A facilitated and dialogue-based space that provides individuals with an examination of personal social identities and their relationship to power and privilege, perceptions of self, and beliefs about others. This module focuses on the complexity of personal identity development and its influence on the lived experience.
Harro's model of socialization describes how people come to accept, both consciously and unconsciously, both inequality and unfairness on the basis of their socialization with families, friends and neighbors, and with reinforcements in later life in various social institutions. The Cycle of Socialization is used as a conceptual framework to explore a) issues of social identity (e.g., identity formation, privileged and targeted social identities, pride, internalized dominance, internalized oppression, individual resistance to socialized roles in systems of oppression) and b) issues related to power relations at the system level (e.g., group privilege, social power, access to resources). This framework is helpful to both support and challenge us to gain a deeper understanding of how we all learn to “fit” in our social world through a systematic process of socialization in “how to be” each of our social group identities.