Primary and Secondary Socialization Paradigms

"He who lives without society is either a beast or God.”--Aristotle

I noted that Aristotle postulated two human natures: the first nature humans are born with while the second nature is formed by socialization. This second nature is viewed by critical sociology as having two general processes the individual undergoes: Primary socialization, and Secondary socialization. However, I want to change these terms to “Primary paradigm,” and “Secondary paradigm.” Both Berger and Luckmann used the term “socialization” which has the connotation of being about table manners. Sociology texts often use table manners as an example of socialization. It is a good example. One actually has to train a child not to pull the hair of a playmate, or eat out of another’s plate on impulse. This process is mostly successful. However, the term “paradigm” is analytically insightful as is “socialization” since paradigms also define what is real, the self, and knowledge. Luckmann only used the term “paradigm” in a colloquial sense once in his book to describe Robert Merton’s sociological studies. The concept of paradigm is useful for keeping the focus on Mannheim’s critique of ideology. In this study, Thomas Kuhn’s scientific paradigm and Berger/Luckmann’s use of the concept of socialization is understood as both having similar meanings as far as ideological formation is concerned. [1]

The Primary Baseworld Sociological Paradigm

“1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.”-- Ludwig Wittgenstein’s definition of logical contingency, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (pdf)

(∀x)(∀y)[{Ix --> (Ix v ~Ix)} --> Ry]*(x :/: y)^[2]

Aristotle famously said, “Man is a social animal."[3]The Greek word for “cynic” (kunikos/ κυνικός) means “like a dog” as in “canine” because cynics ignore the rules of society.

The child’s first nature is inherently social according to Aristotle. Human as a social being means they are sympathetic and imitative of others around them. The primary paradigm constructs the cognitive scheme for a baseworld, or first home world for the socialized child. The baseworld provides a place for the child’s self-identity as a member of society (Generalized other), and access to the stock of cultural knowledge along with intersubjectivity that allow persons to share common interpretations of experiences, thoughts, definitions, and situations. Language is the most important tool for socialization since it “objectifies” the world by creating the system of symbols to organize meanings and things according to a specific hierarchical epistemological scheme. Wittgenstein believed that language is a public tool to understand the private subjective life. There can be no private languages because they are impossible since how would one know if the wrong word was chosen in a sentence? Language allows the child to construct a social identity in which the inner world of thought and the outer world line up in a “symmetrical relationship.” This world ordering implicitly has encoded within it the “social distribution of knowledge” that is also the constricting content of socialization. This cultural stock of knowledge is inherently constrictive since “There is always more objective reality available than is actually internalized in any individual consciousness” (SCR., p. 133). We referred to this “more objective reality” as the remainder, the non-conceptual, and the non-identical.  The observing subject cognitively subtracts what is beyond the domain of a paradigm.

In addition to language, the second essential condition for socially training a child is “emotional attachment to a significant other” or learning is impossible. The parent, or guardian must not only be physically present, but also intellectually, and emotionally present. Without emotional attachment by the child, internalization of the primary paradigm will fail since identification with a significant other failed. The child “identifies” with the significant other’s attitudes by making them their own thereby learning normative correctness. The child’s self identity reflects back the significant other’s view of the child and is “assigned a specific place in the world” (SCR., p. 132). With this kind of identity formation the self is a reflected social self. Berger/Luckmann further write, ”Every individual is born into an objective social structure within which he encounters the significant others who are in charge of his socialization. These significant others are imposed upon him. Their definitions for his situation are posited for him as objective reality…He is thus born into an objective social structure but also an objective social world”(SCR., p. 131). Berger/Luckmann note that there are tremendous variations from person to person with different biographical circumstances (class) and individual “idiosyncrasies” (intellectual, physical) that make each person unique for better or worst. However, empirical studies report persons view themselves as both being inside and outside of society according to Sociologist Georg Simmel (SCR., p. 205). 

The primary paradigm provides a cognitive “nomic structure” to the world. “Nomic” is from the Greek word, νόμος, meaning “ custom, tradition, political tradition, regime, or structure,” (Slater lexicon), and “law” (Middle Liddell Lexicon). The letter ἀ is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. When the prefix is added to “nomic,” it forms “anomic,” or “anomie” which means “no structure,” or “no law.” “Anomie” is an important concept in describing the secondary paradigm and Mannheim’s study of ideology.

