1. Individual as the central starting point for political analysis and the core of social life
2. You can start studying politics by looking at and from the perspective of the individual
3. Three interconnected concepts arise from these
   1. Political learning (socialisation)
   2. Political identity (culture)
      1. Can be narrow eg party membereship
      2. Or can be quite wide like national identity
   3. Political participation
      1. Ways in which socialisation and culture affect political participation
4. Discussion of the individual and of methodological individualism, raises the question of how a coherent social entity - society - is possible in a situation where everyone is self-interested, or socially atomised. How to explain society?
   1. How does a society form
   2. What holds it together
   3. How far can you diverge from social norms and it still be a society
      1. Eg what made USSR fall apart so quickly in the 80s and 90s
5. The process of socialisation
   1. More generally than just politicall
      1. Socialisation is the name given to the process(es) through which a person acquires his or her own view of the world and becomes a social being, so...
         1. See Azimov - Earth is big enough.
      2. Political socialisation is...the process through which people acquire political values, norms, attitudes and behaviours which enable them to fit into a larger social group
         1. For most people though, politics is a fringe activity compared to, say, family, motherhood etc.
         2. A place where a majority at least tacitly consent to the way decisions are made is easier to govern than one in which everyone wants revolution all the time because they disagree.
      3. We learn to become individuals by reference to our relationships with others
   2. How do societies hold together?
      1. Through socialization
      2. In other words socialisation, or social learning, provides a kind of social cement which holds these individuals together, produces order and so on.
   3. The self and others
      1. The concept of the self. Our self is always being related to others and our perception of others
      2. Arguably self versus other defines all political difference. Eg clash of civilisations, party politics, war etc.
         1. Lucile iremonger - The Fiery Chariot, British Prime Ministers and the Search for Love
         2. The concept of the "other". Relationships to individual others and whole groups: affect and anger. See Arjun appadurai fear of small numbers
   4. The process of becoming social while remaining demonstrably individual
      1. Tis process is seen as benign and largely informal, even unconscious
      2. But it can be malign conditioning - indoctrination
         1. The process through which people ar conditioned into particular kinds of attitudes, values and behaviour
            1. Examples: Titus Groan: Gormenghast (Mervyn Peake) Or Lenin to the young communist league October 1920...only by radically remoulding the teaching, organisation and training of the young shall we be able to ensure...The creation of a society unlike the old society - a communist society Stalin: the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks...writers, you are the engineers of the human soul. 1932
            2. Any kind of dissent is available for repression because you don't know where it is going to lead
            3. Lesser examples: Cultural revolutions under Mao Nazi propaganda posters Khmer Rouge - year zero etc But also Floyd, The Wall, makes claim that even in open societies indoctrinate, eg children through education.
         2. Deliberate, often formal instruction in a body of beliefs
         3. Socialisation as a mechanism of control designed to produce outcomes supportive of the leader, regime, ideology