Socialisation and Identity

What Socialisation and Identity covers

Socialisation and Identity is examined in Unit 1 Section A, Acquiring Culture — compulsory for every student. It covers personal and social identity, theories of identity: structural, interactionist and postmodern, gender socialisation and gender identity, masculinity, femininity and change in gender identities, social class and identity, class change, mobility and the underclass, ethnicity and identity, nationality, national identity and Britishness and Welsh identity and the Welsh language.

The 9 subtopics

Each one has its own page. WJEC AS Sociology students sit this topic in the first year.

• Personal and social identityCollective identity, what Goffman meant by impression management and how the body has become part of identity.Open →
• Theories of identity: structural, interactionist and postmodernFunctionalist view of identity, marxist view of identity and what Marxists mean by false consciousness.Open →
• Gender socialisation and gender identityTransgender identity and radical feminist explanation of femininity.Open →
• Masculinity, femininity and change in gender identitiesCrisis of masculinity and new man.Open →
• Social class and identitySocial class and status symbols.Open →
• Class change, mobility and the underclassRecall questions on the affluent worker research, proletarianisation, the underclass debate, the precariat, long-range mobility, relative poverty, and how class shapes ambition.Open →
• Ethnicity and identityEthnic minority and hybridity in ethnic identity.Open →
• Nationality, national identity and BritishnessRecall questions on imagined communities, banal nationalism, sport and schooling as carriers of belonging, civic and ethnic nationalism, migration, and what the census shows in Wales.Open →
• Welsh identity and the Welsh languageY Fro Gymraeg, legal status of the Welsh language and hybrid Welsh identity.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Socialisation and Identity further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Personal identity vs Social identity

  Personal identity: what distinguishes an individual from everyone else. Social identity: it comes from membership of a group and is shared with its other members.

• Hegemonic masculinity vs Complicit masculinity

  Hegemonic masculinity: the dominant, most valued form of masculinity in a society. Complicit masculinity: it benefits from the dominant form without fully living up to it.

• Intragenerational mobility vs Intergenerational mobility

  Intragenerational mobility: movement up or down the class structure within one person's lifetime. Intergenerational mobility: movement between a parent's class position and their child's.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Define identity.

   Model answer

   Identity is a person's sense of who they are, made up of the characteristics, group memberships and roles they treat as defining them and by which others recognise them.

2. 2

   Distinguish personal identity from social identity.

   Model answer

   Personal identity is what makes an individual unique, such as their name, biography and personality, while social identity comes from membership of groups such as a gender, class, ethnic group or nation.

3. 3

   Why do sociologists say identity is socially constructed?

   Model answer

   Identity is formed in interaction with others out of the categories a society makes available, so which identities exist and what they mean vary between societies and change over time.

4. 4

   What is a collective identity?

   Model answer

   A collective identity is a sense of belonging shared by members of a group who see themselves as alike and as different from those outside it.

5. 5

   What did Jenkins argue about how identity is formed?

   Model answer

   Jenkins argued that identity is always a two-way process of internal self-definition and external categorisation by others, so it is negotiated rather than simply chosen.

6. 6

   Explain what Goffman meant by impression management.

   Model answer

   Goffman argued that people work to control the impression others form of them, managing dress, speech and setting like actors before an audience, so identity is performed.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Socialisation and Identity revision questions

Is Socialisation and Identity examined at AS in WJEC Sociology?

Yes. It sits in AS Unit 1, which you take in the first year, so it is on the AS paper as well as counting towards the full A level.

What does Socialisation and Identity cover in WJEC AS-Level Sociology?

9 subtopics: personal and social identity, theories of identity: structural, interactionist and postmodern, gender socialisation and gender identity, masculinity, femininity and change in gender identities, social class and identity, class change, mobility and the underclass, ethnicity and identity, nationality, national identity and britishness and welsh identity and the welsh language. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Socialisation and Identity organised?

By the WJEC 601-5237-0 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.