Michel Foucault (he talked about the idea of Panopticon; you’ll
feel that you’re always under surveillance)
Described the modern society
1. A constellation of social institutions that include
schools, prisons, clinic
2. The dominant disciplinary power in modern society:
“The Gaze” Has produced docile and disciplined
bodies
3. Creation of a Medicalized Society
- Makes the body an object
- Product of advanced sciencentific knowledge
- Result in advances in molecular biology,
biotechnology and medical science: Improved our
ability to prevent, manage or cure a increasing
number of ailments
 The Medical Gaze
1. The dehumanizing medical separation of the
patient’s body from the patient’s person
2. Intensive scrutiny and surveillance of human
bodies by the medical establishment is
pervasive
3. The development of biomarkers in medical
science is defining our experiences
Biomarkers – perceived as predictors of illness
Affect patient’s feelings of anxiety and
vulnerability
4. People tend to view themselves
(specifically, their bodily parts and organs)
primarily through the lens of dominant social
thinking about health and wellness/ about
normality and abnormality
We become concerned about our BMI or
fluctuations in our weight
5. Biopolitics: Human life is managed under
regimes of authority over knowledge
Biopower: technology of power for managing
humans in large groups allows for the control
of entire populations
SANDRA LEE BARTKY
“Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization
of Patriarchal Power”
1. What is the Bartky’s main criticism of Faucaoult’s
conceptualization of disciplinary power in modern
society?
2. How does patriarchal power constitute the feminine
body in modern society?
3. How is this article useful or not useful in explaining the
relationship between your body and your sense of
self?
 Social construction – femininity
II. Psychological Construction of the Self
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
 Coined by Herbert Blumer
 He studied interaction
 Interaction: the process whereby human beings
communicate and thereby create new ideas about
the way society functions; The process by which
people influence one another .
Turner (1981)
Individuals define the situation before
responding to each other
Defining Social Situations
Individuals first define and interpret the
situation (attach meaning) before they act.
Storer (1980)
Social reality lies in the perception of its participants.
Understand society by studying how people
assign meanings to their own and other’s behavior and
develop shared images of society that enable them to
interact effectively
Stress that there is no world ‘out there’ that is
objectifiable. The social world is a human construction
which is continually changing and adapting as different
human beings contribute to that construction.
 we have a construction of reality that is actually shared
 through our constant interaction we are able to
construct and reconstruct our perceptions
SYMBOLS
Our thoughts and feelings must be encoded first into
symbols before they are interpreted by other
Things used to stand for and indicate another thing
Verbal symbols: language (words)
Non-verbal symbols: gestures, facial expressions,
sound, color, design
The meaning of symbols is relative:
Symbols within a group mean the same, different from
group to group.
Example: gestures of greeting
 we exchange symbols
the perspective stresses the investigation of small-scale
interaction between different social factors.
A. The Social Self
Charles Horton Cooley (1902)
“The Social Self”
The self-emerge from our continuous engagement in social
interaction
“The Looking Glass Self”
Involves three steps:
1. The imagination of our appearances to other people
and associated feelings
2. Imaging that others are evaluating our behavior
3. We develop feelings and react to the imaginary
evaluations of ourselves as objects
George Herbert Mean (1863 – 1931)
The self-arises in social experience
Our personality is derived from the social groupings in
which we live.
Even our unique qualities emerge only within a social
community.
Expounded on the social self
I: our perception of our self as a doer of action
Where agency emanates: the active or creative self
Dominates at birth: concerned with our need and the
power
Me: developed as we constantly engaged in social
interaction. Our perception of our self as an object and receiver
of action and feedback from others and even from our “I”
ASSUMPTIONS:
1. The self develops only through social interaction
2. Social interaction involves the exchange of symbols
3. Understanding symbols involves being able to take
the role of another.
The Emergence of the Self in Interaction
Children observe and imitate others to learn about
actors and roles
 Through playing; where we understand our roles
a. One becomes conscious of a complex of roles and
behavior, rules, goals, and strategies
b. One’s action in a game is an intentional act in
anticipation of responses and in coordination with
others
By Mead “GENERALIZED OTHER”
As children collect experiences from continuous social
interaction, they are able to gather the combined attitude and
perspectives of people within the whole social group into a
“generalized other”
Functions of “Generalized Other”
1. Become able to function effectively even with strangers
in a variety of situations
2. Becomes an important source of internalized social
control
Example: on moral issues, the child may be guided by
taking on the perspective of the “generalized other”
 Generalized other is a source of social control; from
social experiences of a person.
Conclusion:
1. Organizing the attitudes of the child’s social group into
a generalized other mark the mature development of
the self.
2. The “me” continues to be modifies through dialogues
