Some important facts on Socialization

(1) Socialization, according to Maclver, “is the process by which social beings establish wider and profounder relationships with one another, in which they become more bound up with, and more perceptive of the personality of themselves and of others and build up the complex structure of nearer and wider association.”

(2) Kimball Young writes, “Socialization will mean the process of inducting individual into the social and cultural world; of making him a particular member in society and its various groups and inducting him to accept the norms and values of that society…. Socialization is definitely a matter of learning and not of biological inheritance”. It is through the process of socialization that the new born individual is moulded into a social being and men find their fulfillment within society. Man becomes what he is by socialization.”

(3) Bogardus defines socialization as the “process of working together, of developing group responsibility, of being guided by the welfare needs of others.”

(4) According to Ogburn “Socialization is the process by which the individual learns to conform to the norms of the group.”

(5) Ross defined socialization as the development of the feeling in associates and their growth in capacity and will to act together.” Through the process of socialization the individual becomes a social person and attains personality.

(6) Gillin and Gillin write, “By the term ‘socialization’ we mean the process by which individual develops into a functioning member of the group according to its standards, conforming to its modes, observing its traditions and adjusting himself to the social situations.” Socialization is the process whereby the individual acquires the conventional patterns of human behaviour.

(7) According to Lundberg, socialization consists of the “complex processes of interaction through which the individual learns the habits, skills, beliefs and standards of judgment that are necessary for his effective participation in social group and communities.” “Socialization is a learning that enables the learner to perform social roles.

(8) According to Green, “Socialization is the process by which the child acquires a cultural content, along with selfhood and personality.”

(9) According to Horton and Hunt, “Socialization is the process whereby one internalizes norms of his groups, so that a distinct “self emerges, unique to this individual.”

(10) H.T. Mazumdar defines socialization as “the process whereby original nature is transform into human nature and the individual into person.”

Every man tries to adjust himself to the condition and environment predominantly determined the society of which he is a member. If he fails to do so, he becomes a social deviant and is brought back into line by the efforts of the group of which he is a member. This process of adjustment may I termed socialization. It is the opposite of individualization. It is a process of the expansion of the se It develops in him the community feeling.

Socialization and Sociality

Socialization may be differentiated from sociality and socialism. Sociality is a quality, socialization is a process. Sociality may mean the capacity to mix with others, to enter into relations with them easily and comfortably. Man is a socialized animal, though he may not possess very much sociality in the common sense of the term. In the process of socialization one comes to acquire the quality of sociality Socialization and Socialism

Socialism:

Socialism is a theory, not a quality or a process. It is a theory of future structure c society. So much vagueness surrounds this word ‘socialism’ that it is very difficult to define it in exact terms. Every person and party brand themselves as socialist.

Very appropriately Joad had compared socialism to a hat which has lost its shape because everyone wears it. In a stricter sense socialism is the theory that the means of production, exchange and distribution should be owned and controlled either by the state or by other associations directly responsible to community.

Such ownership will result in a more equitable distribution of wealth, security for the people against poverty, disease and ignorance. In any case socialism concerns itself with what ought to be.

Socialization and Maturation

Socialization may also be distinguished from ‘maturation’. Maturation refers primarily to the physical and chemical processes of development over which man has comparatively little control. It is the growing up and gradual changing of the organism.

Socialization is a process of learning through which he acquires the habits and patterned behaviour. It designates all of the social processes and pressures by which the norms and standards of a group or community are inculcated in the beliefs and behaviours of the individual members.