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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Key Concepts
- Sprache: Englisch
How does society form and transform individuals? Sociology has been asking this question since its inception and “socialization” has been analyzed from different vantage points by various prominent thinkers.
Socialization offers an overview of some of these perspectives in the classic work of key theorists and in contemporary research that has either developed or challenged these ideas. The book argues that, while socialization has sometimes been framed as an outdated, static approach, it in fact remains highly relevant and continues to provide valuable insight into how we come to act and think as we do. Drawing on a wide variety of empirical examples, the book offers a lively, accessible account of primary and secondary socialization, and how they interconnect. By considering socialization as a process that continues throughout the life course, the book highlights the dynamic and enduring ways in which the social world is involved in shaping and reshaping individuals, shedding productive light on the effects of class, gender, and race, as well as on inequality and domination.
Socialization will appeal to students and scholars in sociology, as well as other disciplines such as psychology and education.
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Seitenzahl: 343
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Detailed Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Building People I: The Strength of Primary Socialization
1. Socialization and education
1.1 Socialization as education
1.2 Education as hypnosis
1.3 Beyond hypnotism
1.4 Socialization as the non-conscious aspect of education
1.5 Incorporation as the non-conscious aspect of socialization
1.6 History as the unconscious aspect of socialization
1.7 The hysteresis of the products of family socialization
1.8 Categories of socialization
2. The initial “folds” of social structure
2.1 The weight of history
2.2 Class socialization
2.2.1 The explanatory nature of social background
2.2.2 The “power of the past”
2.2.3 Observing family socialization
2.2.4 Play and social class
2.2.5 Space and time
2.2.6 The class-based incorporation of Black masculinities
2.3 Gender socialization
2.3.1 Incorporating gender
2.3.2 Games, leisure, and sports
Notes
2. Building People II: The Plurality of Primary Socialization
1. Plural influences
1.1 From plural socialization to the “plural actor”
1.2 The social conditions of socialization
2. Intra-familial heterogeneity
3. Variations in childcare arrangements
4. Childhood professionals and educational norms
5. The influence of peers and the cultural industries
6. School: a hub for primary socialization
3. Rebuilding People: The Varied Forms of Secondary Socialization
1. Defining secondary socialization
1.1 Primary socialization: strength and affectivity
1.2 The bureaucratic worlds of secondary socialization
1.3 The relationship between primary and secondary socialization
2. How a doctor is made: a “historical” example of professional socialization
2.1
The Student-Physician
: medical culture and anticipatory socialization
2.1.1 Learning to reconcile contradictory norms
2.1.2 Finalism and socialization by the reference group
2.2
Boys in White
: student culture and socialization by situation
2.2.1 The making of a physician: a research program
2.2.2 The anti-functionalism of
Boys in White
2.2.3 “Perspectives” as the products of socialization
2.2.4 Primary and secondary socialization
2.3 Two different conceptions of socialization
3. Diverse secondary socialization
3.1 Other forms of professional socialization
3.2 Other forms of secondary socialization
3.2.1 Marital socialization
3.2.2 Group socialization
3.2.3 Political socialization
Notes
4. Studying People-Building: Socialization across the Life Course
1. The agents of continuous socialization
1.1 The central role of institutions and their limitations
1.1.1 Total institutions
1.1.2 A model for analyzing the socializing effects of institutions
1.2 Processes beyond socialization?
1.2.1 Events
1.2.2 Individual effort
2. How continuous socialization functions
2.1 Diverse modes and mechanisms
2.2 Through body, speech, or writing?
2.3 How processes of socialization “fit together”
3. Continuous socialization: products and effects
3.1 Emotions, feelings, and cognition: beyond socialization?
3.1.1 Continuous emotional socialization
3.1.2 Continuous sensorial and cognitive socialization
3.2 Socialization as both continuous and powerful?
3.2.1 Reinforcement socialization
3.2.2 Conversion socialization
3.2.3 Transformative socialization
Notes
5. Engaging with Challenges Old and New: Race, Gender, Children’s Agency
1. What is racial socialization?
1.1 Becoming aware of race (or not)
1.1.1 Socialization to race and racism
1.1.2 Socialization to dominant positions in the social space of race
1.2 Incorporating “race”
1.3 Dealing with the difficulties of this approach
2. Doing gender or being done by gender?
2.1 Moving away from gender socialization?
