Sociological perspective of self

1. CHAPTER 2: SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF

2. OBJECTIVES
• At the end of this unit, you will be able to:
1. State the relationship between the self, society, and culture
2. Describe and discuss the different ways by which society and culture
shape the self
3. Interpret how the self can be influenced by the different institutions in
the society; and
4. Examine one's self on the different views of self that were discussed

3. SOCIOLOGY
• Sociology, or the study of how human society is established, its
structure and how it works, the people’s interaction with each other,
and the effects they have on one another is an aspect which we
have to consider with regards to the development of a person.
• It is also important to understand that the establishment of the
“Self” based on social structures could give us a better
understanding of who we are and provide reasons for how our
interactions can affect us as a person.
SOCIOLOGY IS A SOCIAL SCIENCE THAT
FOCUSES ON SOCIETY, HUMAN SOCIAL
BEHAVIOR, PATTERNS OF SOCIAL
RELATIONSHIPS, SOCIAL INTERACTION,
AND ASPECTS OF CULTURE ASSOCIATED
WITH EVERYDAY LIFE.

4. THE SELF AND CULTURE

5. WHAT IS THE SELF?

6. THE SELF
The self, in contemporary literature and even
common sense, is commonly defined by the
following characteristics: “SEPARATE, SELF-
CONTAINED, INDEPENDENT, CONSISTENT,
UNITARY AND PRIVATE.”

7. SEPARATE
it is meant that the self is distinct from other selves
.The self is always unique and has its own
identity.one cannot be another person. Even twins
are distinct from each other

8. SELF-CONTAINED & INDEPENDENT
because in itself it can exist its distinctness allow it
to be self-contained with its own thoughts,
characteristics, and volition. It does not require any
other self for it to exist.

9. CONSISTENT
because it has a personality that is enduring and
therefore can be expected to persist for quite some time
its consistency allows to be studied , described, and
measured, consistency also means that a particular self
traits , characteristics, tendencies, and potentialities are
more or less the same.

10. 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 , emotion, and thoughts converge.

11. PRIVATE
Each person sorts out information, feelings and
emotions, and though processes within the self. This
whole process is never accessible to anyone but the
self.
This last characteristic of the self being private
suggest that the self is isolated from the external
world

12. SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
• that argues for a merged view of the person and their social
context where the boundaries of one cannot easily be
separated from the boundaries of the other.
• that self should not be seen as a static entity that says constant
through and through. Rather, the self has to be seen as
something that is in unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with
external reality and is malleable in itsdealings with society.

13. CULTURE
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief,
and behavior that depends upon the capacity for
symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices
that characterizes an institution, organization, or group
SOCIOLOGY UNDERSTANDS CULTURE AS THE LANGUAGES, CUSTOMS,
BELIEFS, RULES, ARTS, KNOWLEDGE, AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES AND
MEMORIES DEVELOPED BY MEMBERS OF ALL SOCIAL GROUPS THAT
MAKE THEIR SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS MEANINGFUL.

14. ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
•Language
•Norms
•Values
•Beliefs and
ideologies
•Statuses and Roles
•Cultural
Integration

15. MARCEL MAUSS
(MAAR·SEL MAAS)
• Remaining the same person and turning
chameleon by adapting to one's context seems
paradoxical.
• According to Mauss, every self has two faces:
personne and moi.
FRENCH SOCIOLOGIST AND
ANTHROPOLOGIST WHOSE CONTRIBUTIONS
INCLUDE A HIGHLY ORIGINAL COMPARATIVE
STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN FORMS
OF EXCHANGE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE.

16. MOI & PERSONNE
• Moi - refers to a person's sense of who he is, his body, and his basic
identity, his biological governess. Moi is a person's basic identity
personne on the other hand, is composed of the social concepts of
what it means to be who s/he is.
• Personne - has much to do with what it means to live in a particular
institution, a particular family, a particular religion, a particular
nationality and how to behave given expectations and influences
from others.

17. THE SELF AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE SOCIAL WORLD
The unending terrain of metamorphosis of the self is
mediated by language. 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.

18. AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER, SOCIOLOGIST,
PSYCHOLOGIST, AND PRAGMATISTS. HE IS
REGARDED AS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND OF WHAT
HAS COME TO BE REFERRED TO AS THE
CHICAGO SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITION.
• For Mead & Vygotsky the way that the human
persons develop is with the use of language
acquisition and interactions with others - without a
family biologically and sociologically a person may
not even survive or became a human person.
MEAD AND
VYGOTSKY
WAS A SOVIET PSYCHOLOGIST,
KNOWN FOR HIS WORK ON
PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN
CHILDREN.

