CHAPTER 12

Socialization and Enculturation

The major source of recruitment of members in a society is via birth. Children born out of wedlock are ‘natural’ members of the society of their parents. The newborn, however, is a biological brute. No matter in what society it is born, it possesses the same attributes that are characteristic of the species called homo sapiens. These characteristics distinguish the newborn from other infra-human species, notwithstanding further distinctions based on racial features. Children of white, yellow, or black races—technically called cuacasoid, mongoloid, and negroid, respectively—possess the same biological make-up that is not to be found among other animals. Yet, as the infant grows, differences begin to occur in its behaviour and way of living. These are not biologically inherited, but learnt and acquired from the social surroundings. People belonging to the same race, for example, may represent different cultures. A child born in China, or of Chinese parentage, but reared in an African country will speak the language of that country and lead the lifestyle of the society where it lives. Similarly, a child of African parentage reared in China will become Chinese, his racial features remaining unchanged. This process of growing up has been the subject matter of study for psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists. And it is variously called socialization and enculturation. Of course, specialists in these disciplines have focused on different aspects of this complicated process that transforms the biological human into a social being.

What distinguishes the human animal from other animals is the relatively small amount of instinctive behaviour, and a comparatively huge capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn or learn anew. In fact, learning is a life-long activity with humans; so is the characteristic of forgetfulness. Through learning, mostly imitative, a child transforms itself from a biological brute to a social animal, and from being just social to a culturebearing person. A human being is thus a person who is social, bearing a stamp of the culture in which he/ she is reared, and yet maintains his/her individuality. No other animal possesses all three attributes. To develop the individual personality, society, and culture play important roles.

The analysis of the process of socialization in social science literature is relatively recent. As said earlier, sociologists talked of socialization and anthropologists of enculturation. In common usage, however, is the term socialization which, by implication, also encompasses enculturation. In effect, one can see that for a child, it is important to first become social and then be inducted into one’s culture. When a person moves from one culture to another, he enters yet another process of enculturation—learning the norms and mores of the new host culture; this adds to the person’s cultural capital, and may make his original cultural orientation (to the parent culture) somewhat subdued.

It is interesting that MacIver and Page, in their celebrated book on society (which first appeared in 1950), make no mention of the term socialization. It does not figure in the index of the book. It has, however, three chapters devoted in part two of book one to ‘Society and Environment’. In another book on sociology by Ogburn and Nimkoff (first published in 1940), a reference to socialization occurs briefly in the chapter on social deviation, where social deviation is regarded as the ‘failure in socialization’.¹ They provide a brief definition of socialization as the ‘process by which the individual learns to conform to the norms of the group’² and as a ‘process of assimilation of newcomers. Some of the newcomers are immigrants from other societies or subcultures of the same society, but generally most of the newcomers are newborn babies’ (1958: 301). The authors have not dwelt on the process itself, but have focused on the consequences of the process, particularly that of enculturation, to attribute deviation to poor upbringing.

A survey of sociological literature suggests that while concern has been shown about the problems related to socialization in even the writings of Durkheim and Sigmund Freud, the term first figured in the writings of social scientists as late as the 1930s and early 1940s. Interest in this process simultaneously emerged in sociology, social anthropology and psychology. Robert Park and John Dollard wrote on this theme in the American Journal of Sociology in 1939. That same year, A. Kardiner (psychologist) and Ralph Linton (anthropologist) came out with a book titled The Individual and His Society. Preceding these publications was Gardner Murphy’s Experimental Psychology, which carried the subtitle An Interpretation of Research on the Socialization of the Individual.

Society And Environment

Early sociologists paid little attention to this aspect of a new recruit’s orientation—the entire educational process, the process of learning. Focusing on the environment and hereditary aspects, scholars engaged in a fruitless debate regarding nature versus nurture—nature signifying the physical, that is, the geographical environment, and nurture hinting at social and cultural transmission.

The environmentalists gave a one-sided emphasis to the role that physical environment plays in shaping people, the society and culture; the biologists—particularly the promoters of eugenics (powered by the racist ideology)—tried to explain differences between societies in terms of biologically inherited traits, and propounded the theory of racial superiority. They did not dwell on the processes through which a child became a full member of society and the follower of a way of life called culture.

Before we discuss the processes of socialization and enculturation, it will be useful to briefly summarize the debate on environment and society, using mainly the discourse presented in MacIver and Page. The authors’ concern is expressed in the foreword to this section: ‘Since every social group, whether racially or nationally or “culturally” defined, distinguished as class or as community, we face the question whether these differences are determined mainly by heredity or by the conditions of life.’ Attachment to soil is found to be greatest amongst plants; animals’ attachment to the soil is not that great, but their dependence on the environment cannot be denied. The same is true of humans, although they exhibit greater adaptability to varying environments. But environment understood in a broader sense also includes our habits, our ways of living. Since these differ from group to group, we can say that groups live in different environs. In this sense, environment has two components: physical and social. In order to survive, humans are involved in three kinds of adaptation—physical adaptation, biological adaptation, and social adaptation.

Purely physical adaptation occurs whether we will it or not: it is independent of our strivings and our aims … whatever the conditions are, whether wilderness or city, poverty or prosperity, whether in the eyes of men they are favourable or unfavourable, good or evil, this unconditional physical adaptation remains with all its compulsion (MacIver and Page, 1955: 77).

Biological adaptation means ‘that a particular form of life is fitted to survive or to prosper under the conditions of the environment. We say that fish are adapted to a marine environment or tigers to the conditions of life in the jungle’ (ibid.). If there are no physical conditions for the adequate functioning of the organism, there occurs maladaptation. Social adaptation, ‘however, involves some standard of value …. Various sociologists speak of the process of adjustment or of accommodation ...., The peculiar thing about Man is that ‘he selects and modifies his environment in such a way that the inevitable adaptation shall admit the greater fulfilment of his wants’.

Heredity and Man-made Environment

MacIver and Page made an important distinction between nature-made and man-made environment. Furthermore, they divided the man-made environment into the outer and inner environment of a social man. What they called the outer environment is more commonly referred to in anthropological literature as ‘material culture’; likewise, the inner environment is the ‘non-material’ culture. To quote the authors: ‘The inner is society itself and endures only so long as the society endures. It consists of the organizations and regulations, the traditions and institutions, the repressions and liberations of social life, of what we collectively name the social heritage’ (1955: 78).

It is in this framework that they examined some of the evidence presented in social science literature on heredity and environment. Implicit in their argument was that human beings are influenced both by their natural and social environment; that is why, despite belonging to the same species, Homo Sapiens live in varied socio-cultural environments. However, they do not deny the role of heredity, which serves as a limiting factor in the same manner as the natural environment. They refute the deterministic theories of both the eugenicists and the environmentalists.

Inspired by the theories of Charles Darwin, the issue of racial superiority was raised by Francis Galton in his book Hereditary Genius, published in 1869. That was the period of colonization, and this theory came in handy to the colonizers seeking to justify their rule. ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and ‘Struggle for Existence’ were the key phrases the colonizers borrowed from Darwin and used to assert their supremacy over the heathens. Interestingly enough, Karl Pearson—a mathematician—used the data on race and intelligence, and developed his formula for the correlation coefficient to establish a correlation between two variables.³ He came to the conclusion that ‘the influence of the environment is far less than that of heredity in the determination of important human differences’ (MacIver: 81). Following Pearson, several studies were carried out to support this line of reasoning. One of them compared the intelligence scores of Negroes and Whites. There have also been studies of physical traits. For example, the Japanese were compared with Americans with regard to their stature, and the obvious conclusion was reached that the Japanese were shorter compared to the Americans. However, these studies did not examine whether a change in food habits or lifestyle or physical location can result in an increase in stature—as is now found. Similarly, there have been studies of occupational groups. In one study, the authors found that ‘inequality of earnings between the several occupational classes has its origins in a fundamental inequality of native endowments, rather than in an inequality of opportunities’. Again, the conclusions were along expected lines. But MacIver and Page raise the same question: ‘what do they tell us of the respective amounts of influence of heredity and environment in determining these class differences?’

