Sociology

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate August 2001

download word file, 4 pages 5.0

Downloaded 45 times

Going to the military can be seen through a symbolic interactionist's view point. A symbolic interactionist focuses on people's behavior, particularly in face-to-face social settings; symbolic interactionists explain social interaction as a dynamic process. Resocialization is the process people go through to remedy patterns of behavior that society finds destructive or to alter behavior to make it fit with other personal or social goals.

A person reports for the Military having his/her own identity and first name. However, when he/she actually gets there, he/she has to resocialize. Resocialization is the process in which people go through to remedy patterns of behavior that society finds destructive or to alter behavior to make it fit with other personal or social goals. Military personnel have to resocialize by many ways. These include: 1) changes resulting from symbolic uniformity, 2) changes that take place as a person loses his/her identity, and 3) meeting a new culture.

In most cases of resocialization, people are stripped of their old identity so that it can be rebuilt according to other standards (page 134, Chapter 5, Sociology). If a person joins the military, they change their identity to fit their superior's need. They basically turn into computers and do whatever the superior tells them to do. Much resocialization takes place in total institutions. Total institutions are places of residence and work that are total because they exert complete control over the people they contain. Life is enclosed and supervised. Some say that going to the military takes away all of the traces of individuality. Once somebody enters the military, he or she has to make several changes. For example, he or she will have to wear uniforms and have the same haircut as others do in the military. A person like me would go insane if I...