Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity | OCR A-Level Sociology (H580)

Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity

  • 102 questions
  • 11 subtopics
  • Component 01: Socialisation, culture and identity
  • Component 01

Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity is examined on component 01 of OCR Sociology, Socialisation, culture and identity.

102 recall questions across 11 subtopics.

Sample questions from Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

  1. Culture, norms, values and cultural relativism

    Why do sociologists insist that culture is learned rather than inherited?

    Show the answer
    Because a child born into any society acquires that society's culture through socialisation, and children raised in different societies grow up with entirely different norms, values and languages.
  2. Subculture, high culture and popular culture

    How can a subculture share mainstream culture and reject part of it at the same time?

    Show the answer
    Paul Willis found that the counter-school subculture of the lads embraced wider working-class values of masculinity and manual work while rejecting the school's values of obedience and academic success.
  3. Global and consumer culture, cultural diversity and hybridity

    What is consumer culture?

    Show the answer
    Consumer culture is a culture in which buying, displaying and using goods is central to social life and to the way people express who they are.
  4. Primary and secondary socialisation, the family and peer group

    How does Cooley's looking-glass self explain the emergence of a sense of self?

    Show the answer
    Cooley argued that we build a self-image by imagining how we appear to other people and how they judge us, then internalising that reflected view of ourselves.
  5. Media, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisation

    How does religion socialise its members, according to Durkheim?

    Show the answer
    Durkheim argued that shared worship, ritual and rites of passage teach a moral code and bind believers together, reinforcing the collective conscience and social solidarity.
  6. Lifelong socialisation and the nature/nurture debate

    Outline the nature/nurture debate.

    Show the answer
    It is the dispute over whether human behaviour is determined mainly by inherited biology, meaning nature, or by learning and the social environment, meaning nurture.
  7. Social control, sanctions and formal agencies of control

    What is informal social control?

    Show the answer
    Informal social control is the regulation of behaviour through unwritten social pressure such as approval, disapproval, gossip, ridicule and exclusion, applied by the people around us rather than by official bodies.
  8. Informal agencies and theories of social control

    How does education exercise informal social control?

    Show the answer
    Teacher approval and disapproval, praise and the expectations of classmates shape behaviour, while the hidden curriculum trains pupils in punctuality, obedience and respect for authority without ever being taught directly.

The 11 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic What it covers Questions
Culture, norms, values and cultural relativism Recall questions on culture, norms and values, why culture is learned rather than inherited, cultural relativism and ethnocentrism, Margaret Mead's New Guinea research on gender roles and Freeman's challenge to it, and Horace Miner's Nacirema as evidence of the relative nature of culture. 9
Subculture, high culture and popular culture Recall questions on how food norms vary between cultures, subculture and Willis's counter-school lads, high culture and Bourdieu's cultural capital, popular culture and the Frankfurt School's culture industry, and Strinati's postmodern view that the line between high and popular culture has collapsed. 8
Global and consumer culture, cultural diversity and hybridity Recall questions on global culture, Ritzer's McDonaldization and Robertson's glocalisation, consumer culture as explained by Bauman and Baudrillard and criticised by Marxists such as Marcuse, cultural diversity, and cultural hybridity, with Les Back's study of young people in South London. 9
Primary and secondary socialisation, the family and peer group Recall questions on socialisation, primary socialisation in the family and Parsons's view of families as factories producing personalities, Cooley's looking-glass self and G.H. Mead's social self, secondary socialisation, Oakley's four processes of gender socialisation, and the peer group as an agency, including Willis's lads. 9
Media, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisation Recall questions on the media, religion, education and the workplace as agencies of socialisation: how far the media shape audiences, Durkheim's and the Marxist and feminist views of religion, functionalist views of education, the hidden curriculum, Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle, and how the workplace socialises adults. 8
Lifelong socialisation and the nature/nurture debate Recall questions on socialisation as a lifelong process, anticipatory socialisation and resocialisation, the nature/nurture debate with the evidence for nurture and the sociobiology of Wilson, why the debate matters, how agencies of socialisation create identities, and Dennis Wrong's criticism of the over-socialised functionalist account. 9
Social control, sanctions and formal agencies of control Recall questions on social control, positive and negative sanctions, formal and informal social control, and the formal agencies of social control: the police, the law and legal system, the courts, government and the military. 9
Informal agencies and theories of social control Recall questions on informal social control by the family, peer groups, media, religion, education and the workplace, moral panics, how work, education and religion combine formal and informal control, and theories of social control from Durkheim, Althusser, Heidensohn, Becker and Foucault. 15
The concept of identity, ethnicity and nationality Recall questions on the concept of identity, personal and social identity, ascribed and achieved identity, Jenkins's internal-external dialectic, Goffman on managing identity, ethnic identity and the difference between ethnicity and race, and national identity as Anderson's imagined communities. 8
Gender, class and sexual identity Recall questions on gender identity, Connell's hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity, the crisis of masculinity, class identity with Bourdieu's habitus and Savage's Great British Class Survey, postmodern claims that class is dying, sexual identity and heteronormativity, and Rich's compulsory heterosexuality. 9
Age, disability, hybrid and intersecting identities Recall questions on age as socially constructed and Featherstone and Hepworth's mask of ageing, the medical and social models of disability and disability as a master status, hybrid identities, why socialisation is never total, Crenshaw's intersectionality, and whether identities are now fluid and chosen, as Bauman argues. 9
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity is 102 of the 859 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

  1. Step 1 · Closed book

    Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.

  2. Step 2 · Open book

    Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.

  3. Step 3 · Closed book again

    Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.

Nearby topics

All 10 topics Guide overview

OCR A-Level Sociology Active Recall Guide

Every topic, not just this one. 859 questions with their answers.

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