Socialisation, culture and identity, including primary and secondary socialisation, the agencies of socialisation, norms, values, roles, the nature versus nurture debate and feral children.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain socialisation, culture and identity; the difference between primary and secondary socialisation; the agencies of socialisation; the key terms norms, values and roles; and the nature versus nurture debate, including the evidence from feral children. These are the basic building-block concepts used throughout the course.

Socialisation

Socialisation is what makes us social beings: it turns a biological human into a member of a particular culture. It is a lifelong process, not something that stops after childhood, because we are continually learning the norms of new groups we join, such as a workplace or a new school.

Agencies of socialisation

Each agency teaches in its own way. The family teaches first behaviour and language; education adds the norms of the wider society and the hidden curriculum; the peer group teaches how to fit in with others of the same age; the media spreads ideas, role models and norms; religion teaches moral values; and the workplace teaches the norms of working life. Together they build a person's identity.

Norms, values and roles

Sociologists use precise terms for the things we learn, and exams test the differences directly:

• Norms are the expected rules of behaviour in a particular situation, such as queuing, saying please or not talking loudly in a library.
• Values are the general beliefs about what is important and worthwhile in a society, such as honesty, respect for life or the importance of education.
• Roles are the patterns of behaviour expected of someone in a particular position, such as a teacher, a parent or a student.

These combine to make up a society's culture, its whole way of life, and they shape each person's identity (their sense of who they are, including aspects such as gender, ethnicity, class and nationality).

Nature versus nurture

The nature versus nurture debate asks whether our behaviour is determined mainly by nature (our genes and biology) or by nurture (how we are raised and socialised). Sociologists stress nurture. The strongest evidence is the study of feral children: children raised without normal human contact who, when found, could not speak, walk upright normally or follow social norms. This suggests that without socialisation, recognisably human behaviour does not develop on its own, supporting the view that we are made by nurture, not simply born with our behaviour fixed by nature.