1. The social construction of
everyday life
Lecture 8
The Social Construction of Everyday
Life

2. Write down your answers
• What is socialization?
• Who is most influential: parents, media,
teachers or peers?
• What could be the correct answer to these
questions:
– ‘Good morning, how are you?’
– ‘What do you think about British food?’
• How do you ‘sit like a girl’ or ‘sit like a boy’?

3. Aims
• To build on Cultures, norms and values
• How do people become social?
• Goffman and Performance
• Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology
• How is everyday life constructed and
negotiated?
• How is gender socially constructed?

4. Micro -sociology
• ‘the study of everyday life in social interactions’
(Macionis &Plummer 2008:192)
• Social construction of reality (Berger & Luckman
1967) how people shape reality through social
interaction
• Social interaction is negotiation: drama
• Human worlds are socially
– produced
– changed
– modified

5. Socialisation
• A lifelong social experience by which individuals
construct their personal biography, assemble daily
interactional rules and come to terms with the wider
patterns of their culture
• Humans rely on social experiences to learn cultural
survival skills
• ‘the process whereby the helpless human infant
gradually becomes a self-aware knowledgeable
person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which
he or she was born’ (Giddens 2009:284)

6. Who is being socialised?
• Are people born with
‘human nature’ or are
they are product of the
environment?

7. Who are they being socialised by?
• Agents of socialisation
– Father
– Mother
– Peers
– Teachers
– Mass media
• Ask your partner: which
agent of socialisation is
most influential, in your
opinion?

8. How are they being socialised?
• Socialisation theories
– Psychodynamics (Sigmund Freud 1856- 1939)
• Unconscious desires and wishes motivate and drive our
behaviours
– Centred on the presence or absence of a penis
(symbolic of masculinity and femininity)
• When boys are 4-5, they feel threatened by the father (rival
to mother’s affection)
• The boy gives up the love for mother (fear of castration)
• The girls have ‘penis envy’
• The mothers are devalued (don’t have a penis either)

9. Interactionism
• By interacting with others, meaning is created in the
interaction, from which we learn

10. Nature VS
Nurture
• Genetics /DNA – human nature
• Behaviourism – ‘specific
behavioural patterns are not
instinctive but learned’
• Margaret Mead – ‘the differences
between individuals who are
members of different cultures, like
the differences between individuals
within a culture, are almost entirely
to be laid to differences in
conditioning especially during early
childhood, and this conditioning is
culturally determined’ (1963:280)
• If you were born in another
country: Japan? Brazil? Australia?
Iran? – how would your beliefs,
culture, ideas, be different?

11. Nature versus
Nurture
• Nurture:
– Behaviourism: ‘specific behaviour patterns are not
instinctive but learned’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008:
194).
– Social construction: ‘the process by which people
creatively shape reality through social interaction’
(Ibid, 192). (People perceive events differently; they are
motivated by different interests and intentions)

12. How do we develop? Nature or
Nurture?
• Sociologists are extremely cautious about
describing behaviour as simply instinctive or
genetic.
• This does not mean that biology plays no part in
human behaviour.
• Development of an inherited potential depends
on:
– opportunities associated with social position.
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13. Socialisation
• Sociologists argue that we go through processes of
socialisation:
– ‘.…a lifelong experience by which individuals construct
their personal biography, assemble daily interactional
rules and come to terms with the wider patterns of their
culture’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008: 193).
• Thus, we learn the characteristics of our culture in
order to survive within that culture.

14. Agencies of socialisation: the family
• The principal agency
of socialisation?
• Family structures:
– vary across cultures.
– can be small (nuclear)
or extended.
• Children adopt
parents’ ways of being
and behaving:
– this again varies
across cultures.

15. Nurture: The Kids are alright...
• The World’s Strictest Parents
15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBaxSqYFRow (1st part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1G9l6O7
vgM&feature=related
(2nd part)

16. Agents of socialisation: education
• A curriculum of
subjects.
• Expected to
observe certain
rules of behaviour
linked to the future
workplace:
– obedience etc.
• Peer groups are
often formed at
school.

17. Agents of socialisation: media
• Extent of media influence on children is
hotly debated:
– do children passively absorb media content?
• Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment
(1961;1963)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdov
KHDNU

18. Agents of socialisation: peer groups
• a group of children/ young people of a
similar age:
– pressure from the behaviour of our peer groups.
– adolescence

19. Critical thinking
• Which of the agents of socialisation is the
most influential?
• What happens when there is a conflict
between the beliefs and values of one agent
of socialisation and another?

20. Erving Goffman and Performance
• We sometimes ‘put on a show’ for people – as if others are
watching us. Why? What’s behind the scenes?
• Front regions where we act out roles. For example ‘teamwork’ of
politicians (who actually hate each other!), or parents who hide
arguments from their children
• Back regions parallel to back stage/ off camera. Swearing, sexual
remarks, informal, sitting differently, humming, burping, flatulence.
For example, the bar staff who are polite and friendly to customers
but then go out the back and are aggressive and loud. Medical staff
who smoke, drink heavily or take drugs outside of work.
• 20th century’s leading micro-sociologist
• Criticisms of his work what about power and social relations? I.e.
inequalities (these criticisms are often given to micro sociologists)

21. SOCIALISATION: THE CASE OF GENDER

22. Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
--Performances
• People behave like actors performing on a stage
– dress
– objects carried
– tone of voice
– gestures
• All of these are gendered. What does he mean
by this?
• In what ways can we perform gender?
22

23. Harold Garfinkel and
Ethnomethodology (breaching
experiments)
• Research question – why do people get so angry when people do not follow
minor conventions of speech? (1963)
• Background expectancies are essential for smooth running everyday social
life/existence
• ‘Have a nice day’ –
• ‘Nice? In what sense exactly?’
• People get upset very quickly – ‘What’s wrong with you?! You know what I
mean.. *”&£’
• Sociologists take this smooth running for granted: the social order is hard work
• What if the participants had carried on like this: kicked out of home? Sent to a
psychiatric hospital?!
• Critiques doesn’t look for explanation/causes but is descriptive/looking for
meaning (i.e. this means that studying social life can never be scientific)

24. Ethnomethodology
• Ethnomethodology (Garfinkle,
1967): the study of the way people
make sense of their everyday lives.
• ‘Social vandalism’
• When we ask the simple question,
‘How are you?’ do we mean:
– Physically?
– Mentally?
– Spiritually?
– Financially?
– Are we even looking for an
answer, or just being polite?
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25. Today
• To build on Cultures, norms and values
• How do people become social?
• Goffman and Performance
• Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology
• How is everyday life constructed and
negotiated?
• How is gender socially constructed?

26. Structure of Course
The end of term test is in three weeks.
End of
term test
10%
Essay 10%
Presentation 5%
Academic Engagement 5%
Final
Exam
70%

27. Self study
• Revision for end of term test.
• Create 8 mind maps on A3 paper using different
coloured pens to revise lectures 1-8.
• Bring to lectures and seminars
• Include: key terms, theorists, definitions. Detail!
• Go to Moodle Glossary and test a friend on the
terms.
• Create flash cards that represent key terms.
• Go back and do ALL assignments on Moodle