Socialisation Theory and Marxism.

[Oswy]

What is Marxism's orientation to socialisation theory generally (I'm thinking in terms of sociology rather than psychology here)?

Is there a specifically Marxist theory of socialisation and if so can any scholarly works be recommended which cover contemporary society?

[Hit The North]

The Marxist approach to socialisation is informed by its notion of ideology and the assertion that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.

The area of primary socialisation in the family can only be understood in its particularity by showing the relations between the family and its location in the broader society, particularly the class system.

Most Marxist sociological work has focussed on agents of secondary socialisation, such as the labour process, the education system and the mass media. For the first you could do worse than dig out a copy of Harry Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital.

You could look up Marxist work on education as an agent of ideological reproduction, such as Bowles and Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/soced.pdf

Or you could look at Althusser's influential notion of ideological state apparatus:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm

For an interersting, if unorthodox marxist reading of mass media, you could start with Marcuse and One Dimensional Man:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/index.htm

[mikelepore]

What is socialisation? I've never heard of it before.

[Hit The North]

It's a sociological concept which belongs to structural-functionalism and attempts to describe how individuals supposedly internalise the norms and values of the social order. It's about learning one's culture.

[Oswy]

It's a sociological concept which belongs to structural-functionalism and attempts to describe how individuals supposedly internalise the norms and values of the social order. It's about learning one's culture.

You sound a bit sceptical there. An examples might be the way religion is inculcated in children through the formal and informal transmission of parents.

Does socialisation have to be strongly structuralist-functionalist? Maybe there are examples of resistence-based socialisation too?

Anyway, thanks for the advice earlier!

[Hit The North]

You sound a bit sceptical there. An examples might be the way religion is inculcated in children through the formal and informal transmission of parents.

Does socialisation have to be strongly structuralist-functionalist? Maybe there are examples of resistence-based socialisation too?

Anyway, thanks for the advice earlier!

I'm sceptical about the concept as it is employed in functionalism, but, no, it's not the only version of socialisation. Symbolic Interactionism, for instance, as a fragment of structural functionalism, employs the notion of a negotiated social order where the socialisation process is open to particularlisation. See G H Mead.

The problem with a resistance-based notion of socialisation is that the concept is an attempt to explain conformity, therefore either excluding the possibility of resistance altogether or casting it as either deviant or irrational.

Of course, the underlying assumption of socialisation theory is that society is fundamentally a "moral order" regulated by a collective conscience (Durkheim).

Having said that, there is a wide range of subcultural theory which examines the way in which individuals are socialised into deviant subcultures which could include anything form delinquent youth gangs to Trotskyist sects. But again, the assumption is that there exists a more or less legitimate mainstream culture which most of the population adhere to. The beginning point for these theories can be found in the work of the American sociologist, Robert Merton.