2.2 A social space of socialization to styles of masculinity and femininity
2.3 Are desires tastes that we acquire?
3. What about children’s agency?
Notes
Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Socialization
Muriel Darmon
Translated by Lucy Garnier
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Muriel Darmon 2024
The right of Muriel Darmon to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5368-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5369-3(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934595
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Detailed Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Building People I: The Strength of Primary Socialization
1. Socialization and education
1.1 Socialization as education
1.2 Education as hypnosis
1.3 Beyond hypnotism
1.4 Socialization as the non-conscious aspect of education
1.5 Incorporation as the non-conscious aspect of socialization
1.6 History as the unconscious aspect of socialization
1.7 The hysteresis of the products of family socialization
1.8 Categories of socialization
2. The initial “folds” of social structure
2.1 The weight of history
2.2 Class socialization
2.2.1 The explanatory nature of social background
2.2.2 The “power of the past”
2.2.3 Observing family socialization
2.2.4 Play and social class
2.2.5 Space and time
2.2.6 The class-based incorporation of Black masculinities
2.3 Gender socialization
2.3.1 Incorporating gender
2.3.2 Games, leisure, and sports
Chapter 2. Building People II: The Plurality of Primary Socialization
1. Plural influences
1.1 From plural socialization to the “plural actor”
1.2 The social conditions of socialization
2. Intra-familial heterogeneity
3. Variations in childcare arrangements
4. Childhood professionals and educational norms
5. The influence of peers and the cultural industries
6. School: a hub for primary socialization
Chapter 3. Rebuilding People: The Varied Forms of Secondary Socialization
1. Defining secondary socialization
1.1 Primary socialization: strength and affectivity
1.2 The bureaucratic worlds of secondary socialization
1.3 The relationship between primary and secondary socialization
2. How a doctor is made: a “historical” example of professional socialization
2.1
The Student-Physician
: medical culture and anticipatory socialization
2.1.1 Learning to reconcile contradictory norms
2.1.2 Finalism and socialization by the reference group
2.2
Boys in White
: student culture and socialization by situation
2.2.1 The making of a physician: a research program
2.2.2 The anti-functionalism of
Boys in White
2.2.3 “Perspectives” as the products of socialization
2.2.4 Primary and secondary socialization
2.3 Two different conceptions of socialization
3. Diverse secondary socialization
3.1 Other forms of professional socialization
3.2 Other forms of secondary socialization
3.2.1 Marital socialization
3.2.2 Group socialization
3.2.3 Political socialization
Chapter 4. Studying People-Building: Socialization across the Life Course
1. The agents of continuous socialization
1.1 The central role of institutions and their limitations
1.1.1 Total institutions
1.1.2 A model for analyzing the socializing effects of institutions
1.2 Processes beyond socialization?
1.2.1 Events
1.2.2 Individual effort
2. How continuous socialization functions
2.1 Diverse modes and mechanisms
2.2 Through body, speech, or writing?
2.3 How processes of socialization “fit together”
3. Continuous socialization: products and effects
3.1 Emotions, feelings, and cognition: beyond socialization?
3.1.1 Continuous emotional socialization
3.1.2 Continuous sensorial and cognitive socialization
3.2 Socialization as both continuous and powerful?
3.2.1 Reinforcement socialization
3.2.2 Conversion socialization
3.2.3 Transformative socialization
Chapter 5. Engaging with Challenges Old and New: Race, Gender, Children’s Agency
1. What is racial socialization?
1.1 Becoming aware of race (or not)
1.1.1 Socialization to race and racism
1.1.2 Socialization to dominant positions in the social space of race
1.2 Incorporating “race”
1.3 Dealing with the difficulties of this approach
2. Doing gender or being done by gender?
2.1 Moving away from gender socialization?
2.2 A social space of socialization to styles of masculinity and femininity
2.3 Are desires tastes that we acquire?
3. What about children’s agency?
Conclusion
References
Index
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank three people without whom Socialization would not exist: Magne Flemmen, who had the idea for this book as a result of the most serious case of Sociologica Francophilia Fever I’ve ever encountered; Polity’s Jonathan Skerrett, who let a Mariah Carey quotation convince him that it was worth giving socialization another chance, and more seriously for his faith in the project and his crucial help in this endeavor to revive the concept; Lucy Garnier, for her extraordinary translation and editing work (to which I am now so accustomed it no longer comes as a surprise) and for all our discussions about words that are always also discussions about things.