Some of the researchers conducted controlled experiments. For this purpose, they ‘paid attention to those cases in which biological inheritance might be regarded as practically identical’. They decided to conduct research on twins. Twins are of two types: dizygotic (fraternal) and monozygotic (identical). The latter type is supposed to have more or less similar biological features as they developed from the same ovum. They are ‘more alike than fraternal twins’. The results of such studies have shown that there exist close similarities,

[B]ut so have significant differences. Among these studies should be mentioned the detailed reports of the famous identical quintuplets, the Dionnes, who in spite of their ‘single-egg’ common heredity (and similar but in no sense identical environment) have quite noticeable variations in physical and mental traits and especially personality and temperament (ibid.: 91).

Then there are studies of identical twins reared apart. A major study was carried out where 19 pairs of identical twins were reared in different environments (separate homes), and 50 pairs of identical twins and 52 pairs of fraternal twins were reared together. While the authors ‘found considerable differences of many types between identical twins reared apart, they concluded that physical traits are least affected by the environment, that achievement and various skills are somewhat more sensitive to environmental influence, and that personality characteristics are most affected’.

Studies were also undertaken of children of different parentages reared together. These studies took environment as the constant and examined the role of heredity. Again, the results hinted at the complex relationship between heredity and environment.

In addition to these studies, we may also mention the stories of feral children—children abandoned in the wilderness and reared by other animals. The famous case of Ramu from Lucknow, reported in the January 1961 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India, is mentioned in Box 12.1. The child survived, but developed the same habits of eating as the wolves that looked after him. The absence of a social or cultural environment did not allow the feral child to become a human; he remained an animal. His biological capital helped him learn from the environment in which he was placed, but he remained socially incapacitated.

References are also found in social science literature of studies of isolated children. In 1938, a five-year-old girl named Anna was found in rural Pennsylvania, ‘wedged into an old chair with her arms tied above her head’. This child of a mentally impaired woman was unwelcome and sent to different agencies but was brought back and kept hidden in a store room, away from the sight of her enraged grandfather. Sociologist Kingsley Davis went to see her after she was rescued and found that the child was totally withdrawn, unable to talk, smile, or make any gestures. With Davis’ help, she was given good care and within 10 days, showed remarkable improvement. After about 18 months, at around seven years of age, she learnt to walk, eat, and play with toys. She could use words when she was 10, the age when she passed away.

Around the same time, another girl named Isabelle was found in the same condition as Anna. Through a special learning programme, Isabelle learned as many as 2,000 words within 18 months, at the age of eight. She gradually became normal and attended school.

MacIver and Page conclude: ‘Heredity is potentially made actual within an environment. All the qualities of life are in the heredity, all the evocation of qualities depends on the environment’ (1955: 97). An individual’s personality develops in a social environment. However, potential can be severely damaged if a person is made to suffer social isolation. One aspect of prison reforms, on humanitarian grounds, is to reform the offender by giving him an environment within which to interact. Isolated cells, severe punishments, and even death sentences are constantly being reviewed⁴ to understand their influence and impact on the personality.

Heredity and Physical Environment

Just as Galton enthusiastically propounded his Eugenics, some human geographers took the opposite view and attributed differences in society and in the behaviour of human beings to the natural environment. Way back in 1924, Ellsworth Huntington published his book titled Climate and Civilization to press the point that the geography of the place— which includes its climate—determines the kind of culture lived by the people inhabiting that area. Huntington made a global comparison between health and energy indicators (on the basis of climate) and the distribution of civilization. The two world maps drawn by him show a striking correlation. However, his critics challenged this static view and invited attention to the history of civilizations, which suggests changes in the location of centres of civilization despite the fact that the geography of those areas has remained unchanged. Ogburn and Nimkoff have argued that ‘the striking similarity does not prove that one is the cause of the other, or that the climate is the cause of civilizations’. The northeastern part of the United States, shown in the map as an area of advanced material culture, was only 300 years ago a locale of primitive tribes with a much simpler culture. During this interregnum, the climate did not change, and yet the arrival of the migrants to the New World caused this change. To quote MacIver and Page, ‘The geographical environment alone never explains the rise of a civilization’ (p. 103).

To reassert this point, here is another quote from Arnold Toynbee (1934, Vol. 1: 269):

It is clear that a virtually identical combination of the two elements [non-human and human] in the environment may give birth to a civilization in one instance and fail to give birth to a civilization in another instance without our being able to account for this absolute difference in the outcome by detecting any substantial difference in the circumstances, however strictly we may define the terms of our comparison. Conversely, it is clear that civilizations can and do emerge in environments which are utterly diverse. The non-human environment may be of ‘the fluvial type’ which has given birth to the Egyptiac and Sumeric civilizations and perhaps to an independent ‘Indus Culture’ as well; or it may be of the ‘plateau type’ which has given birth to the Andean and the Hitite and the Mexic civilizations; or it may be of ‘the archipelago type’ which has given birth to the Minoan and the Hellenic civilizations, and to the Far Eastern Civilization in Japan; or it may be of ‘the continental type’ which has given birth to the Sinic and the Indic and the Western civilizations, and to the Orthodox Christian Civilization in Russia; or it may be of ‘the jungle type’ which has given birth to the Mayan Civilization.

The main point is that the same culture or civilization can flourish in different environments, and different cultures can coexist in the same or similar environment. In the Indian state of Punjab, we have the culture associated with the Sikh religion, where every male follower of Sikhism wears a turban and remains hirsute. However, proponents of other religious faiths with different dressing styles also reside here. The new Punjab has become urbanized without ‘turbanization’. The portion of Punjab that has gone to Pakistan still speaks Punjabi, writes in the Urdu script and pursues Islam. The turban (tied in a particular style) is the symbol of a religion and is not necessitated by the climate of the province. The Indian diaspora has settled in different climes, and yet they have retained their identity as Indians.

Climate and Civilization

These two maps showing estimates of health and energy and of level of civilization show considerable similarity, with the help of the proper shading. Yet these supposed correlations may be due to influences other than climate and health. (From Ellsworth Huntington, Climate and Civilization, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1924, p. 295.)

Of course, this is not to deny the role of geography either on physical types or on social formations. What is emphasized is the point that

Not all the differences in physical types among human beings are the result of geographical location. Many are the result of biological mutations, minor ones, such as hair form. These mutations occur in the genes. The carrier of hereditary traits, which are pretty well protected from most climatic influences, though they may be affected, for instance, by radiation (Ogburn and Nimkoff 1958: 104).

The same is true of cultures.

In the southwestern part of the United States the Hopi and the Navaho Indians have lived for centuries in the same locality, but their cultures are quite different. The houses of Hopi are built of adobe and may rise several stories like apartment houses. The Navaho live in single-room dwellings. Shaped much like the Eskimo domed snow house, but built of branches of trees. The Hopi are agriculturists and harvest crops. The Navaho are nomads and graze sheep. The religion and family life of the two groups are quite different (ibid.: 110).

A Hopi Tribe House

A Navaho House

In our discussion on the influence of biology or ecology on social life, that is, culture, we have tried to provide evidence to counter the extremist claims of biologists and environmentalists. The fact that both have over-accentuated their points of view indicates that the truth lies somewhere in between. We have not said that biological or ecological factors are of no relevance to human society, nor are we claiming that human culture has complete control over biological or ecological phenomena. In the early phases of human civilization, humans must certainly have been circumscribed by the limitations of their locality, but as they lived and created culture, they modified their environs. What MacIver and Page have called the ‘outer’ environment is the product of this interaction between nature and man. In fact, this aspect is broadly covered by economic life, which deals with the problem of meeting ever-increasing wants with decreasing resources.

