2.5 The Self and Agents of Socialization

Action Item for our Next Lesson:

Read chapter 1 from Carolyn Deck's book, Mindset.

Today's Lesson: The Self and Agents of Socialization

• What is the sociological concept of "the self"?
• What are some theories about how do we develop it?  
• What are "agents of socialization"?

To begin today's lesson, open the Twenty Statements Test and fill in 20 responses to the question, "Who am I?" Do this quickly, without thinking too much about it.  Simply complete the the statement with the first 20 answers that come to mind.  Here is the Google Form for the lesson.

Try to fill in all 20 statements about yourself.   Work quickly and individually.

After you have answered 20 statements about yourself, proceed:

The "self"

The Twenty Statements Test is a survey that has been used in various studies for over 50 years. (Note: this lesson is based on Rusty Schnellinger's lesson) The test is a qualitative measurement of how people think about themselves, or who they are as a person.   This conscious understanding of who we are as individuals is an example of what sociologists call a "self."  Similar to metacognition and how people think about thinking, a "self" is how individuals consciously think about who they are as an individual.  

Coding your responses.
When conducting qualitative data analysis, sometimes sociologists will code the responses to make sense of the data.  Code your responses to the Twenty Statements Test:

A mode responses: Physical characteristics.   

Ex. I am blonde, I am short, I am strong.

B mode responses: Socially defined statuses that associate you relative to a group.   

Ex. I am a student, I am Catholic, I am a quarterback, I am a daughter, I am a store clerk.

C mode responses:  Personal traits, styles of behavior or emotional states.  

Ex. I am a happy person, I am competitive, I am loud. I am tired.

D mode responses: General, more abstract or existential responses.   

Ex. I am me, I am part of the universe, I am human, I am alive.

After you code your responses, answer the following questions on your notes page:

1.  Individually:  Which type of response did you have the most of?  How many? Is that surprising or does that seem right to you?

Culture And your Sense of Self

2. Without reading any further, use your sociological imagination to hypothesize how these responses might have changed over time.  If you did this test in a different time, say 70 years ago, or in a different place, how might the different culture shape your responses to these?   

After you hypothesize about the question above, continue reading:

Peter Kaufman explains in the book A Sociology Experiment (2019) that researchers did find a change over time in the test responses and it concerned them:

In summary, this is one example that culture shapes how we think about what is important and what we value; culture may influence us to think about our "self" in certain ways.  

Erving Goffman's Dramaturgy

3.  Choose one of your responses that is a mode B response.  

a. Which one did you choose? 

b.  How do you express yourself to fit into this response?  In other words, how do you dress, talk and act in order to be like _______ (B mode response)?  What are the things that you do in order to be that role?

Discussion:  What were some examples for your answer to number two? For number two, this is exemplifying a sociological theory called Dramaturgy by Erving Goffman. Goffman wrote The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which theorized that people present themselves to the world based on their ideas about their "self". They create an image of how they want to be perceived. It is like being in a play, or a drama - when you go on stage you are dressed up to play your role, you have your lines and your costume etc... Goffman's theory in the form of an extended metaphor is known as dramaturgy. In Goffman's theory, every time we go into a social situation we are presenting ourselves to the world - playing a role such as sister, friend, teammate, student, girlfriend, coworker, etc... In all of these roles we talk a certain way, act a certain way and even dress a certain way.

One example might be if you answered, I am a student.  You may feel that you have your own style but I bet that you can find similarities to other students here at Loyola.  And you have learned to sit in the desk, raise your hand, show up to class, answer questions and do all the things that students do.

Agents of socialization

4.  Regarding your answer to number 3b above, what are some of the places that you have learned to talk/dress/act like this?  For example if you wrote I am a student. Where did you learn how to be a student? Where did you learn all the behaviors/habits/actions that a student does?

Discussion: Examples of where?

