Revising Socialization Theory

Corsaro and Rizzo (1988) undertake to demonstrate the importance of children's peer for socialization. Their reasoning and rhetoric, however, lead to some unsupported claims, most notably that their analysis preserves the irreducibility and the autonomy of the children's peer culture (1988, p. 892). These claims, together with several conceptual ambiguities, result in an argument that obscures the role of adults, particularly the family, in children's socialization. Their argument leaves the impression that to understand childhood socialization the only sensible to look is the peer group, and the only useful procedure is the analysis of language that children use when interacting with age-mates. Analysis reveals that Corsaro and Rizzo's argument is constructed on a framework of four polarities, in each of which one pole is disparaged or minimized while the other is advanced as persuasive. (1) Sociologists vs. developmental psychologists. The authors frame their argument as one between sociologists and developmental psychologists. The latter place so much emphasis on that they now see the appropriation of as the movement from the external to the internal. With such a misconception, they easily arrive at the idea that the social actor's competent performance depends upon such internalization (1988, p. 880). Therefore, Theories of children's social development must break free from the individualistic doctrine that sees social development as the private of adult skills and knowledge. Childhood socialization must be understood as a social and collective (1988, p. 880). Does this use of solely and also constitute a partial retraction of their allegation of misconception? Do they now mean that the idea of the appropriation of as movement from the external to the internal has some in the theory of socialization but not as much importance as the developmental psychologists give it? Their analysis never clarifies whether there is a valid scope to the process they first label a misconception but then say must not be the sole doctrine for socialization theory. (2) Collective vs. private. Corsaro and Rizzo's apparent insistence that socialization is always produced collectively rules out not only the possibility that there may be some socialization activity that has a private phase but even the reasonableness of inquiring whether such might be the case. They disparage the psychologists' reliance on interviews. By implication, discourse analysis of children's interaction among themselves is made to seem the only justifiable research procedure. Their stricture even appears to rule out listening to a child talking to itself or to its toys, as when little girls are producing a stream of mother patter to their dolls, talk that can be classed as nurturing, controlling or disciplinary, entertaining (singing snatches of nursery songs, for example), and informative or instructive, all produced in the motherese register (Garvey 1984, p. 203). By fiat, Corsaro and Rizzo rule out the study of such episodes in understanding socialization, episodes which cannot be called collective in their sense. Nor do they allow for a procedure such as individual follow-up interviews with participants in peer interactions in order to amplify our understanding of how the interaction affected and influenced each participant. Despite what appears to be a clear repudiation of a private phase in the socialization process, Corsaro and Rizzo introduce a further ambiguity. First, they criticize the work of Piaget

Criminology · Socialization · Sociology · Child Development and Digital Technology · Early Childhood Education and Development · Educational and Social Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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