It can safely be said that at lower levels of cultural (which also includes technological) development, there was a greater dependence on nature. As nature placed limitations, so did the biology of humans, on the range of human interventions in a given context. Nature and biology conditioned the personal and social lives of the individual. It is through inventions and discoveries that man has been able to convert some of these conditions into means to attain desired goals. The geographical distance between one place and another remains unchanged, but it can be covered either on foot or on a vehicle. In this instance, geographical distance remains a condition, and the individual overcomes this hurdle through movement. When he uses a vehicle, the time taken to cover the distance is minimized—thus, distance is shortened without altering the geography. Again, a horse ride can be replaced with a mechanized car of several horse-power to reduce the distance, that is, the time taken to cover the distance. With an aeroplane, the distance is measured as the ‘crow flies’, which is geographically shorter. The recent construction of a bridge over the sea in the midst of Mumbai has reduced the time taken to reach the same destination using the same mode of transport. With technological advancement, culture has overcome the limitations of geographical conditions. Through technology, we have also overcome biological limitations: aviation technology has made it possible for us to fly, cover long distances and overcome the geographical hurdles posed by mountains, oceans, and deserts. We have succeeded in inventing planes that fly faster than the speed of sound (average speed 2,140 km/h).⁵ The revolution in information technology has made us psychologically mobile (empathetic), so that we are connected to each other despite a distance of thousands of miles. We have even ushered in an era of Internet marriages.

Our geography provides the basic materials needed to build items of our material culture. However, we do not use all of them either because of a lack of manpower or because of a different set of priorities. And materials not found in a given setting are imported from abroad. It is only after the depletion of resources that we have launched programmes of research for alternative sources of energy. Through our interventions, we have also created conditions for ‘climate change’, which has led to concern for the survival of our own species. The big hole in the ozone layer is caused by humans. Today, it is not that climate change is affecting our lives, it is that we have been responsible for climate change and have been called upon to halt this process. Technological intervention will save us from the evil consequences of the impending climate change.⁶ It also reminds us that technology and science have enlarged the realm of the possible—several things regarded as humanly impossible in the past are now within reach. Today, though, we are alerted to another aspect of our cultural life: all that is technologically possible may not be socially desirable or culturally acceptable. Humans today do not deal with only their present, but also engage in fashioning the future of our societies and cultures.

Society educates its young for future roles and fashions the future through socialization and enculturation. It is to these processes that we now turn.

Socialization

At birth, a human child is hopelessly dependent on others, and this dependence is much longer compared to other animals. At age 12, a dog, for example, is already a great-great grandparent and is ready to leave the world; at age 12, a human is still a child, a juvenile, and needs continued care in all respects. The period of intensive learning continues until he/she attains adulthood—variously defined as age 18+ or 21+.

To quote Harry M. Johnson:

At birth the human infant is unable to take part in any human society. What its mental life is like we cannot know directly, but we do know that it has no interest in regulating its bowel movements, no sense of propriety about revealing the various parts of its body—indeed, no conception of its body as something distinct from other objects, or of its fingers and toes as distinct parts of its body ….

Gradually, as the child grows and interacts with the members of its immediate family, then with members of the neighbourhood, and then comes in contact with various other formal and informal groups, he/she begins to behave as others do, comes to know what is right and what is wrong, what is appropriate and when. His id—the animal in him—gets tamed, and he learns to control himself. The child is rewarded for ‘proper’ behaviour and punished for ‘mistakes’ or unwanted behaviour—what is proper and what is not is certainly a matter of cultural definition. And thus, through this process he learns the culture of his society. Rewards are a source of gratification, while punishments cause deprivation. A smile, a kiss, a hug is a reward; a refusal to converse, to pay heed to the child’s demands, or even a slap on the face is a punishment. The more severe the punishment, the more likely is the child to refrain from repeating the act.

The process by means of which an individual is integrated into his society is called socialization. It involves the adaptation of the individual to the fellow members of his group, which in turn, gives him status and assigns to him the role he plays in the life of the community. He passes through various stages, each distinguished by certain permitted and prohibited forms of behaviour, such as playfulness in the young or the manipulation of power among the elders. As sexual maturity is reached, he again participates in a family grouping, but now as a parent, protector and teacher (Herskovits, 1955: 325).

This process is common both among infra-human animals and humans; however, it is much more complex in humans. ‘This means … that the process of socialization is only a part of the process by means of which men adjust to their fellows in working with the total body of traditions—economic, social, technological, religious, aesthetic, linguistic—to which they fall heir’ (ibid.: 326).

Herskovits calls all this process as ‘education’. According to him, the initial process which is common to all animals is socialization; however, induction into a new culture is enculturation. Learning beyond enculturation is a continuous process. This entire process of learning is education. Herskovits defines enculturation thus:

The aspects of learning experience that mark off man from other creatures, and by means of which he achieves competence in his culture, may be called enculturation. This is in essence a process of conscious or unconscious conditioning, exercised within the limits sanctioned by a given body of custom …. Like any phenomenon of human behaviour, this process is most complex. In the earliest years of an individual’s life, it is largely a matter of conditioning to fundamentals— habits of eating, sleeping, speaking, personal cleanliness—whose inculcation has been shown to have special significance in shaping the personality and forming the habit patterns of the adult in later life. Yet the enculturative experience is not terminated at the close of infancy … (ibid.: 327).

Herskovits regards enculturation as a life-long process, which involves not only learning, but much more besides. To quote the author once again: ‘The enculturation of the individual in the early years of his life is the prime mechanism making for cultural stability, while the process, as it operates on more mature folk, is highly important in inducing change’ (ibid.). A close reading of the subtle distinction between these two interrelated processes would suggest that socialization is a process through which the ‘animal’ in man is made ‘social’; but his cultural colouring is provided by the process of enculturation, which begins to overlap as the infant grows older. You have to be social in order to become cultural. Other animals become social but not cultural; culture is unique to humans. Since the world is characterized by cultural diversity, a person socialized in one culture can move to another society and get enculturated in it. A human can live in two cultures, and may even create a sandwich culture when pressed between two cultures—the parent culture and the host culture. This is an important distinction, but in most sociological writings socialization is the only term used to convey the differing concepts of socialization, enculturation, and education.

Socialization is not a one-shot affair. It is a lengthy process and occurs in stages commensurate with the stages of a child’s growth. It should be emphasized that not all learning is socialization. This process relates to the internalization of social roles. As a new member, a child is taught about his roles and those of others in the social system. Distinctions of gender, age and social proximity are learnt through this process. The child also develops skills of communication through which he convey his feelings and demands, and also learns and understands the messages relayed by others in the sphere of social interaction.

Stages of Development

Students of socialization talk of four major stages. They are: (i) the Oral stage; (ii) the Anal stage; (iii) the Oedipal stage; and (iv) Adolescence. In the first three, the key socializing agent is the family. As we have seen in our treatment of the family, in a nuclear family every member has two roles, namely, Father-Husband, Mother-Wife, Son-Brother and Daughter-Sister. These relationships involve two generations. In the case of stem families, three generations are involved with the inclusion of the grandparents. The roles associated with these statuses may vary from society to society—for example, they are different in matriarchal and patriarchal societies; also, polyandrous and polygynous families differ from monogamous families. But in all of them, the basic status categories remain the same.

1. The Oral Stage: This is the first stage, when the newborn confronts the first crisis of separation from the mother’s womb and is left to itself to breathe, feel hunger, and make efforts to feed itself. Its only response when faced with discomfort is to cry. It is this cry that brings it relief. It is the mother who does this, and thus the child becomes orally dependent on her, or on any other person who acts as a mother. The mother becomes the primary identification, although the child does not know whether she is a different person or a part of itself—the two roles are merged. However, in the process bodily contact with the mother provides it with what psychologists call ‘erotic’ pleasure. This attachment appears to be crucial. Experiments conducted amongst chimpanzees give credence to this formulation. In a controlled-experimental study, a chimpanzee baby was breast-fed by the mother, and in another case the mother was replaced by a milk bottle shaped like a breast. While both babies survived because of the feed, the one fed by the mother grew up to be more sensitive and ‘social’; the other did not experience the warmth of the mother’s body and was thus somewhat reserved and reclusive.