I would like to extend my thanks to Polity’s peer reviewers for their helpful, constructive remarks throughout the project. When the manuscript was still in its early stages, I presented an outline of its content at the NYU Sociology of Culture Workshop where I received much decisive input from the participants’ engaged discussion. I am grateful to them and to the organizers Paul DiMaggio, Carly Knight, and last but definitely not least Iddo Tavory, with whom I have now enjoyed nearly fifteen years of sociological conversation. My thanks go also to Martine Court for sharing her vast bibliographical knowledge and for having thought through the challenges of racial socialization with me.
Finally, I am grateful to Armand Colin for transferring the rights to a book written in French on the same topic, as well as to the ERC-funded GENDHI project (see below) and the TEPSIS LabEx (ANR-11-LABX-0067, coordinated by the EHESS) for funding both the translation of Socialization and the necessary bibliographical research trip – on which note “Patience” and “Fortitude” also deserve a special mention for welcoming me into their den during that time.
This study is part of the Gender and Health Inequalities (GENDHI) project, ERC-2019-SyG. The project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 856478).
Introduction
Let us follow Norbert Elias’s suggestion and imagine Robinson Crusoe and Friday from Daniel Defoe’s eponymous novel on their desert island: alone, deprived of any external markers of their place in society, stripped of the wealth, objects, friends, and relatives that both differentiate them and make them feel that difference. Are they not society-less men, generic humans destined to act in exactly the same way within the material constraints imposed by the island? And yet,
Robinson Crusoe, too, bears the imprint of a particular society, a particular nation and class. Isolated from all relations to them as he is on his island, he behaves, wishes and plans by their standards, and thus exhibits different behaviors, wishes and plans to Friday, no matter how much the two adapt to each other by virtue of their new situation, and transform each other in order to come closer together. (Elias 1991: 27)
In order for a “particular society” to act upon the two men, it does not need to exist in material form on the island: they carry it within them as “the human constellation” in which they have lived and were raised.
Robinson, who was brought up in the English bourgeoisie, risks his life to obtain knives and forks from a sinking shipwreck, so necessary are they to him; the first piece of furniture he makes is a table that he considers indispensable for, as he puts it, “I could not write, or eat, or do several things with so much Pleasure without a Table” (Defoe 2007: 59); he displays the same horror in the face of Friday’s cannibalism as the latter expresses for the salt Robinson sprinkles upon his food; he creates separate rooms within his tent, distinguishing between a terrace, a cellar, and a kitchen; he keeps a diary, because for him, as for the author of his adventures, human experience is defined by narrative; he regulates his time meticulously with moments devoted to working, going out, and resting, and his days follow the immutable rhythm set out by this schedule.
In his island-bound solitude, everything this society-less man does testifies to a society-based relationship to the world, to space, and to time that was instilled in him previously, that he “brought with him” to the island, and of which he cannot and does not wish to rid himself. The process that took place during his English childhood and teenage years and that produced this very particular Robinson is what we call “socialization.”
In this sense, socialization refers to all the processes through which an individual is constructed – or alternatively “formed,” “shaped,” “fashioned,” “manufactured,” “conditioned” – by the local and global society in which they live; processes during which they acquire – or “learn,” “internalize,” “incorporate,” “integrate” – socially situated ways of acting, thinking, and being. The simplest definition that can be given of socialization, which will also serve as a guiding thread throughout this book as we explore various theories and empirical studies on the topic, is the following: “the way society forms and transforms individuals.” Arguably, this definition raises more problems than it solves and, in doing so, it points to some of the tasks facing analyses of socialization: the vague term “way” must be replaced with actual, concrete processes (how does socialization operate?), the abstract, over-arching term “society” must be replaced by agents of socialization (“who” or “what” is doing the socializing?), and the generic reference to the actions of socialization upon individuals must be replaced by the analysis of its specific effects, products, contents, and results (what does the socialized individual internalize?).
