Who are you?

“To be nobody but yourself – in a world

which is doing its best, night and day, to
make you everybody else – means to fight
the hardest battle which any human being
can fight”
(E.E.Cummings)
“Love one another but make not a bond of
love: let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls”
(Kahlil Gibran)
• The idea of self in many ways appears both central to our lives and
specific to each of us in identifying us as a unique person.
• Self versus Self Concept

• Self: used here refers to a process, the process of reflexivity which

emanates from the dialectic between the "I" and "Me".
• Self Concept: is a product of this reflexive activity. It is the concept
the individual has of himself as a physical, social, and spiritual or
moral being
• "the totality of an individual's thoughts and feelings having reference
to himself as an object"
Essentialism
• There are underlying forms of essences, there is discontinuity
between different forms rather than continuous variation, and these
true forms are constant over time.
• Certain phenomena are natural, inevitable, and biologically
determined.
• The phenomena of the natural world are simply a reflection of a finite
number of fixed and unchanging forms or essences.
• Constancy and discontinuity are the crucial properties of essences (An
essence does not change and is categorically different from another
essence)
• Continuous variation: the imperfect manifestation of the
essences.
• Essentialism > philosophical foundation for positivism in
philosophy
• (Darwin) Rejected essentialism (at least partially); notion of
change through the evolution > at odds with the notion of
constancy in essentialism.
• Current: Essentialism implies a belief that certain
phenomena are natural, inevitable, universal. (Modern
essentialism)
Cultural Essentialism
• Women = relational, Men = autonomous, independent
• Mother and infant bond > smashed by the male to form a separate,
independent, masculine identity (female infant continues bond with
mother for feminine identity)
• Qualities of separateness (men) and relatedness (women) persist
throughout life AND a result of universal cultural experience (considered
essential qualities)
• Cultural determinism of essential qualities in males and females > resulting
from universal experiences in infant and early childhood.
• Criticism: presuming universality and ignoring diversity in human
experience.
Essentialism Framework

• Classical Essentialism
• Modern essentialism (characterized by biological
determinism)
• Cultural essentialism

• Common assumption across: a phenomena (sexual

phenomena: sexual orientation or gender) reside within the
individual > hormones, personality traits, etc.
Social Constructionism
• Social constructionist inquiry is principally concerned with explicating
the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or
otherwise account for the world (including themselves) in which they
live.
• From the constructionist position the process of understanding is not
automatically driven by the forces of nature, but is the result of an
active, cooperative enterprise of persons in relationship.
• The degree to which a given form of understanding prevails or is
sustained across time is not fundamentally dependent on the
empirical validity of the perspective in question, but on the
vicissitudes of social processes (e.g., communication, negotiation,
conflict, rhetoric).
• Inherently ambiguous, continuously evolving, and free to
vary with the predilections of those who use them.
• Interpretation may be suggested, fastened upon, and
abandoned as social relationships unfold across time.
• The manner in which self-definition is realigned over time as
social circumstances are altered.
• (Family & Media) contribute to prevailing forms of
interpretation.
• Forms of negotiated understanding are of critical significance
in social life, as they are integrally connected with many
other activities in which people engage.
• Descriptions and explanations of the world
themselves constitute forms of social action. As such
they are intertwined with the full range of other
human activities.
• In the same way, descriptions and explanations form
integral parts of various social patterns.
• They serve to sustain and support certain patterns to
the exclusion of others.
• To alter description and explanation is thus to
threaten certain actions and invite others.
Social Constructionism

• Reality is socially constructed and emphasizes

language as an important means by which we
interpret experience.
• Phenomena as external to the individual, defined by
social understandings and discourse.
• Social influence on individual experience > reality is
socially constructed
Constructionist Paradigm (Berger & Luckmann)

