Module 2

The Sociological Perspective of Self

Module Duration:

Week 5-6

GE 005
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
 SAN MATEO MUNICIPAL COLLEGE
General Luna St., Guitnang Bayan I, San Mateo, Rizal
Tel. No. (02) 997-9070
www.smmc.edu.ph

MODULE 2: Sociological Perspective of the Self

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After this module the students are expected to:

• Articulate the various philosophical views about the self.
• Examine one’s thoughts and experiences according to the philosophical views of the self.
• Propose an answer to the questions “Who Am I?”
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INPUT INFORMATION

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE SELF

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD

 Sociologist from University of Chicago
 Symbolic Interactions Perspective

THEORY OF SELF
o Two parts of Self: Self-awareness and Self-image
o Our bodies age biologically, but the self is something that emerges
through social interaction
o Self is developed as we age, as we grow
o Self develops through interacting with others, through reflecting on
that interaction, to thinking about how others are perceiving you,
and that helps you generate an image of yourself
o Our self is mirrored in the reaction of the other
o Self-image was developed in recognizing how others are
perceiving us, we are constantly trying to put ourselves in the
shoes of another and think about how they are seeing this event or
situation or this action transpiring – this is imitation
o When you have internalized the widespread cultural norms, mores,
and expectations of behaviors – this is generalized others
o By taking the role of other, we can become self-aware

THE “I” and “ME” of the SELF

 “I” – what is out there, acting, being spontaneous, doing things in the world
 ”me” – an object, the aggregate combined image of yourself that has been given to you from interacting with
society
By stages, Mead states that self develops through social interaction.
1. Preparatory Stage: Children in this stage are only capable of imitating actions of others (i.e. People are
particularly in contact with such as their family members). They have no ability to imagine yet how others see
things.
2. Play Stage: At this stage, children begin to try to take on the role of other person by acting out grown up
behaviors, dressing like adults, etc.
3. Game Stage: While children learn about several roles of others, they understand how these roles
interact with each other in this stage. They learn to understand complex interactions involving different
people with variety of purpose. In a restaurant for instance, a child understands different responsibilities of
people who work together for a smooth sailing experience. He/she understands that someone from the
restaurant takes orders, others wash dishes, cook the food, etc.).
 4. Generalized other: In this stage, children develop, understand and learn the idea of the common behavioral
expectations of the general society. They are able to imagine how they are viewed by one or many. Mead
pointed out that “self” in this stage is being developed.

A. The Looking Glass Self by Charles Cooley

Charles Cooley pioneered one of the most prominent Sociological

perspectives of the self. He asserted that individuals develop their concept
of self by looking at how others perceive them, hence, coined his theory as
“The Looking Glass Self”.
Using the view of others, Cooley denotes that understanding
of self is socially constructed. Through social interaction, one’s sense
of self is mirrored from the judgments they receive from others to
measure their own worth, values, and behavior. This process involves the
following steps:
1. An individual in a social situation imagines how they appear to others.
2. That individual imagines others’ judgment of that appearance.
3. The individual develops feelings (of pride or shame) and responds to
those perceived judgments.

Seemingly, the theory of Charles Cooley is appealing if not complicated by some context of interaction and nature of
people involved in the process. Feedback for one plays an important role in the process. However, not all feedback are
taken or carried out in the same weight. Thus, not all judgments or view of other people to one’s self may affect how
he/she measure his/her worth, values and behavior. For instance, some take responses from those whom they trust
more seriously than those of strangers. Misinterpretations of signals may also occur from the point of view of the person
examining him/herself. One’s value system can be also taken into consideration when thinking through any changes to
their behavior or views of self. Ultimately, people constantly seek to create consistency between their internal and
external worlds and, therefore, continue to perceive, adjust, and strive for equilibrium throughout their lives (Self and
Socialization, nd).

