The Self

• Cultural identity involves one’s connection with their cultural heritage and how they identify themselves based on this background.
• Identity refers to an individual's sense of self-awareness and understanding of their place within a larger social context.
• Culture is the shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that characterize a group or society.
• Ethnicity is the social grouping that people are born into, which can be defined by race or culture.
• Culture includes all the learned behaviors, attitudes, and ways of life passed down from generation to generation within a society.
• Race refers to physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, facial features, etc., while ethnicity refers to shared customs, traditions, language, religion, values, beliefs, history, and other aspects of culture.
• Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize an institution or organization.
• Tylor (1871) defines culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society."
• The concept of culture has been defined by various scholars over time, including Tylor (1871), Boas (1940), Kroeber & Kluckhohn (1952), Geertz (1963), and Hofstede (1980).
• Ethnicity refers to a person's national origin, ancestry, or race, often associated with specific cultural traditions and practices.
• Gender identity refers to a person's internal sense of being male, female, both, neither, or somewhere else along the gender spectrum.
• Sexual orientation refers to a person's romantic attraction to others, including heterosexual (straight), homosexual (gay/lesbian), bisexual, pansexual, asexual, etc.
• Sexual orientation is the romantic attraction or sexual desire felt towards other persons.
• Gender is the set of expectations about behavior, roles, and activities associated with being male or female.
• Race is a socially constructed category used to classify individuals based on physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, facial features, etc.
• Sociological explanations of the self, identity and difference as both socially caused and socially constructed
• Structuralist views on the self and identity

  • Functionalist
  • Marxist
  • Feminist
• Social action views on the self and identity

  • Interactionist
  • Postmodernist
• Identity


  The characteristics by which a person is definitively recognisable or known: how they view themselves or how others view them
• Personal identity


  The individual uniqueness of a person; how the individual feels on the inside or how they view themselves
• Social identity


  The identity that is portrayed to the outside world or to the groups to which a person may belong
• Self identity


  The perceptions we have about our own abilities, flaws, status and worth
• Functionalist view of the self

  • Identity is a product of socialisation and meritocracy
  • In pre-industrial society people had an ascribed status
  • In contemporary society people achieve their status meritocratically
• Marxist view of the self

  • Identity is shaped by capitalism and an individual's relationship to the means of production
  • Alienation of the working class from each other and the products they create
  • Identity is constructed by the ruling class and imparted through ideology
• Feminist view of the self

  • Gender identity is constructed by the patriarchy through socialisation
• Structuralist views of the self

  Give little prominence to individual identity, people operate within boxes created for them by society
• Social action views of the self


  Agree that identity and the self are social constructs, not something we are simply born with
• Most sociologists appreciate there is more agency on the part of individuals than structuralist theories sometimes suggest
• Anthony Giddens' idea of structuration - individuals have agency but are also influenced by social structures
• For interactionists, society is shaped by individuals, rather than the other way around
• Most people who consider themselves functionalists, Marxists and feminists appreciate there is more agency on the part of individuals than the theory sometimes suggests
• Marx: '"men make their own history", "but they do not make it as they please"'
• Structuration (Giddens)


  Individuals have agency but are also influenced by social structures
• Social constructs


  Identity and the self are socially constructed, not natural
• Social action theorists (interactionists, postmodernists)

  • Agree with structuralists that identity and the self are social constructs
  • See a greater role for human agency in social construction
• Social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann)

  1. All reality and meaning is subjective and created through dynamic interactions with other individuals and groups

  2. Identity is not simply handed to us by processes outside our control, we play a part in its creation

  3. We develop our concept of self through learning how others see us
• Cooley's "The Looking Glass Self"

  • Our self-image and behaviour is affected by how we think others see us
  • We become the person we think others believe us to be, and behave accordingly
  • We pick up on how others see us through our interactions with them
  • Part of our sense of self is a sense of how we are different from other people
• Becker's "Labelling Theory"


  • Interactions with others, and their views of us, can affect our sense of self and our behaviour
  • A label can become our "master status" and be internalised, causing us to take on the characteristics of the label
  • Becker does not remove agency from the individual, they may take on the label as a master status, but they might also choose to reject the label
• Mead's "I and the Me"


  • "Me" is the social self, constructed by interactions with others
  • "I" can act creatively and react to the "me"
  • The "me" does also react to the "I"
• Goffman's "The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life"


  • Social behaviour is like a performance, we carefully construct how we present ourselves to others in order to manage their impression of us
  • Front stage is at work and in public, back stage is at home or on our own
  • Successful performance includes belief in the role, presenting an idealised version, and staying in character
  • Role distance is the gap between our front stage performance and how we present ourselves back stage
  • Individuals often have to perform multiple roles that can come into conflict