Quick questions on Theories of Socialisation - TCE Sociology (Tasmania) - Level 3

Functionalists, following Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, see socialisation as a kind of social glue. Shared norms and values learned in the family and school create value consensus, integrating individuals into society and generating order and stability. Durkheim argued that schools transmit a collective conscience, teaching children to see themselves as part of something larger. For functionalists socialisation is benevolent and necessary: it is how society survives across generations.

Conflict theorists, drawing on Karl Marx, argue that socialisation is not neutral but serves the powerful. In an unequal capitalist society, socialisation persuades the working class to accept and conform to ruling class ideology, including the belief that inequality is natural and fair. Louis Althusser called institutions such as the family, school and media ideological state apparatuses that reproduce the conditions of capitalism. An Australian example is the way schools can teach punctuality and obedience that suit employers.

Feminists focus on how socialisation transmits gender roles and reproduces patriarchy. Ann Oakley argued that gender is socially constructed: girls and boys are channelled into feminine and masculine behaviour through canalisation, manipulation, verbal labelling and differential activities. The family, the media and schools teach what is appropriate for each gender, so inequality is reproduced as if it were natural. An Australian example is the gendered marketing of toys and the under representation of girls in some senior school subjects.

Interactionists, following George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, reject the idea that society simply stamps culture onto passive individuals. They argue socialisation is an active, two way process: through symbolic interaction the individual interprets, negotiates and sometimes resists the meanings offered. Mead described how the self develops through taking the role of the other. This approach restores human agency, though critics say it underplays the power of large structures such as class and gender.