Culture and Socialisation - TCE Sociology (Tasmania) - Level 3
“Explain and evaluate how culture is transmitted through primary and secondary socialisation”
Culture is the whole way of life of a group: its norms, values, beliefs, language and symbols. We learn it through socialisation, the lifelong process of internalising culture. Primary socialisation happens in early childhood, mainly through the family; secondary socialisation continues through school, peers, the media and work. Socialisation is how society reproduces itself in each new generation.
What this dot point is asking
This dot point sits at the heart of Module 1, which concentrates on the social forces that form the individual. You need to explain what culture is, how it is passed on through socialisation, and to evaluate how powerfully this process shapes identity. The big idea is that almost everything we treat as natural about ourselves is in fact learned from the society around us.
What culture means
To a sociologist, culture is not opera and art galleries but the shared, learned way of life of a society. It includes norms (rules of expected behaviour), values (shared ideas about what is desirable), beliefs, language, roles and symbols. Because culture is learned rather than inherited biologically, it varies enormously between societies, which is why sociologists stress cultural diversity and warn against ethnocentrism, the habit of judging other cultures by the standards of your own.
Values are broad, abstract principles a society holds dear, such as mateship or a fair go in Australian culture. Norms are the specific, practical rules that put those values into action, such as queuing fairly or shouting a round at the pub. Norms enforce values in everyday life.
The nature versus nurture debate
A starting question is how much of human behaviour is biological (nature) and how much is learned (nurture). Sociologists lean heavily toward nurture. The strongest evidence comes from rare cases of feral and isolated children, such as Genie, who was deprived of contact and never fully developed language. Such cases suggest that without socialisation the human potential for culture, language and a sense of self does not develop. The functionalist Emile Durkheim argued that society shapes the individual far more than instinct does.
Primary socialisation
Primary socialisation takes place in early childhood, overwhelmingly within the family. Here the child learns language, basic norms, toilet training, emotional control and the difference between right and wrong. The functionalist Talcott Parsons described the family as a personality factory, manufacturing the social beings society needs. George Herbert Mead, from an interactionist perspective, explained how children develop a sense of self by taking the role of the other, first imitating significant others such as parents, then internalising the generalised other, the wider expectations of society.
The main agents are the family, the peer group, the education system, the media and religion, and later the workplace. Each transmits norms and values. As children grow, secondary agents become more influential, sometimes conflicting with the family, which is one reason adolescence can be a time of tension.
Secondary socialisation
Secondary socialisation continues throughout life through institutions beyond the family. In school children learn to follow rules, defer to authority and cooperate with strangers, what Durkheim called preparation for life in wider society. Peers reward conformity to group norms. The media offer role models and shape expectations about gender, body image and consumption. The workplace teaches occupational norms. Through resocialisation, people can even unlearn old roles and learn new ones, for example new recruits in the Australian Defence Force.
Evaluating the power of socialisation
How determined are we by socialisation? Structural perspectives such as functionalism and Marxism can make people sound like puppets passively moulded by society. Interactionists disagree: Max Weber and later interactionists stressed that individuals interpret and sometimes resist the messages they receive. Most sociologists now accept a middle position, that socialisation shapes us powerfully but does not fully determine us, leaving room for human agency and choice.
A common extended-response task asks you to explain and evaluate how culture is transmitted. Work through it in steps.
Step 1: Define culture and socialisation
Open by defining culture as the shared, learned way of life and socialisation as the lifelong process of internalising it.
Step 2: Explain primary socialisation
Describe early-childhood learning in the family, citing Parsons (personality factory) and Mead (taking the role of the other).
Step 3: Explain secondary socialisation
Describe learning through school, peers, media and work, citing Durkheim on the collective conscience and giving an example such as resocialisation in the Defence Force.
Step 4: Evaluate the power of socialisation
Weigh structural determinism against interactionist agency and conclude that socialisation shapes us powerfully but does not fully determine us.
Students often slip into saying behaviour is natural or instinctive when it is actually learned. Things like gender roles, table manners and even emotional expression vary between cultures, which proves they are socialised, not biological. Reserve the word natural for genuinely biological traits, and use socialised for learned behaviour.
When you analyse any institution later in the course, you can return to this dot point: the family, school and media all matter precisely because they are agents of socialisation, reproducing culture and inequality across generations.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice4 marksDistinguish between norms and values, and explain the relationship between them, using an Australian example.Show worked answer →
A 4 mark short-answer response needs both terms distinguished and the relationship explained with an example.
Values. Broad, abstract principles a society holds dear, such as mateship or a fair go in Australian culture.
Norms. The specific, practical rules of expected behaviour that put those values into action, such as queuing fairly or shouting a round at the pub.
The relationship. Norms enforce values in everyday life: the value of a fair go is expressed through the norm of waiting your turn. Values are the general ideals; norms are the concrete rules that realise them.
Markers reward a clear distinction plus an example showing norms putting a value into practice. A common loss of marks is treating the two terms as synonyms.
Practice14 marksExplain and evaluate how culture is transmitted through primary and secondary socialisation.Show worked answer →
A 14 mark extended response needs definitions, both forms of socialisation with agents and theorists, and an evaluation of how powerfully socialisation shapes us.
Define. Culture is the shared, learned way of life of a society (norms, values, beliefs, language, symbols). Socialisation is the lifelong process of internalising it.
Primary socialisation. Occurs in early childhood, mainly in the family; the child learns language, basic norms and right from wrong. Parsons called the family a personality factory; Mead explained the self developing by taking the role of the other.
Secondary socialisation. Continues through school, peers, the media, religion and work. Durkheim saw school transmitting a collective conscience; the media shape gender and consumption expectations; resocialisation can occur, for example Defence Force recruits.
Evaluate. Structural theories (functionalism, Marxism) risk presenting people as passive puppets; interactionists (Weber, Mead) stress that individuals interpret and resist messages. A strong answer concludes that socialisation shapes us powerfully but does not fully determine us, leaving room for agency. Markers reward defined terms, named agents and theorists, and the determinism judgement.