Human Sociability and Socialization: Understanding Individual and Society Dynamics

Posted on Dec 19, 2024 in Social sciences

The Sociability of Human Beings

The tendency of humans to live in society.

Biological Foundations of Sociality

• Indeterminacy: Instinctively, humans must learn. This learning is possible thanks to intelligence and a social body.
• Long Period of Immaturity: Adults must deal with the maintenance and care of offspring for longer periods. Our biological nature makes the company of others a must.
• Lack of Outstanding Physical Qualities: The human being does not possess traits that make him stand out physically against other animals. If humans want to survive and thrive, they must come together and work together.

Cooperation and Aggression

• Aggression and Violence: Factors inherent in human nature. Hobbes believed that man is selfish, only seeking his own benefit and advantage. For Hobbes, the natural state of men is competition and rivalry, while cooperation and solidarity emerge with some organization and collaboration to prevent a permanent state of war of all against all.
• Sociological Darwinism: The view that the process of change is inherently a process of improvement of civilization. Not only do individuals and species evolve, but so do different societies. One of the mechanisms favoring this progress is the struggle for survival.
• External Factors: Violence and conflict are not inherent in human nature. The human being is not aggressive and competitive by nature, but by necessity. There are various kinds of external factors that explain clashes between individuals.

Harmony and Social Disharmony

Reasons:

1. Social: The need for and desire of the company and recognition of others.
2. The need for individualization.
3. The need for privacy and society.
4. Nonconformity and criticism that characterize them become powerful instruments of social transformation.
5. Conflict is an important cohesive element.
6. The majority of organizations have achieved a socially acceptable channel for inclinations toward violence.

Socialization

The learning process by which we integrate into the community and take part.

Mechanisms

Humans cannot have all the knowledge/values. Human life changes groups/subgroups (school, college, work, etc.).

Agents of Socialization

• The Family: The first and most important socializing agent.
• School: An institution built with the intention of educating and training new members of society. At school, the child is introduced to the fundamental contents of different subjects.
• The Peer Group: A group of individuals of the same age with whom the child comes into a relationship.
• The Media: They are occupying an increasingly prominent place in the formation of new generations.

Implications

• Personality (stable): Organization of a person’s inner self, creating patterns of emotions, behavior, and knowledge. The source depends on the biological and environmental.
• Temperament (stable over time): Part of moods and emotions. Characterized by biological determinants. Types: choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, and melancholic.
• Character: Part of habits and behavior reactions. Habits are permanent values that come from family and society. Reactions involve freedom, will, and personal ethics. Character is the interaction between temperament and the environment.

Definition of Terms

• Individual: The smallest unit that makes up society, and therefore, is the ultimate goal of study. Human personality is irreducible to the social mass.
• Society: Every human group that has some unity over others. They occupy their own rather stable space and have a temporal continuity that exceeds that of its members.
• Sociology: The social science that deals with both society and individuals within it.

Evaluation of the Relationship

Collectivism

Either supreme equality:

1. Individual as a social product, one more gear.
2. Collective good.
3. Totalitarianism (state).

Types of freedoms:

• Conscience: Freedom of expression, information, education, and religion.
• Politics: Partnership and participation.
• Economic: Freedom of ownership, production, and consumption.

Individualism

Either supreme individual freedom:

1. Sum of individuals.
2. Individualistic attitudes.
3. Radical liberalism and solidarity (state).

Humanism

A commitment to the balance between public interest and respect for individuality. It fosters a social framework that ensures stability, continuity, and personal freedoms of each individual.

Tensions Between the Individual-Society Relationship

• Rejection: When the majority social group does not accept or recognize certain individuals as full members.
• Opt-in: In this case, it is the individual that is not identified with the parameters of their community, is not satisfied, and lives ignoring the cultural norms of their group.
• Marginalization:
  1. Anterna (exclusion).
  2. Elasa (rather than reality).
  3. Natural exclusion (hard, irreversible social life).
  4. Artificial exclusion (not accepted as a reference model).
  5. Culture (hierarchical minorities).
  6. Supporting (unlawful conduct under the protection of the law).
  7. Economic (unemployment + indigence).
• Violence:
  1. Racial and xenophobic.
  2. Antisocial (frustrations with an end).
  3. Gratuitous (vandalism without end).
  4. Political-nationalism.
  5. Athletes.
  6. Social.
  7. Family.
  8. School.

Freedom

• External Freedom: So-called freedom of action, is the absence of external impediments that hinder action, to do whatever we want without anyone or anything preventing it.
• Inner Freedom: Freedom to choose or free will, is the ability or opportunity to decide or want this or that.

Determinism

Absence of freedom is a philosophical assertion that everything is determined, that is, inevitably caused. It denies the existence of freedom, for it is based on the principle of causality: every event in the world is caused.

• Physical Determinism: States that all reality is determined and can be explained by natural laws.
• Inheritance: Focuses on the explanation of genes; the behavior of a being is determined by the genetic code.
• Educational or Environmental Determinism: Not only genes determine our behavior, but also environmental factors and learning.
• Economic Determinism: Only economic factors matter.
• Theological Determinism: Defends the existence of something greater than humans, a superior or divine being; defends religion.

Indeterminism or the Existence of Freedom

• Determinants: Causes of action; human behavior is considered an inevitable consequence of factors that not even the individual controls.
• Factors: Reasons for the action; human behavior is influenced by external factors but is not considered a result of them.
• Indeterminism: Physical theory in their explanations using statistics and probability laws.

What Are We Responsible For?

We are responsible if we are free, we are aware, we have some purpose or intention, and if the consequences could be foreseen. Morality involves freedom, facts, and morals (used to judge facts based on our values).