Humans are Products of Culture: Socialisation and Rites of Passage

All humans are genetically similar regarding the fact that we are all Homo sapiens sapiens. However, it is argued that humans are ‘blank slates’ at birth, with no instinctual inheritance. Therefore, our characteristics are established through culture, which is the composite system of behavior and meaning that determines the way of life for a particular group or society. Thus, humans are products of society, norms, and values that we have internalized, through the culture we are surrounded by. Thereby, everything there is to be understood about humans is learned through culture, rather than inherited. This essay will discuss the Primary and Secondary Socialisation theory, Robert Herbert Mead’s Social Acquisition Theory, feral children Victor and Genie, and Arnold Van Gennep’s Rites de Passage model, which all support the idea that humans are products of culture to a great extent.

To begin with, socialization is the process through which culture is learned. During socialization, we internalize envisioned norms and values within our society. It is believed there are 2 stages of socialization; primary socialization and secondary socialization. Primary socialization occurs at a young age where we are informed on how to behave, what the world is like and where we belong. Secondary socialization begins in school and continues throughout our entire lives. Every experience we go through will change us in subtle ways as we are constantly internalizing more which enables us to perceive the world differently each time. Moreover, throughout this process, we are also constantly interacting with each other and exchanging meaning and ideas, and therefore influencing each other’s world views. This creates a stock of knowledge that we all internalize as we act on it, which creates a culture that we reproduce and pass on to subsequent generations. This theory demonstrates that humans are products of culture to a great extent suggested by the idea that we are constantly processing cultural knowledge which has been established and reproduced by others before us.

Similarly, the Social Acquisition theory proposed by George Herbert Mead implies that humans develop through a role-taking process. This process consists of 4 stages including, ‘imitation’, ‘play, ‘game’, and ‘the generalized other’. The ‘imitation’ stage beings at birth and lasts up to the age of 6 in which children mimic those around them. During the ‘play stage’, children play pretend by taking on roles of significant others or fictional characters. The ‘game stage’ occurs from age 7 onwards and this is when children understand that other people have a different sense of self of themselves, while simultaneously learning to take on several other roles. The ‘generalized other’ is when the mature person thinks about themselves concerning an audience by recognizing and evaluating their behavior and actions regarding social norms, rules, and expectations that one acquires from our shared stock of knowledge. Through this role-taking process, we learn which behaviors are appropriate and expected of us in our prescribed roles. This theory demonstrates that humans are products of culture to a great extent suggested by the idea that we take on and act out roles from a young age that have been established and reproduced for us before we were born.

Likewise, culture and socialization play a vital role in being considered human. There are critical periods for socialization in an environment where we can absorb and internalize cultural norms. The absence of this can have severe implications which were showcased by a feral child called Genie in 1970. Genie grew up in extremely abnormal domestic conditions up to the age of 12 and had no experience of socialization. Eventually, social services got involved and thereafter, a group of scientists got together called The Genie Group started to help and study Genie. Studies found she had defective language skills which never recovered, she spoke like a very young child and had problematic motor skills. Additionally, she had had difficulty seeing things in perspective at distance and had abnormal walking. Another example of this was Victor, known as the Wild Boy of Aveyron. He lived in the woods around the late seventeen hundreds. He could not communicate and walked around on all fours. It was evident he was not someone we would recognize as being fully human. He came to the attention of John Mark Casper Itard who aimed to help and educate Victor. However, despite his best efforts, he only managed to teach Victor to read and say a few words, and do simple commands. Language eluded him and he could never interact with humans in a normal way. This was attributed to the fact that he was never socialized or developed normal language skills. These cases confirm that in order to be considered fully human with the complexity of human behavior, capacities, and skills we need to be brought up in social environments with other humans around us in order to absorb and internalize cultural norms. What is more, these cases confirm that if certain stages of development are not triggered by an environment in which we can carry out socialization, it becomes difficult for us to recover. More importantly, they show that if a human does not learn the language of culture early on in life they will find it difficult to acquire other social skills. That notwithstanding, these cases demonstrate that humans are products of culture to a great extent, suggested by the fact that lack of socialization to become familiar with the culture that has been established and reproduced prevents one from being considered fully human.

Furthermore, socialization is a continuous process. Arnold Van Gennep proposed this in his ‘Rites de Passage’ model. ‘Rites de Passage’ are events marking the transition of an individual or group to a new life course stage. This model implies that there is a universal structure underlying the rites of passage. Van Gennep suggested that cultural rituals and ceremonies serve as the function of assurance of one’s path through liminal transitory categories as one passes through the stages of separation, transition, and reincorporation that he claims are present in all stages of the rites of passage. However, in this process there may be biological factors involved (e.g. puberty), nevertheless, the mechanisms that determined the rites of passage are always social, and these social constructions exhibit a cross-cultural similarity. This model demonstrates that humans are products of culture to a great extent suggested by the idea that we have a societal need to carry out cultural rituals and ceremonies that have been established and reproduced to mark big transitions which enable us to have a sense of who we are and how we relate to the world as humans.

In conclusion, humans are products of culture to a great extent. We are born as ‘blank slates’ and are surrounded by a culture that has been established and reproduced in our society. There we are exposed to norms and values which we all internalize. This idea is supported by the Primary and Secondary Socialisation theory, Robert Herbert Mead’s Social Acquisition Theory, feral children Victor and Genie, and Arnold Van Gennep’s Rites de Passage model.