   The famous psychologist Piaget observed the growth of his own three children to work out the process of human cognition—he focused not on the content of knowledge, but on how they made sense of the world. He listed six stages of cognitive development. It is only after crossing these stages that a child is in a position to recognize external objects. These are:

   • Stage One (also known as the Sensorimotor Stage): This is the stage at which the person begins to experience the world only through his senses. Reflexes such as ‘sucking’ produce some sensations in the child, but it is not in a position to differentiate these from his act of sucking.
   • Stage Two: Some motor habits—body movements—develop certain perceptions, but they are not consistent. When a child looks at an object from a particular angle, he might sometimes see an image and sometimes not. These are incipient perceptions.
   • Stage Three: Around the fourth or fifth month, the child begins to grasp the objects he sees, and also uses his other senses to verify, such as touch, smell, hearing and sight. Some sort of coordination of these various sensory experiences begins to occur. He is alerted to a movement by noise, but is unable to move his sight from the place of origin—the site where he locates an object. The object may fall with a thud, and yet the child’s eye will not move with the object, it will continue to stare at the original site. Similarly, a child used to sucking milk from a bottle will start sucking it from a wrong end if he is handed the bottle at the wrong end, because he has been unable to ‘construct’ the bottle.
   • Stage Four: When the child is nearly nine months old, he enters the fourth stage. At this time, he ‘learns to search for an object that he has seen an adult put under a cloth; he will remove the cloth. But he is not yet able to take account of a sequence of changes of position: if he twice discovers a toy parrot under cloth A and then before his eyes it is placed under cloth B, he will continue to look it under cloth A’ (Johnson, 1960: 113).
     

     Touching and recognizing the grandmother at Stage Four (Courtesy: @ Rachita Atal)

   • Stage Five: When a child is nearly a year old, he haltingly develops the skills to take note of the sequence of change.
   • Stage Six (The Preoperational Stage): This is the stage when he transits from the oral to the anal stage. Around the fifteenth month, or a little later, the child is able to construct objects, that is, ‘internalize’ them. This stage prepares him for two further stages, which Piaget called the Concrete Operational Stage and the Formal Operational Stage.

   It should be stated here that even in the early stage of infancy, there exists reciprocity in parent–child relations. While the child begins to adapt to the mother’s treatment, the mother also adapts to the changes occurring in the child.

2. The Anal Stage: This is the second stage, which begins when the child completes its first year and continues till the third year. It is called the anal stage because the child is trained to control his sphincter. The child is trained to control and release his bodily emissions at appointed times. This is a new demand on the child, which helps it understand that the mother is a different person and that there are two roles—that of the child and that of the mother. The mother also serves as a ‘go-between’, with the child on one side and the rest of the family on the other. The child at this stage becomes the recipient of not only care, but also of love, which it reciprocates. Withholding faeces or discharging them at wrong intervals may be a sign of aggression (or defiance) on the part of the child, which may incur the mother’s wrath as a form of ‘punishment’. The child thus becomes involved in basic interactions with the mother, and begins to understand the language of love and aggression, of reward and punishment.

   In the subsystem (the mother) is the instrumental leader relative to the child, for she is still chiefly responsible for meeting his specific needs. The child’s contribution to the system is mainly expressive: he helps to integrate the system by cooperating and giving love; he is still too young and dependent to contribute very much to task accomplishment (Johnson, 1960: 125).

   The training involves being somewhat strict and harsh, but the mother as socializing agent has to do so in the wider interest of the social system and also of the child, for a poorly socialized child would be a social misfit. At the same time, the mother also serves as protector, warding off excessive pressure from the social system. Over-protection can make the child pampered and overly dependent; similarly, a child sans protection may become a rebel, and find it difficult to adjust. The success of socialization lies in avoiding both extremes.

   It is at this stage that the child begins to acquire some skills in language. Although the child is exposed to sounds right from his birth, he becomes familiar with only a few of them—the rhythm of rattling toys, percussion, and pounding—but not so much with words, and less so with grammar. In the first stage the child picks up some words. As the child grows, language becomes the principal vehicle of socialization. It serves as the primary tool for the transmission of socio-cultural messages. Language learning thus constitutes an essential process for induction into society, and becomes the solid basis for early parent–child interactions. Current theories of language development posit that children actively construct language from everyday interactions (Tomasello, 2003). Children do not learn language as discrete units, such as words or abstract grammatical rules; instead, they experience language in the form of meaning units that designate a basic pattern of experience—someone volitionally transferring something to someone else, someone causing someone to move or change state, and so on (see Srivastava et al., 2009). In a study on language learning carried out on two-year-old children in Delhi, Smita Srivastava identified two major factors in their acquisition of such meaning units.

   1. The language they hear in interactions with their care-givers. Children draw upon dominant patterns of form-function pairings in their input to construct their own unique meaning units, gradually building up to a full blown adult grammar. For example, Smita Srivastava found that initially two-year-old Hindi-speaking children tend to use a transitive construction (agent-object-verb) such as aap tower banaa do—‘you make the tower’—only with an animate agent and an inanimate object, and to cause a change in someone’s action. On the other hand, an adult uses such a construction in a variety of other contexts.
   2. The particular characteristics of the language they are acquiring. Hindi has different forms of the same verb, such as banana (to make), to denote whether one is talking about an agent’s action (transitive: Ma Chai Banaa Do—Ma make tea) or a change of state in an object (intransitive: Chai Ban Gayii—Tea is made). Srivastava found that hearing different forms of the same verb in different communicative contexts helps these Hindi-speaking two and three-yearolds to understand the difference between the two contexts, which is somewhat difficult for their English-speaking counterparts. In English, the verb ‘make’ has the same form in both transitive (‘ma made tea’) and intransitive (‘the tea is made’), making it difficult for young children to catch on to the difference in the meanings conveyed by both in the two different contexts. Conversations within the family, as well as in the broader language of the community, are thus powerful sources of cultural, psychological and linguistic information for the growing child (Srivastava, 2010).
3. The Oedipal Stage: This stage is said to begin around age four, particularly in the West. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud talked of two complexes—the Oedipus Complex and Electra Complex. Oedipus Complex refers to the jealousy a boy is believed to have towards his father on account of his claim over his mother. Among girls, the reverse is the case: the girl gets attracted towards her father and thus becomes jealous of her mother, who is seen to be in love with the girl’s father. It is not certain whether the attraction is sexual or erotic in a child of four, who hardly understands the sexual implications of anatomical differences. While the child distinguishes between the father and the mother, he/she perhaps has no clear idea that one is a male and the other female. The attachment to the mother is greater because of the initial body contact and prolonged period of care. Moreover, in patriarchal societies mothers usually are soft and reward-giving, while the father’s image is that of a no-nonsense disciplinarian. The child also becomes possessive and refuses to share its mother’s love with other siblings, because that disturbs its ‘exclusive’ relationship. But as the child grows, reaching the age of six, the mother begins to gradually withdraw from exclusive care, and other members of the family—the father, siblings or cousins, and even servants—replace her and become part of the network of socializing agents for the child. This is the time when gender-related behaviour is taught—the dresses of boys are different from that of girls, and the toys too are different. Emphasis is laid on anatomical differences, and the child is encouraged to join the company of people of its own gender—girls with their sisters, aunts, and other female relatives, and boys with their brothers, uncles, and other male relatives. It is their company that encourages the child to emulate gender-related behaviour.

   Special interest in the opposite sex is not inborn; nor is interest in opposite sex the cause of identification with one’s own sex. On the contrary, identification with one’s own sex is the cause of one’s interest in the opposite sex. Failure to make the correct identification is a cause of homosexuality (Johnson, 1960: 128).

4. Adolescence: This is the stage that begins with puberty, when the child increasingly becomes independent, emerging from parental control. The appearance of facial hair is a sign of incipient manhood; similarly, the growth of breasts and menarche herald the arrival of womanhood in girls. Boys begin to imitate their fathers, and girls their mothers. It is the mother who assists the daughter when menarche occurs. The mother becomes the first tutor in sex education for the girl; not so for the boy. In matters of sex, it is generally the peer group that helps a boy through trial and error, the curiosity at times leading to homosexual adventures. In most non-literate societies, the knowledge and practice of sex is properly imparted by elders. For example, in West Africa, a newly circumcized youth is required,

   [T]o have sexual relations with a woman who has passed the menopause, ‘to take off the burn of the knife’. By her experience she aids him in the technique of sexual performance and helps him overcome any traumatic shock that may have resulted from the operation (Herskovits, 1955: 186).

