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Social order can exist only if there is an effective system of social control. It ensures that people generally behave in expected and approved ways and is vital for life of any society. Social control is usually divided into formal and informal controls. Formal control is exercised by the police and government. Informal control works through the reaction of other people in the course of everyday life. Social control starts with the socialization process, which ensures that everyone follows the norms of the society.
The formal control is the last resort and starts to work only when informal control fails. In fact, only a tiny fraction of social behavior can be policed by formal agencies of control, and most sanctions are applied informally. Consequently, social order cannot exist without social control, which, in turn, cannot be efficient without socialization. Socialization is so important because through it the ways a society expects person to act in different situations are learnt. (Robertson, p. 64) Socialization concerns almost every side of our life.
If you help your neighbors and are polite to them, you will be rewarded with smiles and popularity. If you use bad language in the wrong company or offer your left hand rather than your right when someone wants to shake hands with you, you will receive raised eyebrows, glares, stares, or comments designed to make you uncomfortable and therefore more likely to conform to social expectations in the future. These all are ways socialization works as a tool of social control. The socialization process involves many different influences that affect the individual throughout life. The most important of these influences are agents of socialization. Four of these agents the family, the school, tee peer group, and the mass medicare especially important in modern societies, for they affect almost everyone in a powerful and lasting way.
The family is without doubt the most significant agent of socialization in all societies. One reason for its importance is that it has the main responsibility for socializing children in the crucial early years of life. The family teaches the basic rules and pattern of social behavior which stay with a person pretty much for the whole life. Psychologists believe that most reasons of our behavior have roots in our childhood. (Robertson, p. 194) During family socialization occurs a transformation of human infant from a helpless organism to a person able to participate effectively in society. The next agent of socialization, the school, is formally charged by society with the task of socializing the kids in particular skills and values. In school children learn that they should respect and obey without question the commands of those who have social control over them.
School subtly socializes children for their later roles in the work force where punctuality and obedience are highly valued. Peer groups play very important role especially during school in college years of life. They give sense of belonging, and self-worth, and require conformity. They are a buffer to the adult world. Mass media, as another agent of socialization, introduces a person to the wider world, to great number of goods and different viewpoints.
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Research essay sample on Social Control And Socialization
