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 surrounding. 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
in order 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 our self. There is an idea that tells us about the concept of nature (nativism)
and nurture (empiricism).
 According to Fucci (2014) that nativism and empiricism are two
different approaches to our development. Nativism emphasize on
being born with certain innate traits. While empiricism, states that all
knowledge is derived from experience.
(Retrieved last July 15, 2019 from: shorturl.at/luGM7)

NOTE:

“We may be gifted with intellect and the capacity to rationalize things
but at the end of the day, our growth and development are products of
our interaction with external reality”.

The self is CHANGING and DYNAMIC,

allowing external influences to take part in it's
shaping.
 WHAT IS CULTURE AND IT’S EFFECT TO ONE’S SELF?

Culture came from a latin word cultura or cultus meaning care or cultivation. It can be
compared as 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 make sense of individual’s functions in the
context of social and cultural background a person then learns both of his or her personal 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 of
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 on how a
person sees and expresses oneself.

CULTURAL IDENTITY VS. NATIONAL IDENTITY

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

individual’s perception about 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 in.

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 social construction of the self has 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 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)
George Herbert Mead • GENERALIZED OTHERS - an
organized community or social group
which gives an individual his/her unity
of the self (internalized behaviors,
beliefs, or attitudes).
Mead and Vygotsky stated that 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 head.
• We treat the human mind as something
that is made, constituted through
language as experienced in external
world and as encountered in dialogs
Vygotsky with others.
• A child may internalize values, norms,
practices and social beliefs and more
through exposure of these dialogs that
will eventually become part of his
individual 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 opinion.
• 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
Charles Horton Cooley (when people imagine how they must
appear to others, imagine the judgment
on that appearance, and develop
themselves through the judgment of
others.
• The looking glass self is made up of
feelings about other people’s
judgements 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 judgement 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 to 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 how people categorize things.
• Social Identification- After learning
Henri Tajfel their category, people adopt the
identity of the group which they have
categorized themselves.
• Social Comparison- This is where
they tend to compare that group with
other groups.
 • In the postmodernist view, 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 Faucault
• Erving Goffman’s presentation of
everyday life is also known as
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
Erving Goffman information in social interaction.
• 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 about the following:
• Saturated self is a constant connection
to others, a self that absorbs a
multitude of voices.
• People establish multiple selves
through absorption of the multiple
voices of people in their lives, either in
real life or through the media.
• Through mediums such as internet and
video games, people are able to
construct idealized versions of who
Kenneth Gergen they are by selectively representing
various aspects of their selves like self-
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 paticular
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 in active participation in the shaping of the self. Most often, we think that human
persons are just passive actors in the process of shaping of 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.

Mostly people tend to internalize and adapt ways and styles they observe from their family.
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:
ü language
ü ways of behaving
ü attitudes
ü confronting emotions
ü basic manners of conduct

ü Supplementary Materials

Reference/s:

Alata, E., Caslib, B., Serafica, J., & Pawilen, R. (2018). Understanding the self. (First
Edition). Rex Bookstore Inc.

Corpuz, R., Estoque, R., & Tabotabo, C. (2019). Understanding the self. C & E Pubishing
Inc.