• A) Our experience of the world is ordered (perceive the world as

discrete events and specific persons engaging in distinct actions in a
particular order). > objective reality, events and persons exist
independently of our perception of them.
• B) Language provides the basis on which we make sense of the world
(categories, typifications to classify and order events and persons >
language means by which to interpret new experience
(Language/discourse is prior to and constitutive of the world)
• C) Reality of everyday life is shared; this intersubjective
character distinguishes the reality of everyday life from
idiosyncratic realities (e.g. dreams) > Language means to
share experience, make available our experiences to others >
reality is a product of social interaction
• D) Shared typifications of reality become institutionalized
(Habitualization) > makes behavior predictable, facilitating
joint activity (Institutionalization/habitual/expected >
mechanism of social control are developed to perpetuate it).
• E) Knowledge may be institutionalized at the level of
society or within subgroups (sub-universe of meaning is a
socially segregated store of knowledge carried by a specific
group; leads to conflict between groups)
SC Paradigm highlights the external but applies
to the internal. How?
• Language provides us with the categories that we use to
interpret or make meaningful internal phenomena.
• Argument on sexuality: It is biological; grounded in biological
drives > generalized motivation. BUT biology does not dictate
where, when and with what object a person engages in
sexual behavior.
• Sexuality is channeled in specific direction socially rather
than biologically > a channeling that not only imposes limits
on these activities, but directly affects orgasmic functions.
Gagnon & Simon (1973)

• Sexuality is fundamentally social constructionist.

• Sexuality is not a universal phenomenon which is the same in all historical
times and cultural space.
• Sexuality: product of culture, defining behaviors and relationships as sexual
> definitions or scripts by members of society.
• (birth, sexual anatomy, menarche, sexual initiation, impotence, frigidity >
primary significance of these biological events is not that they occur, but
that they are marked by others) = social significance; terms refer to them,
communication about them.
• Emphasis on the role of language and communication as the source of
significance or meaning of biological phenomena.
• Sexuality is not an essence, not a biological quality or natural
inner drive whose character is the same across time and
space > meaning is derived from language or discourse
(each institution has a discourse and becomes an
instructional system) Michel Foucault (1978)

• Language provides a concrete mechanism by which culture

influences individual thought and behavior.
• Social constructionism, can represent the complexity within
a single culture; does not assume uniformity.
• Consistent with variations across societies over time.
The Self
• (William James)
• I = center of introspection and reflection on experience; the person
who made sense of the past, present and future encounters with the
world that renders encounters as coherent and allows for continuity
of being.
• Me = the self known though her/his interactions with others; a social
self; a collection of social selves based in and known through the
person as a social being.
• I and Me > elements of the self that together comprises the person as
an essential being, distinct from others, capable of introspecting and
reflecting on participation I the social world.
• How do you make sense of who you are in relation to
others and negotiate the meanings of your
experiences in the social world?
• Self: reflected in and bound up with social actions.
• What does the SELF mean in our life?
• Cooley (1902) & Mead (1934): How an individual
develops a social self by making sense of his/her
interactions with others.
• Tangent terms to the Self: self-image, self-
actualization, self-affirmation, self esteem etc >
further constructs
• The Self > production of an ever-increasing range of
self-related constructs leading not to any more useful
understanding of the self.
Self as Social Categoriser
• Social Identity Theory: how people are identified socially in terms of
the social identities that they adopt at various times. (memberships
of social groups: gender, age, nationality, etc)
• Membership to specific groups through a psychological process: social
categorization, social identification, social comparison. > individual
acquire identities that locate them within a recognizable social world.
(The focus lies more on what people have in common with others
than on what might make them distinctive)
• Self: default position when no social identities are immediately salient
to the individual.
Constructing a Self as Known