As general and broad as it may seem, this definition nevertheless excludes several other approaches and reveals some of the choices made in this book in order to provide a coherent pathway for the reader, looking at socialization as a specific notion understood in a particular way. Socialization is not a “domain” of facts, like family or school for example, but rather a way of envisaging reality, a perspective to be constructed. For this reason, its definition varies considerably from one scientific discipline to another and even from one researcher to another within the same discipline, and the various meanings in circulation do not necessarily have much in common. Faced with such an omnipresent concept, used in so many different ways, it seemed to me preferable to provide a specific reading of the notion, rather than to give in to the temptation of trying to provide an exhaustive catalog of its iterations. Rather than summarizing what such a catalog might look like, then, let us look instead at the series of choices that have determined the analytical pathway through the field of socialization proposed in this book.
Durkheim once declared “as a sociologist, it is above all as a sociologist that I shall speak to you of education” (1956: 28). In the same vein, this book discusses sociological approaches to socialization, to the exclusion of the sometimes related analyses carried out in other fields such as cultural anthropology or developmental psychology. In sociology, our definition of socialization also sets aside approaches that view it as something that generates social ties, or approaches that establish a close link between socialization, sociability, and ways of “building society” as opposed to ways of “being built by society.” I therefore exclude from my purview here the sociological tradition embodied in particular by Georg Simmel, in which the notion of socialization is used to refer to the things that “transform the mere aggregation of isolated individuals into specific forms of being with and for one another” (Simmel 1950: 41). Similarly, I take my distance from another related meaning, namely socialization as the process through which an individual becomes part of a group and interacts with it. This is also the usage of the term and its derivatives that we most commonly encounter in everyday language, for example when we refer to a “well-socialized child,” meaning a sociable child, capable of interacting with others in an appropriate manner, or when we use the term “socializing” to refer to meeting and mingling with other people. Furthermore, this book’s fundamental conception of socialization in some ways resembles, but in others is distinct from, functionalist approaches that focus on the idea that we learn irreversible social roles in childhood, just as it stands apart from approaches that consider the free deployment of agency to be the mark of socialization.
Certain additional principles have contributed to defining what is and is not addressed in this book. Considerable space is given to empirical studies, especially those that focus specifically on socialization rather than simply alluding to it, for I agree with Cookson and Persell when they argue that “too often there is a kind of scholarly lip service paid to socialization without demonstrating its processes” (1985: 20). Moreover, where possible I emphasize analyses that look at processes of socialization rather than theoretical debates on its general role (whether in terms of reproducing the social order or of creating social ties).
One could be forgiven for thinking that this long series of restrictions will result in a somewhat narrow topic of study; however, this would grossly underestimate the scope of society’s action upon the individual. Throughout this book, we will see the countless, and sometimes unexpected, areas in which society exercises its influence upon us: the things we like and are good at, whether academically or culturally; our eating habits, sporting habits, and body shape; our senses, such as sight or smell; the way we experience and express our emotions; our political leanings and actions; our relationship to time and how we use that time at work or in our leisure activities; how we behave when faced with official institutions; how we learn and perform our jobs, what our professional ambitions are, and how we envisage our futures; what we fear and what we desire; and much more besides.
Socialization forms us, body and soul, but it also transforms us, and this dialectical relationship between the shaping and reshaping of the individual is at the heart of my approach. I emphasize the fact that socialization determines who we are and that its products become “embedded” within the individual and are able to resist the passing of time, but I also underline the fact that socialization processes continue throughout the life course. One question therefore emerges from this dual perspective: what is the relationship between these different processes of socialization and how do they fit together? Answering this question means considering, first, how they are interconnected synchronically, when several agents of socialization coexist at a given moment in time (for example during childhood, when parents, extended family, peers, professional educators, and generalized educational norms must all be taken into account), and, second, how they are interconnected diachronically, when varied socialization processes follow on from one another (for example, in the family, at school, at work, in political groups, etc.) and not only form but also transform the individual.
