According to the authors, why do so many people feel immune to the forces of socialization?
Discussion Questions
1. Key careers tend to be organized in ways that are gendered (police and firefighters tend to be men, while teachers and nurses tend to be women). How would the authors explain this pattern?
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2. According to the authors, why do so many people feel immune to the forces of socialization?
3. How does the concept of socialization challenge the idea of individualism?
4. Many sociologists say that in part how we come to know ourselves is by knowing who we are not. Sociologist Charles Cooley described this process as the “looking glass self” to capture the idea that it is what others reflect back to us that teaches us who we are—that is, our ideas about ourselves are based on how we see ourselves (people like us) in relation to others (people not like us). What kind of people did you learn were different from you? In which ways were they different? How were you taught about this difference? If you were told that everyone was the same, did the implicit messages of your environment match this explicit message? For example, what key groups (such as the elderly, people with disabilities, people of different social classes than your own, people from different religious groups, people from different racial groups) were you segregated from? As you reflect on this question, consider implicit (unspoken) messages as well as explicit (direct) messages
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