Sociology and the Self. The ‘I’; the ‘Me’; Identity and Subjectivity.

Sociology and the Self.
The ‘I’; the ‘Me’; Identity and
Subjectivity.
What is Identity?
 ‘A sense of self or personhood, of what kind of person one
is. Identities always involve both sameness and
difference… (2000) Penguin Dictionary of Sociology.
 ‘Identity is about belonging, about what you have in
common with some people and what differentiates you
from others. At its most basic it gives you a sense of
personal location, the stable core to individuality. But it is
also about your social relationships, your complex
involvement with others’ (1996) Weeks in Bradley.
 Can be seen as something fixed or something fluid.
Three Main Arguments
1. We are born with our identities
2. Identities and culturally and historically
dependent
3. Identities are fluid and fragmented and are
a result of conscious and unconscious
thought and emotion (affective attachment
to particular identities).
Sources of Identity Construction.
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Gender
Age
Sexuality
Ethnicity
Social Class
Consumption
Employment
Roles and
Responsibilities.
 Family networks
 Friendship networks
Group membership
 Use of technology
 Use of information
 Politics
 Leisure activities
 The body
Bradley (1996)
 Two types of Identity
 Personal identity and
social identity
 A blueprint of the self.
 Personal- the corePsychology
 Social- how we locate
ourselves in societysociology.
Critique
 These are old subject
divisions
 Focus on Individual
ignores social and vice
versa
 Personal identity about
subjectivity
What is Subjectivity?
The concept of the self
 George H. Mead (1863-1931)
 emphasised the subjective meaning of human behaviour,
the social process, and pragmatism.
 subjective aspects of social life, rather than on objective,
macro-structural aspects of social systems
 Human beings act toward things on the basis of the
meanings that the things have for them
 These meanings are a product of social interaction in
society.
 These meanings are modified through a process of
interpretation, which each individual deploys when dealing
with the things that s/he encounters.
George H. Mead (1863-1931)
 Mind, Self and Society (1934), The Philosophy of the Act
(1938)
 emphasised the subjective meaning of human behaviour,
the social process, and pragmatism.
 subjective aspects of social life, rather than on objective,
macro-structural aspects of social systems
 Human beings act toward things on the basis of the
meanings that the things have for them
 These meanings are a product of social interaction in
society.
 These meanings are modified through a process of
interpretation, which each individual deploys when dealing
with the things that s/he encounters.
SI premises (2)
 society consists of organised and patterned interactions
among individuals.
 Social research methods based on observable face-to-face
interactions rather than on macro-level structural
relationships involving social institutions.
 shifts focus away from stable norms and values toward
more changeable, continually readjusting social processes.
 negotiation among members of society creates temporary,
socially constructed relation
 This does no occur in a structural flux - we are 'schooled' to
act and respond to others within existing social meanings.
SI basics
 SI advocates reject the micro-macro, subjective-objective
dualisms
 Argue that there is no objective structure outside of
individual experience/perception
 That social life is constructed by individuals in interaction
with others.
 Hence, the lecture is concerned with a fundamental
relations between (a) the reflexive self, (b) the way in which
social roles and meanings evolve out of interaction
between people and (c) the idea that society is the sum of
human relations and consciousness rather than objective
institutions.
The reflexive self
 self-aware individual who consciously acts in the world.
 the reflexive individual emerges from processes of
meaning-making, interpretation and social interaction.
 Humans generating signs or communicative codes via
language (ie 'symbolic communication’)
 Firstly, the signs and symbols that constitute language
allow people to develop a common symbolic and
conceptual store
 which allows for nuanced and complex levels of
negotiation.
 Through social interaction, people learn meanings and
symbols that allow them to exercise thought.
 As people can develop subtle and complex forms of
communication, they also enable more complex
interactions to take place.
Ritzer continued
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Meanings and symbols allow people to carry out human action
and interactions
People alter meaning and symbols they use in interaction >
Language and communication deepens our capacity to become
reflexive (self-aware and aware of others)
In addition to 'talking to others' we engage in 'talking to
ourselves', that is, engaging in internal conversations when we
are making decisions.
The intertwined effects of action and interaction make up groups
and societies.
Thus, 'symbolic communication' is central to the ways that we
make meaning
This also reflects the SI claim that society amounts to the
creative activity and that social change is brought about by
processes of interaction.
Mead: The ‘I’ and the ‘Me’
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‘I’ is the spontaneous unpredictable element of
the self
'I' memory is a store of creativity, adaptability and
novelty in the social process.
Where our most important values are located
Constitutes the realisation of the self - i.e. reveals
a definite personality
Seen as an evolutionary process
Mead – ‘I’ and ‘Me’
 'Me' is the conformist aspect of the self, and the
reflexive, organised aspect of the self (Mead 1934:
197).
 Mead's concept of "playing the game”, where one
must participate in a "conversation of gestures”,
use " significant symbols, if one is to participate in
society. Through this conversation, members
playing the game are ‘socialised’ or made to
conform to social system.
