Rethinking Socialization Research through the Lens of New Materialism

• Main Author: Grit Höppner
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Sociology
• Subjects: socialization; new materialism; dualisms; onto-epistemologies; agencies; non-human
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fsoc.2017.00013/full

In recent decades, socialization research appears to have suffered the loss of its former capacity to explain the processes of becoming a socialized subject in a social environment. In this article, I review socialization theories taking into account assumptions regarding human subjects and their social environments. I confront them with the idea of rethinking dualisms, ontologies, and agencies addressed by the field of new materialism. I propose a new materialist-inspired socialization theory that assumes that humans, knowledge, and material environments become inseparable parts of (gendered) socialization processes in a world of constant change. This approach contributes to socialization theory and methodology because it illustrates precisely how humans and non-humans coproduce socialization in situated material-discursive processes.