Early sociologists paid little attention to this aspect of a new recruit’s orientation—the entire educational process, the process of learning. Focusing on the environment and hereditary aspects, scholars engaged in a fruitless debate regarding nature versus nurture— nature signifying the physical, that is, the geographical environment, and nurture hinting at social and cultural transmission.
The environmentalists gave a one-sided emphasis to the role that physical environment plays in shaping people, the society and culture; the biologists—particularly the promoters of eugenics (powered by the racist ideology)—tried to explain differences between societies in terms of biologically inherited traits, and propounded the theory of racial superiority. They did not dwell on the processes through which a child became a full member of society and the follower of a way of life called culture.
Before we discuss the processes of socialization and enculturation, it will be useful to briefly summarize the debate on environment and society, using mainly the discourse presented in MacIver and Page. The authors’ concern is expressed in the Foreword to this section: ‘Since every social group, whether racially or nationally or “culturally” defined, distinguished as class or as community, we face the question whether these differences are determined mainly by heredity or by the conditions of life.’ Attachment to soil is found to be greatest amongst plants; animals’ attachment to the soil is not that great, but their dependence on the environment cannot be denied. The same is true of humans, although they exhibit greater adaptability to varying environments. But environment understood in a broader sense also includes our habits, our ways of living. Since these differ from group to group, we can say that groups live in different environs. In this sense, environment has two components: physical and social. In order to survive, humans are involved in three kinds of adaptation—physical adaptation, biological adaptation and social adaptation.
Purely physical adaptation occurs whether we will it or not: it is independent of our strivings and our aims … whatever the conditions are, whether wilderness or city, poverty or prosperity, whether in the eyes of men they are favourable or unfavourable, good or evil, this unconditional physical adaptation remains with all its compulsion (MacIver and Page, 1955: 77).
Biological adaptation means ‘that a particular form of life is fitted to survive or to prosper under the conditions of the environment. We say that fish are adapted to a marine environment or tigers to the conditions of life in the jungle’ (ibid.). If there are no physical conditions for the adequate functioning of the organism, there occurs maladaptation. Social adaptation, ‘however, involves some standard of value….. Various sociologists speak of the process of adjustment or of accommodation……, The peculiar thing about Man is that ‘he selects and modifies his environment in such a way that the inevitable adaptation shall admit the greater fulfilment of his wants’.
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