Explain and evaluate how culture is transmitted through primary and secondary socialisation

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.

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.

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.

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.