This term you will look at who you are and how you came to be that way. George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) talked about the "social self" - how people develop personalities derived from what they learn through language and social interaction. The process of growing up and learning to belong in society is called “socialisation”. Sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists are interested in this process.

Over time, various theories have been developed to explain socialisation. Some say we are the way we are because of our family. Others think the environment is the most important thing. Some say spirituality is significant. Some say only a few people fully develop.

Then there’s the question of “nature vs. nurture” – are we shaped by what happens in life and whom we meet or are our personalities biologically determined?

Finally, how are your experiences of socialisation different to that of other cultural groups?

 

Main tasks for this topic: 

 

• Research a theory of personal and social development

David Elkind - do you construct your own 'personal fable'?

Erik Erikson- is development ecological - about environment and society?

Carol Gilligan

Robert Havighurst- should children get more unstructured play time?

Jane Loevinger-

Jean Piaget - is our development locked into congnitive stages?

 

 

• Group Presentation on the development of a sub-culture

• use examples drawn from contemporary society

• assess the impact of technologies, including communication technologies, on individuals, groups and institutions.

 

• Essay: Examine the life course transitions experienced by characters in a film about coming of age, and evaluate EITHER Mannheim OR Strauss-Howes’ theory of generations

 

Social Interaction Theory and choosing brands! Why do people identify with certain brands? (see flow chart to the right)

 

 

 

What ARE adolescents?

 

“THE rebellion of youth is not an entirely new phenomenon nor is it a specific product of any particular socio-cultural determinants inherent in our era. Youth has always been rebellious, and such social movements as the Young Turks, Young Italy, NarodnayaVola and, on the other side, the Facist and Nazi movements were largely comprised of young people. Political slogans and ideals depend on particular historical, socio-cultural and geopolitical situations, but it has been traditional with the youth to rebel against any tradition and fight against the socio-cultural systems of their parents.

One must not, arrive at the conclusion that the issues raised by the rebellious youth were culture-free… A psychological study of the rebellion of youth must therefore account for socio-cultural factors and analyse their import on human behaviour.”

Wolman, B. B. (1972). The rebellion of youth.International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 18(4), 254-259.

 

Map your micro-world

1. How many people do you know from each life stage?

2. How do you know these specific people?

What are the links between these people? Eg, family,

sport, school, work etc.

How have these people influenced you in your life?

3.Create a visual mind-map of these people placing

yourself in the middle. Be artistic!

Explain to others how this map shows the network

Of links that make up the networks of your micro world society.

 

How does the media contribute to the experience of coming of age?

 

Constructs of Adolescents in film:  Describe how adolescents are portrayed in three of your favourite films

 

 

What really characterises "Gen Y"? (Thats YOUR generation!) Gen X-ers might think its the way your fingers have evolutionised to grapple with tiny information-senders and digital games that you do 'mind-numbing' lethargic sports' with - like sling-shotting "birds" on I-phones. Gen X-ers think  they’re special because they were the fist to use email, were postmodern, and because your flimsy indyness grew out of their edgy grunginess.

But can we really lump a whole generation into one bag?

 

Read this article: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/looking-to-generational-divides-tell-us-nothing/

 

 

It pays to know your XYZ

by: Ray Beatty From:HeraldSunJune 10, 200812:00AM

HERE'S a topic that I'm sure confuses you as much as it confuses me. What are all those "generation" labels about and what exactly do they mean?

In the press or on TV, experts blithely talk about "Gen X", "Gen Y", "Gen Z" as if we automatically know what they mean. In fact no-one has an exact definition, but this is close.

Let's start with the great-grandparents. They came from the Depression and World War II and are labelled the "Builders" or the "Silent Generation" or the "War Babies".

They grew up at a time when unemployment meant hunger and work in a bank was a job for life. In marketing terms they are seen as conservative and security-conscious. Their numbers are dwindling.

1946-64 the Baby Boomers.Brash, confident, the product of a prosperous society when youth was discovering its wings for the first time. From free love to freedom rides, they forced their social and political values onto society.

Today they're the managers, the politicians - your boss.

From the marketing standpoint they still follow their teenage values and can be brand-switchers, argumentative, know-alls.

They are doers, communicators, achievers. But don't expect them to retire at 65 - they figure that so long as they can think and talk, they can do the job better than anyone.

1965-79 Generation X.

Brought up by a bunch of would-be hippies, they swung the other way and tended to a more detached view of the world.

Their influences were MTV, small families, AIDS and higher education than their parents. Sex had been liberated by the sexual revolution and they were not inclined to commitment.

