norms and the negative and positive reactions to how people follow norms are called sanctions. Deviance is a situation where the social norms are violated. This is relative expression of behavior since what some may view as deviant others may not (Plummer 2010, pp. 206). It should be noted that it is not that act or behavior displayed that makes an individual deviant, but the reaction that the society has to the behavior. Human beings always seek to explain deviance perhaps in the hope of correcting it. Psychologists and biologists often look for explanations within personality disorders or genetic dispositions while sociologists seek explanations in social relations. Perpetrators of crime often manage to neutralize the values and norms of the societies they are within to commit deviant acts while still viewing themselves as conformists. New methods of socializing also result in the development of variations of cultures and deviance. New technologies create variations of subcultures and deviants Conclusion Both cultural and social influences and elements affect the behavior and actions of individuals. Culture and socialization have a vast number of ways through which they interact in a sociological context. There are variations in the results of these interactions owing to internal and external issues within individuals. As individuals interact, they alter and modify their perceptions of cultures through socialization to the end of becoming better individuals or engaging in criminal activities. The society is shaped by culture and culture shapes the society, as well. Thus, the nature, processes, structures and results of interactions between culture and socialization characterize the sociological context. Deviance and crime are constituent of more than plain enactment of an inert culture. This is because cultural dynamics are in constant motion. Collective cultures present a heterogeneous mixture of meanings and symbols that blur, blend and cross real and imagined boundaries. They also coalesce, conflict and hybridize with the dynamic social circumstances List of References Henslin, JM, Possamai, A & Possamai- Indesedy, A 2011, Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach, Pearson Australia, Frenchs Forest. Plummer, K 2010, Sociology: The Basics, Taylor and Francis, New York. Read More