Sociology: The Artistic Science

“Sociology: The Artistic Science” is a series I will be writing on. This series will cover different sociological and possibly psychological concepts. The first Episode is “Learning to be Adequately Human”.

Learning to be Adequately Human:

We live in a society today where social interaction is very crucial, as a matter of fact if someone does not know how to interact with others he or she will be labeled “socially awkward”. To further buttress this point, from a sociological perspective it is said that humans need to be social, hence socialization is defined as the act of learning to be adequately human (Henslin). What this means in essence is that all the social behaviors we exhibit as humans are learnt and if one fails to exhibit proper social skills he/she is therefore not being “adequately human”.

This statement of learning how to be adequately human leads us to the example of “Feral Children”. According to National Geographic, Feral children are children living in the wild often with the help of animals. Note these children have had no contact with human beings therefore they do not know how to socialize with other humans. If these children were brought into our society today they will be considered wild or inadequate humans because they cannot perform some basic human functions e.g.  reading, writing, etc. as normal human beings can. On the other hand if these children are brought into the society they can learn to be social, and this can be done (although very unlikely) by decoding the previous knowledge they have on how to live life and then encoding them with a new sociological perspectives. (Read the “Tubular Rasa” epistemological theory for better understanding this).

So the question now is “how do we learn to be adequately human?” To begin with, we must understand the relationship between science and sociology. Science can be defined has the process of gaining knowledge and knowledge gained from the process (Henslin). As stated earlier, sociology is a social science, meaning that there is a process of gaining the knowledge of learning to be social; it more or less like a written script that tells you the “do’s” and “don’t” of the society.

We learn to be social right from childhood, the “Tabular Rasa” theory explains that the minds’ of children are like blank slate and this slate can later on be filled with a specific perception of life (New World Encyclopedia). This means that as young children we were taught how to behave in the society and there are different agents of socialization that facilitated “learning to be adequately human”. These agents are teachers, parents, peers, media etc. When we do not conform to what is being taught (norms) we are therefore sanctioned.

Social acts are restricted by norms which act as sanctions (Henslin). Therefore the best and easiest way for a human being to improve his/her social skills is by obeying social norms (written and unwritten) or by observing the reasons why he/she is being sanctioned for disobeying certain norms. After observing these things, that individual will have to make behavioral modification to avoid being sanctioned again.

Note that a sanction can be as little as a sigh when someone steps on your shoe. Using that as an example, if you accidently step on someone’s shoe and the person reacts by sighing, that is a warning and the behavioral modification for that act will be “to be more careful next time”. A “bigger example” of a sanction would be doing time in prison. If a person is caught breaking a law (is a type of norm) and then put in prison, after the individual is released from prison he or she is expected to have learnt his/her lesson.

In conclusion, the act of socialization is learning to be adequately human and there are ways by which humans have learnt these skills or can improve these social skills.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE….. J

           

                                                  Work Cited

National Geographic: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/all-videos/av-2340-3040/ngc-feral-children.html

Teague, I. L., Mackenzie, S., & Rosenthal, D. (2009). Your Health Today, choices in a changing society, brief. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.

New World Encyclopedia: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tabula_rasa