with others and through our membership of new social
groups during the course of our lives
3. People revise their symbolic representations of the
world and ideas about themselves through interaction
 Different way looking things because of constant
interaction
B. Reflexivity and Agency
By Mead REFLEXIVITY
Ability to see one’s self as an object
A uniquely human capability which enables human
beings to create and achieve a sense of self.
A form of cognition or thinking
A social process that involves the interpretation of
symbols and meanings and the expectation of possible
responses
Reflective Intelligence
Experience Thinking
(thinking Action
Practice people)
 We are thinking people and that is what differentiates
us from lower forms
 We act out of our thoughts
By Mead AGENCY
The self is a problem-solving actor: human beings have
agency
Agency: the capability to cause necessary and desired
changes
III. The Situated Self: Selfhood, Time and Space
Situated Self: The self in relation to place and time
Selfhood involves the understanding of you
situatedness or the context of your personhood
Richard Rorty (1989)
Selfhood is a contingency. It is an outcome of specific
configurations of the environment you happen to be
born into or accidentally inhabit
 Influencing selfhood; dependent on time and
place
 A. Sense of Place
The more time you send in a certain place, the more
memories you can collect.
The place becomes memorable as you assign meanings
and symbols to the place.
 The meaning of the place to you
 The length of tie you spend there doesn’t matter
 It will remind you of the events that maybe favorable
and unfavorable to you
 You have specific interpretation of that place
Selfhood is a map of your geographical location.
Selfhood includes thoughts and feelings in a place.
 You’re talking about your feelings about the place
Mahood (2017)
You inhabit a place and that place becomes a part of
how you identify yourself.
The place evokes emotions and compels actions from
you.
 A place is not only a social space or something
abstract.
 A place is a physical space that you inhabit with
others.
 Place is essential to the process of selfhood as it
becomes a marker of identity.
 A piece of land, a rock, a forest – becomes significant
to stabilizing your own understanding of how you are
similar or different from others.
 Marker of your identity
About time
 Your experience and interpretation of ‘time’ provides
context from selfhood.
 Time and place are intertwined in the process of
selfhood: Selfhood is marked by historical or epochal
conditions and shifts.
 Be reflexive and practice reflexivity.
B. Collective Memory
Time as a material for selfhood is not limited to an
immediate situation or a present context. Critical features of
selfhood vary over the life course. Selfhood encompasses
changing cultural and social context. Changes in social settings
alter social experiences.
 Cultural events, social events that can only happen
once in a while
 Doesn’t happen on a daily basis, but very significant
Olick (1999)
Active remembrance o the past throughout social
groups. Allows the continuity of the past into the present.
Collective memory is stored, retrieved and communally
shared through various means and traditions, rituals,
commemorations, stories, and narratives.
 COMFORT WOMEN
Collective memory becomes part of your own biography as you
mark your own milestones based on the markers of this
collective memory.
In imbibing this collective memory,
1. You are able to identify with people and events from
great distances in time and space.
2. Build an emotional attachment to these people and
events.
3. Enables you to think of yourself as belonging to an
imagined community.
Benedict Anderson (1991)
Defined a nation as an imagined community
Human beings are reflexive and have agency.
Human beings are capable of resisting and changing the
course of social control.
But the exercise of reflexivity and agency is specified by
the contingency of
COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM AND THE SELF
Reflexivity and agency may be colonized by historically
specific
 Colonialism may be an important factor that can
influence, it might actually allow you to be reflexive and
exercise agency; Specific force of domination, source of
control.
COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM
1. Epochs that have had historically specific impact on the
lives of many people across
Most enduring impact of colonialism and most
brutal form of white colonial power: erasure of the
identity of the colonized.
FRATZ FANON (1952)
The most visible form of colonial power: brutal
coercion of the colonized into passive submission.
 Inferiority Complex developed; forced to adopt the
colonial mind
THE COLONIZED

1. Forced to forget and reject as backward,

inferior, or wrong their cosmology, their
language, their traditions, etc.
2. Forced to adopt the identity of the colonizers

 developed deep rooted inferiority complex

Still, the colonized is rejected and made aware of

this rejection by the colonizer as being one of them
(if you’re not yet one of them)

Black Skin, White Mask

FRATZ FANON

Applies a historical critique on the complex ways in

which identity particularly Blackness, is constructed and
produced.
This result in a deep-seated inferiority complex
among colonized.

 Inferiority Complex as a result of colonialism

2. Colonialism continues to filter actions

EDWARD SAIN (1993)

Extended the analysis in the period of
decolonization
Argued that imperialism in intertwined with
culture
Through literature (specifically the novel): the
imperial west has created a racist image of the oriental.

 ORIENTALISM – he talked about the colonizers who

think of themselves as us

Non-western peoples are seen by westerners as exotic,

mystical, barbaric and violent.