[Week 3] Talking about socialization

For this week’s blog post, we were encouraged by Prof. Walsh to think about our personal journeys and to share how we are working to impact change in our communities.

This week’s readings, “The Cycle of Socialization” and “The Cycle of Liberation,” both by Bobbie Harro, provide great frameworks to both analyze our personal journeys and evaluate how we are being actors of liberation in our communities.

In her first chapter, Harro brings into question what roles we have been socialized to play, and encourages us to take one of our identities through the cycle of socialization. Since being a female is an identity I have held since birth, that is the identity I chose to explore. I am particularly interested in early-childhood gendered socialization, nowadays mostly because of my hypothetical considerations of how to be a good parent, but looking back on my own childhood I am able to see many instances in which I was taught to fulfill a certain role.

My affinity with games and sports that were “for boys” as well as of movies and cartoons that involved super-heroes, crime, and action, were often suppressed by my family and teachers alike, while being a reason for mockery from my classmates. With a slightly more in-depth understanding of how those early experiences go on to shape children’s beliefs in adult life, I believe I would like to raise my own children in as much of a gender-neutral way as possible. The information on how the one-sided dependence that children have towards their caretakers making them unconsciously conform to their views particularly alarmed me.

Another interesting take away was that by fulfilling our roles imposed on us as targets, we are reinforcing the stereotypes that  we want to fight. Sometimes, it might be easier and personally beneficial to act the way we are expected to rather than the way we would like to in order to truly express ourselves, and Harro’s statement on the subject served as a much needed reality check for me.

[ICC Comparison]

As for the chapter on the Cycle of Liberation, instead of comparing my own experiences to it, I chose to think of an organization I’m a part of which is trying to incorporate more principles of social justice in its operations. Being an active member at this organization has been one of my motivational factors to take this class and learn in a more direct way, and it is also one of the ways I’m working to impact change in my community.

Comparing our progress to Harro’s cycle has been very insightful, particularly on issues where the direction we chose to take didn’t work out and we had to move a step back to be able to move a step forward. The organization’s waking up process was due to a member bringing organizational-level issues to our attention through an open letter. After agreeing that those were indeed problems that needed to be addressed, we had a major shift where our operational policies did not reflect our newly defined values. This generated a broad conversation amongst the membership, trying to identify what needed to change and what we needed to be educated on.

We have since reached out to other social justice organizations to learn from them, and to begin a mutually beneficial relationship exchanging our challenges, needs and resources in order to bring forth the change we wanted. Now, I believe we are at both the “Coalescing” and the “Creating Change” phases, sometimes walking back and forth between the two. We feel encouraged and are planning actions, while also changing the structure and policies that guide us.

Seeing how a liberation cycle initially designed for individuals can be applied on an organizational level was really enlightening, and it makes me wonder about the possibilities going forward. What’s the largest scale we can apply this cycle to? What’s beyond individuals and small organizations? Would this be the same cycle if a local government wanted to create liberation? What about if it was to be implemented nationwide? World-wide?

Relating all of this new knowledge to Nicholas Christakis’ TED Talk, I believe we can positively foster our social networks to take active instance on the issues of social justice. Just like the traditional privileges we have explored, those individuals that can be found at the center of networks can use their power of influence and the widowhood effect to organize the “super-organism” of the network towards collective behavior that is more inclusive and in touch with current issues in society. From Generation Like, we get the takeaway that while forming social networks, physical or virtual, is an important process in building community and therefore creating change, the vain pursuit of likes and thumbs up are a superficial way to feel connected that may not transform into actions and effective change.

Conclusion: The world needs more connections. Those will serve to cure our depression and teenager’s needs for attention. But also, we must connect, form coalitions, and act together in order to effect any changes to the overarching system of oppression.