This book’s analytical pathway through various theories about and studies of socialization follows the same temporal logic. Chapters 1 to 3 focus on “primary” then “secondary” socialization, Chapter 4 provides an analytical grid for studying socialization as a whole across the life course, and finally Chapter 5 examines some of the challenges facing this particular understanding of socialization. Following the order of the life cycle and in keeping with a common distinction in sociology, I distinguish between primary socialization (which, as we shall see, must be considered in the plural) and secondary socialization. In sociology, the primary/secondary distinction is understood in three main ways, although the meaning is often implicit and sociologists tend to use the terms as though they were self-evident. First, the distinction can be predicated on the agent of socialization in question: in this case, primary socialization refers to what takes place in the family and secondary socialization to what is done by other agents. As the first two chapters of this book will show, however, this is a difficult distinction to maintain once extra-familial agents are involved, alongside the family, during the early childhood years. Second, although this is rarer, the distinction can be based upon the results of socialization: in this case, primary socialization will refer to all the processes that instill in the individual “fundamental” knowledge and attitudes, and secondary socialization to all the processes through which the individual “adds” less fundamental elements. Aside from the fact this second understanding of the distinction is abstract and lacking in precision, it also presents the disadvantage of being rooted in normative definitions of what the products of socialization are supposed to be. Finally, the third way in which the opposition can be understood is in terms of the life course, with primary socialization relating to everything that takes place during childhood and adolescence, and secondary socialization to everything that takes place in adulthood. This is the definition I adopt in this book, although I will be using it flexibly given how hard it can be to establish and respect a clear, systematic break between these two periods and thus between the two types of socialization. We will see, for example, depending on the chapter, that formal education can either be an agent of primary socialization, when it reinforces or competes with family socialization, or an agent of secondary socialization, when it provides professional training. For the sociology of socialization, what matters is not so much drawing up a fixed, universal typology of moments and agents of socialization as closely analyzing the various processes that make up socialization and therefore the individual themselves. This then offers a way of obtaining the necessary tools to understand its formative action throughout the life course.
Finally, this analytical pathway will show not only the full scale of society’s formative action upon the individual throughout their life, but also the value of this particular concept when it comes to understanding that action. The value of socialization as a concept is no longer considered self-evident today and proving its enduring worth may be more necessary than with other sociological notions. In the United States, for example, it has long been discredited and eclipsed by other approaches, unlike in France where it remained in active use – notably in the teaching and research of various followers of Bourdieu such as Chamboredon – and then made a highly visible return to sociology from the early 1990s onwards with the work of Lahire. Diverse criticisms have been leveled against the concept since the 1960s (Wrong 1961), emanating from many different positions in the social sciences. The main arguments contended it was too deterministic and failed to allow for individual agency or social change. Other, more recent charges have, on the contrary, condemned its inability to take into account social structure or power relations. Over recent years, however, a new consensus seems to be emerging that it is time to ask “whatever happened to socialization?” (Guhin et al. 2021), to “resurrect” the notion (Fillieule 2013), “breathe life into this particular dead horse” (James 2013: 4), and take it “out of purgatory” (Haegel 2020), in short to “return to our roots” and bring about a “resurgence” of the concept (Jenkins et al. 2021).
This book does exactly that, inviting the reader to suspend whatever negative connotations the term “socialization” might have for them so as to consider with an open mind what it can still bring to the table today and, in particular, the light it can shed on some of the most contemporary aspects of our social world, without ever losing sight of the ways in which older social logics persist and are reproduced. Socialization promotes what could be defined as a maximalist, practice-oriented, and deterministic conception of its key concept, which, while it does not explain everything about society, can always explain something of it in all areas of practice. Far from being a relic of the past, mentioned only for history’s sake in introductory textbooks but now largely obsolete, socialization may well be exactly what sociology needs today to move forward: a notion able to describe and explain both the reproduction and the transformation of societies in action, via individuals who are defined by their positions in the social space of class, gender, and/or race; an empirically grounded notion that allows us to take into account the multiplicity of the “plural actor” and what that actor does, as well as what can account for it; a way of understanding both structure and agency, through a renewed deterministic lens that does not deny individual activity but instead explains it by combining a focus on situation and a focus on individual dispositions. All this means that socialization is a conceptual tool through which it is possible to understand how and why we act as we act, think as we think, and become what we are.
