Culture and the Individual

1. Culture and the Individual Culture, Anthropology and Psychology

2. The Self Historical Background Augustine • Single UNIFIED narrative of a life • Inner fragmentation and spiritual reconstruction of self • View of humans as pilgrims seeking salvation for individual souls • Egalitarian morality, natural rights, personal liberty • Shift from pagan to Christian • Shift from individual as pawn of society • Shift to individuals as shapers of society • FIRST EVIDENCE in historic writings of self discovery, self description, self assessment

3. The Self Historical Background Greece & Rome • Identity embedded in ancestry • Self defined by family and kinship relationships • Humanness defined by participation in community • Privacy and personal gain indicated failure of the person to be fully human • Greek word that comes closest to self is “psyche”, which translates as mind or soul that leaves the body at death – no word for self.

4. The Self Historical Background Plato • Introversion as basis for self • Expanded introversion to include lower and higher parts of the self • Reason and intelligence are higher parts • Passion and emotion are lower parts • Humankind as capable of self-mastery and actions based on internal reasoning so that reason controls passion and emotion.

5. The Self Historical Background The Renaissance (14th-17th Century) • Move away from individual as a pawn in the feudal system over which individuals had no control • Worship of creative genius and independent scholarship as individual accomplishment • Shift from marriage as a role and duty in a larger family context to romantic love • Beginning of scientific view of nature as knowable and controllable by humans

6. The Self Historical Background Multiple Perspectives on Self • Montaigne – contradictory nature of self • Hobbes – self pursuing power through competition and conflict • Descartes – the power of self to think correctly, to control the self through thought • Hume – self as a non-entity, unbounded, contradictory, ruled by habit, sensation and desire • Kant – rationality within self leads to morality

7. The Self Historical Background Protestant and Capitalist Persectives • Protestant rejection of group oriented, patriarchal church in favor of religious autonomy • Capitalism based on individual competition • Entrepreneurism with focus on individual effort

8. The Self Historical Background Rousseau • Noble Savages The individual is self sufficient, self- evaluative, self-loving, living in harmony with nature, childlike and pure With the Division of Labor transformed into • Civilized Humans Individual is a slave to the power of others, an imitator of fashion who only knows the self through the eyes of others – all self reflection comes through others

9. The Self Historical Background Hegel’s Spiral (relational) Thesis . . To . . Antithesis . . To . .Synthesis • People want to be autonomous and unique • People only exist in social interaction and are therefore not either autonomous nor unique • The self is thus socially constructed • The individual is a fleeting moment in the opposition between personal uniqueness and cultural construction

10. The Self Historical Background Marx (relational) • Materialism, not idealism, is the real focus of individual identity • Social class determines individual • When the proletariat overthrows the capitalists, then “humanity” (not individual humans) will reach its pinacle

11. The Self as Autonomous Vs Relational Autonomous Rousseau – humans decay when they focus on the relational self Nietzsche – the selves of individuals are struggling to break free from the controls of others Relational Utilitarianism – individuals must yield their own selves for the good of the group Bentham – athe self is continually exchanging with others to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Hegel – People only exist as they struggle between personal uniqueness and cultural construction Marx – individuals are a reflection of their social class, based on control of resources Weber – selves learn from their society how to view the world Durkheim – individuals only exist as part of a superorganic society and collective consciousness Freur – self is sexually and aggressively defined by relationships with others.