Socialization: Understanding the Process and Impact
Understanding Socialization Processes
What is Socialization?
Socialization refers to the processes by which individuals in a community assimilate social learning models and make them their own. This process shapes us into who we are and, paradoxically, allows us to develop autonomy, unique ideas, and opinions. It is through learning and education that we build our personality.
From this definition, we can extract the basic elements of the process:
- Stages
- Mechanisms
- Agents of socialization
Stages of Socialization
There are two key stages:
Primary Socialization: The individual acquires knowledge, values, patterns, symbols—ways of functioning, thinking, and feeling—typical of the groups and society into which they are integrated. This process begins at birth and continues throughout life but is most intense during childhood and youth. It can also occur in adulthood if the group or society changes drastically, for example, in the case of emigration.
Internalization: The lessons learned in the previous phase become an integral part of the personality structure, becoming part of oneself. The proportion varies from person to person. Once integrated, these cultural and social elements become ways of thinking and being. This process allows us to adapt, understand, and integrate into the group and society.
Internalization should not be understood fatalistically; there is always room for personal freedom. “Internalizing” means making elements our own, implying a certain originality, creativity, and personal contribution, not merely repetition or copying.
The Social Debt
Achievements and Social Responsibility
To be who we are, we need others. Sociality has evolved from intense forms of pressure to more permissive ones. Individualism, the social model of our time, argues that the sovereignty of the individual is above the group or power.
This assertion was a social achievement. Many human skills are emergent properties that have arisen from social relationships, the result of struggles, conquests, revolutions, commitment, and the effort of individuals united by ideas, values, and common causes.
These achievements have been most significant since modernity. We must remember our debts. The expression “social debt” began to be used in the philosophy of the Enlightenment: Kant and Fichte studied this heritage and its possibilities.
Speech as a Social Construct
Language is our ordinary means of communication. Verbal language is unique to humans, and its possibilities are the great difference that separates us from other animals. Philosophers have defined the human being as “homo loquens” (the talking being).
We are who we are because we communicate with others. The first philosophers used the term logos to describe this intimate relationship between thought and speech.
We must stress the social nature of this achievement. Since birth, we are received in a communication field that humanizes us, making us people and forging our personality. With communication, we construct and understand reality. Almost nothing is known of the world from experience: almost everything we know is because of language. Hence, we can say that everything exists because of language and communication.
Intelligence as a Social Achievement
Human intelligence is expressed and developed through language. There is no thought without language. Intelligence is a social achievement. This means that by living in society, we have been able to accumulate and enhance opportunities for our intelligence. We have evolved from primitive societies to more complex ones.
Moreover, this complexity involves an accumulation of problems of all kinds (ethical, political, etc.) but also an accumulation of knowledge and an ever-expanding repertoire of solutions.
This is the dynamic of human progress: we have an intelligence that must be shared because our problems are common. All individualism and autonomy of the individual within the group can only count on the complicity of others.
The Conquest and Learning of Freedom
One of the classic definitions of man is to be “free.” The socialization process also involves the exercise of human freedom. This can be seen at two levels:
Individual level: The ability to act freely is a learned ability. Freedom is not a real and stable property of human beings but a possibility culturally created by living in society. Like language, we learn to be free by first learning to control ourselves, obeying. The child learns to control, that is, to exercise their freedom.
Political level: Society offers a conquest of freedom and rights acquired throughout history. The history of human sociability is a story of struggles and victories to achieve a better life.
Thus, the rights and liberties won acquire an institutional value, guaranteed by the State’s force. The result is that by being born in a state that guarantees certain rights and freedoms, even before we can exercise them, we have them guaranteed. This is what we mean when we say that freedom is an achievement and a social debt.
The Institutionalization of Education
We are not born free and intelligent beings; we learn to be so through education and learning from all social actors. That is why education is so important to human life. There is no known culture that has not devoted an important place to education. So it should be included among social achievements.
Developed societies increasingly devote more resources to education systems. When it comes to improving education, we refer to the Enlightenment ideal of humanity to “improve.” If who we are depends largely on education, it means we can intervene in it and choose our life projects.
This assertion is based on a common ethical project based on dignity and human rights. This is a momentous issue for human life.