Resocialization
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the characteristics of a total institution
- Describe when and how resocialization occurs
Resocialization
If socialization is the lifelong process of learning the values and norms of a given society, then resocialization refers to undergoing this process again by drastically changing one’s values and beliefs. Typically, this occurs in a new environment where the old rules no longer apply. According to Erving Goffman (1961) total institutions such as private boarding schools, the military, jails or prisons, and mental institutions provide such environments because they are effectively cut off from the larger society and are highly regulated. This regulation includes strict norms (i.e., uniform, hairstyle, daily schedule, communication, etc.) and comprehensive rules. Typically, a single authority figure such as a prison warden, drill sergeant, high ranking military officer, or headmaster is in charge and oversees staff to enforce the regulations.
Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1956) coined the term degradation ceremony (also known as “status degradation ceremony”) and described a process through which people who have usually wronged society in some way are marked and punished to reaffirm the existing norms. They are often stripped of their former identity and given a new, lower-status identity.
Initiation Rituals
On some occasions, degradation ceremonies are used to initiate people into total institutions like schools, mental hospitals, prisons, or military units. The purpose of a ceremony in this context is to deprive people of their former identities and dignity in order make them more accepting of external control. The “perp walk,” wherein a person suspected of committing criminal acts is publicly arrested and led into a police car or station, is a common example of this kind of degradation ceremony. Invasive searches in jails and prisons, being assigned a number, having one’s hair cut and jewelry taken, and being issued a prison uniform are all examples of initiation rituals. Through a variety of such processional steps, one’s identity is diminished and replaced with that of a jail or prison inmate, for example. With the exception of tattoos, any representations of material culture such as piercings or jewelry, is removed. The resocialization process continues as one learns the systems of value and social norms necessary for survival in this type of total institution. A norm that would have been previously unacceptable, such as using an open toilet in a shared room, is now a daily occurrence. Here the common value of personal privacy has to be discarded to some extent as a result of external constraints.
When entering the army, soldiers have their hair cut short, their old clothes are removed, and they are issued matching uniforms. These individuals must give up any markers of their former identity as a “civilian” in order to be resocialized into a new identity as a “soldier.” In the military, soldier