Resocialization in Total Institutions

In certain situations, people are voluntarily (or sometimes involuntarily) resocialized within a highly controlled social environment (P. Rose, 1979:320). Resocialization is particularly effective when it occurs within a total institution. Erving Goffman (1961) coined the term total institutions to refer to institutions, such as prisons, the mili­tary, mental hospitals, and convents, which regu­late all aspects of a person's life under a single authority. The total institution is generally cut off from the rest of society and therefore provides for all the needs of its members. Quite literally, the crew of a merchant vessel at sea becomes part of a total institution. So elaborate are its require­ments, so all-encompassing are its activities, that a total institution often represents a miniature soci­ety.

Goffman (1961) has identified four common traits of total institutions. First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and are under the control of a single authority. Second, any ac­tivities within the institution are conducted in the company of others in the same circumstances— for example, novices in a convent or army re­cruits. Third, the authorities devise rules and schedule activities without consulting partici­pants. Finally, all aspects of life within a total in­stitution are designed to fulfill the purpose of the organization. Thus, all activities in a monastery are centered on prayer and communion with God (P. Rose et al., 1979:321-322).

Individuality is often lost within total institu­tions. For example, upon entering prison to begin "doing time," a person may experience the humiliation of a degradation ceremony as he or she is stripped of clothing, jewelry, and other per­sonal possessions (H. Garfinkel, 1956). Even the person's self is taken away to some extent; the prison inmate loses his or her name and becomes known to authorities as No. 72716. From this point on, daily routines are scheduled with little or no room for personal initiative. The institution is experienced as an overbearing social environ­ment; the individual becomes secondary and rather invisible.

Goff man's concept of a total institution alerts us to the negative aspects of depriving people of contact with the larger society. The power of such institutions in shaping people's behavior was dis­turbingly illustrated in a famous experiment by Philip Zimbardo (1972, 1974; С Haney et al., 1973). He and a team of social psychologists care­fully screened more than 70 college students for participation in a simulated prison. By a flip of a coin, half were arbitrarily designated as prison­ers, the others as guards. The guards were al­lowed to make up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect.

After only six days of operation, Zimbardo and his colleagues were forced to end the experiment because the student guards had begun to take pleasure in cruel treatment of prisoners. About a third was tyrannical in their arbitrary use of power, while the remaining guards did not agree with this tough approach. At the same time, the prisoners meekly accepted their confinement and mistreatment. More recently, sociologist Ivan Fahs conducted several replications of Zimbardo's model prison experiment over a four-year period; he came to the same disturbing find­ings (Greene, 1987a).

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

As we have seen, American culture is defined by rather gradual movements from one stage of so­cialization to the next. The lifelong socialization process involves many different social forces which influence our lives and alter our self-images. The family is the most important agent of socialization in the United States, especially for children. Four other agents of socialization will be given particular attention in this chapter: the school, the peer group, the mass media, and the workplace.

Family

The family is the institution most closely associ­ated with the process of socialization. Obviously, one of its primary functions is the care and rear­ing of children. We experience socialization first as babies and infants living in families; it is here that we develop an initial sense of self. Most par­ents seek to help their children become compe­tent adolescents and self-sufficient adults, which mean socializing them into the norms and values of both the family and the larger society. In this process, adults themselves experience socializa­tion as they adjust to becoming spouses, parents, and in-laws (Gecas, 1981).

The lifelong process of learning begins shortly after birth. Since newborns can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel heat, cold, and pain, they orient themselves to the surrounding world. Human beings, especially family members, constitute an important part of the social environment of the newborn. People minister to the baby's needs by feeding, cleansing, and carrying the baby.

The family of newborn and other caretakers is not concerned with teaching social skills per se. Nevertheless, babies are hardly asocial. An infant enters an organized society, becomes part of a generation, and typically enters into a family. Depending on how they are treated, infants can develop social attachments and dependency on others.

Most infants go through a relatively formal period of socialization generally called habit train­ing. Schedules are imposed for eating and sleep­ing, the termination of breast or bottle feeding, and the acceptance of new foods. In these and other ways, infants can be viewed as objects of socialization, yet they also function as socializers. Even as the behavior of a baby is being modified by interactions with people and the environment, the baby is causing others to change their behav­ior patterns. He or she converts adults into moth­ers and fathers, who, in turn, assist the baby in progressing into childhood (Rheingold, 1969).

As both Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead noted, the development of the self is a critical aspect of the early years of one's life. In the United States, such social development in­cludes exposure to cultural assumptions regard­ing sex differences. The term gender roles refer to expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females. For example, "toughness" has been traditionally seen as masculine—and desirable only in men—while "tenderness" has been viewed as feminine. As we will see in Chapter 10, other cultures do not nec­essarily assign these qualities to each gender in the way that American culture does.