In some tribal societies, there are youth dormitories—like the Ghotul among the Gonds of Central India (see Elwin, 1947)—where the young meet at night and exchange information related to sex. Gond Ghotuls are common dormitories for boys and girls. ‘The premarital experimentation … plays a definite role in inculcating skill and finesse in sex behaviour.… The attitude toward instruction in sex is generally marked by consciousness of a serious duty on the part of older people, rarely by lasciviousness’ (ibid.: 186–87). There are other tribes that have separate dormitories for boys and girls. Besides serving as centres for sex education, these institutions also train the young in music, dance, and martial arts. The young function as watchmen for the village. In modern societies, this is the age when young people wish to be with their peers. Discotheques are in some ways the functional equivalent of tribal dormitories. The key point is that adolescence is the age when the process of socialization is removed from the family. Adolescence is the final step before the entry into adulthood. This is also the time when boy–girl interactions are governed by the incest taboo on the one hand, with some freedom being granted for premarital rendezvous on the other. Engagement, betrothal, and marriage ceremonies are also associated with this stage.

Piaget’s last two stages, namely, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage, are related to this age group. The Concrete Operational Stage is reached between ages 7–11, when individuals begin to focus on the how and why of an event, and are able to use more symbols for an event. The last stage—the formal operational stage—is reached around age 12, when individuals begin to think critically and in abstract terms.

Agents and Content of Socialization

Agents

This brief excursion into the stages of socialization helps us to identify the key agents and content of socialization. The agents are:

1. The Mother—Real or Surrogate: The first person with whom the child comes in contact and remains attached to, for the longest time is the mother. It is she who brings the child into the world and it is her task to provide care and ensure its welfare. Through her, the child learns to distinguish between himself and the other party, and to have the first lesson in social relationship. She also becomes the first language teacher—that is why we talk of a mother tongue. Through her, the child is linked to the family, the neighbourhood, the community and the wider society. She gives the first lessons in social behaviour in terms of dos and don’ts—the prescriptions and proscriptions; and she is the one who introduces the concepts of gratification and deprivation—of rewards and punishments—which control the ‘id’ of the child and transforms him into an ‘ego’, the balanced personality, through the accumulation of cultural norms and practices. We may also note that it is not only the mother who is an agent of socialization; a woman is socialized into the role of a mother and a male into the role of a father through the child, who plays the role of son or daughter. If the parents have the mechanisms of reward and punishment, the child also has

   [A]t his disposal two powerful means of controlling his caretakers—the cry and the smile …. No wonder the young child believes in the magical power of the human voice and gesture, for his own cry summons powerful beings to his side and his smile establishes this participation in social life (Danziger, 1971: 61).

   Both parents and child make dual demands—positive and negative. Positive demands are to encourage the child to commit himself to a desirable activity, and the negative demand is to keep the child from undesirable activities.

2. The Father and the Siblings: In a nuclear family, these come next to the mother. Of course, they can also play the role of a surrogate mother. Their gradual participation in their interaction with the newborn enlarges the child’s sphere of social interaction, and expands his cognitive horizons. The mother–child interaction is now extended to other members of the family. The same set of positive and negative demands are made by both parties. It is through interactions with them that the child learns of a differentiated status structure and the attendant roles and responsibilities.
3. The Peer Group: As the child becomes mobile and gains independence—being away from the protection of the parents—his time is spent more with children of his age group. In the earlier years, this group consists of both sexes, but as the child grows older, these tend to be sex-based. Even the games become different for boys and girls. This is also the period when grandparents, if they are around, share a common social field with grandchildren and become tutors in the culture of the society through the narration of mythological stories and stories reviving their past.
4. The School: Teachers and Fellow Students: In modern societies, schools become ‘second families’ as they take on the responsibility of educating the young. While the entire process of education is not socialization, the school provides a good ground for this transformation. The child learns to accommodate the differing demands of members of his role set—the teachers, students of higher classes (seniors), and classmates. Lessons in group life, in several cultural norms—dressing patterns, morning prayers, respect for elders, punctuality, obedience, and several other things are learnt at school besides the curriculum, which prepares them for their adult role. The schools and textbooks are also primary sources of political socialization. Even an abstract subject like Arithmetic can be the source of political socialization. Scholars have hinted at this by pointing to the sums related to weight measures or currencies. For example, during the British period, Arithmetic books carried sums related to addition and subtraction of British currency—pound, shilling, and pence—and the pound was symbolically written as £. At that time, a shilling was worth 12 pence, and 20 shillings equalled a pound, and 21 shillings was called a pound sterling. The British weights were likewise called pound (but the symbol was lb) and ounce (oz)—16 ounces equals one pound, and gram. In India, the money measure was rupee, divided into rupee, anna and paisa (12 paisa = 1 anna, 16 anna = 1 rupee), and the weight measures were mound, seer, and chhatak (16 chhatak = 1 seer, 40 seer =1 mound). It must also be said that in different princely states, the measures used the same nomenclature, but their values were different. The silver rupee coin of Mewar state was more valuable than the rupee in British-ruled states. The British measures of weight were called ‘Bangali’—presumably because they were introduced by the East India Company. The Mewar seer was equal to the weight of 108 Mewari one rupee coins, whereas the Bangali seer was equal to 80 one rupee coins of the British Raj. Thus, vicariously, the school child was socialized into the country’s system of currency and measures of weight. Upon independence, a political decision was taken to go decimal, and that changed our currency to rupees and paise, measures of weight into kilograms, and measures of distance from yard, feet and inches to the metric system. While the Americans still measure liquid in gallons, we have moved to litres. Apart from this, history books, books on geography and literature contain subject matter that not only educates students in abstract theory, but socializes them in the culture of the country.
5. The Mass Media: At one point in time, the mass media was limited to the print media, and thus its exposure was limited to the literate population. However, the radio, television and the cinema (the DVD revolution has turned many houses into small cinema theatres) have made literacy almost redundant. Through audiovisual aids, the impersonal communications meant for a large audience reach all age groups, and increasingly all sections of society—both urban and rural. They have become surrogate schools and sources of encyclopaedic knowledge. Not only do they influence dressing patterns or mannerisms, they also influence attitudes and behaviour. The Mahabharat TV serial, for example, became so popular that people would avoid committing themselves to any other task during that time slot. Even the prime minister was asked to delay his arrival to ensure that the crowd would be there to welcome him in a state capital. The language used in the serial was Sanskritized, and children picked up several phrases and terms of address for their kin. Literacy as a precondition to learning is challenged by the mass media. For the educated, literacy is no longer limited to the knowledge of the three R’s (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic); computeracy is now an added skill that is needed in all professions. A literate has also to be a computerate. The mass media are also criticized for encouraging violence and alienating people; there is, however, insufficient evidence to either support or refute these hypotheses. It calls for cross-cultural research in mass communications.

Contents of Socialization

It will be useful to list the contents of socialization.

• Language: This is the most important means of communication, learnt through the process of socialization. We have mentioned earlier that a child living in total isolation is incapable of articulating his speech in a meaningful manner. A human has an enormous potential to produce various sounds, but any given individual is able to actualize only a small amount of this vast potential. He gets exposed to the language of the group in which he is born. Through constant listening and repetition of set phrases and sentences, he acquires the skill in reproducing them first without understanding them, but later associates meaning with them and unconsciously picks up the pattern we call grammar. There is no society—preliterate or literate—that does not have its own language; it does not require linguists and grammarians to teach it to the young. The mother, and later older siblings, become teachers of language to the child. Reading and writing are skills that develop later, but effective participation in the social sphere requires competence in communicating in the common language. Communication involves both sending and receiving messages and their right interpretation.
• Locomotion: From its elders, the child picks up mannerisms such as walking, sitting, standing, etc. There are studies that tell us that while swimming is a common exercise, people belonging to different cultures master this art differently, in terms of controlling the breath, use of the hands and legs while swimming, and even making some sounds. People living in coastal areas master the art of swimming as part of their socialization.
• Behaviour patterns. These are part of the learning process. Forms of salutation and greeting, manner of speaking, expressions of emotion—smiling, crying, show of grief, etc.—are all culturally conditioned.
• Dressing pattern: Clothes are not only meant to cover the body and protect it from the elements, but also to announce one’s status vis-à-vis others. Some clothes may be unisex, but hairstyles, certain other clothes, special marks on the forehead or chin are all status diacriticals.
• Knowledge about society, religion, economy and polity: This is that aspect of the process of socialization that anthropologists call enculturation. Of course, it also includes some of the items mentioned above, particularly the many things taught via mathematical sums, or history or civics.

