Q.What in your mind is the most effective agent of socialisation for your generation? How do you think it was different before?

Socialisation does not happen through any single channel; it works through several distinct agencies, each of which shapes a person in a somewhat different way. The chapter identifies the family, the peer group, the school, the mass media, and -- more broadly -- the occupational group, social class or caste, region and religion a person belongs to, as the main agencies through which a child is socialised.

The family is typically the first and, in early childhood, the most intensive socialising agency -- though who specifically does the socialising within it (parents, or in an extended household, grandparents, uncles or cousins) varies with family structure, and the family's social position often shapes a child's own social location as well. The peer group, made up of friends of roughly the same age, offers something the family cannot: a relatively egalitarian setting where a child tests and negotiates rules of conduct among near-equals rather than having them imposed by an authority figure. The school teaches through its official curriculum, but also through a hidden curriculum -- unstated lessons, such as gendered expectations about who does which classroom tasks, absorbed through routine practice rather than any lesson plan. Mass media -- both print and, increasingly, electronic and digital -- widens a person's exposure to information and ideas well beyond their immediate community, reaching even areas with no road access or local school, though exactly how much it shapes at …