Socialiazation through Values

SOCIALIZATION THROUGH VALUES : GOAL VALUES AND PERFORMANCE VALUES Dumitru Borţun, PhD Associate Professor National School of Political and Administrative Sciences SNSPA – Bucharest 1. The concept of ‘socialization’: mechanisms and forms of socialization 1.1. The concept of ‘socialization’ In the sociological and socio-psychological literature, this concept has a double meaning: a hard and a soft one. In the hard meaning, ‘socialization’ means the transformation of an individual from an asocial being into a social being by instilling certain ways of thinking, feeling and behaving (cf. Dictionaire de la Sociologie, Larousse, 1993). This definition applies to children and to adults in limit cases (nowadays, almost extinct). In the soft meaning, ‘socialization’ can be defined as re-socialization, hence as a process of inculcating certain ways of thinking, feeling and behaving different from those interiorized by an individual up to now. This is the case of individuals that transgress into a different culture by changing the affiliation group or of sudden social transformations that trigger the modification of norms and values that the individual must internalize so as to be able to evince a professional behavior. In the former situation, socialization may define a group phenomenon while in the latter it is a mass phenomenon. The fact that the process of socialization tackles both the psychic particularities of the individual and the psycho-social mechanism of the group or the mass phenomena explains why the concept of ‘socialization’ belongs to the personal psychology, to the social psychology and to sociology. It is a trans-disciplinary concept. Moreover, socialization aims at integrating the individual into a system of norms and values, of social rules (which by definition are peripheral to the individual) (1 and at reinforcing the solidarity between the group members. Classical studies dealing with the concept of socialization (initiated by Durkheim - 1922, 1925) have highlighted the processes through which an individual internalizes concepts and structures and have analyzed the effects of this interiorisation (internalization) on the behavior. One of the main objectives of these studies has been to offer a solution to the problem of permanence, throughout the generations, of the cultures and sub-cultures proper to certain groups as well as the problem of the behavior of individuals that have to abide by the same types of linguistic, cognitive, political or moral habits. Although these studies have laid stress on a powerful dimension of continuity – for instance a great resemblance of political behavior between children and their parents (Kembell, 1960), they have neglected to account for the change of such behaviors. In addition to that, the most renowned studies have tried to understand the way in which the value system held by the social class triggers the fate of the individual that internalizes this value system (for instance, the meaning of collective solidarity portrays the working class while individual accomplishment is more representative for the middle class). These studies were based on a definition of ‘socialization’ that implies: the priority of society over the individual; the practice of constraint through an allegedly legitimate authority; an objective defined at social scale. Furthermore, this definition substantiated a rudimentary theory of learning – understood as simple conditioning. The individual is thought to be a passive being whose behavior is narrowed to the reproduction of already acquired schemes. A more supple concept might make a stand against this super-determinist vision, which takes into account the relative autonomy of the individual, its capacity of adapting its acquired dispositions to the life situations and even of modifying, if necessary, the internalized norms and values depending on the problems that he is compelled to solve. The dialecticized vision on socialization is represented in more recent theoretical approaches and even in empirical researches – some of which are expressly dealing with the political socialization. The cleavage from the coarse sociologist determinism is increasingly obvious in the approach of socialization mechanisms. 1.2. Mechanisms and forms of socialization One of the important approaches from the social communication perspective is the socio-linguistic approach of socialization undertaken by the British sociologist Bazil Bernstein (1; 2). Bernstein states that one of the most important events in the 20th century scientific research is the convergence of natural sciences and the social sciences in the study of linguistic aspects of communication. He observes, however, that sociology felt astern due to the fact that few were the sociologists who studied the language as social institution (according to the family, religion model). Except for some papers written by the American George Mead (1863-1931), leading representative of the School of Chicago, in the studies on socialization we find no empirical research examining the role of speech as a process through which the child acquires a specific social identity. Such considerations have been developed in the American anthropology (Franz Boas and Edward Sapir) which reached the conclusion that for the individual ‘language is just a guide to social reality’ (Sapir, 1921). But the tradition of American anthropology imposes the thesis that the fashions of speaking are determiners of social relations (Whorf), in other words: the link between language-culture-habitual thought is not mediated through the social structure. Bernstein pleads that, on the contrary, the fashions of speaking (the codes) depend on the form social relations take. The social structure generates codes which transmit the culture and so constrain behavior. Inherently, the changes in the social structure determine the formation and transformation of a culture through