HENRI de SAINT-SIMON (1760-1825)

 Historic founder of French Socialism

 Origin of many ideas elaborated into Comtism
 His idea of the reconstruction of society were conditioned by the French
Revolution and by feudal and military system
 He insisted on the necessity of new and positive reorganization of society
 Industrial chiefs should control society
 In medieval church, spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of
science
 Industrial state directed by modern science, in which universal
association should suppress war
 Men who are successfully able to organize society for productive labor
are entitled to govern it
 The social aim was to produce things useful to life
 Call for “society of science” – influenced his disciple Auguste Comte

HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)

Synthetic Philosophy - Encompasses realms of physical, psychological,
biological, sociological, and ethical

Moral Philosophy
 Social Statistics
o Human happiness can be achieved only when individuals can
satisfy their needs and desires without infringing on the right of
others to do the same
o In obtaining full satisfaction, one must derive pleasure from seeing
pleasure in others
 Principles of Ethics – basic law of ethics and morality
 o Extension of laws in the natural world, and much of his scientific
justification for his moral position
o Moral dictum: Once physical and biological realms are discovered, humans should obey them and
cease trying to construct, through political legislation, social forms that violate these laws
o Scientific position: The laws of social organization can no more be violated than can those of the
physical universe, and to seek to do so will create, in the long run, more severe problems
o Humans should be as free from external regulation as possible – “implicitly obey them!”
 Social Statistics
o Moral laws and laws of laissez-faire capitalism converge and how they reflect biological laws of unfettered
competition and struggle among species
o In the union of many men into one community – the law of individuation
o While decrying war as destructive, it allows more organized “races” to conquer the ”less organized and
inferior races,” increasing thereby, the level and complexity of social organization

DAVID EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917)

 French sociologist, cited as the principal architect of
modern social sciences
 Established academic discipline with Marx and Weber
 How societies could maintain their integrity and
coherence in modernity, an era in which a traditional
social and religious tie are no longer assumed, and
in which new social institutions have come into being
 Acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science

Sociology of Knowledge
 How concepts and categories of logical thought
could arise out of social life
 Certain aspects of logical thought common to
all human did exist, but they were products of
collective life and that they were not universal a
priori since the content of categories differed from
society to society
Collective representations
 The symbols and images that come to represent the ideas, beliefs, and values elaborated by a
collectivity and are not reducible to individual constituents
 Created through intense social interaction and are products of collective activity
 Controlled by society (as a whole) yet simultaneously by virtue of that individual’s participation
within the society
 A language product of collective action, language contains within it a history accumulated
knowledge and experience that no individual would be capable of creating on their own
 Language – a social product that structures and shapes our experience of reality

ALBERT BANDURA (1925) Social Learning Theory

 Theory that attempts to explain socialization and its effect on the development of
the self
 It looks at the individual learning process, the formation of self, and influence of
society in socializing individual
 Formation of one’s identity is a learned response to social stimuli
 An individual’s identity is not the product of the unconscious, but instead is the
result of modeling oneself in response to the expectations of others
 Behaviors and attitudes develop in response to reinforcement and
encouragement from people around us

Self-Efficacy
 People’s belief about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over
events that affect their lives
 This belief determines how people feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave
 People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than
as threats to be avoided
 They set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them despite series of failures
 They attribute failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills which are acquirable
o Not on their personal deficiencies, on the obstacles they will encounter, and all kinds of adverse
outcomes
 They approach threatening situations with assurance that they can exercise control over them
Four Main Sources of Self-Efficacy
1. Mastery Experience
 Successes build a robust belief in one’s personal efficacy
 A resilient sense of efficacy requires experience in overcoming obstacles through perseverant effort
2. Vicarious Experience
 Provided by social models
 Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too, possess
the capabilities to master comparable activities required to succeed
 People seek proficient models who possess the competencies to which they aspire
3. Social Persuasion
 People who are persuaded verbally that they possess the capabilities to master given activities are likely to
mobilize greater effort and sustain it than if they harbor self-doubts and dwell on personal deficiencies when
problem arises
 People who have persuaded that they lack capabilities tend to avoid challenging activities that
cultivate potentials and give up in the face of difficulty
4. Psychological Responses
 People rely partly on their somatic and emotional states in judging their capabilities
 They interpret their stress reactions and tensions as signs of vulnerability to poor performance

KARL MARX (1818 – 1881)

Theory of Self-Estrangement or Self-Alienation
 “the alienation of man’s essence, man’s loss of objectivity and his
loss of realness as self-discovery, manifestation of his nature,
objectification and realization”
 When a person feels alienated from others and society as a
whole
 A person may feel alienated by his work by not feeling like he
has meaning to his work, therefore losing their sense of self at
the workplace

