How Are People Socialized - Essay Example

? How Are We Socialized School How Are We Socialized Socialization is a result of both an individual’s nature and the way he/she is nurtured by the parents, guardians, and/or the society. The first and the foremost role in the process of socialization is played by an individual’s nature and his/her personality traits. People differ in their level of exposure to the society. What fundamentally makes the difference is the confidence. Two boys who study in the same school and are class-mates vary in their number of friends. One has many friends while the other has none. Both boys come from the same family background and their economic status is also equal, yet their social skills vary so much that they look the opposite of each other. The boy who has many friends has very fine oratory skills combined with an exceptionally high level of emotional intelligence. He knows what to say when and how so as to please the listeners and to make them want to hear more. The boy has very good amount of general knowledge and can speak on any topic that is under discussion. Even if he has limited knowledge of the subject, he would still find ways to join the on-going conversation. He might not be an active speaker, but knows how to be a part of the discussion. He participates by asking others questions about things he does not know and raises objections with his common sense to the explanations he is made by others. This enables him to keep the conversation going. Thus, it hardly matters if he has prior knowledge about the subject of discussion or not. On the other hand, the other boy does not join group discussions. He also has equal amount of general knowledge, but he has very poor oratory skills. He is not sufficiently present-minded so as to tackle the witty comments of the class fellows. He does not like when somebody makes fun of him, but cannot hide that dislike because he is not too intelligent. Thus, in an attempt to escape the mockery, the boy prefers to be alone rather than in some group. As time passes, he becomes used to living like this and thus becomes socially excluded. Had the boy had good oratory skills and the emotional intelligence of the magnitude of the other boy, he would also have many friends and his social network would have been much stronger and vaster than it is. The boy cannot help it because anger and agitation is just part of his nature. He cannot let go of it when someone makes fun of him and mockery among friends is the most common thing in every part of the world. Friends don’t spend time praising one another, particularly when they are boys. They are nasty and like to do such nasty things as calling other names and making witty jokes. In such circumstances, people with high tendency to be patient, good amount of emotional intelligence and nice oratory skills are stronger socially than the rest. Since these qualities are intrinsically linked with an individual’s nature, so nature plays a fundamental role in the way people socialize. The way our parents nurture us in the initial days of our childhood has a life-long impact on our social skills. The best example in the history that supports this argument is that of Genie, who was a girl born with completely normal senses, but her senses were reduced to the level of a mentally retarded girl as a result of the abuse she was offered by her parents. Genie was made to live in a room for full thirteen years of her life since birth. At the age of thirteen, when she was discovered and her case was brought in the limelight, she wore diapers and walked and sounded like animals. She barely ever said something, but when she tried to, she sounded too much like an animal. “The social worker noticed that the "small withered girl" had "a halting gait" and "hands held up as though resting on an invisible rail," which gave her a curious, unnaturally stooped posture” (Georgetown University, n.d.). The pretty girl was brought up in complete isolation from the world. She saw very less and so she knew very less. Her abilities to socialize were marred in the first thirteen years of her life, though she started to improve as a social person when her environment was changed and people started to take care of her. The case of Genie provides robust evidence in support of the role of nurture and environment in an individual’s social skills. The environment we are grown in also plays a cardinal role in the way we socialize, people we socialize with, and the extent to which we socialize. There are several factors that shape the environment in which we grow up. These factors include but are not limited to religion, history and culture. Amongst the myriad of factors that shape our environment, one that is usually deemed the most important particularly in the conservative societies is religion. Most religions offer complete guidance upon the subject of socialization. Religions guide the way we should dress up, the way we should react to the offenders, the way we should speak, the way we should live and the way we should behave in literally all areas of life. One such religion whose instructions are most obvious is Islam. Practicing Muslim women wear Hijab. Although Hijab is just a dress and wearing it is apparently just a religious obligation upon the Muslim woman, yet it has an undeniable impact upon the way Muslim women socialize. The Hijab places restrictions upon the level to which the woman can get intimate with a man who is her colleague, friend or class-mate. Although the Muslim woman does not say it, yet the Hijab speaks on behalf of her to the man that his interaction with her by no means signifies lust. By covering her whole body, the woman hides the significance of her body in her interaction which is a very important element in socialization since our bodies play a primary role in influencing the image we cast on the other person. We like being with people who dress nicely and who look beautiful. For many, it hardly makes a difference what kind of a person an individual is by nature. As long as he/she looks good, they are happy giving them company. In the popular culture, women are seen as objects of sex. They are portrayed in sexual terms in the media as well as in literature. The women we see in the video games and in the popular music videos are barely dressed. Having seen too much of them, the message that women are objects of sex becomes ingrained in our mind. In such background, Muslim women tend to project a different identity that is independent of sex, and this is why they become very obvious in the society. Islam also instructs Muslim women to keep their gaze low while talking to the men that are not related to them. This brings a drastic change in the way we are used to socialize with the women. Thus, religion plays a fundamental role in the way we socialize, but for the people who practice it. Culture also plays a very important role in our socialization. There is an obvious divide between the way men and women socialize in the East and in the West. A vast majority of the Eastern countries have very conservative culture. Women in the many Eastern countries are still living the life of the woman from the Victorian Era. In the Victorian Era, women were not allowed to decide things for themselves. They were married by their parents at a very young age and they had to be nothing more than a wife and a mother for the rest of their lives. In the culture of the Victorian Era, women were denied access to politics and they had minimal representation in the media. The society was dominated by men and women had to adapt themselves according to the desires of their men. Likewise, in many Eastern societies in the present age, women are forbidden to make friends or socialize with men. Women are educated in separate schools that are meant just for them. Women don’t choose life-partners for themselves. Their parents choose them for their daughters. Thus, male domination still persists in many countries in the East. On the contrary, the Western culture has generally eradicated male domination from the society and has brought men and women on equal footing. In a vast majority of countries in the West, a significant population of people chooses to cohabit rather than marrying. In cohabitation, partners interact and socialize with each other not in the capacity of a husband and a wife, but in the capacity of a girlfriend and a boyfriend. The Western culture associates completely different societal roles to the genders. There is no division in their roles on the base of gender. A woman is as eligible to work as a man is and a man is quite as eligible to be at home and babysit the children as a woman is. It is fundamentally because of the cultural divide between the East and the West that people migrating from the East towards the West experience a cultural shock after spending some time in the host country. Likewise, the East is a completely different world for the people who have grown up in the Western culture. Hence, the environment we grow up in has a fundamental influence on our tendency to socialize with people, both within our own gender and outside it. A girl who grows up in the West thinks that girls who grow up in the Eastern culture are chained in a bundle of restrictions throughout their life. Likewise, a girl that grows up in the East thinks that girls that grow up in the Western culture are provided with more freedom than they require. Thus, people’s trends for socialization are to much an extent the outcome of their cultural norms and traditions. Concluding, the way we socialize is controlled by numerous factors including our nature, nurture, environment, religion and culture. Our nature and nurture both are equally important determinants of our patterns of socialization. The only difference between the two is that the nature of an individual cannot be changed whereas it is possible to change the culture he/she is brought up in which would in turn totally change the environmental influences that depict the patterns of socialization for him/her. References: Georgetown University. (n.d.). Case 4 Genie, The Wild Child Research or Exploitation? Retrieved from http://highschoolbioethics.georgetown.edu/units/cases/unit3_4.html. Read More