“the Functionalist Concept of Socialization Is Too Deterministic. Interactionists Provide a Better Understanding of the Process of Socialization”. Explain and Assess the View.

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According to functionalists, order and predictability is important if a society is to exist. To ensure the society functions accordingly, people have to follow the norms and share common values or value consensus. Functionalists believe that value consensus can constrain and shape humans’ behaviour because people are said to be passive and they conform to sanctions whereby rewards will be given for practicing good behaviour (positive sanction) and punishments await those who commit deviant behaviour (negative sanction). Emile Durkheim argues that society is bigger than individuals and more vast . Individuals learn to desire what the society provides and in doing so, they internalise the roles given to them. For instance, in caste system in India, people at the top rank and the bottom rank cannot be mixed because they are conformed to the norms and they believe that they have to behave nicely and avoid doing deviant behaviour so that they will not be punished in afterlife. Thus, it shows that the functionalists concept of socialization is too deterministic as they have to internalise the roles to satisfy their needs because humans have unlimited desires. This statement is further supported by the Suicide Study that shows relationship between social integration and suicide rate. For example,suicide rates in Protestans is found to behigher than Catholics because the social integration is low. Therefore it proves that the functionalists concept of socialization that is said to be too deterministic is true because social intergration plays an important roles in ensuring the society to act in harmony. Interactionists argues that individuals act on their own and interactions with others that creates socialization, not just constrained by moral codes or economic relations which comes from ‘society outside’. Without this interactions society is cease to exist. H. Blumer

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