GNED 08 - UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

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DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

LESSON 2: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIOLOGY

What is the self?

It is commonly defined by the following characteristics: “separate, self-contained, independent,
consistent, unitary, and private”.
• By separate, it is meant that the self is distinct from the other selves. The self is always unique and has
its own identity. One cannot be another person. Even twins are distinct from each other.
• Second, self is also self-contained and independent because in itself it can exist. Its distinctness allows
it to be self-contained with its own thoughts, characteristics and volition. It does not require any other
self for it to exist.
• It is consistent because it has a personality that is enduring and therefore can be expected to persist for
quite some time. Its consistency allows it to be studied, described and measured. Consistency also
means that a particular self’s traits, characteristics, tendencies and potentialities are more or less the
same.
• Self is unitary in that it is the center of all experiences and thoughts that run through a certain person.
It is like the chief command post in an individual where all processes, emotions, and thoughts converge.
• Finally, the self is private. Each person sorts out information, feelings, and emotions, and thought
processes within the self. This process is never accessible to anyone but the self.

This last characteristic of the self being private suggests that the self is isolated from the external world.
It lives within its own world. However, we also see that this potential clash between the self and the external
reality is the reason for the self to have a clear understanding of what it might be, what it can be, and what it
will be.
What is the relationship between external reality and the self? In the famous Tarzan story, the little
boy named Tarzan was left in the middle of the forest. Growing up, he never had an interaction with any
other human being but apes and other animals. Tarzan grew up acting strangely like apes and unlike human
persons. Tarzan became an animal, in effect. His sole interaction with them made him just like one of them.
Disappointedly, human persons will not develop as human persons without intervention. We may be gifted
with intellect and the capacity to rationalize things but at the end of the day, our growth and development,
our selves are truly products of our interaction with external reality.
From this perspective then, one can see that the self is always at the mercy of external circumstances
that bump and collide with it. It is ever-changing and dynamic, allowing external influences to take part in its
shaping.
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Social constructionists argue for a merged view of “the person” and their “local social context” where
the boundaries of one cannot easily be separated from the boundaries of the other. Social constructivist argue
that the self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and through. Rather, the self has to
be seen as something that is in unceasing flux, in a constant struggles with external reality and is malleable in
its dealing with society.

The Self and Culture

Remaining the same person and turning chameleon by adapting to one’s

context seems paradoxical. However, the French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss has
an explanation for this phenomenon. According to Mauss, every self has two faces:
personne and moi. Moi refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and his
basic identity, his biological givenness. It is a persons’s basic identity. Personne,
on the other hand, is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who
he is. It has much to do with what it means to live in a particular institution, a
particular family, a particular region, a particular nationality, and how to behave
given expectations and influences from others.

“The self is capable of morphing and fitting itself into any circumstances it finds
itself in.”

The Self and the Development of the Social World

So how do people actively produce their social worlds? How do children growing up become social
beings? How can a boy turn out to just be like an ape? How do twins coming out from the same mother turn
out to be completely different when given up for adoption? More than his givenness, one is believed to be in
active participation in the shaping of the self. Most often, we think the human persons are just passive actors
in the whole process of the shaping of selves. That men and women are born with particularities that they can
no longer change.

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD

• Born: February 1863, Massachusetts, USA
• Graduated and taught grade school at Oberlin College
• Enrolled at Harvard University (1887)
• During the span of his career, he wrote and published many
articles and book reviews but did not publish any book.
• It was his students who put together his numerous writings and
edited them for publication.
• Died: Heart failure in 1931
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MEAD’s SOCIAL SELF

• Social Behaviorism is the approached used to describe the power of the environment in shaping
human behaviour.
• He described the self as a ‘dimension of personality that is made-up of the individual’s self-
awareness and self-image’ (Macionis, 2012).

According to Mead, the self cannot be separated from the society. This, he explained through a set of
stages which the person undergoes in the course of his development:

STAGES EXISTENCE OF SELF CHARACTERISTICS

Preparatory Stage None Imitates another
Play Stage Developing Role-taking
Game Stage Present Generalized other

1. The PREPARATORY STAGE

• Mead believed that a self, did not exist at birth. Instead, it develops over time. Its development is
dependent on social interaction and social experience.
• At this stage, children’s behaviour are primarily based on imitation. It was observed that children
imitate the behaviours of those around them. As these children grow, they become familiar with the
symbols (verbal and non-verbal) that people use in their interactions. The symbols are the bases of
communication.
• At the first stage, knowing and understanding the symbols are important for this will constitute their
way of communicating with others throughout their lives. (Schaefer, 2012)

2. The PLAY STAGE

• At this stage, skills at knowing and understanding the symbols of communication is important, for this
constitutes the basis for socialization. Through communication, social relationships are formed.
• Now children begin to role play and pretend to be other people. Role-taking in the play stage according
to Mead, is the process of mentally assuming the perspective of another person to see how this person
might behave or respond in a given situation. (Schaefer, 2012)
• The play stage is significant in the development of the self. It is at this stage where the child widens his
perspective and realizes that he is not alone and that there are others around him whose presence he has
to consider.

3. The GAME STAGE

• Age: about eight or nine years and does more than just role-take
• The child begins to consider several tasks and various types of relationships simultaneously. Through
the learnings that were gained in stage two, the child now begins to see not only his perspective but at
the same time the perspective of others around him.
• The child now has the ability to respond not just to one but several members of his social environment.
 GNED 08 - UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

‘generalized other’
• The term Mead used to explain the behaviour of the person when he sees/considers other people in the
course of his actions.
• Through the generalized other, the person realizes that people in society have cultural norms, beliefs
and values which are incorporated into each self. This realization forms the basis of how the person
may evaluate himself (self-evaluation).