• Constructing an inner self, allows an individual to describe his/her

inner world or experiences in accounting for one’s actions.
• Any such claims therefore run the risk of being challenged by those to
whom the self is being told > YOU having a ‘stake’ in how YOU
describe yourself.
• We tend to: constructing versions of self that describe not just
internal states but also elements that are known to others.
• Present selves that are based both in our internal experience and in
how other people know and recognise them in social situations.
Self in Discourse
• The self can be constructed on the basis of inner
preferences, inner states or experiences, or as some
combination of these and how the self is known and
recognised by others.
• These selves are not completed products that will endure
into the next interaction and beyond that.
• Future interactions will call for and allow the construction of
other selves that in turn will be oriented to the local contexts
in which they are produced.
Self and Power
• (Foucault) Modern power is achieved largely through the self-
regulation and self-discipline of individuals to behave in ways which
are largely consistent with dominant discourses about what it is to be
human.
• Discourse and Power: contributed to the shaping of certain
behavioural practices, modes of thought and institutional structures
which function to produce people possessing these valued qualities.
• Certain ways of talking or constructing objects and events become
pervasive and dominant in particular historical moments, which make
them more culturally available and thus more powerful in
constructing social reality.
Self and Power
• The self is the direct consequence of power.
• Vehicles of power in diverse institutional settings.
• Practices that are normatively represented as humane interventions
in support of community health, safety, and education actually serve
as mechanisms of domination.
• Rationality, reason, and scientific knowledge are rejected as
progressive sources of emancipation.
• The self is coerced into existence, not to become an agent but as a
mechanism of control where systems of discourse work from the
inside out by creating a self-regulating subject.
Self, not a discovery but a deconstruction.
• The self is coerced into existence, not to become an agent but
as a mechanism of control where systems of discourse work
from the inside out by creating a self-regulating subject.
• Stuart Hall (1996): There can be no true self hiding "inside" or
behind the artificial or superficial because self and identity
are constructed "within, not outside discourse.“
• (Rose, 1996) Genealogy of subjectification > localized
attempts to produce meaning (description of the
institutional, political, and economic forces shaping our
cultural understanding of the self).
 Caveats of the Power & Discourse Arguments.
• Dissolved the foundation of a universal self and eliminated the
assumption of an agentic and knowledgeable actor.
• Why? the possibility of emancipation through organized resistance
and political intervention if actors are conceived to be mere subjects
of discourse.
• Reduced consciousness and identity formation to coercive
socialization and failed to grasp the individualizing possibilities
created by modernity.
• Alternative argument: requires a conceptualization of the self as an
embodied agent, a knowledgeable, problem solving actor rather
than an amorphous subject position (Reflexive Self)
Self and Reflexivity
• It is a mistake to say that identities are trans-historical and universal,
but it is also a mistake to say that personhood and selves are not
(Wiley, 1994).
• The self is first and foremost a reflexive process of social interaction.
• The reflexive process refers to the uniquely human capacity to
become an object to one’s self, to be both subject and object.
• Relfexiveness: the turning-back of the experience of the individual
upon himself.
• the self at its most basic level is a reflexive process that regulates
the acting, agentic organism.
Self and Reflexivity
• Referring to or discussing itself or its own creation; self-
referential.
• Subjective meaning, understood knowledge as contextual,
values the subjectivity and reflexivity of the individual
• Critical point: Treats language as a productive force, rather
than a neutral medium for communication.
• The ability to see one’s self as an object, is a uniquely human
capability, which enables human beings to create and
achieve a sense of self.
• Critical reflexivity required for radical change (Agency)
Alternative Insights to the Self
• An individual’s constructions of self over multiple situations produce
what can be viewed as a ‘personal history’ of self.
• Individuals become psychologically ‘invested’ in specific forms of self
that recur across social contexts.
• Current Trends:
• Self-fashioning OR Self-creating (Virtual Reality)
• Construct positive selves > as contrasting the previous self (social
support)
• The selves that people present and create are accomplishments,
designed towards some social outcomes.
Points of Critical Interest to the Self:

• Why is essentialism not useful in understanding the self?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of social
constructionism as a framework in understanding the self?
• How does power create the self?
• If the self is produced by power, how can change,
resistance, and self-creation occur?
• How does Reflexivity of the Self challenge Power and
Agency?
Critically Think and Move Fluidly.
• The term ‘self and society’ may refer to the interaction of two distinct
elements, where each of the elements — self and society — possess
essential characteristics, which affect and specify social behavior.
• But ‘self and society’ may also refer to the process of continuously
ongoing social interaction from which social behavior is performed.
• Both biological perspectives and cultural perspectives about the self
may have essentialist assumptions that gloss over differences.
• Social constructionism is helpful in understanding observable
differences but is not helpful in formulating universally acceptable
theories about the self.
• Structures of power are determinants of selfhood.
• Reflexivity and agency enables human beings to escape
social control and makes possible change and self-creation.
• There are local selves as there are local configurations of
power.
• Self and society is understood as the ongoing process of
social interaction from which
• Definitions and performances of the self emerge.
• There are many perspectives about the self.
• Power, specifically discourse, shapes definitions and
performances of the self but reflexivity and agency enable
self-creation and thus make change possible.