Notes · SociologyUK · A-Levels

Socialisation, Culture and Identity (core theme)

This core theme is the conceptual foundation of the whole A-Level: how human beings acquire the norms, values and roles of their society through socialisation, and how, in the process, they come to have a culture and a sense of self. It runs through every substantive topic - family, education, media, crime - and frames the discipline's central question of how far we are shaped by society and how far we shape ourselves.

4 sections~18 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 2 · Standard 1 · Advanced 1

T·0111 / 15

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of culture, norms and values, the agencies of socialisation, and the concept of identityAO2 · Apply the concepts of socialisation and identity to specific institutions and to the substantive topics of the courseAO3 · Analyse and evaluate structural, social action and postmodern accounts of how far identity is socially determined, reaching a judgement

Operators:outline and explaindefineapplyanalyseevaluateassessdiscuss

basic level

AS-Level expects secure command of the core vocabulary - culture, norms, values, roles, primary and secondary socialisation - and the ability to identify agencies of socialisation.

higher level

The full A-Level requires you to weigh structural against action and postmodern accounts of identity and to carry these concepts into evaluative essays on the family, education, the media and crime.

Depth

Text

Contents · 4 sections

Socialisation, Culture and Identity (core theme)

Culture, norms, values and types of culture#

FoundationAQA 7192 core theme 1DfE GCE Sociology subject content

Types of culture

Fig. 1Sociologists distinguish several types of culture; the boundaries between them are contested rather than natural.

Culture is the entire way of life of a group or society - the shared beliefs, values, customs, knowledge, language and material objects that are learned and transmitted from one generation to the next. Sociologists distinguish material culture (physical artefacts such as tools, buildings and technology) from non-material culture (the ideas, norms and values that give those objects meaning). The central sociological insight is that culture is learned, not biologically inherited: what feels natural to us - how close to stand to a stranger, what to eat, how to grieve - is in fact the product of a particular society at a particular time. This is why sociologists treat human behaviour as socially constructed rather than instinctive.

The building blocks of culture are norms, values, roles and status. Values are general beliefs about what is worthwhile, good or desirable - for example a belief in fairness, in the importance of educational achievement, or in respect for private property. Norms are the specific, situational rules that put values into practice: queuing, lowering your voice in a library, or wearing black to a funeral. Roles are the sets of norms attached to a particular social position (the role of teacher, parent or patient), and status is the social standing attached to a position, whether ascribed (fixed at birth, such as being born into an aristocratic family) or achieved (earned through effort, such as a professional qualification). Together these concepts explain how abstract values are translated into predictable everyday conduct.

Sociologists classify several types of culture. High culture refers to the cultural products historically associated with elite groups and seen as possessing special aesthetic worth - classical music, opera, the literary canon. Popular or mass culture refers to the cultural products consumed by the majority, often commercially produced and widely distributed, such as television, chart music and blockbuster films. Folk culture is the culture of ordinary people rooted in local tradition and community, while global culture describes the way media, migration and consumer brands have spread shared cultural products across national borders. Consumer culture emphasises the way identity and status are increasingly expressed through what we buy, and subculture refers to a group within a wider society whose norms and values differ in some respects from the mainstream.

The distinction between these types of culture is itself contested and reveals competing perspectives. Marxists and critical theorists (notably the Frankfurt School) argue that the elevation of high culture over mass culture serves the interests of dominant groups by presenting elite tastes as objectively superior, and that mass culture is a commercialised, standardised product that dulls critical thought. Bourdieu develops this by showing how tastes function as cultural capital - a resource that advantages the middle class in education and employment because their cultural preferences match those rewarded by institutions. Postmodernists, by contrast, argue that the boundary between high and popular culture has dissolved: in a media-saturated society, cultural products are endlessly mixed, sampled and recombined, and no single hierarchy of taste survives. This debate matters because it recurs in the topics of the media, education and stratification.

Worked example

Explaining that culture is learned, not natural

Using an example, explain how sociologists know that human behaviour is a product of culture rather than biology.