MAX WEBER (1864 – 1920)

 German sociologist and political economist
 Capitalism developed out of a Protestant ethic, a religious calling
 “iron cage” – as the religion became peripheral, capitalism decoupled from
its roots and established itself as the dominant force in society
Exercise Self-Help Imagination
✓ “Personality” makes little sense in its modern usage
✓ “an inner devotion to the subject and only to the subject”
✓ which raises one “to the height and dignity of the subject”
✓ You gain personality within a field only by stepping out of your own self
✓ Teach the subject, not your interpretation of the subject
✓ Make your students interested in the subject itself, rather than in the person
teaching it

LEWIS MORGAN
 The Leasguge of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (1851)
 This presented the complexity of Iroquois society in a path-breaking ethnography
that was a model for future anthropologists
 He wanted to provide evidence for monogenesis, the theory that all human
beings descended from a common source
 The structure of the family and social institutions develops and change
according to a specific sequence
Theory of Social Evolution
 Kinship relations as a basic part of society
 Critical link between social progress and technological progress
 Interplay between the evolution of technology, of family relations, of property relations, of the larger social
structure, and systems of governance, and intellectual development
ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is a relative newcomer to the debate on selfhood. It emerged as a subject from the imperial
ambitions of European states during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was initially an effort to identify the
weaknesses and failings of other cultures so that they could be exploited and subjugated. It was only in the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries that anthropology threw off its intimate links with the national and
religious organizations it had been serving, and began to ask the big question that has informed its research ever since: ‘
What does it mean to be human?
Anthropology does express a unique view on the issue of selfhood: the anthropological approach both starts and
finishes with the group. The self needs to be seen as a socially defined phenomenon, created by both the impression of
the group upon the individual and the expression of the individual upon the group. Humans have a unique relationship
with other members of their species, both communicatively and socially. Our capacity for group living and group
institutions exceeds that of every other animal on the planet. Anthropology therefore has an important voice in the
discussion of selfhood.

MARCEL MAUSS
- Remaining the same person and turning chameleon by adapting to
one’s context seems paradoxical. However, French anthropologist Marcel Mauss
has an explanation for this phenomenon.
According to Mauss, every self has two faces: personne and moi. Moi refers
to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and his basic identity, his biological
givenness. 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 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.
He studied non-Western societies all over the world and proposed the
“Total Social Phenomenon”, which tackles that every sector in a community or
society should cooperate to have a well-balanced living.

LANGUAGE
Has something to do with culture. It is a salient part of culture and ultimately, has a tremendous effect in our
crafting of the self. This might also be one of the reasons why cultural divide spells out differences in how one regards
oneself. If a self is born into a particular society or culture, the self will have to adjust according to its exposure.
Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a specific group of people.
When you interact with another language, it means that you are also interacting with the culture that speaks the language.
You cannot understand one’s culture without accessing its language directly. When you learn a new language, it not only
involves learning its alphabet, the word arrangement and the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific
society’s customs and behavior. When learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the language
belongs be referenced, because language is very much ingrained in the culture.