All the places where we learn how to act out this role are examples of what sociologists call agents of socialization, or, the most important groups that shape an individual's sense of self. (especially: family, school, peers/friends, media).  For example, if you answered I am a student, I bet learning that role happened even before you went to school.  You may have watched kids shows or cartoons about kids going off to school and what they do there.  Kids read books about the first day of school and what students do all day.  Parents tell stories about when they went to school.  And if you have older siblings, cousins or neighbors, you learn by watching and talking to them about their school experiences. Then, teachers themselves tell you what they expect from you.  A great deal of elementary school is learning how to do school.  Classmates also socialize us by sharing their habits preferences for studying and school supplies etc...  In other words, you didn't just show up and decide what kind of student you wanted to be, you were socialized by different agents throughout your life. 

Charles Horton Cooley's Looking Glass Self

5a.  Also thinking about your answer to 3b, can you think of a time when one of the ways you expressed yourself was received positively by another person or group? Who was it? How did they react? What did they say?

For example, if I answered I am a student and one of the ways I express that is by participating in class and commenting on readings, I can specifically recall a few different teachers of mine telling me that it was a pleasure having me in class to discuss the readings and challenge them on somethings while helping to generate class discussion.  

5b.  Can you think of a time when one of ways you expressed yourself was received negatively by another person or group? Who was it? How did they react? What did they say?

These are examples of Charles Horton Cooley’s theory called the “Looking Glass”.  By “Looking Glass” he is referring to a mirror.  His theory is that we learn to act a certain way because of our interactions with others and how they react to us.  Their reaction to us is like looking into a mirror that reflects back on us.  We learn from others' reactions to us how we are perceived in the world and this shapes our sense of self.

In Sum

We are influenced from the moment we are born (even before) by important groups around us including culture which we are born into.  The process by which we are shape by these social groups is called socialization.  This process not only helps us to survive but it also develops a self or our conscious way of thinking about who we are as an individual.  These most important groups that socialize us are called agents of socialization.

Please don't forget to read chapter 1 from Carolyn Deck's book, Mindset for our next lesson.

Election Day

Election Day is coming up!  Here is Chicago's Election calendar and here is a guide from the Phoenix on early voting for the 2023 Presidential Primary:

March 3, 2024 - Last day to register to vote by online registration.

More on Sociology and Voting:

Democracy?
In the United States, voter turnout is relatively low.  The chart below shows some of the highest rates of voting in the US in decades and yet the percentage of those who vote out of all those of eligible age to vote is relatively low.

As much as we want to believe that we are a free democracy by and for the people with the guaranteed right to vote for all, there are institutional reasons why turnout is low in some areas and it has nothing to do with voters’ motivation. 

Political sociologists have shown that full voting rights are not as guaranteed in the United States as in many other major democracies, especially for low-income voters and communities of color in the electoral process. Bureaucratic policies can also enforce voter suppression by making it harder for people to register and to vote.

Institutional policies affect voter turnout.
How institutional policies affect voter turnout from the Society Pages.  there are institutional reasons why turnout is low in some areas that have nothing to do with voters’ motivation. 

Felony Disenfranchisement.
The States are Not United on Felon Voting Rights from the Society pages.
6.1 million Americans are barred from voting due to a felony record. However, these disenfranchisement practices look different from state to state.

Other Policies that deserve a strong consideration in moving American Democracy forward:

• Ranked choice primaries.
• Dismantling the electoral college.
• Limited campaign funding.
• ending gerrymandering.

Mindful Voting
Before becoming cynical about voting, bear in mind the people who fought and died for the right to vote:

From historian, Kevin Kruse:

Reverend George Lee in Belzoni, Mississippi, used his pulpit and his printing press to encourage African Americans to register to vote. For his troubles, he was assassinated by three men with shotguns in May 1955.









A few months later, Lamar Smith -- who had been busy trying to convince local blacks to vote -- was gunned down by three men on the lawn of the courthouse on a Saturday afternoon. A crowd watched it happen, but originally police could find no witnesses to it.







In 1961, voting rights activist Herbert Lee was murdered by a state legislator in front of a dozen witnesses. After a few years, one of the witnesses offered to testify about the murder. The night before he was going to leave the state, he was killed outside his home.






Medgar Evers, the head of the Mississippi NAACP, had been actively involved in a lot of this work. In June 1963, he was gunned down by an assassin in his driveway. The full story here.


Most famously, in the summer of 1964, three voting rights activists -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner -- were detained by cops and then murdered by Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.



The next year, during the climactic voting rights protests in Selma, 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by Alabama state troopers in February 1965. He died soon after.






A few weeks later, Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was beaten by white supremacists who attacked him and two other clergymen who had come to Selma to support voting rights. Reeb died two days later.







Two weeks after that, four Klansmen murdered Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five from Detroit who had been giving rides to voting rights marchers after the Selma-to-Montgomery march. They chased her in their own car and shot her twice in the head.







In August 1965, Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopalian seminary student from Boston, was arrested along with a Catholic priest for supporting a voting rights campaign in Lowndes County, Alabama. Almost immediately after their release, Daniels was shot to death by a deputy.








In January 1966, Vernon Dahmer, a well-off grocery store owner, announced on the radio in Hattiesburg that he would pay poll taxes for anyone who wanted to vote but couldn't afford it. The Klan attacked his home that night. The Klansmen threw jugs of gasoline into his home and set it on fire. As the fire spread, Dahmer fired his gun to scare the Klansmen off and got his wife and kids out of the house. He finally made it out, but soon died from the severe burns and smoke inhalation.






"I've been active in trying to get people to register to vote," Dahmer told a reporter. "People who don't vote are deadbeats on the state. I figure a man needs to do his own thinking. What happened to us last night can happen to anyone, white or black."







And don't forget those who fought for the right to vote for women, from the Washington Post.

Here is Alice Paul, sociology scholar and activist:




The women were clubbed, beaten and tortured by the guards at the Occoquan Workhouse. The 33 suffragists from the National Woman’s Party had been arrested Nov. 10, 1917, while picketing outside the White House for the right to vote.
The male guards at the Northern Virginia prison manacled the party’s co-founder Lucy Burns by her hands to the bars above her cell and forced her to stand all night. Dorothy Day, who would later establish the Catholic Worker houses, had her arm twisted behind her back and was slammed twice over the back of an iron bench.
The guards threw suffragist Dora Lewis into a dark cell and smashed her head against an iron bed, knocking her out. Lewis’s cellmate, Alice Cosu, believing Lewis dead, suffered a heart attack and was denied medical care until the next morning.
The suffragists dubbed their treatment Nov. 14, 1917, as the “Night of Terror..."

Vote!

The better choice matters, even if it's not the best choice.

2.4 American Culture; The Importance of Values

As we wait for students to arrive, please review the readings I assigned last class:

Kohl's Values Americans Live By

Buettner's Thrive

Remember that we were learning how humans are shaped by their society.  Culture is a strong force in nurturing who we are.  We are born into a culture and before we are even conscious, we are shaped by it.  Culture is made up of different components, but values are one of the strongest components in shaping the lives of individuals living within the culture.

Please open the Google Doc and answer questions 1 and 2 individually 

1.  Choose one of the values that Kohl writes about.  How does this value show up specifically in your everyday life?

2.  Look at the list of values that Americans hold.  Identify American values that might complement each other.  These are called value clusters.  

Culture in general and values specifically are not always so easy to define.  Culture is dynamic, constantly evolving.  And sometimes different aspects of a culture conflict.  Culture can be both ideal and real;  that is, culture can contain values that people agree are important but they may be different from values that are actually manifest in everyday life. 

Sociologist Karen Cerulo explains the importance of understanding the complexity of American values in her 2008 essay here:

3.  What cultural values from the Kohl reading might conflict with that you wrote about above? (use the list of values)  (Or look for American values that might contradict the other American values.)  These are called value contradictions.  

The Importance of Values

Values are very strong components of culture.  They shape so much about what we do and how our daily lives are structured.  Below are some studies of values in the U.S. identified by social scientists:

American Values

In 1970, sociologist Robin Williams published his examination of American cultural values.  

In 1985, L. Robert Kohl published a similar examination of values written for refugees like the Lost Boys so that they could adjust to American culture.  

And, in 2015 Sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers published American Society; How It Really Works in which they identify five core social values that most Americans affirm in one way or another: freedom, prosperity, efficiency, fairness, and democracy.

Below is a chart that synthesizes the lists of values from above.  (For more on values see my previous post on Amer-I-can Values)

American Values                          vs.              Other Cultures’ Values

Personal control/responsibility                           Fate/destiny

Change seen as natural/positive/Progress          Stability/tradition

Time and its control                                          Human Interaction

Equality/fairness                                               Hierarchy/rank/status

Individualism/independence/freedom                 Group welfare/dependence

Self-Help/initiative                                            Birthright/inheritance

Competition                                                     Cooperation

Future orientation                                            Past orientation

Action/work                                                     “Being”

Informality                                                      Formality

Directness/openness/Honesty                           Indirectness/ritual/”face”

Practicality/efficiency                                        Idealism/theory

Materialism/Acquisitiveness                               Spiritualism/detachment

Achievement/Success                                       Acceptance/Status Quo

Morality/judgement                                          Consequentialism/situational ethics

Thriving in America? Comparing American values to the ethnographic documentary.

Thrive by Dan Buettner is a cross-cultural ethnographic study of cultural values.  

Using the excerpt from Thrive, answer:

4.  What was one suggestion that Buettner made that was interesting to you - something you had not thought about before?

5.  What is something that Buettner mentions that our culture might make difficult to pursue?  Why does our culture make it difficult? 

6.  Identify values that are contradictory to U.S. values from the film God Grew Tired of Us.

US Value        How does it contradict with the Lost Boys?

Hopefully, you see that culture can shape our lives in numerous ways - especially what we value about community, workplaces, social life, financial life, homes and our self-identity.

My goal is for you to become sociologically mindful about the ways in which culture shapes you, especially in how it leads you to be happy or not.  With sociological mindfulness, we can use research like Buettner's to consciously guide our choices to help us live happier lives.

For more on Thrive:

Here is the Thrive happiness test- it will measure your satisfaction and make recommendations. 

Here is a review of the book from NPR.

You can read a preview of the book from Goodreads here. 

Here is link to an interview with the author on NPR.

Here is the publisher's Thrive website.

A test of your cultural values:

Try this experiment:

Close your eyes.  Think of someone influential in your life. 

then, click here

For More on American culture:

This link to the US State Dept. provides ways of thinking about American culture: https://www.state.gov/courses/answeringdifficultquestions/html/app.htm?p=module2_p2.htm

This link to Study USA explains American values for foreign exchange students coming to the USA:

https://www.studyusa.com/en/a/1223/six-aspects-of-u-s-culture-international-students-need-to-know

What People Around the World Like – and Dislike – About American Society and Politics, PEW 2021

How Americans’ views of the U.S. compare with international views of the U.S., PEW 2023

Foreigners Reveal 17 Weird Things Americans Do (That We Think Are Normal) 2020

American Themed Parties around the world:

Socimages

Instagram

TikTok

This skit from SNL called Washington's Dream is a funny take on American cultural differences in weights and measurements.

Mindfulness and Values

Let's think with sociological mindfulness for a second about values.  They shape you in so many different ways. And they also shape the entire culture in certain ways.  These values lead to behaviors that we all participate in unconsciously.  These behaviors can have an enormous impact on a culture when you view them as cultural behaviors.  Watch this TED talk by Chris Jordan to see how the behaviors impact our culture:

2.4 Cross-cultural Ethnography (part 2): The Lost Boys of Sudan

ANNOUNCEMENT: This Friday will be an Asynchronous lesson.  Please plan to complete the lesson via Google Form but you do NOT need to be physically in class.

REMINDER of ACTION ITEMS: Please read the two readings below for our next class. Both of them are about culture.  

Kohl's Values Americans Live By

First, the Kohl reading is about American culture.  It was written to help emigrants arriving in America adjust to cultural values that they may not be familiar with.  For Americans, the reading provides interesting insight into the culture that surrounds us.  Like fish who have never questioned water, we are engrossed in our cultural values so ubiquitously that we don't realize it.  This reading will help us take a step back and view the ways that American culture shapes those within it.  As you read, think about examples from your own life that illustrate the values Kohl highlights. 

Buettner's Thrive 

Second, the Thrive reading is from a book by Dan Buettner.  Buettner travelled the world as sort of an ethnographer writing about people all over the globe.  In Thrive, Buettner focuses on the places in the world that report the highest levels of happiness.  The book focuses on a few happiness anomalies (Blue Zones) around the world: Denmark, Singapore, Mexico and San Luis Obispo (USA). This excerpt is Buettner's concluding chapter in which he tries to make sense of what the places all have in common and what we can learn from them to make our lives happier. As you read, look for areas of happiness that you had not thought about.  Make a note of things that Buettner suggests that you can do right now in your own life as well as things you want to do as you get older.

Today's Lesson:

For the second half of the ethnographic documentary, please turn your attention toward the cultural values that are shaping the boys' lives in America.  How is life in America different and difficult? In what ways was the refugee camp easier/healthier for them?

If you are absent, please watch from one of the available sources:

Here is the movie on Amazon Prime

Here it is on Watchdocumentaries.com

Here it is on Tubi

Here it is on Youtube (free with ads)

Other Resources:

This post explains more about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers and the 2017-2023 crisis at the border.

Here is John Bul Dau's Foundation website which also includes information about his memoir and ways that they are serving Africa and how you can help.

Here is John Bul Day speaking at Google about his life, his foundation and the Lost Boys.

Here is his Ted Talk:

Lost Boys on NPR 2007.

From PBS the documentary, The Day I Had To Run details the story of the Lost Boys.

60 Minutes part 1

60 Minutes part 2

Seeds of Sudan

International Rescue Committee timeline of the Lost Boys

March 2016 South Sudan Faces Another Civil War
Sudan broke apart into two nations; Sudan and South Sudan.  South Sudan is where the Lost Boys in the movie returned to. Unfortunately, South Sudan faces a new civil war within itself.  

February 2024 Lost Boy Signs 3 Year NBA Contract

Duop Reath, NBA player for the Portland Trailblazers, was born in Sudan before moving to the Kakuma refugee camp when he was young due to the war. He talks about growing up in the camp and his journey in basketball. 

World Relief

International Aid organization HQ'd in Chicago suburbs that helps resettle refugees

Immigrants choose to leave but refugees are forced.

The road to refugee:

Flee homeland, leave everything behind, find temporary shelter (avg stay is 5 years) sometimes living in the forest for an extended time

Interview with UNHCR; often involves reliving the events

Wait for acceptance and nation to accept you

The US resettles 50-60% of worldwide refugees

If accepted, go wherever you are sent and be prepared to pay back airfare costs!

26 million refugees worldwide.

50-80,000 refugees accepted to the US each year

$900 given to each refugee to make it through the first 3 months!

IL is 7^th largest recipient of refugees by state in the US

UNHCR – US Dept state – IOM Travel logistics – Resettlement Services

World Relief Services:

• Initial resettlement
• Employment Services
• Education Services/ESL
• Refugee Counseling Services
• Youth Services
• Volunteer and Church Relations
• Citizenship and Immigration Legal Service

Challenges:

• Educational factors: ESL and lagging academics
• Family and Cultural Dynamics:
• Parent-child role reversal
• Lack of parental involvement in students’ lives
• Lack of parental involvement in school
• Different parenting styles and discipline
• Past and Current Trauma/stress
• Identity crisis

IL refugees:

• Bhutanese
• Ethnic Lhotsampa
• 108,000 people displaced
• Imprisoned, abused, denial of human rights
• Iraqi
• Very different from Bhutanese
• Recent refugees, short term
• Kids have seen and experienced more turmoil than Bhutanese

Viator House

Also in the Chicago suburbs is the Viator House of Hospitality

Home for male young adults seeking asylum