Monthly Archives: August 2017

Socialization

Many years ago, from about 10 to 14 years old, I used to spend 3 weeks each summer in a camp close to Cape Sounio, south of Athens.  The camp was in a pine forest, and less than a kilometer from the Aegean sea at the Asimaki beach.  My fellow campers for those 3 weeks were all boys of similar ages – there was a separate all-girls 3-week period as well.  We lived in small wooden cabins, 4 boys per cabin.  Each cabin comprised a group, 4 groups a community, and, oh, I don’t really remember any more the exact number, something like 10 communities made up the whole camp.  Each cabin had two sets of bunk beds, against each of the two side walls, 4 cabinets for our clothes and toiletries on the wall between the bunk beds, and the door and a large window on the fourth wall.  In the middle of the room, there was a table and chairs.  The camp had a speaker system for announcements and the calls for morning rise, assembly, meals, siesta, and bed time.

Every day, except Sunday, we would be woken up by 6:30 am or so, go for physical exercise, then morning cleansing.  We would then assemble for prayer and the raising of the flag, sing the national anthem, then march to the camp’s dining hall for breakfast.  After breakfast, we would return to our cabins to prepare them for inspection: make our beds, fold our clothes in our cabinets, and clean the room.  Each group was graded, and the top performer names were announced and congratulated during the evening assembly before dinner.  After the inspection, we got ready and marched to the beach for the daily swim, then back to the camp for showering, then lunch.  Following lunch was siesta time – its beginning and end punctuated by the speaker system – that we were supposed to spend quietly in our cabins.  We were not supposed to be out playing, for example, and there were inspections to make sure we were not.  When the siesta time ended, we had a snack, followed by a few hours of free time giving us the opportunity to play sports if we wanted to.  At dusk, we assembled for the lowering of the flag and the announcement of the morning inspection grades, and then we marched to the dining hall for dinner.   After dinner, we watched TV, a movie, played games, or sang songs together, until it was bed time, marked by the speaker system.  On Sunday mornings, we went to a small church within the camp for mass, and it was also parents’ visiting day.

We all had a wonderful, memorable time, living in a pine forest next to the sea.  But simultaneously with this wonderful life an intensive process of socialization was also taking place.  Each day was broken up into time slots for different activities, for cleaning the living quarters, going swimming, eating meals, sleeping, being quiet, even free time had its own time slot.  And all these activities were group-coordinated, we would clean our cabin together, pray together, eat meals together, all together at the same time.  We also learned to respond to the speaker system signals telling us what was the activity we were expected to do, again all together, as a group.  Group rituals, prayer, raising and lowering the flag, singing the national anthem, brought us all together in common religion and nationality.  Our bodies learned to be mobilized.  An interesting part of this socialization, that most of us at the time found quite amusing, was teaching us proper table manners: where to put the plate, the napkin, the fork, the knife, or the spoon, how to hold them, how to use them, and how to eat different kinds of food.

Of course we are all familiar with such socialization, in groups or as individuals.  Schooling involves a similar process, with well-defined time slots, time signals, a different subject taught in each time slot, all sitting quietly in class, all together, as a group.  Army drills and training, army life in general, are another example.

Socialization, individually as well as in groups, ensures the transmission from generation to generation of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are essential for the survival of a community.  This is how language and general communication skills are transmitted, the domestication and cultivation of plants, hunting and fishing, making and using tools, cooking, and so on.  Group socialization in particular is what ensures the coordination and integration of the individual activities.  And taking part in such integrated activities, as well as in common rituals, creates the sense of belonging to a community.

Some Of The Things We Take For Granted

I am sitting at a café, steaming coffee in a porcelain cup on the table next to me.  I am reaching to take a sip of coffee, my hand goes to grasp the cup’s handle, as it begins to grasp it adjusts the strength, not too light a grasp, enough to lift the weight, I bring the cup to my lips, keeping it steady not to spill, my lips sense the heat, my hand tilts to take a sip or a gulp, depending on how hot the coffee felt, how thirsty for it I was.  I have just taken a sip of coffee.  On the table there is a plastic soft cup of water, I reach to take a drink, my hand grasps the cup, squeezing gently, not too tightly, it adjusts the strength as the cup gets squished, but there is enough strength to lift it.  I empty the cup, and as I am still holding it, a waiter comes to refill it, I lift it for him and as he pours fresh water in, my hand adjusts its squeeze to hold the increased weight, maintaining the position of the cup.   I have just gotten my cup of water refilled.  I am browsing through the day’s newspaper, reading parts, while at the same time reaching at the table, barely looking, to get the cup of coffee or the cup of water to take a sip.  I adjust my seat, my legs, my posture, mostly without realizing it.  I am just sitting at a café drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.  Friends arrive and join me, as we begin to chat I adjust my breathing to handle the talking, actually I modulate the airflow during breathing to talk, as I change my posture my trunk and respiratory muscles adjust to handle the different loads for breathing, at the same time coordinating with the muscles that move my vocal cords, mouth, tongue, with those changing my facial expression, and so on.  I have just been sitting chatting with friends.  Later we take a walk, climb a long flight of stairs, my breathing adjusts to accommodate the increased demand.  I have just taken a walk.

We are all familiar with what I am describing, with all the background support and maintenance and adjustments our body is continuously carrying out to sustain our interactions with our environment.  An environment that may be pre-structured in certain ways to sustain, even guide, our interactions with it: the table and the chairs at the café for example instead of a rug with pillows, or the flight of stairs instead of a ramp for wheelchair access.  Indeed, we typically consider this background activity trivial, we take it for granted.  It is when due to injury, disease, or age that the bodily abilities that sustain this activity are impaired that they are focused upon, when for example we might have lost part of our visual field, or our sense of how tightly we are holding something, or our sense of where our limbs are with regard to the rest of our body.

These considerations extend Bian the wheelwright’s insight to the minutia of daily activities, highlight how much our verbal descriptions, our representations of what we do, leave out.  Our descriptions are incomplete, can only be incomplete, as they edit out most of what is going on, while foregrounding only certain features of the material world along with aspects of our actions.  The material world, our body included, is always in excess.

In short, there is plenty going on, allowing a host of different descriptions of our world, ourselves, and what we do.  This may be obvious, but these descriptions, our understanding of our environment and of ourselves, play an important part in orienting us in the world and guiding our actions.