The Secondary Subworld Sociological Paradigm

The secondary subworld paradigm is a second process of socialization involving other areas of society. The secondary subworld paradigm is parasitical (Greek: para, “beside”, sitos, “the food”) in that it presupposes the baseworld with an already formed social self-identity. Personality tests are often given to measure the degree of socialization of a potential employee. The child’s guardian constructs the first primary baseworld, but a person unrelated to the child’s family constructs this other new subworld. Examples of a subworld would be when a person entered the military, joins a corporation, become a university student, or joins a religious organization. The mentors in this social context can be “anonymous, detached and interchangeable” (SCR., p. 142). This second process of socialization is necessary because of the high social division of labor, and distribution of knowledge by stratified industrial sectors. The person learns a new institutional language and new system of schematization. The family becomes less important in this subworld as a vocational advantage-oriented life style becomes the dominant value in this example. Socialization is successfully completed when people are willing to “sacrifice” themselves in someway for the new paradigm (SCR., p. 145).

Paradigm Entropy

"1 The world is everything that is the case."
--Wittgenstein

(∀x)[Wx --> (Ex * Cx)]^[3]

However, the secondary subworld has less of the same sense of reality, inevitability, and naturalism as the primary baseworld. Self-identity is not as strongly defined by the subworld. However, experience in the subworld can cause the destruction of one’s self-identity in both levels of socialization. Internalization of the subworld is a vulnerability from an institutional point of view. In fact, one can “hide” within the role specific knowledge of a secondary subworld although this is becoming less and less possible today with employee surveillance technology. Factional groups and social theorizers can engage in ideological manipulation of reality by constructing paradigms that hermeneutically exclude selective perceptions such as individual intuitive preunderstandings (intuition). The ruling social paradigm does not want to compete with any other legitimizing authority in constructing a socially functional false totality. Society can become repressive in the domains of the cognitive-instrumental (Science), moral-normative (Ethics), and the aesthetic-expressive (Culture). The social totality has coercive force, and the power to kill by action or inaction.

The most important characteristic of the secondary subworld is it can create conflicts of paradigm consistency with the stronger primary paradigm. "Paradigm entropy" is a paradigm that is no longer able to give coherent meaning to experience resulting in an asymmetry between thought and life. The primary and secondary paradigms may conflict with different interpretations of phenomena, or there is a conflict of values between different domains of social reality. Phenomenon that appears as reality-disconfirming is named by Kuhn, “paradigm anomaly.” Karl Mannheim called this damaged paradigmatic world “structureless,” and “enfeebled” (Ideology and Utopia, p. 17). Max Weber referred to this condition as “disenchanted experience” in describing modernity. Critical theorist Roger Foster refers to the “atrophy of experience,” “restricted experience,” and “mutilated experience” in a disenchanted world. [4] Paradigm shift may result from the realization there are many possible interpretations of reality by other paradigms alien to one’s primary baseworld. What the subject believed to be the necessary structures for society (Psychological Egoism) and reality (Nihilism) turn out to be “a bundle of contingencies” (SCR., p. 135). Also, the original primary baseworld paradigm may have serious internal crises being a religious cult or hate group. There is always in the background the possibility of one’s world collapsing and metamorphose into a counter-reality and counter-identity. Consequently, there is a need by individuals and institutions for intense “reality maintenance” to uphold “reality-persistence” with theoretical cultural legitimations to enhance internalization by members of the subworld.

When paradigm entropy reaches a critical mass then revolutions occur or even “Great Awakening” religious movements rise up. Historically, Religious Great Awakenings last for two years. Revolutions in history are typically non-violent because most people do not want to die for an already dead paradigm. Total socialization is not possible in a modern industrial society with a complex division of labor (SCR., 165). Human beings construct society, and society in return reshapes what it means to be human so there are continual metamorphoses of society and the individual.

Metamorphosis

Philip Glass

[1] Footnote: the idea of the “reflective social self” likely originated from William James in his book “Principles of Psychology (1890)” (SCR., p. 206).

[2] Footnote: Wittgenstein never put this proposition into symbolic form, but it might look like this.

Definitions of symbols for expressing logical contingency:

:: equivalent

:/: not equivalent

v = either, or, inclusive

--> = Logical operator for implication: If, then.

* = and, conjunction

~ =Not

(∀x) = for all x

I = each item

R = Remains the same

y = everything else

x = any item

[3] Definitions of symbols for categorical proposition:
W = world
E = everything
C = is the case

[4] For a classic critical analysis of how Internet monopolies are mining personal data for surveillance and monetization of the individual private life see Shoshana Zuboff’s interview about her recent book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.” Sociologist Jurgen Habermas described this process as the  “colonization of the lifeworld.”