19. 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.
• However, from the point of view of the social sciences and the self, it is
important to give one the leeway to find, express, and live his identity.
This account illustrates that our gender partly determines how we see
ourselves in the world. Often times society, forces a particular identity
unto us depending on our sex and /or gender .
SEX REFERS TO “THE DIFFERENT BIOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF MALES AND FEMALES, SUCH AS REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS,
CHROMOSOMES, HORMONES, ETC.”
GENDER REFERS TO "THE SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN
AND MEN – SUCH AS NORMS, ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS OF AND BETWEEN
GROUPS OF WOMEN AND MEN.

20. • Both Vygotsky and Mead treat the human mind as something that
is made constituted through language as experienced in the
external world and as encountered in dialogs with other.
• A young child internalized values, norms, practices, and social
beliefs and more through exposure to these dialogs that will
eventually become part of his individual world. VYGOTSKY, for this
part a child internalizes real life dialogs that he has had with others,
with his family, his primary caregiver, or his play mates.

21. GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
George Herbert Mead is an American Sociologist, he
is considered the Father of American pragmatism,
and one of the pioneers in the field of social
psychology because of his contributions to the
development of the person relating to various social
factors.

22. Mead rejected the idea of biological determination of the self
which proposes that an individual already has an established
self from the moment he is born. For him, the notion of a
person with regards to who they are develops from one’s social
interaction with other people. He reiterated that the process of
establishing the self is through the construction and
reconstruction of the idea of who we are as a person during
the process of social experience.

23. THE “I” AND THE “ME”
• The “Me” are the characteristics, behavior, and or actions done by
a person that follows the “generalized others” that person interacts
with, while the “I” is the reaction of the individual to the attitude
of others, as well as the manifestation of the individuality of the
person.
• Simply speaking, According to Mead the concept the “I” is one’s
response to the established attitude, and behavior that a person
assumes about their social interactions while the “Me” is the
attitudes, and behavior of the person about their social
environment.

25. MEAD’S THREE ROLE-PLAYING
STAGES OF SELF DEVELOPMENT
Mead proposed that there are three stages in which
a person has to go through for one to develop one’s
self. These stages are the Preparation/Language
Stage, Play stage, and Game stage.

26. THE PREPARATORY STAGE (BIRTH – 2
YEARS OLD)
According to Mead, during this stage, the infant simply
imitates the actions and behaviors of the people that the
infant interacts with. Because the child is only mimicking
what he or she observes from his or her environment their
actions are only the reflection of what they can remember
without any intention or meaning behind their actions or
behavior.

27. THE PLAY STAGE (2 – 6 YEARS
OLD)
the Play stage, it is the time where children begin to interact with
others with which certain rules apply, these rules often time does not
adhere to any set or standards but rather are rules that are set by the
children themselves. Also, this is the stage where the child practices
real-life situations through pretend play and is the onset of self-
consciousness. The development of the self in this stage occurs
through the preliminary experiences that serve as practice for the
child.

28. THE GAME STAGE (6-9 YEARS
OLD)
The final stage of self-development according to Mead where is
characterized by the ability of the children to recognize the rules of
the game and be able to identify their roles and the roles of the
others that are playing with them. With this, the children at this stage
learn the implications of their actions as well as the understanding or
taking into account how one can take into account the viewpoint of
the society on the attitudes and actions.

29. With the idea of Mead with regards to the establishment of the sense of self,
socialization is a lifetime endeavor, and the people one interacts with will change
throughout a person’s life, as such, considering the social environment one belongs
to along with the changes on the person’s development, may it be at school, home,
or work, the interactions, and experiences the person acquires from those people
and situations help define a more concrete identity and sense of self. That idea of
“Self” may be based on the general attitudes and behaviors of other people or the
individuality of the person that manifests as a response to those attitudes and
behaviors of others.

30. SELF IN FAMILIES
Apart from the anthropological and psychological basis for
the relationship between the self and the social world, the
sociological likewise struggled to understand the real
connection between the two concepts. In doing so,
sociologists focus on the different institutions in powers at
play in the society. Among these the most prominent is the
family. GENDER has to be personally discovered and
asserted and not dictated by culture and the society.