their effect on the fashions of speaking. Tested by its author in the research of the training processes (education), this hypothesis is very promising for the understanding of the socialization process (re-socialization) in Romania. Mainly since it can account for the so diverse forms of socialization and identity construction: according to Bernstein, within the same language (as a general code) appear specific codes (fashions of speaking) that induce to speakers different types of reporting to reality (to objects and other individuals). How does the form of social relation determine these fashions of speaking? The speakers may choose: what I say, the moment I say it, the way I say it. The form of social relation regulates the speaker’s options both at syntactic and lexical level (for example an adult that speaks to a child). As the child learns to speak (so when he learns the codes of speaking), he learns the requirements of his social structure which become, through the consequences of the linguistic process, the substratum of its experience. Every time the child speaks or listens the social structure that he is part of is reinforced within him, his social identity is modeled. By shaping his acts of speech, the social structure becomes the child’s psychological reality. Stabilized through time, the fashions of speaking will eventually come to play an important role in the adjustment of the intellectual, social and affective orientations. Thus, the social structure becomes a referential that the future adult shall carry along and perceive as ‘reality’. Depending upon the probability of predicting the organizing elements of the fashions of speaking, Bernstein divides the fashions of speaking in elaborate codes (when the speaker selects from a vast range of alternatives and the probability is limited) and restricted codes (when the speaker selects from a small range of versions and the probability is increased); the codes included in the latter category appear in prisons, operative military units, children and teenagers groups, etc. (see 4, pp. 53-105). The great asset of Bernstein’s theoretical program is the separation from the sociologist reductionism as well as the avoidance of the ‘linguistic reduction’. He discovers the truth formulated by Helmut Von Humboldt in 1848: “In life, man understands the world following the image that the language offers him’. Thus, Bernstein explains the fact that certain individuals (groups) select certain values, internalize certain norms, rejecting others or just withstanding them. The great drawback of Bernstein‘s theory is that it fails to convincingly account for the CHANGE(2. 2. Socialization in post-communist Romania 2.1. Social Change and re-socialization There are various types of social changes: abrupt or gradual, partial or global, radical or superficial, destructive or constructive, organic or induced. Change supports a complex typology. The social change taking place in Romania after 1989 is unmistakably an abrupt and global change. We cannot yet state how radical/superficial it is and this is closely related to the organic/induced report which has not yet been clarified by the scientific research. The transition, as a sudden and global change, triggered an extensive socialization process. But this process must be seen as a re-socialization process. For this purpose, we must give up the idyllic image of a population that had waited for four decades, as a ‘virgin’, the fall of communism. Throughout the 40 years socialization processes took place, albeit in contradictory, paradoxical forms. Due to the rupture that took place after 1989 in all fields (institutions, values, behaviors) the various layers and segments of population had to face a mandatory social re-learning process unfolding in various speeds and directions. Which elements account for these differences: As regards the speed, the differences stem from differences in terms of age, level of education, vocational status, geographical (geo-economic) area. The ones enjoying the greater odds in the change process are the young individuals, the educated individuals, the individuals having professions or jobs more easily adaptable to the market economy, the individuals living in developed areas. The fact that their subjective feeling (derived from the opinion surveys) fails to coincide with the real odds is less important; in the context of social change the psychological part may be more important than the sociological one. As regards the direction of the re-socialization, the differences derive from the fact that the sense of the transition is not defined at a social scale. Apparently, there is a quasi-general agreement regarding the objectives (democracy, market economy, rule of law, separation of powers, observance of human rights). But the targets are codified in different languages which lead to dissension and even conflicts – both amongst the political class and the population. One of the most important obstacles in the course of re-socialization is the high degree of incertitude (according to an IRSOP survey/June 1994 two out of three Romanians were unaware of the path Romanian society will follow). The great confusion began immediately after December 1989 when the last common target had been reached. This confusion has been measured through the great mass-media consumption which reached, in 1991, an European record (90% of the adult citizens in Romania watched TV for more than 6 hours per day). The behavioral strategies set before 1989 are no longer applicable, which leads to a serious value crisis. A study performed by IRSOP (May, 1994) for an American beneficiary reveals the fact that in Transylvania there were, at the time, four “life philosophies’ in the following order of frequency: Traditionalist (based on family, health, religion); Pragmatic (focused on money and success); Hedonistic (based on leisure activities not related to money or work); Labor ethics (focused on work and correlated to family but not to religion, as in Max Weber perspective, but rather to tradition). If labor ethics came last in Transylvania, we could expect even bigger surprises if the research would be conducted in other regions of the country. The value crisis develops in another plan as well: the systematic ambiguity of value orientation which denotes the weak cognitive dimension of the attitudinal vector (for instance information regarding the market economy). Thus, in 1994, the dominant opinion trend was in favor of privatization (67% - according to an IMAS study / March and 58% - IRSOP study/June). But a large majority of the subjects that encouraged privatizations rejected the consequences thereof (unemployment, social inequality, etc.). This ‘schizophrenia’ of values has antecedents in the period prior to 1989 (characterized by a super-dimensioned sensitivity towards authority, propaganda). To perceive the world through clichés and stereotypes or received ideas and especially to verbalize it by using verbal clichés borrowed from others means, for that matter, ‘pseudo-thinking’ (Erich Fromm)(3, but from a psycho-social point of view we are dealing with a mass phenomenon that we must identify, explain and, eventually, remodel. 2.2. Socialization through values The gap between the material practice and the educational practice of a collectivity leads to a peculiar configuration of values and affective emotions and inherently of motivations and behaviors. This gap generates the mass formation of an ‘agglutinated personality’ and, consequently, of some incoherent social behavior, more often than not antagonistic. In this challenging context various essential questions are raised for the socialization instances: Which values shall be conveyed through education?; Is its transmission enough to establish the expected, anticipated social behaviors? Which is the optimum ratio between the educational ideal of a society and the current status its development? To answer these questions it is worthwhile to mention the theoretical distinction made by psychologist Pierre Janet and further developed by Jean Piaget (6, p. 44 and foll.) between values of finality – values of accomplishment.  The goal (end) values are shared by the individual depending upon its conception about the world, being acquired through education (culture); they dictate ‘disinterested’ behaviors;  The performance values are shared by the individual in terms of costs/gains criteria, are enforced by coherent life conditions and dictate ‘’interested’ behaviors.(4. The duality commented by Piaget becomes prolific in explaining a lot of social phenomena which are difficult to grasp – from the day-to-day behavior of the common individual to the behaviors of large social groups: participation to revolutionary fights (from the French Revolution in 1879 to the Romanian Revolution in 1989) of some ‘danglers’ guided by no sacred beliefs; performance of the consensus and exceptional solidarity in warfare or acts of God situations (performance values such as ‘comfort’, ‘health’, ‘our own life’ are replaced by goal values such as ‘country’, ‘people’, ‘native land’, ‘future of the nation’, ‘freedom’, ‘independence’, ‘justice’, ‘dignity’, etc.) The replacement of performance values by goal (end) values eases the mobilization of a large number of people under a single commandment, encouraging collaboration and compassion, tolerance and mutual comprehension – inherently socialization and humanization of behaviors to the highest possible level at a given historical moment. At present, the situations in which performance values give up the leading place in favor of the goal values as well as the psychic mechanisms through which an individual passes from a state into another made the object of very few studies. In ‘normal’ conditions, the hegemony is held by performance values and the life situations in which the conflict between the two sets of values explicitly gains ground are tragic situations(5. For the majority of individuals, the goal values indwell somewhere in the ‘sky of tradition’ (quoting Habermas) or shimmer in the ‘horizon of aspirations’. When they underpin the social organization they only tacitly participate to the daily life, not being verbalized by all members of society in all life situations. Explicitly, they are invoked only in atypical situations: the ‘discussions in principle’, the debates organized by institutional entities, interpersonal conflicts (when we appeal to ‘humaneness’, ‘justice’, ‘honor’, ‘truth’). If an individual would set his mind to permanently pursue goal values that he tacitly shares, he would either wreck in a chronic wastefulness of his actions or he would collide with the social psychology of his affiliation group(6. The use of the distinction between performance values – goal values is compulsory for the ones who want to set up a theory of educational communication, of educative practice, of socialization in general. Such a theory would be useful for a possible re-shaping policy of mentalities, as a mandatory dimension of transition. No policies – economic, social, educational – can elude this duality without risking to bring about inadvertences. A decision, a norm or a law becomes inoperative if it breaches the performance values recognized by a certain segment of the civil society (7, as it would be equally inoperative if it breaches the goal values inherited by the collectivity(8. In the re-socialization logistics of a larger community (such as a nation), the types of decision must adapt: the short-term decisions – to the performance values; the long term decisions – to the goal values. If the two prerequisites are not complied with, we reach the paradox of ‘forced welfare’ (which means doing bad, not good)(9. The divergence angle between the goal values and the performance values may be reduced either a) by changing the moral ideal of the collectivity, or b) through