CLIFFORD GEERTZ
An American cultural anthropologist who defined culture as “a system of
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards
life.
Basic premises of his work, "The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the
Concept of Man," The Interpretation of Cultures. (1966), include the following:
 Look for what makes people/cultures different, not the same; it is more
effective to analyze human nature by noting the differences between
cultures that arise over time and space than to try to form vague notions of
universals
 Culture reveals the link between what man is capable of and how he
actually behaves, which in turn helps define human nature.
 Culture is the "accumulated totality" of symbolic patterns that appear in
different societies
SELF IN FAMILIES
Apart from 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 and powers at play in
the society. Among these, the most prominent is the family.
While every child is born with certain givenness,
disposition coming from his/her parents’ genes and general condition of
life, the impact of one’s family is still deemed as a given in understanding the
self. 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 affects as we go through life. As a matter of evolutionary fact,
human persons are one of those beings whose importance of family cannot
be denied.
Human beings are born virtually helpless and the dependency period of a human baby to its parents for nurturing
is relatively longer than most other animals. Learning therefore j critical in our capacity to actualize our potential of
becoming humans. In trying to achieve the goal of becoming a fully realized human, a child enters a System of
relationships, most important of which is the family. Human persons learn the ways of living and therefore their selfhood
by being in a family. It is what a family initiates a person to become that serves as the basis for this person’s progress.
Babies internalize ways and styles that they observe from their family. By imitating, for example, the language of its
primary agents of rearing its family, babies learn the language. The same is true for ways of behaving. Notice how
kids reared in a respectful environment becomes respectful as well and the converse if raised in a converse
family. Internalizing behavior may either be conscious or Unconscious. Table manners or ways of speaking to elders are
things that are possible to teach and therefore, are consciously learned by kids. Some behaviors and
attitudes, on the other hand, may be indirectly taught through rewards and punishments. Others, such as sexual behavior
or how to confront emotions, are learned through subtle means, like the tone of the voice or intonation of the models. It is
then clear at this point that those who develop and eventually grow to become adult who still did not learn simple matters
like basic manners of conduct failed in internalizing due to parental or familial failure to initiate them into the world.
Without a family, biologically and sociologically, a person may not even survive or become a human
person. Go back to the Tarzan example. In more ways than one, the survival of Tarzan in the midst of the forest is already
a miracle. His being a fully human person with a sense of selfhood is a different story though. The usual teleserye plot of
kids getting swapped in the hospital and getting reared by a different family gives an obvious manifestation of the point
being made in this section. One is who he is because of his family for the most part

GENDER AND THE SELF

Another important aspect of the self is
gender. 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. Many conservatives may frown
upon this and O the biological. However, from the
point of-view of the social sciences and the Self,
it is important to give one the leeway to express,
and live his identity. This forms part of selfhood
that one cannot just dismiss. One maneuvers into
the society and identifies himself as who he is by
taking note of gender identities. A wonderful
anecdote about Leo Tolstoy’s wife that can
solidify this point is narrated below:
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.” A few years later she wrote, “It makes me laugh to read over this diary. It’s so full of
contradictions and one would think that I was such an unhappy woman. Yet is there a happier woman than I?”
(Tolstoy1975)
 This account illustrates that our gender partly determines how we see ourselves in the world. Oftentimes,
society forces a particular identity unto us depending on our sex and/or gender. In the Philippines, husbands for the
most part are expected to provide for the family. The eldest man in a family is expected to head the family and hold it in.
Slight modifications have been on the way due to feminism and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism
but for the most part, patriarchy has remained to be at work. Nancy Chodorow, a feminist, argues that because mothers
take the role of taking care of children, there is a tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the
same kind of mentality of women as care providers in the family. The way that little girls are given dolls instead of guns
or any other toys or are encouraged to play with makeshift kitchen also reinforces the notion of what roles they should
take and the selves they should develop. In boarding schools for girls, Young women are encouraged to act like fine
ladies, are trained to behave in a fashion that befits their status as women in society. Men on the other hand, in the
periphery of their own family, are taught early on how to behave like a man. This normally includes holding in one’s
emotion, being tough, fatalistic, not to worry about danger, and admiration for hard physical labor. Masculinity
is learned by integrating a young boy in a society. In the Philippines, young boys had to undergo circumcision, not just
for the original, clinical purpose of hygiene but also to assert their manliness in the society. Circumcision plays another
social role by initiating young boys into manhood. The gendered self is the shaped within a particular context of time and
space. The sense of self that is being taught make sure that an individual fits in a particular environment. This is
dangerous and detrimental in the goal of truly finding one's self, self-determination, and growth of the self. Gender has to
be personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by culture and society.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Activity: DEBATE
Totoo ba? Is the Philippines really a collectivist society? Give examples and if true, how does this shape/ impact
our idea of Self?

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LEARNING RESOURCES

 Eden Joy Pastor Alata, Bernardo Nocolas Calib, Jr., Janice Patria Javier Serafica, R.A. Pawilwn (2018)
Sociological Perspective Of The Self UNDERSTANDING THE SELF. Rex book store. Page 12-23
 https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/polytechnic-university-of-the-philippines/human-resources-management/
im-uts-heres-the-instructional-material-for-understanding-the-self/19669029