Category: Socialization and Enculturation

It will be useful to list the contents of socialization. This is a broad list indicating that socialization serves the purpose of making the child a useful and active member of society. Through this process, he is oriented towards the society and feels a part of it. Those deviating from the norms of culture become… Continue reading Contents of Socialization

Students of socialization talk of four major stages. They are: (i) the Oral stage; (ii) the Anal stage; (iii) the Oedipal stage; and (iv) Adolescence. In the first three, the key socializing agent is the family. As we have seen in our treatment of the family, in a nuclear family every member has two roles,… Continue reading Stages of Development

Just as Galton enthusiastically propounded his Eugenics, some human geographers took the opposite view and attributed differences in society and in the behaviour of human beings to the natural environment. Way back in 1924, Ellsworth Huntington published his titled Climate and Civilization to press the point that the geography of the place—which includes its climate—determines the kind of… Continue reading Heredity and Physical Environment

On a cold windy morning in January, 1954, a quivering bundle of rags in a waiting room at the Lucknow railway station attracted the attention of passers-by who opened it to be greeted by a nine-year-old boy, crawling out on all fours. The boy could not speak and was running a high temperature. At the… Continue reading The Wolf Boy Grows Up

  Published in The Illustrated Weekly of India, January 1, 1961. page 77     Ramu at the Balrampur Hospital in Lucknow

Early sociologists paid little attention to this aspect of a new recruit’s orientation—the entire educational process, the process of learning. Focusing on the environment and hereditary aspects, scholars engaged in a fruitless debate regarding nature versus nurture— nature signifying the physical, that is, the geographical environment, and nurture hinting at social and cultural transmission. The environmentalists gave a one-sided… Continue reading SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT

Early sociologists paid little attention to this aspect of a new recruit’s orientation—the entire educational process, the process of learning. Focusing on the environment and hereditary aspects, scholars engaged in a fruitless debate regarding nature versus nurture— nature signifying the physical, that is, the geographical environment, and nurture hinting at social and cultural transmission. The environmentalists gave a one-sided… Continue reading SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT

The major source of recruitment of members in a society is via birth. Children born out of wedlock are ‘natural’ members of the society of their parents. The newborn, however, is a biological brute. No matter in what society it is born, it possesses the same attributes that are characteristic of the species called Homo Sapiens. These… Continue reading Introduction