MEAD’s Theory of the Self

• The self is not present at birth but begins as a central character in a child’s world. Children see
themselves as the center of their ‘universe’ and is having difficulty understanding others around them.
• As they grow and mature, there is a change in the self. Begins to see other people and is now concerned
about people’s reactions. People around him, particularly his family, play a major role in the formation
of the self. They are the significant others who strongly influence his development (Schaefer, 2012).

The “I” and “ME”

• He explained that the person’s capacity to see the self through others implies that the self is composed
of two parts, the I self and the Me self:
• I Self – When the person initiates or performs a social action, the self, functions as a subject. This
subjective element of the self is I.
Ex. I will go on a date. I will cook dinner tonight.
• Me Self – When the person takes the role of the other, the self functions as an object. The objective
element of the self is Me.
Ex. The choice for the best drawing was awarded to me.
• The formation of the self is not the end of the process of socialization.
• It continues for as long as the person is alive.
• The self may change based on life circumstances that have strong impact on it. Events such as death of
a loved one, disease or disability may reshape the self.
• Though a person may have no control over such events, he has control over how he reacts and deals
with it which is still an important aspect of the self (Macionis, 2012).

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY (1864-1929)

• an American sociologist
• made use of the sociopsychological approach to understanding how
societies work.
• Earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan and taught at the same
university as a sociology professor.
• Discussed the formation of the self through interaction (Human Nature
and the Social Order, 1902)
• People learn who they are through their social interaction with other
people. Although seeing oneself is based on contemplating one’s
personal qualities, the view of the self is also significantly influenced by
the impression and perception of others.
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He called this the looking-glass self or the self that is a product of social interaction. Cooley believed
that the process of developing a self has three phases:

1. People imagine how they present themselves to others.

ex. You dress-up elegantly for the prom.
You greet your teachers politely in the school’s hallway.
2. People imagine how others evaluate them.
ex. Others will see you as pretty and attractive by the way you fix yourself.
Others will see you as courteous and well-bred.
3. People develop some sort of feeling about themselves as a result of those impressions.
ex. You may see yourself as confident or inferior.

It is noticed that Cooley in his three phases made use of the word imagine. This may mean that there is
a possibility that people develop self-identities based on the wrong perception of how others see them. Wrong
perceptions, however, can still change based on positive social experiences.

I am not what I think I am

I am not what You think I am
I am what I think You think I am

ERVING GOFFMAN (1922-1982)

• A Canadian-American sociologist
• Known for his role in the development of Modern American
Sociology
• In his work, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, he
wrote how he observed that people early in their social
interactions learned to slant their presentation of themselves in
order to create preferred appearances and satisfy particular
people.
• Impression management – the process of altering how the
person presents himself to others.
• He sees similarities of real social interaction to a theatrical
presentation. This is the reason for the label dramaturgical
approach to his view.
• Face-work – a phrase used to describe another aspect of the self. This was usually observed in situations
where face-saving measures are resorted to in the maintenance of a proper image of the self in
frustrating or embarrassing situations.
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Self in Families
While every child is born with certain givenness, disposition coming from his parents’genes and general
condition of life, the impact of one’s family is still deemed as a given in understanding the self. The kind of
family that we are born in, the resources available to us, and the kind of development that we will have certainly
affect us as we go through our life. As a matter of evolutionary fact, human persons are one of those beings
whose importance of family cannot be denied. Human beings are born virtually helpless and the dependency
period of a human baby to its parents for nurturing is relatively longer than most other animals. Learning
therefore is critical in our capacity to actualize our potential of becoming humans. In trying to achieve the goal
of becoming a fully realized human, a child enters a system of relationships, most important of which is the
family.
• Imitation of Language and Behaviour
Without a family, biologically and sociologically, a person may not even survive or become a human
person. One is who he is because of his family for the most part.

Gender and the Self

Gender is one of those loci of the self that is subject to alteration, change and development. We have
seen in the past years how people fought hard for the right to express, validate, and assert their gender
expression. Many conservatives may frown upon this and insists on the biological. However, from the point of
view of the social sciences and the self, it is important to give one leeway to find, express, and live his identity.
This forms part of selfhood that one cannot just dismiss. One maneuvers into the society and identifies himself
as who he is by also taking note of gender identities.
Oftentimes, society forces a particular identity unto us depending on our sex and/or gender. In the
Philippines, husbands are expected to provide for the family. The eldest man in a family is expected to head
the family and hold it in. Slight modifications have been on the way due to feminism and lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) activism but for the most part, patriarchy has remained to be at work.
Nancy Chodorow, a feminist, argues that because mothers take the role of taking care of children, there
is a tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality of women as care providers
in the family. The way that little girls are given dolls instead of guns or any other toys are encouraged to play
with makeshift kitchen also reinforces the notion of what roles they should take and the selves they should
develop. In boarding school for girls, young women encouraged to act like fine ladies, are trained to behave in
a fashion that befits their status as women in the society.
Men on the other hand, in the periphery of their own family, are taught early on how to behave like a
man. This normally includes holding in one’s emotion, being tough, fatalistic, not to worry about danger, and
admiration for hard physical labor. Masculinity is learned by integrating a young boy in a society. In the
Philippines, young boys had to undergo circumcision not just for the original, clinical purpose of hygiene but
also to assert their manliness in the society. Circumcision plays another social role by initiating young boys
into manhood.
The gendered self is then shaped within a particular context of time and space. The sense of self that is
being taught makes sure that an individual fits in a particular environment.