Lesson 2:

The Self from

Anthropological
Perspective
Maria Naina D. Gillamac, RPm
Instructor
GEC – Understanding the Self
1
Being a Filipino

• Filipino – belonging or relating to

the Philippines or to its people and
culture
• In the context of citizenship,
Filipino simply means membership
in a nation-state.
• In the constitution, a citizen is
someone who legally resides in a
country
But Anthropologically,
it is different…

3
Culture Identity &
National Identity
✓ Culture is derived from the Latin
word cultus meaning care or
cultivation.
✓ It is analogous to caring for an
infant.

4
Cultural Identity &
National Identity
✓ Identity refers to “who the person
is” or the qualities and traits of an
individual that make him or her
different from others.

5
Cultural Identity &
National Identity
✓ Cultural Identity – refers to the
identity or feeling of
belongingness to a certain culture
group.
✓ It is an individual’s perception
about himself or herself anchored
on race, gender, nationality,
religion, ethnicity and language.

6
Cultural Identity Theory
✓ Explains why a person acts and behaves the way he or
she does

✓ It makes sense of how an individual is influenced by

the cultural contexts he or she is situated in.

7
Cultural Identity Theory
✓ A nation is a group of people built on the premise of
shared customs, traditions, religion, language, art,
history, and more.

8
Cultural Identity Theory
✓ Material Culture – ✓ Non-material Culture –
refer to the national embodies the shared
flag, emblem or seal understanding of a
and those group of people which
representing all the includes norms,
people who are part beliefs, and traditions.
of a nation.
9
Cultural Identity Theory
✓ National Identity requires the process of self-
categorization.

✓ In self-categorization, one must identify himself or

herself with an in-group (identifying with one’s nation)
and differentiate himself or herself from the out-groups
(other nations).
10
Brian Morris’
Anthropology of the Self
✓ He reiterated that the self is not
an entity but a process that
orchestrates an individual’s
personal experiences.
✓ As a result of this process, a
person becomes self-aware and
self-reflective about his or her
place in the surrounding world.

11
Brian Morris’
Anthropology of the Self
✓ Morris stated that the most crucial
form of interaction and exchange
takes place neither between the
individual and society nor
between the psyche and culture
but instead between the self and
his or her cultural environment as
mediated by social practices.

12
Brian Morris’ Anthropology of
the Self
✓ In view of the dialectical relationship between the self and the
cultural milieu, which is assumed to be different depending on the
dynamics of a society, a dichotomy between Western and Non-
western notions of self has long been embedded in Western
philosophical and psychological traditions of thinking.

✓ Cultural conception – a category of a particular community. This idea

about the self was long conceived by Marcel Mauss (1938 as cited in
Van Meijl, 2008).
13
The Dialogical Self
The dialogical self theory was introduced in
1992 by Hubert Hermans. It regarded “self” as
the “society of Mind”.
He posited the idea that the self is considered
as extended to significant others in the
environment that populate the self as a
dynamic multiplicity of I-positions in which
dialogical or monological relationships may
emerge.

14
The Dialogical Self
In this theory, an individual’s sense of self is
established through how one’s identifies
himself or herself with the different positions he
or she holds, internally or externally, to himself
or others.

An internal I-position refers to how one

functions in himself or herself while an external
I-position refers to how one identifies himself
or herself based on particular external factors.

15
The Dialogical Self
The dialogical self is a relational concept
of self. In Herman’s view, the autonomy of
self is not constituted in an internal
intraindividual negotiation made by one I-
position with respect to another, but it is
intensely interwoven with external
dialogical relationship with actual others.

16
Individual Self, Relational
Self, Collective Self
✓ The individual self reflects the
cognitions related to traits, states and
behaviors that are stored in memory.

✓ The relational self reflects cognitions

that are related to one’s relationships.

✓ The collective self reflects cognitions

that are related to one’s group.

17
Identity Struggles
An individual can be unsympathetic
because of particular individual
issues but people, sometimes, fail
to consider any justification for why
one can be unsympathetic and this
is called identity struggle.

18
Identity Struggles
✓ This is a term introduced by
Anthony Wallace and Raymond
Fogelson
✓ The discrepancy between the
identity a person claims to
possess and the identity
attributed to the person by
others. 19