So only now are we seeing them start to marry, in their 30s and far later than any generation before them. Many have only recently left home.

1980-97 Generation Y.

These are today's teens and 20s. Among them is a recklessness that has caused all the King Street and 2am lock-out troubles.

If you think they come from another planet, you're right. Computers were mother's milk, the internet opened up the world, mobile phones and SMS can pull them into temporary groups.

So a few text messages can cause a rave party of thousands to mushroom - or a riot to ignite.

It can also cause viral marketing to blaze around the world in hours. Look at the Barak Obama campaign - built on the power of internet communications and small on-line donations by millions.

Living at home, Gen Y'ersget to keep any money they make and spend it on what they want. In any case the housing market is so tight that what's the point of even looking? The empty-nest syndrome is starting to dwindle.

Finally to Generation Z - our rug-rats born since 1998.

They have entered a world of information overload, bombarded day and night. You'd better believe that their filters are hepa-fine, allowing only very well-targeted messages to pass through.

Family is a loose definition to them - so many of their school friends come from single or same-sex families. The parents are older and comfortably affluent, but with big financial commitments.

Everybody rushes to work and school in the morning and home at night. Junior has more time to study consumerism than the parents, so their influence in buying decisions is powerful.

The family works as a unit and relates on an adult level. It's like no one has time or space for a childhood.

Marketers have to communicate to these very different groups. And the one message or medium can rarely cover them all.

Before we can sell effectively, we have to learn our XYZs.

 

 

Looking to generational divides tell us nothing

byJames Arvanitakis, 12 Nov 05:35am (*James is an academic and author - he was also my favourite lecturer at uni!)

 

"Sitting around in a café the other day, one of my former colleagues bemoaned the fact that young people where not as active as him when he was studying. He raised his frustration that each generation is getting more politically lethargic and ranted about the generational changes we are seeing.

Apart from reminding him that ‘his generation’ had not done such a bang up job in solving the world’s problems, and actually delivering some new ones, the whole area of ‘generational research’ is one that is deeply flawed. That is, to clearly define a population’s attributes based on their ‘generational status’ tends to homogenise a population by their age – despite there always being significant differences within each cluster.

 

Despite this, we see books and papers about Boomers, X-ers and Y’s – all presented as if this is the missing ingredient in understanding the way of the world and what is going on with our society. So is this the case?

 

I am far from convinced – rather, I would argue we are seeing fracturing and clustering of different groups based on a cross section of attributes and often displaying contradictory trends. Further, these developments have important implications for the future of Australia that are not being addressed.

I am not saying that generational status is not an element, but that it is merely one of many factors and we should treat claims that there are clear-cut differences between generations carefully. Further, any differences that do emerge should not be analysed in isolation but be looked at within the context of broader trends that are emerging...."

 

 

Cross cultural difference and Adolescence

Ethnicity, culture, globalisation

"Cross-cultural research has shown that the storm and stress assumptions about adolecence are far from universal. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood, argues that at the heart of the cross-cultural difference is achieving independence. Our western conception of adulthood and places a high value on individual identity and self-sufficiency and much of the storm and stress of Western adolescence comes from the push and pull of this movement toward separation.

"However in traditional cultures, particularly in Asia, personal independence has not been the goal of adulthood. Instead, interdependence - reliance on and obedience to ones family, clan and village - has been the goal. Teenagers on their path to adulthood are not expected to strain the bonds that tie them to their family. because traditional cultures have de-emphasised the notion that adolescence is the road to personal independence , much of the storm and stress experience has been absent."

(From Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us, 2010)

 

Teen rebellion- A Western export?
The BBC's Robin Lustig asks if teenage rebellion is a natural phenomenon or nurtured by Western pop culture.
So what is it about Western culture that seems to encourage adolescent rebellion?
The American academic Cynthia Lightfoot suggests part of the answer may be connected with the fact that teenagers now spend
much more time with each other than they do with adults.
"When kids are cut off from adult society they begin to affiliate with each other in ways that historically they did not," she says.
"With the advent of formal education, kids are more isolated from the adult world than they have been in the past. They also
spend a lot more time with other kids.
"So this creates the conditions for the emergence of a youth culture or a peer culture.
"And as kids interact with one another, their group affiliation shifts from being primarily the family group to being the peer
group."
Perhaps we should think of adolescents as children who are practising to be adults?
They make mistakes, and sometimes they break the rules - and as more and more of them, even in countries like India and Ghana, are exposed to the influence of Western youth culture, well, they are bound to want to try it for themselves.

