THE SELF, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

• What is the connection between external reality and the self?

  -       We may be gifted with intellect and the capacity to rationalize things but at the end of the day, our growth and development and consequently, our selves are truly products of our interaction with the external reality.
• What is self?

  -       Defined by the following characteristics:

  ➢    Self-contained

  ➢    Independent

  ➢    Consistent

  ➢    Unitary

  ➢    Private

  ➢    Separate
• SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISTS

  -       Argues that the self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and through

  -       The self is capable of morphing and fitting itself into any circumstances it finds itself in. 
• Marcel Mauss

  -       French Anthropologist, she has an explanation for this. According to Mauss, every self has two faces :

  a.    Personne -is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be him

  • b.    Moi a person’s sense of who he is
• Schwartz, White, and Luiz


  Language as both a publicly shared and privately utilized symbol system is the site where the individual and the social make and remake each other
• Mead and Vygotsky


  the way the human persons develop is with the use of language acquisition and interaction with others.
• SELF IN FAMILIES

  -       The kind of family that we are born in, the resources available to us (human, spiritual, economic), and the kind of development that we will have will certainly affect us as we go through life.
• THE SELF AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL WORLD

  -       One is believed to be in active participation in the shaping of the self
• Gender

  -       is one of those loci of the self that is subject to alteration, change, and development.
• Sonia Tolstoy


  the wife of the famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, wrote when she was twenty-one, “I am nothing but a miserable crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a useless creature with morning sickness, and a big belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobody wants and which nearly drives me insane

   
• William James


  the self as having two aspects-the “I” and the “me
• The “I”

  is the thinking ,acting, and feeling self.
• The “me”

  ➢   is the physical characteristics as well as psychological capabilities that makes who you are
• Identity

  is composed of personal characteristics, social roles, and responsibilities, as well as affiliations
• Self, identity, and self-concept

  -       are not fixed in one time frame.
• G.H. Mead(1934)

  -       argued that the self is created and developed through human interaction
• -       Three reasons why self and identity are social products:

  1.    We do not create ourselves out of nothing

  2.    Whether we like it or not, we actually need others to affirm and reinforce who we think we are.

  3.    What we think is important to us may also have been influenced by what is important in our social or historical context.
• Three other self-schema:

  1.    The actual who you are at the moment

  2.    Ideal who you like to be

  3. Ought self who you think you should be
• SELF AWARENESS

  -       May be positive or negative

  -       Can keep you from doing something dangerous