As the primary agents of childhood socializa­tion, parents play a critical role in guiding chil­dren into those gender roles deemed appropriate in a society. Other adults, older siblings, the mass media, and religious and educational institutions also have noticeable impact on a child's socializa­tion into feminine and masculine norms. A cul­ture may require that one sex or the other take primary responsibility for socialization of chil­dren, economic support of the family, or reli­gious or intellectual leadership.

Psychologist Shirley Weitz (1977:60-110) has suggested that differential treatment of children by adults is an influential aspect of gender-role socialization. Let us consider a hypothetical ex­ample of differential treatment of children which begins in the family. Ron and Louise are twins who both show an unusual interest in science at an early age. For his birthdays, Ron is given chemistry sets, telescopes, microscopes, and the like; however, despite asking for similar gifts, Louise is given miniature dollhouses, beautiful dresses, and dancing lessons.

When the twins are in junior high school, teachers take note of Ron's love for science. They encourage him to do special projects, to help with their laboratory work, and to join the science club. Louise is given no such encouragement; in fact, one teacher considers her fascination with astronomy "strange" for a girl. By the twins' high school years, Ron is well known as a "science whiz." The guidance counselor suggests that he attend a college with a strong science program in order to achieve his goal of becoming a biologist. Louise has realized that she would like to become an astronomer, but the counselor and her parents pressure her into preparing for a career as an early childhood teacher—a career which they see as more suitable for a woman.

During their college years, Ron and Louise might develop self-images as "scientist" and "teacher," respectively. On the other hand, Lou­ise might get to college, switch her major, and become an astronomer despite everyone's opposi­tion. Neither of these young people is a passive actor who will inevitably follow the traditional gender roles of American society. Yet it can be extremely difficult to pursue a career, or any other type of life choice, if one's parents, teach­ers, and the society as a whole seem to be telling you that you are unmasculine or unfeminine for doing so. Without question, differential socializa­tion has a powerful impact on the development of American females and males.

Like other elements of culture, socialization patterns are not fixed. There has, for example, been a sustained challenge to traditional Ameri­can gender-role socialization in the last 15 years, owing in good part to the efforts of the feminist movement (see Chapter 10). Nevertheless, de­spite such changes, children growing up in the 1980s are hardly free of traditional gender roles. As Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1981:380), a founder and editor of Ms. Magazine, wondered, how many parents would move a 6-year-old girl's toy chest into the room of their 6-year-old boy with confidence that he would enjoy its contents?

Interactionists remind us that socialization con­cerning not only masculinity and femininity, but also marriage and parenthood, begins in child­hood as a part of family life. Children observe their parents as they express affection, deal with finances, quarrel, complain about in-laws, and so forth. This represents an informal process of an­ticipatory socialization. The child develops a ten­tative model of what being married and being a parent are like.

As noted earlier, children function within the family as agents of socialization themselves. The term reverse socialization refers to the process whereby people normally being socialized are at the same time socializing their socializers. For example, young people may affect the way their parents (and other adults) dress, eat, and even think. Sociologist John Peters (1985) studied re­verse socialization by surveying the parents of his college students in Canada. Peters found that these parents had been influenced by their chil­dren in such areas as sports, politics; clothing, physical appearance, and sexuality (see also Thorne, 1987:95). Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1970:65-91) has suggested that reverse socialization is greatest in societies undergoing rapid social change; in such societies, the young socialize the old to new customs and values.

School

Like the family, schools have an explicit mandate to socialize Americans—and especially children— into the norms and values of our culture. As con­flict theorists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) have observed, American schools foster competition through built-in systems of reward and punishment, such as grades and evaluations by teachers. Consequently, a child who is working intently to learn a new skill can nevertheless come to feel stupid and unsuccessful. However, as the self matures, children become capable of increas­ingly realistic assessments of their intellectual, physical, and social abilities.

Functionalists point out that, as agents of so­cialization, schools fulfill the function of teaching recruits the values and customs of the larger soci­ety. Conflict theorists concur with this observa­tion, but add that schools can reinforce the divis­ive aspects of society, especially those of social class. For example, American higher education is quite costly despite the existence of financial aid programs. Students from affluent backgrounds thus have an advantage in gaining access to uni­versities and professional training. At the same time, less affluent young people may never re­ceive the preparation that would qualify them for our society's best-paying and most prestigious jobs. The contrast between the functionalist and conflict views of education will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 16.

In teaching students the values and customs of the larger society, American schools have tradi­tionally socialized children into conventional gen­der roles. Professors of education Myra Sadker and David Sadker (1985:54) note that "although many believe that classroom sexism disappeared in the early '70s, it hasn't." They headed a three-year study in which field researchers observed students in more than 100 fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade classes in four states and the District of Columbia. The researchers found that teach­ers commonly engage in differential treatment of students based on gender. Teachers praise boys more than girls and offer boys more academic assistance. In addition, they reward boys for aca­demic assertiveness (for example, calling out answers without raising their hands) while reprimanding girls for similar behavior.