LESSON 2: SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGY:

THE SELF AS A PRODUCT OF MODERN SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Target Outcomes

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. explain the relationship between and among the self, society, and culture
2. describe and discuss the different ways by which society and culture shape the self
3. compare and contrast how the self can be influenced by the different institutions in the society
4. examine one's self against the different views of the self.

Abstraction

This lesson discusses how external factors such as the society and the culture we are in can
affect the way we act, think and respond to our surroundings. This side of us also reflects who we
are as a person and also shows another side of our personality that we must learn to comprehend
to fully understand ourselves.

For the first part of this lesson, we need to understand where we are coming from when it
comes to developing ourselves. There is an idea that tells us about the concept of nature (nativism)
and nurture (empiricism).
WHAT IS CULTURE AND Its EFFECT TO ONE’S SELF?

Culture came from the Latin word cultura or cultus meaning care or cultivation. It can be compared
to caring for an infant. It is said that throughout one’s life we function according to the cultural
context where we are situated.
As an individual interacts with people and makes sense of an individual’s functions in the
context of social and cultural background a person then learns both of his or her identity and
collective identity.
If a particular self is born into a particular society or culture, the self will have to adjust
according to its exposure. It is a salient part that our culture has a tremendous effect in crafting the
self.

WHAT IS IDENTITY?

Identity refers to who the person is. It is also known to be the quality or traits of an
individual that makes him or her different from others. Aside from that, it also refers to how a
person sees and expresses oneself.

CULTURAL IDENTITY VS. NATIONAL IDENTITY

Cultural identity refers to the feeling of belongingness to a certain cultural group. It is an

individual’s perception of the self that is anchored on race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity,
and language. The 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 an individual
is situated.
While national identity is the feeling of belongingness to one state or nation. Rupert
Emrson, a political scientist defines it as a body of people who feel that they are a nation. It is
socially constructed and can be shaped by material and non-material culture. Material culture
represents culture or nationality (ex. national flag) while non-material culture is the shared
understanding of a group such as norms, beliefs, language, traditions.
It also requires the process of self-categorization such as the following:
1. Individual self reflects the cognitions related to traits, states, and behaviors that are stored
in memory.
2. Relational self reflects cognitions that are related to one’s relationships.
3. Collective self reflects cognitions that are related to one’s group.

Studies on the phenomenon of the social construction of the self have become rampant,
and has produced theories that explain in various dimensions how the concept of the "self" is
constructed by the individual, as influenced by his/her social environment
Let us know more about the socio-anthropological perspective of the self from different
philosophers:
PHILOSOPHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE SELF
Mead believed that the self is categorized as the
following:

 I - represents the unique, free and subjective

part of the self (who we are without too much
consideration of external influences)
 ME - represents conventional and objective part
of the self (assumes roles, learned behavior, and
internalized attitudes of others)
 GENERALIZED OTHERS - an organized
George Herbert Mead community or social group which gives an
individual his/her unity of the self (internalized
behaviors, beliefs, or attitudes).
Mead and Vygotsky stated that a human person’s
development is with the use of language acquisition and
interaction with others. They believed that:
 The way we process information is normally a
form of internal dialogue in our heads.
 We treat the human mind as something that is
made, constituted through language as
experienced in the external world and as
encountered in dialogs with others.
 A child may internalize values, norms,
practices, and social beliefs, and more through
Vygotsky exposure to these dialogs that will eventually
become part of his world.
 Charles Horton Cooley’s looking-glass self is a
social psychological concept which explains
that the self is developed as a result of one's
perceptions of other people's opinions.
 People are the way they are at least partly
because of other people's reactions to them and
to what they do.
 Self is built through social interaction (when
people imagine how they must appear to others,
imagine the judgment on that appearance, and
Charles Horton Cooley develop themselves through the judgment of
others.
 The looking glass self is made up of feelings
about other people’s judgments of one’s
behavior.
 The self is built through social interaction which
involves three steps: first, people imagine how
they must appear to others; second, they
 imagine the judgment on that appearance; and
finally, they develop themselves through the
judgment of others.
 Social Identity by Henri Tajfel is defined as the
person’s sense of who he or she is according to
his or her membership in a certain group.
 According to this group, membership is an
important source of pride and self-esteem. It
gives a sense of social identity- social
belongingness to the social world.

Three mental processes:

 Social Categorization- This is similar to how
people categorize things.
 Social Identification- After learning their
category, people adopt the identity of the group
in which they have categorized themselves.
Henri Tajfel  Social Comparison- This is where they tend to
compare that group with other groups.

 In the postmodernist view, the self is not the

creator of meaning nor the center or starting
point of sociological inquiry. For Michael
Foucault, the self is also seen as a product of
modern discourse that is socially and
historically conditioned.
 The self is shaped by outside forces. In
traditional society, a person’s status is
determined by his or her role; in modern society
by his or her achievement and by postmodern
society by fashion and style.

Michael Foucault
 Erving Goffman’s presentation of everyday life
is also known as 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.
 As people interact with one another they are
constantly engaged in impression management-
a process in which people regulate and control
information in social interaction.

Erving Goffman
  This model of social life assumes that
personalities are not static because they change
to suit the situation.
 The self is a product of the dramatic interaction
between actor and audience. The self is made up
of the various parts that people play, and a key
goal of social actors is to present their various
selves in ways that create and sustain particular
impressions to the different audiences.
Kenneth Gergen’s saturated or multiplicitous self-
tackles the following:
 The saturated self is a constant connection to
others, a self that absorbs a multitude of voices.
 People establish multiple selves through the
absorption of the multiple voices of people in
their lives, either in real life or through the
media.
 Through mediums such as the internet and video
games, people can construct idealized versions
of who they are by selectively representing
various aspects of their selves like self-
Kenneth Gergen promotion.

According to Marcel Mauss (French Anthropologist)

that every self has two faces:
 Moi - a person's sense of who he/she is, the
body, and basic identity or biological
composition.
 Personne - composed of the social concepts of
what it means to be who he is, what it means to
live in a particular family, institution, religion,
or nationality, and how to behave in the given
expectations and influences of others.

Marcel Mauss

SELF AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL WORLD

Aside from the givenness (personality, tendencies, and propensities among others), one is
believed to be inactive participation in the shaping of the self. Most often, we think that human
persons are just passive actors in the process of shaping selves, however, men and women engage
actively in the shaping of the self. The unending terrain of changes of the self is mediated by
language.
 Language as both a publicly shared and privately utilized system, a site where the
individual and the social make and remake each other has been a huge aspect in molding one’s
self.

SELF IN THE FAMILY

Human person learns ways of living and therefore their selfhood is developed by being in
the family. It is what a family initiates a person to become that serves as the basis for this person's
progress.
Most people tend to internalize and adopt the ways and styles they observe from their
families. Internalizing behavior may be conscious or unconscious. Some behaviors and attitudes
may be indirectly taught through rewards and punishment. Aside from that, emotions can be
learned through subtle means like the tone of voice or intonation of the models. Without a family,
biological and sociologically, a person may not even survive or become a human person.

Basic aspects that can be taught in the family are the following:
 language
 ways of behaving
 attitudes
 confronting emotions
 basic manners of conduct