The social construction of everyday life

Lecture 8The Social Construction of Everyday

Life

Write down your answers

• What is socialization?• Who is most influential: parents, media,

teachers or peers?• What could be the correct answer to these

questions:– ‘Good morning, how are you?’– ‘What do you think about British food?’

• How do you ‘sit like a girl’ or ‘sit like a boy’?

Aims

• To build on Cultures, norms and values• How do people become social?• Goffman and Performance• Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology • How is everyday life constructed and

negotiated?• How is gender socially constructed?

Micro -sociology

• ‘the study of everyday life in social interactions’ (Macionis &Plummer 2008:192)

• Social construction of reality (Berger & Luckman 1967) how people shape reality through social interaction

• Social interaction is negotiation: drama• Human worlds are socially– produced– changed– modified

Socialisation

• A lifelong social experience by which individuals construct their personal biography, assemble daily interactional rules and come to terms with the wider patterns of their culture

• Humans rely on social experiences to learn cultural survival skills

• ‘the process whereby the helpless human infant gradually becomes a self-aware knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which he or she was born’ (Giddens 2009:284)

Who is being socialised?

• Are people born with ‘human nature’ or are they are product of the environment?

Who are they being socialised by?

• Agents of socialisation– Father– Mother– Peers– Teachers– Mass media

• Ask your partner: which agent of socialisation is most influential, in your opinion?

How are they being socialised?

• Socialisation theories– Psychodynamics (Sigmund Freud 1856- 1939)

• Unconscious desires and wishes motivate and drive our behaviours

– Centred on the presence or absence of a penis (symbolic of masculinity and femininity)• When boys are 4-5, they feel threatened by the father (rival to

mother’s affection)• The boy gives up the love for mother (fear of castration)• The girls have ‘penis envy’• The mothers are devalued (don’t have a penis either)

Interactionism

• By interacting with others, meaning is created in the interaction, from which we learn

Nature VS Nurture• Genetics /DNA – human nature• Behaviourism – ‘specific behavioural

patterns are not instinctive but learned’

• Margaret Mead – ‘the differences between individuals who are members of different cultures, like the differences between individuals within a culture, are almost entirely to be laid to differences in conditioning especially during early childhood, and this conditioning is culturally determined’ (1963:280)

• If you were born in another country: Japan? Brazil? Australia? Iran? – how would your beliefs, culture, ideas, be different?

Nature versus Nurture

• Nurture:

– Behaviourism: ‘specific behaviour patterns are not instinctive but learned’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008: 194).

– Social construction: ‘the process by which people creatively shape reality through social interaction’ (Ibid, 192). (People perceive events differently; they are motivated by different interests and intentions)

How do we develop? Nature or Nurture?

• Sociologists are extremely cautious about describing behaviour as simply instinctive or genetic.

• This does not mean that biology plays no part in human behaviour.

• Development of an inherited potential depends on:– opportunities associated with social position.

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Socialisation

• Sociologists argue that we go through processes of socialisation:

– ‘.…a lifelong experience by which individuals construct their personal biography, assemble daily interactional rules and come to terms with the wider patterns of their culture’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008: 193).

• Thus, we learn the characteristics of our culture in order to survive within that culture.

Agencies of socialisation: the family

• The principal agency of socialisation?

• Family structures:– vary across cultures.– can be small

(nuclear) or extended.

• Children adopt parents’ ways of being and behaving:– this again varies

across cultures.

Nurture: The Kids are alright...

• The World’s Strictest Parents

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBaxSqYFRow (1st part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1G9l6O7vgM&feature=related

(2nd part)

Agents of socialisation: education

• A curriculum of subjects.

• Expected to observe certain rules of behaviour linked to the future workplace:– obedience etc.

• Peer groups are often formed at school.

Agents of socialisation: media

• Extent of media influence on children is hotly debated:– do children passively absorb media

content?

• Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment (1961;1963)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU

Agents of socialisation: peer groups

• a group of children/ young people of a similar age:– pressure from the behaviour of our peer

groups.– adolescence

Critical thinking

• Which of the agents of socialisation is the most influential?

• What happens when there is a conflict between the beliefs and values of one agent of socialisation and another?

Erving Goffman and Performance

• We sometimes ‘put on a show’ for people – as if others are watching us. Why? What’s behind the scenes?

• Front regions where we act out roles. For example ‘teamwork’ of politicians (who actually hate each other!), or parents who hide arguments from their children

• Back regions parallel to back stage/ off camera. Swearing, sexual remarks, informal, sitting differently, humming, burping, flatulence. For example, the bar staff who are polite and friendly to customers but then go out the back and are aggressive and loud. Medical staff who smoke, drink heavily or take drugs outside of work.

• 20th century’s leading micro-sociologist

• Criticisms of his work what about power and social relations? I.e. inequalities (these criticisms are often given to micro sociologists)

SOCIALISATION: THE CASE OF GENDER

Erving Goffman (1922-1982)--Performances

• People behave like actors performing on a stage– dress– objects carried– tone of voice– gestures

• All of these are gendered. What does he mean by this?

• In what ways can we perform gender?

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Harold Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology (breaching experiments)

• Research question – why do people get so angry when people do not follow minor conventions of speech? (1963)

• Background expectancies are essential for smooth running everyday social life/existence

• ‘Have a nice day’ – • ‘Nice? In what sense exactly?’• People get upset very quickly – ‘What’s wrong with you?! You know what I

mean.. *”&£’• Sociologists take this smooth running for granted: the social order is hard work • What if the participants had carried on like this: kicked out of home? Sent to a

psychiatric hospital?!

• Critiques doesn’t look for explanation/causes but is descriptive/looking for meaning (i.e. this means that studying social life can never be scientific)

Ethnomethodology• Ethnomethodology (Garfinkle, 1967):

the study of the way people make sense of their everyday lives.

• ‘Social vandalism’

• When we ask the simple question, ‘How are you?’ do we mean:– Physically?– Mentally?– Spiritually?– Financially?– Are we even looking for an

answer, or just being polite?24

Today

• To build on Cultures, norms and values• How do people become social?• Goffman and Performance• Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology • How is everyday life constructed and

negotiated?• How is gender socially constructed?

Structure of CourseThe end of term test is in three weeks.

End of term test

10%

Essay 10%Presentation 5%

Academic Engagement 5%

Final Exam 70%

Self study

• Revision for end of term test. • Create 8 mind maps on A3 paper using different

coloured pens to revise lectures 1-8.• Bring to lectures and seminars• Include: key terms, theorists, definitions. Detail! • Go to Moodle Glossary and test a friend on the

terms. • Create flash cards that represent key terms.• Go back and do ALL assignments on Moodle