State the claim
Sociologists argue that most human behaviour is learned through socialisation rather than genetically fixed, because it varies enormously between societies.
Give comparative evidence
Practices treated as natural in one society - table manners, gender roles, ways of expressing grief - differ sharply in another. If they were instinctive, they would be universal.
Cite the extreme case
Documented cases of children raised in extreme isolation, who never acquired language or normal social behaviour, suggest that even seemingly basic human capacities depend on socialisation.
Draw the conclusion
The cross-cultural variation of behaviour and the isolation evidence together show that culture, not biology, is the main source of how we act.

Result: Because behaviour varies between cultures and fails to develop without socialisation, sociologists conclude that human conduct is socially constructed - learned as culture rather than inherited as instinct.

Typical mistakes

Confusing norms with values - treating them as synonyms. Values are broad beliefs; norms are the specific rules that enact them. State the relationship, do not conflate the terms.
Treating 'high' and 'popular' culture as neutral, obvious categories rather than as contested labels that carry a hidden judgement about whose culture is worthwhile.

Active revision

Outline and explain two ways in which sociologists distinguish culture from instinct or biology. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

Socialisation and the agencies that transmit culture#

FoundationAQA 7192 core theme 1DfE GCE Sociology subject content

Agencies of socialisation and the self

Fig. 2Primary socialisation (the family) and secondary agencies together transmit the culture that forms the socialised self.

Socialisation is the lifelong process through which individuals learn the culture of their society - its norms, values, language and roles - and so become competent members of it. Sociologists divide the process into primary socialisation, which takes place in early childhood, overwhelmingly within the family, and secondary socialisation, which takes place later and more widely through education, the peer group, the media, religion and the workplace. Primary socialisation is regarded as especially powerful because it lays down the deepest, most taken-for-granted assumptions - basic language, emotional bonds and a first sense of right and wrong - before the child is able to question them.

The family is the first and most intensive agency. Functionalists such as Parsons argue that it performs the essential task of internalising society's central values so effectively that they come to feel like the child's own, giving society a stable foundation of shared belief. Marxists reinterpret the same process as the transmission of ruling-class ideology, socialising children into acceptance of hierarchy and obedience. Feminists such as Oakley emphasise that the family transmits gender norms through the differential treatment of boys and girls - what she describes as manipulation, canalisation, verbal appellations and differential domestic activities - so that gendered behaviour comes to seem natural.

Secondary agencies extend and sometimes complicate this early learning. Education transmits both an official curriculum and, sociologists argue, a hidden curriculum of punctuality, obedience and competition; the peer group exerts powerful informal pressure to conform, especially in adolescence; religion transmits moral codes and, for Durkheim, a sense of the sacred that binds members together; and the workplace socialises adults into occupational norms. The media have become an increasingly central agency, presenting models of behaviour, identity and consumption on a scale earlier generations never experienced - a theme developed fully in the media topic.

The relationship between these agencies is not always harmonious, and this is where evaluation begins. Agencies may reinforce one another - the family and the school both rewarding effort and respect - or they may conflict, as when peer-group values pull against those of the family or school. This tension is important for later topics: Willis's study of anti-school 'lads', for instance, shows a peer subculture actively resisting the values the school tries to transmit. The very existence of such resistance is used by interactionists and postmodernists to challenge the more deterministic, top-down picture of socialisation offered by functionalism and structural Marxism, in which individuals appear as passive recipients of a culture simply poured into them.

Worked example

Applying the agencies to a scenario

A teenager learns from home to value hard work, but among friends it is 'uncool' to try hard at school. Using sociological concepts, explain what is happening.

Identify the agencies
The family (primary socialisation) and the peer group (secondary socialisation) are both acting on the teenager, transmitting different norms.
Name the process
This is a conflict between agencies of socialisation: the value of effort transmitted by the family is contradicted by an informal peer norm.
Link to theory
It illustrates why the functionalist picture of smooth value consensus is incomplete; interactionists note the individual must actively negotiate between competing sources.
Extend to a topic
It anticipates Willis's account of anti-school subcultures, where peer values directly resist the school's - showing socialisation is contested, not automatic.

Result: The scenario shows conflicting socialisation between family and peer group, which challenges any view of socialisation as a smooth, one-way transmission of shared values.

