Concepts of the Self. Anthony Elliott

Concepts of the Self - Anthony  Elliott


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that problems of identity are, first and foremost, matters for individual attention and personal solution; the culture of identity politics is increasingly made up of isolated and isolating voices, with few cultural resources available for connecting personal troubles to public issues. In short, some worry that identity politics is too closed in on itself, unconcerned with wider political solidarity, and too intolerant and defensive properly to grasp how political demands for recognition and respect relate to oppressions of the wider political system. While it may be the case that questions concerning the constitution of the self have been linked to radical politics (as in, say, sexual politics or postcolonialism), it is much less clear that attention to the subjective aspects of social experience is always inherently subversive. Indeed, the opposite might be true. Some critics argue that the advanced capitalist order is so drenched with consumerist signs, codes and messages that the self is now, in effect, fully regulated by dominant corporate interests in advance. From this angle, concentration upon the self is part of the political problem, not the solution.

      The chapters that follow are designed to introduce students to concepts and theories of the self within the social sciences. The book aims to examine critically the ideas, concepts and theories of the self that are used in social analysis, while also discussing key areas in which such approaches have addressed the trajectory of self-identity, selfhood and personal identity.

      Chapter 1 looks at how the self has entered sociology. The chapter introduces three powerful sociological approaches to understanding how the self is constituted and constructed in the social world. How do people draw on symbols and symbolic material to fashion a sense of self? How do they live a narrative of self-identity that is actively constructed and reconstructed in the course of a life trajectory? In addressing these questions, I pay close attention to George Herbert Mead’s theories of the emergence of the self, and I also consider the ways in which his ideas have been developed in the sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism. The extremely subtle distinctions we often make in developing shared understandings about self-identity, as elucidated in the sociological writings of Erving Goffman, are also examined in this chapter. Finally, the chapter addresses the wider field of social theory and considers how self-identity links to social influences that are increasingly global in their implications and consequences. Here, the writings of the British sociologist Anthony Giddens are discussed and critically evaluated.

      Chapter 4 focuses on the nature of gender and its relation to the self. Feminism holds that the social world is pervaded by gender, that men and women are socialized into distinct patterns of relating to each other, and that masculine and feminine senses of self are tied to asymmetrical relations of gender power. How is gender power reproduced at the level of the self? How do men and women acquire a distinct sense of masculine or feminine gender identity? The writings of two feminists strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, Nancy Chodorow and Julia Kristeva, are critically examined against this backdrop. I look in particular at the very different concepts of the self articulated by Chodorow and Kristeva, and compare their blending of feminism and psychoanalysis. Gender is also at the heart of contemporary anxiety about sexual choice, erotic orientation, and the bridging of sexuality and the performance or enactment of gender. The work of the radical sexual feminist, Judith Butler, on strategies for the subversion of gender identity is discussed in this context, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of recent gay and lesbian scholarship on the self as well as critical evaluation of queer theory.


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