This is a broad list indicating that socialization serves the purpose of making the child a useful and active member of society. Through this process, he is oriented towards the society and feels a part of it. Those deviating from the norms of culture become marginal. They are variously called criminals, people of the underworld, or renegades (when they begin orienting themselves to a different society, begin adopting the lifestyle of that society and plan to move out). That is the reason why earlier studies of social disorganization attributed all deviant behaviour to the poverty of socialization and to weaker mechanisms of social control. Such an approach was also condemned by some as ‘status-quoist’ and ‘anti-change’.

Final Word

What the process of socialization basically does is transform the human individual from a mere instinct-bearing biological being to a person who has internalized the norms and behaviour learnt socially, in the company of others. Freud called it a process of transformation from an ‘id’ into an ‘ego’. But the ego is not just ‘I’. A socialized person distinguishes between ‘I’ (the subjective part of the self—the actor) and ‘me’ (the objective form of the personal pronoun). He not only knows who ‘he’ is, but also tends to know what others expect from him. When he asserts himself, it is his ‘I’, but when he acts while giving due regard to the question ‘what is expected of “me”’, his action is in relation to others. Charles H. Cooley has called this the ‘looking-glass self’ (Cooley, 1902). Socialization creates a mirror—a looking glass—in which the person sees his own image as seen by others; the ‘others’ serve as the mirror. Every time a person acts, he considers what the other party will think, how they will react. It is this estimate of others’ response that helps him to modify his behaviour suitably. A wrong anticipation can damage the interaction, or bring in unanticipated consequences. Similarly, a wrong estimation of the likely response to the other party can create a crisis in relationships.

Let us explain the concepts of id, ego and superego as proposed by Freud.

The Id (it is a Latin word for ‘it’) is the unorganized and inaccessible part of the personality structure. Described as ‘a cauldron full of seething excitations’, its energy is derived from its instincts. It strives to satisfy instinctual needs for personal pleasure. The id is biologically inherited, and is part of the somatic organization. The newborn child is regarded as completely ‘id-ridden’. His mind is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses and craves the immediate satisfaction of bodily needs for food, water, sex, and other basic impulses. It is amoral and without a sense of time. It is completely illogical, primarily sexual and infantile, and does not take ‘no’ for an answer. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or the ‘instinctive drive to create’. The id-ridden child is ‘ego-centric’—in the sense that he thinks he is at the centre of the universe and others exist for him.

With constant interactions with other members and the cultural milieu, the id is brought into control. The internalized part of the cultural milieu constitutes a person’s superego. Sandwiched between the twin pressures of the superego and the id, the child develops his ego. The closer he is to the id, he remains an ‘idiot’, and the farther he moves from it towards the superego, he becomes a well-adjusted ego. The ego thus comprises that ‘organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions’. The ego is that part of the id that has been modified by the direct influence of the external world (based on Freud, 1923); by this, we primarily mean culture. In the personality structure of an individual, the superego is almost the opposite of the id and works for the suppression of the id, like a charioteer holding the reins of a horse to keep the beast under control and guide its movements in accordance with the norms of the road. The compromise that results from the competing demands of the self and society is called sublimation. ‘The super ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways.’

To recapitulate, socialization is a process through which the individual learns to perform social roles and acquire the values and norms of a society’s culture. That is how individual behavioural dispositions are integrated with the needs of the social structure. The child inherits the knowledge pool of society and is made to conform to the societal norms of behaviour. However, all learning is not necessarily socialization, and socialization does not include all learning. In a way socialization is indoctrination, where the learner is mainly the recipient.

A Note On Political Socialization

In the area of sociology, very little research on socialization has been carried out, particularly in societies of the South. Of course, some cultural anthropologists have devoted their time and attention to this aspect of social life. Most ethnographies devote a chapter or two to the rites de passage (rites during the journey of life), in which they talk of the rituals associated with the major crises of life, namely, birth, initiation, marriage, and death. Margaret Mead did a ground-breaking work on socialization by producing a monograph titled Coming of Age in Samoa. Although some of its findings have later been challenged, it still remains a major landmark. In this regard, I wish to briefly allude to the controversy surrounding Margaret Mead’s work.⁷ Boas found in her work a strong argument against the ‘apostles of Eugenics’ who floated the ‘nurture versus nature’ controversy. Boas was of the view that ‘the social stimulus is infinitely more potent than the biological mechanism’. He regarded the eugenics movement as a ‘pseudo scientific cult’, and said that ‘racial interpretation of history [is] irremediably dangerous’. To quote Freeman: ‘The extreme doctrines of the hereditarians, Boas pointed out, had set anthropologists and biologists at odds, and so much so that a “parting of ways” had been reached’ (1984: 5). Boas’ students—Kroeber and Lowie—worked hard to propound a doctrine of absolute cultural determinism that excluded biological variables. Mead’s work was refuted by Freeman on the ground that in her enthusiasm to side with cultural determinism, she somehow ignored the role of genetic factors, and thus misguided her audience by a faulty portrayal of the cultural reality of the Samoans. In the US, Freeman’s book became a ‘seismic event’ as it raised some key ethical issues pertaining to the writings of the world’s most respected and highly acclaimed anthropologist.

The author with Margaret Mead in 1975

There is another work by Hamed Ammar, Growing up in an Egyptian Village (1954), which is an ethnographic account of the process of socialization. In the same tradition is the book by David Landy on Tropical Childhood (1965).

Books on political socialization are, however, rare. The credit must go to Herbert Hyman, who produced a collection of essays in 1959 on Political Socialization, which encouraged scholars to pay attention to this aspect of socialization.

In this context, it is important to mention that political socialization plays a very significant role in political systems that are democratic, but not so in others. Broadly, political cultures are classified into three categories, parochial, subject, and participant political cultures, which correspond with traditional, authoritative, and democratic political systems. In traditional systems, the sphere of the political is not separated from other spheres—in some tribal societies, the political system as such is not noticeable (that is why they are called acephalic), and even in somewhat advanced societies of yore, the church and the state were inseparable. In such systems, there exists no need for any distinct political socialization. In authoritarian political systems, the people are the subjects ruled by the despot, and the subjects have no say in the affairs of the state. Regimes in such societies want to keep their subjects apolitical. It is the democratic systems that are participative in nature, and citizens are expected to be au courant with the goings-on in the polity, and actively participate in the running of the state; they elect people to govern, they influence policy-making, and they agitate and protest against the governing elite. A well-informed citizenry is regarded as a prerequisite for the effective functioning of the democracy. No wonder such studies of political socialization had their origin in the United States, which prides itself as being a democratic polity. Students researching these areas tried to analyse how much ‘political content’ there was in the general process of socialization, and how politically relevant socialization was being conducted by different agents of socialization.

Most existing studies on political socialization have not focused on the process of political socialization; they analysed its content, and tried to measure the degree of political awareness and commitment amongst the common citizenry—both adults and citizens-in-the-making. Thus, there have been studies of mass media, election campaigns and party manifestos, and content analyses of school textbooks to cull out elements of political socialization.

Rajni Kothari (1928–2015)

In India, some of the studies carried out on the youth included some aspects of their political knowledge and involvement. Election studies done in the 1970s drew voter profiles in terms of their awareness of political issues, parties and political leaders; some even worked out political opinion profiles and tried to correlate them with their political participation. An India-specific Index of the Sense of Political Efficacy (SPE index) was developed by Yogesh Atal and used in his study titled Local Communities and National Politics (1971).

Surendra K. Gupta came out with a full-length monograph based on his study of school children in a district town in Uttar Pradesh. The study, titled Citizen in the Making, focused on the family and the school—the two potential agents of political socialization. Gupta regarded the family as the latent agent of political socialization, and the school as the manifest agent. Quoting Almond, the author defines manifest political socialization as ‘… an explicit transmission of information, values, or feelings vis-à-vis the roles, inputs and outputs of the political system’. Latent political socialization, on the other hand, is ‘transmission of information, values, or feelings vis-à-vis the roles, inputs and outputs of other social systems, such as the family, which affect attitudes toward analogous roles, inputs and outputs of the political system’ (Gupta, 1975: 220).

