Culture pertains to those aspects of society which are learnt, rather than inherited. The process by which children or other members of society learn the way of life of their society is called socialization. Socialization is the primary channel for the transmission of culture over time and across generations.

Animals low down on the evolutionary scale are capable of fending for themselves very soon after they are born, with little or no help from adults. Higher animals, however, have to learn appropriate ways of behaviour – the young are often completely helpless at birth and have to be cared for by their elders. Human infants are the most helpless of all; a human child cannot survive unaided for at least the first four or five years of life. Socialization, therefore, is the process whereby the helpless infant gradually becomes self-aware, knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which s/he is born. Socialization is not a kind of ‘cultural programming’ in which the child absorbs passively the influences with which s/he comes into contact. Even the most recent newborn infant has needs and demands that affect the behaviour of those responsible for its care: the child is from the beginning an active being.

Socialization connects the different generations to one another. The birth of a child alters the lives of those who are responsible for its upbringing – and they themselves therefore undergo new learning experiences. Parenting usually ties the activities of adults to children for the remainder of all of their lives. Older people remain parents when they become grandparents, of course, thus forging another set of relationships connecting different generations with each other. Socialization, therefore, should be seen as a lifelong process in which human behaviour is continually shaped by social interactions. It allows individuals to develop themselves and their potential, to learn and to make adjustments.

Social Roles

Through the process of socialization, individuals learn about social roles – socially defined expectations that a person in a given social position follows. The social role of ‘doctor’, for example, encompasses a set of behaviours that should be enacted by all individual doctors, regardless of their personal opinions or outlooks. Because all doctors share this role, it is possible to speak in general terms about the professional role behaviour of doctors irrespective of the specific individuals who occupy the positions.

Some sociologists, particularly those associated with the functionalist school, regard social roles as fixed and relatively unchanging parts of a society’s culture. They are taken as social facts. According to such a view, individuals learn the expectations that surround social positions in their particular culture and perform those roles largely as they have been defined. Social roles do not involve negotiation or creativity – rather, they are prescriptive in containing and directing an individual’s behaviour. Through socialization, individuals internalize social roles and learn how to carry them out.

This view, however, is mistaken. It suggests that individuals simply take on roles, rather than creating or negotiating them. In fact, socialization is a process in which humans can exercise agency; they are not simply passive subjects waiting to be instructed or programmed. Individuals come to understand and assume social roles through an ongoing process of social interaction.