practical activities, of humanizing real life. In post-communist Romania, we have been trying to adapt the goal values (with unimaginable consequences) through (a) while (b) is unachievable in this phase. The first questions we should answer to as analysts of Romanian transition are: In which of the two registers are we falling astern? How large is the divergence angle? How can this angle be reduced (by changing mentalities or by economic development)? Within a research carried out in a representative sample group of students in Brasov within the period 1983-1985 (cf. 7), the subjects have chosen the following preference criteria for their future job: more free time, likelihood of promotion to management positions, opportunity of business trips abroad; possibility of obtaining considerable incomes and so on. The students fail to list among the first criteria a series of other criteria suggested by the questionnaire: ‘high degree of responsibility at work’, ‘spiritual and behavioral discipline’, ‘creative nature of the work’, etc. even if they displayed the belief that ‘work generates human and personality development’. When did they spoke the truth? In both cases! The rupture from this ‘contradiction’ (visible in many other studies) happened at the expense of the discovery of a real contradiction: between the performance values and the goal (end) values. The education providers had done their job: the real social system, the work relations, the form of organization within Romania society were jeopardized. And today we are facing the same problem: the mere change of goal values would not be enough (and in fact it is not likely to happen without a real transformation in the social labor environment). N O T ES 1. As social regulation instrument, socialization allows the decrease of exterior sanctions. The group doesn’t have to remind the individual anymore, each and every time, its rules and to exercise a continuous surveillance over him. The breach of rules gives raise to a powerful sense of guilt. This mechanism works wonderfully in the North-American society where the psychic discomfort of the individual reluctant to the norms of the ‘American lifestyle’ is triggered not only by the sense of guilt stemmed from the human need of a favorable response from the others, but also by the fear that the breach of the rules would make him a symbolic outcast from the definition of the ‘true American’, would project him in the category of the ‘new-comers’, ‘fresh immigrants’ which would affect the satisfaction of the need for integration and emotional safety. Lately, this set of restrictive social norms has been codified in the phrase: ‘political correctness’ whose social impact is extremely relevant as regards the socializing force of the need for recognition. 2. As in the expressive theory (Rembell) or instrumental theory (competition) that stranded in a rationalist idealism. 3. Fromm draws our attention that, in case of ‘pseudo-thinking’, the problem is not whether the subject’s assertions are logic or not, but rather whether the though is the result of its own through-process, that is its ‘own activity’: ‘Pseudo-thinking’ may be perfectly logical and rational. Its pseudo character does not necessarily appear in its illogical elements. This can be studied in rationalizations which tend to explain an action or a feeling on rational or realistic grounds, although it is actually determined by irrational or subjective factors. (5, p. 297). For a better understanding of the difference between the authentic thinking and pseudo-thinking – as proposed by Erich Fromm – we recommend the reading of the entire 3rd paragraph, entitled ‘Automate compliance’ in Chapter V of the work ‘Escape from Freedom’ (idem, pp. 290-307). Special attention must be drawn to the heuristic episode invented by Fromm with the fisherman and the tourists (idem, p. 294-296), as well as the description of the political thinking in the American society (idem, p.296). 4. The term interest bears two meanings: i – the general qualitative meaning: any conduct is interested, ‘to the extent that it pursuits a purpose which has value because it is desired’ (6, idem); ii – the strict meaning: ‘energetic regulation that discharges the available forces …, and so aims at the performance and, from this perspective, a behavior is interested if it is intended to increase the performances from the subject’s point of view’ (idem). 5. The tragic condition of the ‘moral hero’ put forward by all versions of humanism has been conveyed since Antiquity (Socrates from Plato’s Apology’ of or Antigone of Sophocles) until Modernity (in the Romanian popular literature – Manole in the “Mesterul Manole’ ballade or Gelu Ruscanu in ‘Jocul ielelor’ by Camil Petrescu). 6. The value crisis peculiar to teenage years is due to the fact that the young man discovers that life cannot be lived par excellence at the highest level of the goal values assimilated by him through education (through the moralizing discourses offered by the parents or teachers or by reading books). Subsequently, as teenagers are deemed mature enough to ‘come to grips with life’, many education providers (usually parents with educational interests) assault them with ‘rectifying’ discourses trying to ‘bring them to reason’ in fact to re-direct them from the goal values to performance values. In Romania before 1989, a cause of the ‘generation conflict’ manifested in almost all normal families was the resistance of the teenagers toward the adults’ attempts to inculcate performance values meant to facilitate the adaptation to the actual social environment (the most usual phrases being: “Life is not as you imagine it to be”, You live in the cloudland’. “You’ll come to your senses eventually, ‘You will give us right later on but it will be too late’, etc.). After 1989 a mutation took place that few would have been able to anticipate: more and more education providers are struggling to offer teenagers landmarks from the goal values range since more and more teenagers are overwhelmed by performance values. [A style of life research performed in 1998 by the company DATA MEDIA on a representative group sample of teenagers living in Bucharest shows, however, that they still display loyalty towards the family but it is difficult to say whether in the new social context this still represents a goal value or rather it grew into a performance value]. 