Gupta interviewed a sample of students from a higher secondary school in a district town in Uttar Pradesh; he also interviewed, through a questionnaire, their teachers and parents. The analysis showed that the family does not serve as a direct agent of political socialization in small towns in India. In contrast, the teachers ranked higher than parents in terms of their political awareness; however, the parents were more open in expressing opinions on political matters than teachers, their comparative lack of political awareness notwithstanding. The study found that students in lower standards, and those with an urban background, have shown more leadership qualities. More than 75 per cent of the students in the sample exhibited a dependency trait as they perceived their family structure as ‘conservative’ and ‘authoritarian’; therefore, they were hesitant to plan their future and left it to their parents to decide their career for them. Compared to the family, students found the school climate liberal and democratic, this despite the fact that teachers preferred to be conservative and authoritarian vis-à-vis the students. In terms of reference group theory, the author interprets that students regarded their teachers as more liberal compared to their parents, and treated them as role models. Political awareness—of local, regional and national issues—in the student sample increased with age and educational level, but the awareness remained linked to the salience of the people and issues. Thus, for example, more students knew about the prime minister than about the President of India. The study supported the hypothesis that political involvement is associated with socio-economic status. In any case, the school in the small town did not serve as a major agent of political socialization, as was clear from the ranking of students on scales related to media exposure, political awareness, opinion, and participation.

The study was conducted at a time when the fourth general elections were being held in the country in 1967. In a pilot study carried out by Gupta, it was found that the political parties and their workers contributed a great deal to enlarging the knowledge base relative to politics. Equally important was the role of the mass media in political socialization. Children who did not have direct access to these media remained uninformed.

It must be stressed here that this study was conducted in 1967—over 47 years ago. With the spread of mass media and innovations in the curricula, the profile of students today in terms of political socialization would be greatly different. Sadly, research in this field is lacking.

Appendix

Youth Dormitories in Tribal India

In some of the tribes there exist youth dormitories that serve the function of developing community feeling, training young boys and girls, and preparing them for marital life. These dormitories provide the venue for the assembly on important occasions to all the villagers, or specific groups, such as women, outside visitors. Community-level meetings are also held there where important decisions relative to village or the behaviour of any member of the community are taken. These youth dormitories provide the space for the community’s young—boys and girls together or separately, to meet in the evenings for entertainment, storytelling, and even spending the night there.

We will describe some of these institutions prevalent in tribes of India as agents of socialization of the young into adulthood.

The Nagas of the Northeast have a bachelors’ hut which is called Morung. These are meant especially for boys and girls were not allowed inside. A boy enters the dormitory at the age of six or seven and remains there till he gets married and sets up his own house. Morung also serves as a storehouse for keeping relics of human and animal skulls. Villagers also keep their spears and shields. It also serves as a meeting place where important decisions relating to war and peace are taken. In the past, the younger generation were reared there to manhood and inducted into the culture of the Naga society. They learnt folk tales and songs and local dances. Morung also acted as sanctuary for a culprit who took refuge in it. The Morung was the pride of the village and was always decorated with trophies of war.

It must be said that since there are several tribes bearing the common appellation Naga, the Morungs of each Naga tribe has distinct features.

A Typical Naga Morung

For example, Angami Nagas call their dormitories Kichuki. In another Naga tribe, Boys’ dormitory is called Ikhuichi and girls’ dormitory is called Iloichi. The Juang call them Darbar.

The matrilineal Garo have a house for the unmarried called Nok Pante, which is visited by women rarely, on special occasions, and whenever they do they enter the house from the back door. They go specially to offer drinks during a feast or to convey some important messages. For the visitors to the village, a special guest house is built which is called Alda.

Youth dormitories are found in several tribes of India. We find descriptions of youth dormitories in the southern tribes of Kannikar, Mannan, Palayan, Vishavan, and Mudavar. The Zen Kurumba of Mysore and Wynaad have separate dwellings for boys and girls. The boys’ dormitory is called Pundal Mane; girls can visit this Mane in the night and sleep with their lovers. Similarly, boys can visit the dormitory for women. It is, however, important that the boys and girls keep the happenings secret.

Yurali or Betty Kurumbas have an open hut in the middle of the village which is called Chital Pore or Chital Mane. The hut for women is also called Baangiri. Among them also premarital sex is permissible.

Among the Kotas of Nilgiri Hills, a different kind of institution has developed. There, a married couple is allowed to live for three years after the marriage. But during this time, if the woman becomes pregnant the couple has to quit the hut. Men and women living there sing songs, play games, share jokes, and sleep after the lamp is burned out. In this society, women take special interest in cheating their husbands in matters of sex. After the lamp is put out, girls pretend to comb their hair and when they feel that their husbands have slept they invite any other man to their carpet to sleep together. In the morning, the lover boasts that he spent the night with some other’s wife.

The Bondos of Odisha have a waiting hall for women, called Selani Dingo. Here women receive men from other villages, but not from their own village. Because of this, the young of the village visit other villages in the night to meet women in the Selani Dingos. This is how they pick up their life partners. This is also an example of village exogamy.

The Oraons of Bihar call this institution Jonkarpa or Dhumkuria. Among Munda and Ho tribes it is called Gitiora. Bhoias call it Dhangarbasa. Bhotias of Uttar Pradesh have the identical institution of Rangbang.

Bhotia Rangbang

The Bhotias live on the Indo-Tibet border in the Almora district of Uttaranchal. Every night Bhotia youth assemble here to drink, sing, and dance. Whichever place they meet, the function is named Rangbang. Thus, there is no specific place for Rangbang function.

For this function, boys and girls from the nearby villages are also invited. Standing on a cliff some people wave a coloured cloth to send such a message to other villages. While meeting, care is taken that the boy and girl are not of the same clan (called Ronth). When girls go to another village for participation in a Rangbang, they invite boys of the host village to their village for the next Rangbang. These girls look after them, serving them food and drinks, and making arrangements for their night halt.

Drinking is an essential part of Rangbang. The local brew, known as Chaktee is served to the guests in wooden bowls. But it is regarded bad to gulp down all the wine served in the bowl. Some more liquor is poured into the bowl and passed on the person sitting next. This rotation keeps going until it is decided to halt it when the last person served the drink empties the bowl and put it facing down. It may be noted that in this society, it is the task exclusively of women to brew the liquor. Women too drink and smoke profusely. Participants play the game of riddles, sing songs ridiculing each other.

After the event, people sleep in pairs on woolen carpets. When the number exceeds either of the boys or of girls, they sleep alone. Because of small size of the room, sexual activity is almost negligible. The society also does not appreciate such free sexual license; the children born out of such union are also given a lower status. That is why they have allowed abortions. Various techniques are employed for an abortion.

Young people can select their lovers in a Rangbang. After the decision to marry is taken the boy goes with his friends to the village of the bride, and brings her to their village. This is a form of abduction or kidnapping. Once the kidnapped girl agrees to marry the kidnapper boy, the friends of the would-be bride are invited. Such girls are called Shasha. A Rangbang is arranged in their honour. After the song and dances and drinking these girls sleep with the friends of the bridegroom. While returning, if any Shasha is asked to stay back then all these girls go to their village and return for the second Rangbang wedding. If any boy began liking an already married girl participating in a Rangbang he lifts her and takes her out in a separate room where he urges her to divorce her husband and marry him. The married girls are allowed to participate in the Rangbang only until they do not start sharing bed with their husbands. If any married woman continues participating in the Rangbang and suddenly realizes that she has become pregnant, she tries to please her husband and does everything to satisfy his sexual needs. In that case the child born to her is regarded as her husband’s. Thus, it is the married women who encourage sexual activity in the Rangbang.

Rangbang is a socially accepted institution. It is organized practically on all important occasions such as festivals, functions, and congregations. There is an important place of migratory living among the Bhotias. While staying in different places girls are sent to the new destination in advance to make arrangements for food and stay. On their way, these girls are received in specially arranged Rangbangs. Similarly, when adult Bhotias go to Tibet for trade, then the boys and girls of nearby villages assemble for Rangbang activities.

