Lesson 2.docx

Lesson 2 **The Self from the Sociological Perspective** Identify the **Objectives:** 1. sociological perspectives about self, 2. Demonstrate critical and reflective thinking in showing different aspects of the self, and 3. Examine yourself using Charles Horton Cooley's Looking-Glass Self...

Lesson 2 **The Self from the Sociological Perspective** Identify the **Objectives:** 1. sociological perspectives about self, 2. Demonstrate critical and reflective thinking in showing different aspects of the self, and 3. Examine yourself using Charles Horton Cooley's Looking-Glass Self Theory. In the realm of sociology, the self interacts with the social world. Initially, the self is self-absorbed and is just concerned with its own. No one could live by himself alone, By extension, man will always look for someone to commune with. The human person is a social animal, he or she will always seek others for commercial or personal reasons. These reasons will always be equated with relationships. Relationships and their scientific study will always be correlated with sociology. **George Mead 's Social Self** George Herbert Mead argued that the self is not biological but social. Self is something that is developed through social interaction. The self is developed as one grows and ages. Self is constructed by directly engaging in the world through interaction and through reflections on those interactions. **2 parts of self** 1. Self-awareness 2. Self-image **Role-playing-** is the process in which one takes on the role of another by putting oneself in the position of another person. - Self is not inborn **Three stages of development** 1. Imitation or preparatory stage imitates the behavior of his or her parents. 2. Play stage child playing the roles of others 3. Game stage-The child comes to see himself or herself from the perspective of other people. He is bright, she is brilliant she is creative he is lazy. **"I and Me" Self** - All humans experience internal conversation. - Phases of self a. I- is the phase of the self that is unsocialized and spontaneous. It is the acting part of self, an immediate response to other people. It represents the self as free and unique. It is the subjective part of the self. b. Me is the self that results from the progressive stages of role playing or role taking and the perspective one assumes to view and analyze one's own behavior. The I is the response of the organism to the attitude of others. It allows the individual to still express creativity and individualism and understand when to possibly bend and stretch the rules that govern social interactions. The Me is the organized set of attitudes of others which one assumes. It is the socialized aspects of the individual. It represents learned behavior, attitudes, and expectations of others and society. It is developed through the knowledge of society and social interaction that the individual has experienced. **Generalized Others** It is an organized community or social group which gives the individual his or her unity of self. The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the entire community. **Charles Horton Cooley's Looking -glass Self** The Looking-glass Self is a social psychological concept introduced by Charles Horton Cooley. The self is developed as a result of one's perceptions of other people's opinions. It is made up of feelings about other people\'s judgments of one's behavior. It provides an idea of how the self develops in relation to the perception of others. It should serve only as a guide for reflection and should not be taken to end up living in accordance with other people's expectations. **Private Self, Public Self and Collective Self** Private Self or individual self, is the cognition that involves traits, states and behaviors. It is an assessment of the self by the self. The public Self is the cognition concerning the generalized other's view of the self. It corresponds to an assessment of the self by the generalized other. The collective self is the cognition concerning a view of the self that is found in membership in social group. **Social Identity Theory** It was conceived by Henri Tajfel. Social identity has been defined as the person's sense of who he or she is according to his or her membership in a certain group. Group membership, according to the social identity theory is an important source of pride and self-esteem.It gives a sense of social identity- a sense of belongingness to the social world. Postmodern View of the Self Postmodernism is not a philosophy but more a report on the mindset of Western culture in the latter half of the 20^th^ century. Self is not the creator of meaning nor the starting point of sociological inquiry.Michel Foucault, the self is also seen as a product of modern discourse that is socially and historically conditioned. **4 basic postmodernist ideas about the self.** 1. Multiphrenia which refers to the many different voices speaking about who we are and what we are. 2. Protean a self capable of changing constantly to fit the presented conditions.It is a manifestation that people do not have a true stable self. 3. De-centered, a belief that there is no self at all.The self is constantly being redefined or constantly undergoing change. 4. Self-in-relation, means that humans do not live their lives in isolation but in relation to people and to certain cultural contexts. - There is no"I" the self is shaped by outside forces. The self is socially constructed, what defines a person are the norms, values, languages, arts, and culture of society. **The postmodern social condition is dominated by two realities:** 1. The rise of new media technologies 2. The dominance of consumerism. - Lyon(1997) argued that the predicament of the self in post-modern societies is complicated by the advent of electronically mediated virtual interactions of cyberselves and the spread of information technology. **Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.** Erving Goffman one of the most influential American sociologists of the 20^th^ century introduced this theory the dramaturgical model of social life. For him, social interaction may be compared to a theater and people to actors on a stage where each plays a variety of roles. He posited that people interact with each other they are constantly engaged in impression management- a process in which people regulate and control information in social interaction. This model of social life assumes that personalities are not static because they change to suit the situation. **Front stage**- is the region where actors perform and act in conformity with the expectations of the audience. **Backstage** is the region where actors behave differently. It is a place where actors act their natural selves with no roles to portray and no audience to impress. **Off stage** where actors meet members of the audience independently. **Kenneth Gergen's Saturated or Multiplicitous Self** A saturated self is characterized by a constant connection to mothers, a self that absorbs a multitude of voices and takes in seemingly endless streams of information. Today's technology has become a major outlet for people to create and experiment with multiple selves. Through mediums such as the internet and video games, people are able to construct idealized versions of who they are by selectively representing various aspects of their selves like self-promotion on the internet.