 

 

Gender and Feminism

 

*Somegood teaching activities here: http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/activitiesgender.htm

 

Anything that aims to address inequality between men and women can be called a feminist. But that's very broad isn't it!

 

'Feminism undertook a battle that no longer exists, not because it won or lost, but because its battlefield was a constructible terrain and domination has nowbuilt its neighbourhoods there.' (Tiqqun, Sonogram of a Potential)

 

In other words, Feminism is fraught with problems because of theoretical ambiguity. Some are essentialist (see gender as "nature"/biological) and others emphasise the role of 'nurture' and 'social construction'. The 'battlefield' where we are supposed to win womens' liberation is 'constructible' - mouldable to the different desires of groups in society. So the 'neighbourhoods' (schools of thought) built on this terrain might include bourgeois feminists - that is, individual powerful women that rise above the others without challenging the constraints on other women, eg working-class women.

 

Notes on Emily Maquire's chapter from Princesses & Pornstars,

Biological determinism and why feminists are men’s biggest defenders

 

Gender is the result of nurturing, or ‘socialisation’ and according to Professor Gambarino, up until the age of 3, children are mostly ungendered, but after this age their behaviour is shaped to be masculine or feminine. She says this disadvantages boys who are forced to conform to masculine ideals and miss out on developing verbal and emotional skills they would benefit from. Hence, men should be feminists, not just women!

 

 

Notes on Judith Butler, Gender Trouble - sexual and gender idea is a 'performance'!

Butler looks at the traditional view of a "continuum" of sexuality from gender.

E.g

bilogical sex > gender > sexuality

She argues we can "subvert" the continuum by performing our genders in diverse ways - and take on fluid (changing over time) queer identities.

biological sex / gender / sexuality - all free floating and changable  across time and experience.

 

 

 

Extension reading: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/40428_Chapter2.pdf

 

Review Questions from James Arvanitakis' book: Gender

 

1. What is gender, how does it differe from sex?

2. How do you 'do' or 'perform' (Butler) gender?

2. How can we distinguish between what is natural and what is cultural in relation to sex and gender?

3. Consider what you do to your body; how do you interact verbally and non-verbally; and the activities you engage in. How are theres gendered or gender nuetral?

4. What are some of the problems people face when they do not conform to ideals of masculinity and femininity?

5. How have you been advantaged or disadvantaged because of your gender?

6. Do you think someone's gender shapes their life choices? How?

7. In what ways have you been socialised to meet gender norms?

8. What is the role of various institutions in your life in assisting to establish what is socially expected of males and females?

9. What social pressures have contributed to the way you do/perform your gender?

 

 

Mannheim's Theory

 

Applying Mannheim’s theory to a film study:

 

Persopolis

 

 

Question

Examine the life course transitions experienced by Marjane in ‘Persopolis’ and evaluate Karl Mannheim’s theory of generations

List key social events or shared experiences (micro and macro) that define Marjane’s ‘generation’ of Iranians.

 

• List and discuss topics of historical conscienceness for Marjane (e.g Islam, womens’ roles….)

• How does the socialisation of marjane and her generation affect behaviour, beliefs and world views?

• What is the role of mortality or biology in defining Marjane’s generation (e.g., birth/parenthood/death)

• Not all people living in the same time share the same experiences. Discuss in relation to Marjane and her European friends

 

(Extra notes - abbreviated from Christopher Linning's notes)

Karl Mannheim (1923) defined a generation as a cohort of individuals who experienced the same key social event/s during their youth.

Historical consciousness existed within generations

Generations affected how people behaved, felt and thought

Generations are formed around a key socio-historical event

The biological relationship with social generations is two-fold:

• Our mortality sets biological parameters to the cohort

• Social generations are often formed through a shared experience (event) that occurred during the cohort's youth

The nature of time - not all people living at the same time share the same experiences.

So although two or more social generations can experience quantitatively identical time, sociological differences between social generations leads each generation to experience and approach the same social event differently. So qualitative time is measured through social differences within and between generations.

Individuals are shaped by their socio-historical circumstances (biography).

Then, through their shared historical consciousness (generation) individuals shape society and so effect the history of society. 

Every generation has the potential to develop a distinct and original consciousness.

Normally shifts in norms occur as old generations die off, while new generations engage with and reinterpret pre-existing social and cultural knowledge.

 During periods of rapid social change, the new generations force their distinct consciousness into society and society responds by accommodating this new perspective.  

 

 

If you want, you can read my article on identity, motherhood and class here 

And on the construction of gender in girls here