With the expansion of education, elite Bhotias have begun decrying this institution. But Bhotia students returning to their villages after their education elsewhere keep Rangbangs alive specially to indulge in sexual activities. Filmy songs are now being used in place of traditional folk songs in such functions. People have become ambivalent.

Muria Ghotul

The most popular are the Ghotuls of Maria and Muria Gonds of Bastar, Chhattisgarh, popularized by Verrier Elwin through his 1947 publication. A British missionary, turned an anthropologist spent most of his life among the tribals of India. Living in Bastar, he married a 13-year-old Gond girl when he himself was 40. Elaborate description of this institution is found in his book, The Muria and Their Ghotul.

Ghotul is a place where unmarried boys and girls of the village assemble in the evening. Here they beat drums, sing songs, and dance. Ghotul is a place where assemble to take rest, drink and dance. It is here that the unmarried get free time to learn the mysteries of sex.

Ghotul Gudi is a small hutment closed from all sides with a little door and is built a little away from the village. Because of a narrow entry a person has to crawl to enter it. Inside is dark and dingy, and the burning fire makes it smoky. No unknown person is allowed inside.

Children—boys and girls—become its members after attaining the age of 6–7 years. All children of the village are expected to join the Ghotul. If any member does not take regular part in the activities of the Ghotul he/she is suitably punished. Parents disallowing their child from participation in Ghotul activities are also penalized for anti-social behaviour. However, only unmarried ones are eligible to become its members. A widowed person, however, is allowed to join it again. In no circumstance a married woman is ever allowed to enter the Ghotul.

Ghotul makes differentiation on the basis of age. Older members have special rights compared to new entrants. They become special office holders of Ghotul. The boys of Ghotul are called Chelik and the girls Motiari. In Padelbhum village the chief of Ghotul is called Leyur Gaita and other office bearers are named Leyur Meddi, Jalarasi, Laharu, Baider, and Kamdar. In Narayanpur village, the chief (Pradhan) is called Salau, and others are called Vaidhar, Siladhar, and Kotwar. In village Karanji, the chief is named Deewan. In some villages, these officials are also called Tehsildar, Deputy Sahib, and Kalektar (Collector).

Bastar Gonds doing a stilt Dance (Courtesy: @ Niranjan Mahavar)

The Chief (Salau) is the overall chief who is responsible for all the activities in the Ghotul. He also enjoys some special privileges. He can make love with any particular girl, and once advertised, such a girl enjoys special privileges. While the Salau can have love relationships with more than one girl, none can make love with the lover of Salau. In village Karanji, the chief Motiari is called Deevanin, but it is not mandatory for her to be the lover of Deewan. The Salau continues to hold office until he gets married. Later, this task is given to another unanimously chosen leader.

It is the task of Vaidhar to collect firewood and get the Ghotul hut cleaned regularly. Siladhar keeps record of attendance of members, and Kotwar is assigned the duty of following instructions from Salau regarding invitations for food or presenting an erring member. There is no more distinction other than this in a Ghotul. The rich and poor, children of village head and of the village priest receive no special treatment in Ghotul. Strict control is observed in a Ghotul. All are expected to obey the orders of the Salau or the Sardar. Members are expected not to disclose the happenings within the Ghotul to outsiders. Anyone breaking this rule is heavily punished and/or his membership to Ghotul is cancelled.

Cheliks and Motiaries assemble in Ghotul after having their evening meals. They pay their respect to the Salau and each Motiari takes her Chelik to oil his hair and comb them, and then to massage his body. This releases the Chelik from the fatigue of the day-long work and makes him feel fresh to play on the drums and participate in the dance with the girl members. The dances last till midnight; through them members are given special training in agriculture, hunting, and fishing. They serve the function of socialization into the world of work, besides providing entertainment.

Ghotuls also educate its members in matters of sex. Members are allowed to have sex relationships even prior to marriage. Generally, it is the elderly girls who train young boys in sex. There is no ritual attached to the mating relationship. The permission of the Ghotul chief is also not essential. The sexual relationship more or less depends on the personal relationship of the boy and the girl. Generally, girls enter into sexual activity only after menarche. However, getting pregnant while in Ghotul is not appreciated. It is believed that the presiding deity of Ghotul, Lingo protects the girls from being pregnant. The Motiari discloses the name of her lover after she is declared pregnant. And it is expected that the boy marries that girl and bestows his fatherhood on the expected baby.

Generally, it is tried to ensure that no Motiari is linked with any particular boy. It is for this reason that no Motiari shows in public any special attraction towards a particular boy. While it is possible to indulge in sexual activity within the Ghotul hut, it is generally preferred to have this act in privacy. It is for this reason that the boy and the girl go out silently in the dark of the night to indulge in sex.

Ghotuls are of two types— Jodidar Ghotul and Mundi Badalna. In the first type, the girl is attached to a single Chelik. He is her partner. They are formally married within the Ghotul. In Mundi Badalna partners change. In them, if a Chelik tries to sleep with a particular Motiari for more than three nights, he is suitably punished.

Elwin is of the view that Jodidar Ghotul is older than Mundi Badalna Ghotul. Gond people advance following reasons favouring the Mundi Badalna:

1. The Ghotul tries to ensure that attraction or affection towards a particular person may not develop as it may give rise to jealousy and ill-will.
2. Ghotul does not allow marriage. All members are to be treated equal.
3. Any boy sleeping with a particular girl for more than three nights, he is asked to discontinue such behaviour. That is why if any Chelik feels hurt when his favourite Motiari sleeps with another Chelik, he is gently reminded that the girl is not your wife. You do not have exclusive right over her. She belongs to Ghotul.
4. The Gonds believe that if a Chelik sleeps with a particular Motiari, there are more chances of her becoming pregnant. Of course, Elwin found evidence that contradicts this assumption. In his sample of 2000, he found only 80 cases of pregnancy, of which 25 were from Jodidar Ghotul and 55 from Mundi Badalna.
5. The Gonds believe that excessive love prior to marriage results in loss of love after the marriage. That is why it is essential to change the partners in Ghotul.
6. The Gonds are against individualism, because it gives rise to jealousy. Changing partners makes everyone happy. All girls in a Ghotul should be treated wives of all young boys of the Ghotul.
7. Some people say that everyone prefers variety. You do not enjoy the same vegetable every day.
8. If a girl is seen all the time with a particular boy, elders in the village begin suspecting. It is, therefore, better to change partners.

From all this, it should not be inferred that there is no control on sexual relationships in a Ghotul. Clan exogamy is strictly observed. As far as possible, sexual act is performed only during nights, and care is taken to ensure that those sleeping nearby do not get disturbed and that they do not recognize them.

Ghotul laws differ from village to village. In village Bakulvahi, Motiaries sleep only three days a week in the Ghotul. In cases where the Cheliks outnumber Motiaries, then they take turns to sleep with different Cheliks. For example, if a given Ghotul has thirty Cheliks and ten Motiaries, then the latter will oil and comb the hair of all the boys but leave combs in the hair of ten of them which is a signal that the girls would sleep with them on that particular night.

To Recaptuliate

1. Ghotul is an association where boys and girls meet together to learn goodwill, cooperation. This institution emboldens the feeling of unity and of sacrifice of self, interest for the greater good of the society.
2. Ghotul is a kind of school. It teaches children the roles and responsibilities of a good villager. It also inducts them into the culture and tradition of the Gond society.
3. After a day’s toil, Ghotul provides a space for entertainment.
4. Normally, Muria Gonds live in one-room huts. They feel shy to have sex in the presence of their children. Ghotul provides the shelter to children so that parents can have sex without any inhibition in their own hutments.
5. Ghotul makes significant contribution to transform the village energy in constructive and productive activities, and provides space to the young to rejuvenate themselves and to mix with people.
6. Ghotul members also volunteer to help any family in the village during cropping, or a death ceremony. Money earned from providing such labour to the family is used for the expenses of the Ghotul.
7. Ghotul helps in disciplining its members.