Socialisation:Peer Groups

Socialisation:Peer Groups

1. Ways of being socialised by peer groups

   • Formed by people roughly the same age & social position
     • learn social norms and experiment with social roles
   • Parents worry about peer groups encouraging drugs/ alcohol
   • Worry about popularity
   • Groups perform valuable functions for their members

2. Peer Power: ADLER AND ADLER

   • Study of white middle class children in usa
   • showed the importance to pre adolence teens
   • Popularity :) Social isolation :(
   • Shift and change , Hierarchy , cliques have higher prestige some members have greater power
   • higher status = role models
   • Cliques excersise power by accepting some & excluding others

3. HEY

   • Peers control each other using informal sanctions
   • written in the context of feminist sociolgy and concerns of ethnographic study of girls in 2 london schools
   • excluded and insulted peers
   • Eg calling working class slags & controlling cliques

4. Renold

   • Strong force in children
   • primary aged boys hide academic success to avoid teasing
   • ' cool boy' incorpratated being good at sport and bad in class
   • Sewell
     • backed this up in study of black boys underachivement
     • argues that black working class boys in inner cities focus on media stars who promote consumerism and deviance

5. JACKSON

   • Lads and ladettes control each others behaviour by encouraging rebellion rewards with popularity
   • Pupils who conformed to rules were ignored ( informal sanctions)

6. EVALUATION

   • studies only focus on children/ teenagers
   • Time when peers most important
   • Increasing time with friends and shift from family
   • Through socialising with same age develop sense of identity / independence
   • Preparation for adulthood
   • However process being socialised by peers is very subtle and informal hard to see effects