Typical mistakes

Listing agencies of socialisation without explaining WHAT each transmits or HOW - a list is description (AO1) with no analysis (AO3).
Presenting socialisation as wholly successful and one-directional, ignoring resistance, conflict between agencies, and the individual's active role.

Active revision

Outline and explain two agencies of secondary socialisation and the norms and values they transmit. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

The social construction of identity#

StandardAQA 7192 core theme 1DfE GCE Sociology subject content

Mead: the social formation of the self

Fig. 3For Mead the self is built up through language and role-taking, culminating in the dialogue between the spontaneous 'I' and the socialised 'me'.

Identity is a person's sense of who they are - the qualities, group memberships and characteristics through which they understand themselves and are recognised by others. Sociologists argue that identity is socially constructed: it is formed in interaction with others rather than fixed by biology, and it is assembled from the cultural materials a society makes available. A person's identity typically has many strands - class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, sexuality and disability among them - and these intersect, so that the experience of, say, being a woman is inflected by class and ethnicity rather than being a single uniform status.

Interactionist sociologists explain how identity emerges through the response of others. Cooley's idea of the looking-glass self captures the way we come to see ourselves as we imagine others see us, taking on the image reflected back. Mead develops this into a fuller account: through language and shared 'significant symbols', the child learns to take the role of the other, first of particular people and then of the 'generalised other' - the community's expectations as a whole. For Mead the self has two aspects, the spontaneous 'I' and the socialised 'me', and it is the constant dialogue between them that makes the self both a social product and a source of individual response. This is a crucial corrective to purely structural accounts, because it shows the individual as an active interpreter, not a blank slate.

Different dimensions of identity are constructed through distinctive processes. Gender identity is transmitted through gender-role socialisation in the family, school and media, so that behaviours labelled masculine or feminine come to feel natural. Ethnic and national identities are built partly through shared language, religion and history and partly, as Anderson argues of the nation, through an 'imagined community' of people who will never meet but feel a common belonging. Class identity is shaped by upbringing, tastes and, following Bourdieu, the cultural capital acquired at home. Each of these is developed at length in the culture and identity, stratification and crime topics.

The extent to which identity is imposed or chosen is the central evaluative debate, and it divides the perspectives sharply. For functionalists and structural Marxists, identity is largely determined by social position: we are socialised into the roles our place in the structure requires. For interactionists it is negotiated in interaction and can be actively managed. For postmodernists such as Bauman, identity in contemporary society has become fluid, fragmented and self-assembled - a 'pick-and-mix' constructed through consumption and media images rather than dictated by class or community. Critics counter that this overstates freedom: the resources for constructing identity are unequally distributed, and class, gender and ethnicity continue to constrain the identities realistically available to people. Holding these positions in tension, rather than simply asserting one, is what a strong AO3 answer does.

Worked example

Model essay plan: is identity freely chosen?

Plan a 20-mark answer evaluating the view that identity is freely chosen rather than socially determined.

Frame the debate (intro)
Set up the contrast: structural theories see identity as determined by social position; postmodernists see it as freely self-constructed. Signal a judgement to come.
The 'determined' case
Functionalism and Marxism: socialisation transmits the norms and identities the structure requires. Oakley on gender-role socialisation; Bourdieu on class habitus - identity is patterned by position.
The 'chosen' case
Interactionism (Mead, Goffman) shows identity actively managed in interaction; postmodernists (Bauman) argue consumption and media let people assemble a pick-and-mix identity.
Evaluate the choice claim
The freedom is unequal: the money, cultural capital and social acceptance needed to construct identities are unevenly distributed, so class, gender and ethnicity still constrain what is realistically available.
Reach a judgement
Conclude that identity is neither simply imposed nor freely chosen but actively constructed WITHIN structural limits - a synthesis rather than a one-sided answer.

Result: A top-band plan sets structural determinism against postmodern choice, evaluates the choice thesis using the unequal distribution of resources, and lands on a reasoned middle judgement - constrained construction - rather than juxtaposing the two views.