1Building People I: The Strength of Primary Socialization
It is commonly held that the first years of life are crucial to forming an individual, and many scientific disciplines have advanced this idea, especially subfields in psychology and sociology. However, we take this so much for granted that we often forget to mention, if only in passing, the causes of the particular influence wielded by the childhood or even teenage years. Why does this particular period in life, and especially parental education, have such formative power?
In order to explain the strength of primary socialization, sociologists have provided different answers to this question: because children are easily influenced and initial experiences have considerable sway over them (Émile Durkheim, Norbert Elias); because children have a veritable need, at this point in their development, for the influence of those around them so as not, or no longer, to be animals (Norbert Elias); because, at this stage in their lives, socializing influences are imposed upon children who cannot choose their parents or their parents’ actions upon them, but also because this constraint operates within an affective context that lends primary socialization its particular tone and effectiveness (Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann); and, finally, because initial experiences become the filters through which individuals go on to perceive the outside world, “selecting” the events, people, and perceptions that do not call into question the person they have become as a result of those initial experiences (Pierre Bourdieu). For all these reasons, the education that individuals receive in childhood can be said to have a profound effect in forming the people they become.
1. Socialization and education
“Socialization” and “education” are not, however, equivalent terms. Socialization is more than just the effect of educational practices, that is to say the actions specifically and explicitly undertaken by parents with a view to raising their children in a particular way, even though studying those actions is essential to its analysis. Socialization also involves implicit processes, and sociological approaches examining it differ according to the degree to which they emphasize its various components and its conscious or unconscious aspects.
1.1 Socialization as education
Some sociologists have foregrounded the fact that children’s “education” is at once the core of family socialization and the most visible part of the process. As Durkheim put it at the beginning of the twentieth century, in two often-quoted passages from Education and Sociology: “Between the vague potentialities which constitute man at the moment of birth and the well-defined character that he must become in order to play a useful role in society the distance is, then, considerable. It is this distance that education has to make the child travel” (1956: 84–5). “Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and the special milieu for which he is specifically destined” (71).
In these excerpts, Durkheim uses the term “education” to refer to the “actions” undertaken by parents (although he refers to “teachers and parents” indiscriminately and considers the actions of school and family together) with a clear, explicit, and methodical aim: “creating a new being in man,” that is to say the “social being” (1956: 126). At first glance, then, it seems that for Durkheim children are constructed entirely as a result of conscious, effective educational practices deployed by adults with this specific aim in mind. Children’s “education” and “socialization” are taken to be equivalent processes.
From Durkheim’s perspective, the processes in question are oriented in a particular direction: the intention is for the child to take on the “useful role” demanded by “society as a whole” and particularly the “milieu for which he is […] destined.” From this point of view, then, if we extrapolate a little, there are good forms of socialization that prepare children “well” for this role, and others that could be considered “bad.”
This normative conception of socialization, determining what qualifies as “good” socialization, can also be found among some of the functionalist sociologists influenced by Durkheim. From their point of view, societies ensure the reproduction of culture and social structure by having children internalize norms and values, first and foremost within the family. For functionalist sociology, such as that of Talcott Parsons, “socialization is critical for the maintenance of both social continuity and social order, as actors learn both to imitate and to identify with others, eventually learning their specific ‘role-values and symbol-systems’” (Guhin et al. 2021: 3).
This conception of things also entails identifying the predefined contents of socialization, which can then be said to have “failed” when they are not internalized and to have “succeeded” when they are. Looked at this way, the starting point for the sociological study of socialization is not so much the process itself as the social structure thanks to which we can identify what will, or what should, be internalized. The next stage is then studying the educational process by analyzing the means through which these contents will be taken on board.