 We alternative between ‘I’ and ‘Me’.
Mead and ‘multiple selves/others’
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Multiple Selves "... we divide ourselves up in all sorts of different selves
with reference to our acquaintances."
generalised other
significant other. Each group has their own significant symbols in which
they communicate with our "self" and we perpetuate triadic relations
accordingly.
Cooley’s ‘looking Glass Self’ ‘As we see our face, figure and dress in the
glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or
otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we
should lime them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another’s some
though of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends and
so on, and are variously affected by it. A self-idea of this sort seems to
have three principle elements: the imagination of our appearance to the
other person; the imagination of his judgement of that appearance; and
some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification . The comparison
with a looking-glass hardly suggests the second element, the imagined
judgement, which is quite essential 9CH Cooley, 1902: 153).
Erving Goffman
 Stigma (1963) Interaction Ritual (1967), Forms of Talk
(1981)
 Presentation of the Self in Everyday life (1956),
 Dramaturgy - with human social behaviour seen as
more or less well scripted and with humans as roletaking actors.
 Role-taking is a key mechanism of interaction >
reflexive awareness of self and others
 Role-making a key mechanism of interaction in
unaccustomed situations
 improvisational quality of roles, with human social
behaviour seen as poorly scripted and with humans as
role-making improvisers.
SI defines ‘society’
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Reflexive selves – social roles – meaning (triangular
relationship).
Society is the sum of human relations and consciousness
rather than objective institutions
There is no objective structure outside of individual
experience/perception
Social life is constructed by individuals in interaction with
others
The self is social because we are born into existing
society BUT
the self is bound by language (shared symbolic meanings
) and interaction.
Thus, the mind and self are socialised. (SI does have a
theory of ‘structure’).
THUS the self can adopt various social roles – significant
and generalised others
Symbolic Interactionism as action
thoery - Herbert Blumer
 Mead’s student at U. Chicago. responsible for coining the
term, "symbolic interactionism"
 Symbolic Interactionism, a study of human group life and
conduct which holds the centrality of the production of
meaning as central to human behaviour.
 concerned with observing social behaviour in relation to
what he called the 'root images' of social interaction.
 The Dilemma of Qualitative Method: Herbert Blumer and
the Chicago Tradition (1989)Martyn Hammersley (ed).
 Three core principles to his theory. They are meaning,
language, and thought
Blumer (2) ‘meaning’
 meaning states that humans act toward people and things based upon
the meanings that they have given to those people or things.
 Language gives humans a means by which to negotiate meaning
through symbols.
 Thought, based on language, is a mental conversation or dialogue that
requires role taking, or imagining different points of view
 symbolic importance we attach to signs in the world around us was
highly significant to the organisation of social behaviour
 Meaning of cultural signs not ‘arbitrary’ but outcomes of social
processes (like Structuralists)
 symbolic importance of physical things, such as flags, clothing,
uniforms, and to weddings rituals such as weddings, funerals,
courtroom trials, conferences, etc.
 Social symbols are not universal or ahistorical – Layder - kiss (of
friendship, romance, greeting, celebration – men hugging and football,
‘continental’ manners)
Becker, Howard
 Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance(1969)
 Studies of group values among ‘delinquents’ and emergence of
shared codes, values contra ‘mainstream’ values
 People continuously shape and reshape social worlds by
attaching meanings to objects in their environment
 Thus every human action bears potentially diverse symbolic
meanings
 All people attach meanings to their behaviourm but such
meanings are not always validated or accepted
 Becker argued, for example that (1) that the meaning of marijuana
was not lodged in the drug itself, but in the user's experiences of
the drug
 (2) meaning cemented social roles in the rituals of exchange and
interaction with other user's .
 (3) the meaning value of the drug is also bound up future
development of its value to the user (the cycle of meaning-making
is ongoing).
Becker, deviance and labelling
 Becker and labelling – ‘social groups create
deviance by making the rules whose infraction
constitutes deviance, and by applying those
rules to particular people and labelling them as
outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is
not a qaulity, of the act the person commits,
but rather a consequence of the application by
others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’.
The deviant is one to whom that label has
successfully been applied; deviant behaviour
is behaviour that people so label.
LEGACY OF SI
 A rejection of the dualisms that bedevilled sociological
theory up to that point
 no objective structure outside of individual experience,
emphasis - perhaps deterministically – on human agency
in processes of social change
 social life is constructed by individuals in interaction with
others
 Ethnomethodology
 participant observation
 Focuses on social structures as in construction – interested
in how institutions are created and adapted by people
 Significantly draws attention to construction and
reinforcement of dominant meanings (deviance and
labelling)
 Emphasis on action at the micro-level and processes of
social engagement and shifts in power (Foucault), amongst
Critiques of SI
 Idealistic - tends to overlook the deep
seated possibilities of conflict and resistance
to the collective will
 overly impressionistic in their research
methods and somewhat unsystematic in
their theories.
 Inattention to the functions of institutions or
structural forces and what structures we are
trying to make sense of and adapt to.