Typical mistakes

Treating identity as a single thing rather than a set of intersecting strands, so that class, gender and ethnicity are discussed as if they never interact.
Asserting the postmodern 'free to choose' view without evaluating it against the evidence that class, gender and ethnicity still constrain identity.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the view that identity is freely chosen rather than socially determined. (20 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

The individual and society: structure, action and postmodern views#

AdvancedAQA 7192 core theme 1DfE GCE Sociology subject content

Structure versus social action

Fig. 4Structural and action theories differ in the direction of explanation; structuration theory occupies the overlap, treating structure and action as two sides of one process.

Behind every debate about socialisation and identity lies the discipline's foundational question: what is the relationship between the individual and society? Structural (or macro) theories start with society as a whole and treat individuals as products of it. Functionalism sees society as a system that shapes members through value consensus to meet its needs; structural Marxism, especially in Althusser, sees individuals as bearers of positions in a system of class relations, their consciousness shaped by ideology. In both, the direction of explanation runs from society to the individual - people are, in large part, what their society makes them.

Social action (or micro) theories reverse the emphasis. Weber insisted that sociology must grasp the subjective meanings actors attach to their behaviour - verstehen, or empathetic understanding - and that society is ultimately built up out of these meaningful actions. Symbolic interactionists such as Mead and Blumer treat society as an ongoing accomplishment, continually created and re-created through interaction and the interpretation of symbols. Goffman's dramaturgical model pushes this furthest, portraying social life as a series of performances in which individuals actively manage the impressions others form of them. Here the direction of explanation runs from the individual to society: structures are the outcome of countless interactions, not a cage that precedes them.

Several theorists have tried to transcend this opposition rather than choose a side. Giddens's structuration theory argues that structure and action are two sides of the same process: social structures both constrain us and are the medium through which we act, and they exist only because we continually reproduce them in our actions - the 'duality of structure'. This offers a way of saying that we are simultaneously shaped by society and the makers of it, which many sociologists find more convincing than either pure structure or pure action.

Postmodern theory reframes the question again. Writers such as Bauman argue that the stable structures of modern society - secure class positions, lifelong occupations, settled communities - have given way to a fluid, uncertain 'liquid' condition in which individuals must continually construct and reconstruct their own identities and biographies. On this view neither old-style structural determinism nor a simple free individualism fits: people are compelled to choose, yet do so under conditions of insecurity they did not create. Evaluating these competing frameworks - structure, action, structuration and postmodernity - is the intellectual backbone of the theory strand, and the language introduced here recurs whenever an essay asks how far social behaviour is shaped by society.

Worked example

Evaluating the structure-action opposition

Assess whether the structure-action debate is best resolved by choosing a side or by synthesis.

State the poles
Structural theories explain from society down; action theories explain from the individual up. Each captures something the other misses.
The case for structure
Patterned inequalities in achievement, health and crime by class, gender and ethnicity are hard to explain by individual choice alone - they suggest structural forces.
The case for action
Yet those patterns are produced and reproduced in real interactions - labelling in classrooms, negotiation in courts - which structural theory cannot see.
The synthesis
Giddens's structuration holds that structures both constrain action and are reproduced by it, dissolving the either/or without denying either insight.
Judgement
Conclude that synthesis is more adequate than choosing a side, because the evidence shows structure and agency operating together.

Result: The strongest position treats structure and agency as mutually constituting: patterned inequality shows the force of structure, but that structure exists only through the interactions that reproduce it - the case for structuration over a one-sided answer.

Typical mistakes

Caricaturing action theories as claiming individuals are wholly free, or structural theories as claiming individuals are wholly passive - both positions are more qualified than that.
Ignoring attempts at synthesis (structuration) and so presenting the debate as an unbridgeable either/or.

Active revision

Outline and explain two differences between structural and social action theories in their view of the relationship between the individual and society. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology

AQA

AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification

Socialisation, Culture and Identity (core theme)

4 sections~18 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 2 · Standard 1 · Advanced 1

Socialisation, Culture and Identity (core theme)

Key points

Explaining that culture is learned, not natural

Key points

Applying the agencies to a scenario

Key points

Model essay plan: is identity freely chosen?

Key points

Evaluating the structure-action opposition

Sources

Socialisation, Culture and Identity (core theme)

Key points

Explaining that culture is learned, not natural

Key points

Applying the agencies to a scenario

Key points

Model essay plan: is identity freely chosen?

Key points

Evaluating the structure-action opposition

Sources