SOCIOLOGY AND THE SELF:

BETWEEN FREEDON AND

CONSTRAINT
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SELF: THE
SOUP-SPILLING KID
• SELF, the modern thinking and acting individual, cannot come to
being without the input and influence of society making a strong
case for the interrelated and inextricable links between the two.

• George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) identified the Self as the

product of the individual’s interaction with others in society that
occurs in the process of socialization.

• So how does society engender a complete and functional Self?

EVOLUTION OF THE SELF FROM BEING, AT FIRST,
FRAGMENTED AND THEN LATER, COMPLETE

• First rudimentary terms that map out the key figures in our social world – the
members of our immediate family, our significant others.

• An important element in how a person gains a rudimentary and yet incomplete

Self is to learn how other people regard him or her.

• It is only through the standpoint of one’s significant others, they add, that a
child first achieves a sense of rudimentary identity.

• It is therefore through the basic social unit of society or the family that a young
person is enabled and equipped to achieve its full potential at the onset.
FORMATION OF A FRAGMENTED
INCOMPLETE SELF
• Maria realizes that not only her sister disapproving of soup-spilling but
that belief is apparently also shared by other members of her immediate
family, her significant others. She also comes to the conclusion that the
other customers in the restaurant including the waiters were also in
disapproval of her act.

• Maria has come to the awareness that “one does not spill soup” in
general.

• Generalized other – simple shift in consciousness that actually elevates

our identity and self-regard to a complex level of awareness that now
includes within our personal vista not just our significant others, included
for our consideration is what Mead refers to as the “generalized other”
• Generalized other is indicated by the term “one” as a non-specific
but mass noun commanding all of us not to spill soup.

• Who therefore is the voice exhorting us to follow his general

commandment against soup-spilling? Isn’t it no one else but the
loud booming voice of Society?

• This allegory of the soup-spilling Maria is actually the sociological

narrative of how individuals achieve complete Selves according to
the re-interpretation of Berger and Luckmann of Mead’s pioneering
ideas.
• We begin to have an idea of who we are as we put ourselves in
the shoes of our loved ones.

• However, we only become completely human once we have

properly inculcated the views and expectations of society-at-
large as voiced by the generalized other in our heads.

• We only become wholly human if we are able to see ourselves

from the vantage point of society’s expectations.
• We only become bonafide members of society with socially
acceptable Selves if we already know the rules and norms of
society which goes beyond just the knowledge that one does
not spill soup.

• It is also paradoxical situation here: we are given skills and the

consciousness, the desire, to be truly free but in the same
breathe also restricted from attaining such full and unmitigated
freedoms in favor societal norms and rules
MODERNITY AND THE SELF: THE LUMAD
ASTRONAUT
• Has the Self always been mired in this paradoxical situation of
being empowered and yet restricted? Has there always been a
modern and self-aware Self across history whose freedoms are
constantly mitigated by society?

• Sociologists share in their analysis is the belief that transformations

in the economy of society have given birth to the modern
individual’s autonomous and independent practices.

• Collective consciousness – the totality of beliefs and sentiments

common to average citizens of the same society
• Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft societies referring to the intrinsic
differences between rural and urban societies.

• We are born into specific social epochs (period, time) whose

characteristics either enable us towards certain desired ends or
severely restrict us from going beyond established limitations.

• We are indeed free, but only within the confines of predetermined

borders.

• Structure – overarching sociological structure where individuals

navigate their limited freedoms
• Collective effervescence – kind of social spirit borne out of
people’s interactions in society. The social nature of life exerts
considerable influence on individuals by empowering them on
the one hand, but also impinging on their choices and limiting
their potentials, on the other.

• Death through one’s own hand may be the most private and
willful act a person can do. The most private act of suicide,
according to Durkheim, is more than the willful choice of
individuals. Rather, it is an indication of a society’s health.
• The existence of social inequality is the strongest case for the
power and influence of structure over individuals.

• Compare two young individuals: one born into a first world

setting with middle class parents, while the other, a Lumad child
from rural Mindanao whose education is periodically interrupted
by evacuations due to the militarization of their communities.

• Which of the two will have greater chances of achieving their

dreams? Who will have more obstacles blocking his or her way?

• The case of the Lumad aspiring to be an astronaut is an example

of how social structures define our life-chances.
• The Sociological Imagination brought attention to the structural
limits of individual life-chances.

• Individuals that occupy the same social position and have the
same socially-determined traits shall have the same life-chances.

• Sociological imagination promotes this quality of mind that looks

into the relationship of “biography, history, and of their
intersections within society”

• Useful in the practice of the sociological imagination was the

differentiation of personal troubles from social issues
• Troubles – have to do with problems that concern only people
and circumstance within one’s immediate milieu (environment,
setting) and whose resolution can also be found within this
limited realm

• Issues – pertain to shared realities with a greater number of

people within a larger social and historical milieu.
THE SELF AS A SOCIALLY
CONSTRUCTED AND IMPRISONED
ONION
• Self remains the basic unit of society upon whom the larger structures of
society rely on to make them functioning and real.

• Goffman likens everyday social reality as the site of a performance akin to

what takes place on a theatrical stage.

• Everyday life can now be dissected according to parts of a theater where

there is a setting, script, and actors.

• We put our best foot forward in our dealings with people in everyday life and
this constant pretentious performance is accessible to others through our
front stage even as we hide and suppress our real selves in the back stage.
• Goffman is often quoted to have said that the Self is an onion,
all layers and no core.

• Constant social pressure to perform and a social audience

where we don layers of masks one after the other.

• Another metaphor is Self as a coat hanger.

• It only achieves true form and function when a coat is placed

on it. Remove all the masks or the coat from the coat hanger,
then it is only emptiness at the core.
Foucault
• Looks at the constitution of the modern Self and society through the
prism of the modern penal system particularly in his work Discipline and
Punish: the Birth of the Prison System.

• It serves more as a symbolic representation of the power of the State

and society, a physical reminder of its power to take away freedoms
when its laws are violated.

• Panopticon – architectural element plays an important surveilling

function. The inmates believe that they are being watched because of
the presence of the tower and its one-way windows even if no guard is
actually inside.
• That feeling of always being watched or that nagging voice
inside our heads that exhort commands and edicts indicate the
presence of the panopticon beyond the prison into the most
mundane and commonplace of locations in modern life, that is
in each of our minds erected there stealthily by society through
the process of socialization.

• Self achieves completion when it has finally internalized

society’s mores and expectations.

• One only becomes wholly human once the panoptic power of

society has been properly imbibed and planted in your mind.
BEYOND THE SELF: PRACTICING FREEDOM AMID
CONSTRAINT
• We complete the process of achieving Selves once we are taught the
rules that govern the social order.

• We are imbued with potential as well as social skills at the start of our
journey but always with the caveat that we follow society’s
established rules.

• Choices that we make in life as practices of freedom, are actually

contextually determined by larger historical forces that evolve
independently from human will.

• We do not choose the circumstance of our birth and the differentiated

struggles we face confronting the social structures.
• The sociological imagination actually encourages us to have a
sensitivity for the impact of these socio-historical forces in our
personal lives, an understanding of how our biographies intersect
with history so that we will not lose our bearings navigating social
life.

• Sociology has been rightly insisting on the dialectical relationship

between Self and Society.

• Only by understanding the circumstances of our “unfreedom” that

we share with others, will we be able to begin the magnificent task
of transforming society for the freedom not just of our individual
Selves but also of one and all.