Key Concepts, New Understandings?

Abstract

As hinted at in the opening chapter, undertaking a conceptual makeover of socialisation is not a task to be undertaken lightly! As an idea, socialisation is firmly embedded in everyday understandings of how the world works and, in particular, of what happens in the relationships that transpire between adults and children. Trying to re-theorise this process risks, on the one hand, the accusation of over complicating what is apparently a matter of common sense. On the other hand, attempting to explain how socialisation takes place, rather than simply that it does, necessitates getting to grips with some fundamental theoretical dichotomies that have long plagued the social sciences, and for which, as yet, there are few satisfactory answers. This book will likely not provide any either. However, while these opposing views might appear therefore to render the ambition to explain socialisation from a child centred perspective doomed to failure, I would argue that, some where between these extremes, new light can be shed on the matter. The five assumptions around which this book is built, as set out in Chapter 1, shape an interesting intellectual journey and, though the final destination may not in the end amount to a re-theorisation of socialisation, along the way I will have shown some ways in which we might begin to understand how children experience, understand and engage with the process of becoming social, thereby enhancing our understanding.