Explain how culture and socialisation interact in a sociological context?
Culture can be defined as the mind set, values, behaviour or non-material culture and material objects or material culture which are all shared by a specific group of people. This specific group of people could belong to the everyday Australian family, an African Tribe, a cycling club or be part of a large company in the city working on the 4th floor of an office building because culture is a way of life that a number of people follow and it is not limited to religion or what country you were born in. Culture is reflected in such ways as what foods a person may eat, what traditions they may believe in, what clothes they may wear or how they treat males or females
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We initially rely on others to clothe us, feed us and teach us what we need to know to survive and as we age we socially interact with others at school, in friendship circles, within our community or workplace to develop the skills we need to further navigate our way through society. This ongoing process is called socialisation. Socialisation shapes our thoughts, feelings, behaviour and actions and as individuals become socialised, they learn how to blend into society, they learn what the norms, customs and ideologies are and function alongside the rest of society. Individual views on the rest of society can by influenced by the socialisation that an individual has experienced growing up. For example gender socialisation. Henslin (1999:76) contends that "an important part of socialisation is the learning of culturally defined gender roles." Gender socialisation refers to the learning of behaviour and attitudes considered appropriate for a given sex. Boys learn to be boys and girls learn to be girls. This "learning" happens by way of many different agents of socialisation. The family is certainly important in reinforcing gender roles, but so are one’s friends, school, work and the mass media. Gender roles are reinforced through "countless subtle and not so subtle ways" (1999:76). As parents are present in a child's life from the beginning,