7. For instance, the decisions of the Romanian communist regime through which, by virtue of some goal values, the most elementary performance value have been infringed upon: the so-called emancipation of women meant, given the socialism and forced industrialization, the transformation of millions of women in true ‘slaves’ of the socialist society, the assault against their physical and psychical health being a mass phenomenon whose aftermath continues up to this day; the so-called social homogenization meant a promiscuous intertwining between the social-professional categories – from the social recognition of labor to the dwelling conditions – which also lead to the infringement of some elementary performance values such as waging and the peace necessary for intellectual work at home. 8. Examples: the unique (soviet) pattern of ‘socialism construction’ imposed upon the peoples in the ‘satellites; under the hegemony of the Soviet Union; the attempts to impose modernization models invented in other historical areas; more recently, the attempt to amend the legislation regarding the homosexual relationships in post-communist Romania. In all these cases, we are dealing with the endeavor to introduce new goal (end) values that come against the goal values inherited from a community through cultural inheritance or to introduce performance values that are in breach of the goal values shared by the members of a community. Similarly to the ‘classical’ modernization process, the current globalization trend shall violently come across an obstacle difficult to overcome throughout a single generation: the conflict between the goal values inherited by the local communities on the one hand and the performance values imposed from the outside as well as the alternative goal values that legitimate the new performance values, on the other hand. The conflict between the two sets of values relegates the political elites of the traditional societies (as is the case of the Romanian society) to the practice of a double discourse: an internal discourse (focused on inherited goal values) and an external discourse (focused on the performance values that stemmed from the globalization process itself as well as on the goal values afferent thereto. We shall be able to give up the double discourse only when the political elite from such a country shall be able to present the new goal (universal) values as performance values, desirable in the daily practice of the respective country. 9. From this perspective, the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia under the Milosevic’s rule cannot be neither ‘legitimate’ nor ‘necessary’. It is not worthwhile raising the issue of legitimacy because it is a false problem: NATO intervention aimed at changing the type of legitimacy in the international relations (the replacement of the acknowledged one after the Second World War and legitimated through UN-Charter). As regards the ‘necessity’, one must be culturally obtuse to imagine that a violent action that comes against the goal values shared by the overwhelming majority of the Serbs shall lead to the change of their behavior towards the Kosovo Albanians or toward the national problem in general. As a matter of fact, the military intervention did not even suited the elementary expectations of the performance values which has been proven in the months following the termination of the bombing (the presence of KFOR troops in Kosovo has exacerbated the original problems and generated new problems inexistent before the intervention). It is obvious that the leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance have learned nothing from the lesion of over seven decades of real communism (an enormous attempt of forced welfare against the dominant goal values in the countries subdued to the experiment and against performance values – mainly of the economic ones). This lesson should have served as least in the elaboration of the justification discourse of the intervention and of the legitimacy discourse of the Alliance if not in the elaboration of the new identity thereof subsequent to the ‘Cold War’. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES Bazil Bernstein, Language and social classes / Langage et classes sociales, Paris, Editons du Minuit, 1975 Lazăr Vlăsceanu, ‘Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions’ introductive study to Bazil Bernstein Studies of sociology of education, Didactical and Pedagogical Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978 Jean G. Padioleau, La formation de la pansée politique: développement longitudinal et déterminants socio-culturels”, Revue franaise de Sociologie, vol. XVII, N ° 3, June-September 1976, pp. 451-484 Bazil Bernstein Studies of sociology of education (edition under the guidance of Lazăr Vlăsceanu), ed. cit. Erich Fromm, Selected Texts, translation Nicolae Frigioiu Political Publishing House, Bucharest, 1983 Jean Piaget, “The problem of common mechanism in the human sciences’ in the volume Contemporary sociology the 6th World Congress of Sociology Evian, Politica Publishing House, Bucharest, 1967 Dumitru Borţun, Nicolae Madar (coordinator), Emil Poenaru, Valeria Pop, Cornelia Tatu, Ştefan Ungurean, Combination of the specialized training with the political-ideological training of future specialists Study within the University of Brasov, 1985, Board of social-humanistic sciences – ‘Transylvania’ University of Brasov PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 1