Page 37 - Flipbook: Sociology Shortcuts Issue 3

powerpoint

presentation

This Presentation identifies a range of primary and secondary socialising agencies - family,
peers, education, workplace, media and religion - and provides some simple information /
examples for each in five categories:

• Behaviour

• Roles

• Norms

• Values

• Sanctions.

The basic ideas behind the
Presentation are two-fold:

Firstly, to develop a simple,
consistent, way for students
to understand the role and
function of different socialising agencies – hence the fact each agency is considered in terms of
the same 5 categories – as an early attempt to introduce the notion of transferable concepts.

This is the idea that if you can remember a concept or, in this instance, set of related concepts,
that can be applied in one context (such as the family) you may also be able to apply the same
concept/s in another context (such as the media). It doesn’t always work, but in a lot of
instances it does.

Secondly, and somewhat less ambitiously, the main idea was to present an example or two in
each category for each agency (such as Family Values or Religious Norms) that could be used
as discussion prompts. Students can use the given examples as a way of both generating their
own examples and, if you have the time and inclination, taking them a little more deeply into
the topic.

For example, while the conventional way of looking at agencies of socialisation is to divide
them into two groups – primary and secondary – is this always as simple as it seems?

Education, for example, is frequently cited as a secondary socialising agency (which it is) – but
it may also contain primary socialising elements (embodied in the relationship, for example,
between teachers and students, students and students etc.).

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