1.2 Education as hypnosis
Durkheim uses a striking metaphor to characterize the strength and scope of these “means” and to show that primary socialization shapes children in deep and lasting ways. He argues that the power of educational action can be compared to hypnotic suggestion:
(1) The child is naturally in a state of passivity quite comparable to that in which the hypnotic subject is artificially placed. His mind yet contains only a small number of conceptions able to fight against those which are suggested to him; his will is still rudimentary. Therefore he is very suggestible. For the same reason, he is very susceptible to the force of example, very much inclined to imitation. (2) The ascendancy that the teacher naturally has over his pupil, because of the superiority of his experience and of his culture, will naturally give to his influence the efficacious force that he needs. (1956: 85–6)
With this metaphor, Durkheim outlines an educational situation clearly characterized by the total passivity and lack of consciousness of those being educated, and the equally all-encompassing activity and lucidity of those educating them. Children are almost like blank slates, upon which adults, thanks to their “natural authority,” can write whatever content they like, as long as they “wish” to do so. This aspect of Durkheim’s analysis may well make us smile given how at odds it is with our current conceptions of childhood and education. It is as though he were talking about indoctrinating children into a cult rather than about educating them, and his text seems to be trapped in an old-fashioned educational model that today seems to us both dangerous and obsolete.
However, our instinctive reaction to distance ourselves from this point of view, and perhaps even consider it with some measure of condescension (“we know better now!”), should not prevent us from perceiving the significance of Durkheim’s metaphor. Although the comparison with hypnosis is extreme, it has the advantage of emphasizing a fundamental aspect of the primary socialization process: at no point do children have even the illusion of being able to choose their influences. These are all imposed upon them. As the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann underscore:
[A]lthough the child is not simply passive in the process of his socialization, it is the adults who set the rules of the game. The child can play the game with enthusiasm or with sullen resistance. But, alas, there is no other game around. […] Since the child has no choice in the selection of his significant others [i.e. the individuals who will be important in his primary socialization], his identification with them is quasi-automatic. For the same reason, his internalization of their particular reality is quasi-inevitable. The child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one of many possible worlds. He internalizes it as the world, the only existent and only conceivable world, the world tout court. (1991: 154)
Berger and Luckmann’s game metaphor is certainly more pleasing than Durkheim’s hypnosis analogy, but the fundamental process in question (a game that is completely constrained in its very principles) is not so different. When we refuse to see childhood socialization as a long series of constraints, we are perhaps confusing modern educational standards (the “softer” more “democratic” way in which we believe children should be raised today) and the description of what a socialization process actually is, given that its mechanisms are necessarily constraining even when the content is not presented as such. It is important, therefore, not to conflate educational norms with the consequences of socialization processes, which are the same now as they were in Durkheim’s day: children are shaped by the global and local society in which they are raised. The hypnosis model combines the notion of strong conditioning with the idea that we forget all about that conditioning after the event (“when you wake up [from your childhood] you will have forgotten almost everything about these hypnosis sessions but, without necessarily knowing why, you will see the world this way rather than that way, you will like this food not that food, you will do this sport, enjoy this cultural activity, have this political preference, and not others”). For this reason, Durkheim’s model is perhaps more relevant than it initially seems and the rest of this chapter will try to show how and why that is the case.
1.3 Beyond hypnotism
First of all, criticizing Durkheim for adopting an approach to socialization that is too mechanical means overlooking all the ways in which he himself qualifies that mechanism. While his theories do principally seem to establish the existence of a socialization process that is very similar to deliberate, defined education, they in fact also reveal certain limitations to such explicit processes, which can help us to understand how and why socialization cannot simply be conflated with education.
Regarding the two points just emphasized (the passivity and lack of consciousness of those being educated, on the one hand, and the activity and lucidity of educators on the other), it is upon the second that Durkheim places the most limitations. As his book progresses, he identifies a certain number of reasons that call into question the educator’s hyperconsciousness and omnipotence, reasons linked to the fact that “society” is more powerful still than educators who are themselves subjected to social rules that restrict their actions. This tells us that it would be a mistake to take too literally his idea of the educator’s “natural” authority. First of all, in every era, educational norms are imposed with the strength of social facts and they prescribe how each generation of educators will raise children. We shall come back to this in more detail in Chapter 2. Furthermore, since education “reproduces” society but does not create it, educators cannot create in children dispositions that they do not themselves have and have not acquired during their own education (Durkheim 2005: 240). Finally, Durkheim argues that the construction of a social being is far from limited to the effects of intentional acts undertaken with that in mind:
