Culture and socialisation are the two major entities that help shape our identity. The culture one is raised in as a child, and the people we come into contact with in our daily lives, can all be classified as encounters we have with socialisation. As young children who enter this world, we imitate those close to us and behaviours begin to form. It is through this imitation we also discover to express our emotions. These characteristics are engrained in us from a young age and are the major basic building blocks to help us develop our individual identities. What we come to see in our everyday lives and interaction with other people on a regular basis, has a much greater influence over us, particularly in our younger years, when we are constantly learning about our culture, environment and the people involved in our lives on a regular basis. Ken Plummer also highlights the great need and importance of this for a young child on early socialisation and the negative effects that an un-socialised individual may confront. Our parents teach us the actions that are acceptable in society, these behaviours often become habit and dictate how we conduct ourselves and communicate with others. The mother or guardian and child bond is particularly strong and so from birth the child learns to imitate its mother, this is the earliest and most consistent socialisation the child receives and therefore is most important. The words of Kim Atkins come to mind when stressing the importance of the mother/child bond, “human beings come into existence quite literally through the bodies of our other human beings, and our early survival depends upon the most intimate human interactions.” (Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: A Practical Perspective, Kim... ... middle of paper ... ...d not develop into the social beings that we are intended and in fact that society demands us to be. While social structures do affect us, they are not the main “building blocks” required to develop us as socially functional individual identities. Bibliography Plummer, K 2010, Sociology: The Basics, Routledge, New York Black, L, Bennet, A, Edles, L D, Gibson, M, Inglis, D, Jacobs, R & Woodward, I 2012, Cultural Sociology: An Introduction, Wildey-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex Atkins, K 2008, Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: A Practical Perspective, Routledge, New York Calhoun, C, Gerteis, J, Moody, J, Pfaff, S, & Virk, I 2002, Contemporary Sociological Theory, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden, Massachusetts Lemert, C 2011, Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life, Fifth Edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Lanham, Maryland
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Many philosophers and psychologist from Jean Piaget to William James have theorized what makes a person who they are, their identity. Jean Piaget believed that the identity is formed in the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage. This means that a child is forming his identity as late to the age of seven (Schellenberg, 29) However, identity is strongly impacted by society such as school, church, government,and other institutions. Through our interactions with different situations our personality develops (Schellenberg 34). "In most situations there is a more diversified opportunity for the development of social identities, reflecting what the individual wants to put forth to define the self as well as what others want to accept,"(Schellenberg 35). Therefore, humans, much like animals, adapt to different situations based on who they are with. Individuals are always changi...
This is a journey of self-discovery to understand the fundamental meaning of what makes me, me? All of us have a unique identity and culture. An Identity are a sets of social expectations related to ourselves and others that are grounded in the interplay between similarities and differences and pertain to the personal, relational, and communal aspects of lives (Hall, 102). In other words, it is our identity that makes us who we are. On the other hand, Culture is defined as a historically shared system of symbolic resources through which we make our world meaningful (Hall, 4). Culture is how we as individuals make sense of the world. So what is Cultural Identity? Cultural Identity allows us as individuals to feel a sense of belonging to a particular
The education system and the peer group within the school system are important socialisation agents in an individual’s life. Children from an early age absorb the values, attitudes and beliefs of the society in which they participate (Ashman & Elkins, 2009).
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...ements. Yet, everyone in our society will result in developing their own perspectives on deviance and social control.
How many times have people asked themselves, who am I? What defines me? Culture plays a very important role in the identity of people. People are born in a culture, their family's culture, but not with an already established culture. The term culture refers to the values, beliefs, customs, style of dress, food, songs and stories that are shared and learned in a characteristic group. On the other hand, identity is a set of features, attributes and characteristics that define a person. Identity is constructed by language, social structure, gender orientation and cultural patterns. Although many do not relate these two themes, there is a complex relationship between culture and identity.
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