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Exploring essentialism and constructionism in identity studies, personal and social identity levels, and Anthony Giddens' theory of self-identity as continuity and narrative.
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EDD 5229 • Liberal Studies in Knowledge Society • Lecture 6 • Understanding the • Curriculum Content of Liberal Studies II: • Self and identity in post-traditional • and individualized society
Understanding the Structure of the Areas of Study: Self and Personal Development • The formal structure outlined by the CCD and HKEAA • Module 1: Personal development and interpersonal relationship • Theme1: Understanding oneself • Theme2: Interpersonal relationship • The organic theoretical structure • Self-identity as narrative and interactive processes: A theory of self development • Self-identity development and the process of individualization • Identity crisis in modern and reflexive-modern society • Interpersonal relationship in late-modern society
Theories of Identity Development • Two paradigms of self and identity formations • Essentialism: Essentialism in identity studies refers to approaches which takes social identity, such as gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, class, as objectively exiting reality. Their formations are based on some essentially fixed traits such as biological sex, skin color, place of birth, formal-legal status, level of income, etc. • Constructionism: Constructionism in identity studies refers to perspective which conceives identity as socially constructed reality. They are on one hand collectively constituted in social processes or even political movements, and on the other hand individually ascription in deliberate articulations.
Theories of Identity Development • Two levels of identity Studies of identity have been a multidisciplinary area of inquiry. It could be approached from psychologists, sociological or philosophical perspectives. Nevertheless, identity has often be studied either at personal or collective levels. • Personal identity: It refers to the self-description, self-image, or self-conception that an individual assigned upon herself. • Social Identity: It refers to social-role performance that individuals subscribe themselves or expected by others and/or membership of social categories that individuals applied to themselves or imposed upon by others.
Theories of Identity Development • Two levels of identity Though these two levels of identity can analytically be differentiated, in reality they are closely interconnected or even coherently integrated. For example, Anthony Giddens has coined the concept of self-identity to depict such a phenomanon.
Theories of Identity Development • Anthony Giddens’ conception of self-identity • Giddens defines “self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography.” (Giddens’ 1991, p. 53) • Identity, according to Giddens, indicates a person’s sense of “continuity across time and space.” (ibid)
Theories of Identity Development • Anthony Giddens’ conception of self-identity • Self-identity, therefore, can be defined as a sense of “continuity as interpreted reflexively by the agent.” (ibid) More specifically, a person with a reasonably stable sense of self-identity is, therefore, the one with “the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them out into ongoing ‘story’ about the self.” (Giddens, 1991, p. 54) In short, self-identity can be discerned as coherent and continuous narrative one imputed to oneself.
Theories of Identity Development • Anthony Giddens’ conception of self-identity • Constituents of self-identity: A stable self-identity, i.e. coherent and continuous self narrative, would compose the following attributes • Ontological security: “A stable sense of self-identity presupposes the … elements of ontological security - an acceptance of the things and of others.” (ibid) The sense of ontological security implies that a person has to extend beyond self-reflexion and connects to her or his environments, both physical and social. In turn, it will generate both sense of trust and bondage with the physical and social environments.
Theories of Identity Development • Anthony Giddens’ conception of self-identity • Constituents of self-identity: • Trust: Trust can be construed as the confidences and expectations that a person invested on particular relationships with social and physical environments. It is generally evolved from the positive feedbacks obtained by the person in the particular relationships. • Bondage: As the positive feedback generated from a relationship with a human aggregate accumulated, the person involved will develop strong sense of belonging to it and in turn constitute a social bondage. As a result, a “social identity” develops.
Theories of Identity Development • Richard Jenkins’ theory of identification • The meaning of identity: • According to Oxford English Dictionary, the Latin root of the word identity is identitas, which is from idem, meaning “the same.” It signifies two basic meanings. “The first is a concept of absolute sameness: this is identical to that. The second is a concept of distinctiveness which presumes consistency or continuity over time.” (Jenkins, 1996, p.3) • Hence, the notion of identity implies both the notion of similarity and difference. More specifically, in dealing with one’s identity, one must simultaneously handling the distinctiveness of oneself and the similarity one shares with members of the collectivity one identified with.
Theories of Identity Development • Richard Jenkins’ theory of identification • The meaning of identity: • Accordingly, Richard Jenkins suggests that individual and collective identities are analogue because they “come into being within interaction”, “routinely entangled with each other”, and are produced and reproduced instantaneously in the same process of identification. (Jenkins, 2004, p. 15-16)
Theories of Identity Development • The process of identification • By identification, it refers to the process through which the selfhood of an individual is constituted and at the same time the sameness that she shared with members of the collectives to which one belongs is constructed. • The process of identification is in essence a social process. It is through the interactions with other fellow human being that both the individual identity, i.e. selfhood and collective identities emerge.
Theories of Identity Development • The process of identification • The concept of “looking-glass-self”: Charles Cooley coined the concept in 1962 to indicate that the selfhood of an individual is defined and redefined through interacting with others and taking references and accounts of how others perceive her. It is the perceptions of the “significant others” and the “referent others”, which is of particular importance to the constitution of one’s selfhood.
Theories of Identity Development • The process of identification • Labelling theory: The theory was first generated in deviance studies. It indicates the process in which authoritative labels imposed on individual in institutional setting may be internalized by the label-recipients as part of their identity. • Concepts of institutional identification and categorization: The concepts were first derived in ethnic studies, they signifies the process of asserting, defending, imposing and resisting of identities and categorizations between ethnic groups.
Theories of Identity Development • The concept of social identity: Richard Jenkins suggests that within the theory of identification both individual and collective identities are part of the notion of social identity. It refers to the meanings one attributes to oneself whether in the form of individually distinctive or collectively shared meanings. Moreover, these meanings are generated and consolidated in social interactions undertaken by the individuals with others.
Social Identity in the Process of Individualization • The conception of Individualization of modern society • “'Individualization' consists of transforming human ‘identity’ from a ‘given’ into a task and changing the actors with the responsibility for performing that task and for the consequences (also the side-effects) of their performance. ….Human being are no more ‘born into’ their identities. … Needing to become what one is the feature of modern living - and of this living alone. …Modernity replaces the heteronomic determination of social standing with compulsive and obligatory self-determination.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 32)
Social Identity in the Process of Individualization • The conception of Individualization of modern society • “individualization means, first, the disembedding and, second, the re-embedding of industrial society ways of life by new ones, in which the individuals must produce, stage and cobble together their biographies themselves. Thus the name ‘individualization’, disembedding and re-embedding …do not occur by chance, nor individually, nor voluntarily, nor through diverse types of historical conditions, but rather all at once and under the general conditions of the welfare in developed industrial labour society, as they have developed since the 1960s in many Western industrial countries.” (Beck, 1994, p.13)
Social Identity in the Process of Individualization • The conception of Individualization of modern society • Institutionalized ‘beds’ - identity bases - for the re-embedment of modern individuals • Beds’ in capital market, e.g. occupations, professions, social-class positions, etc. • ‘Beds’ in institution of marriage and family, husband, wife, father, mother, etc. • ‘Beds’ in modern political arenas, e.g. citizens, members of new social movements, such as environmentalists, feminist, anti-gloabizationists, etc.
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Social identity crisis in the process of Individualization • “What distinguished the ‘individualization’ of yore from the form it has taken in ‘risk society’ …. No ‘beds’ are furnished for ‘re-embedding’, and such beds as might be postulated and pursued prove fragile and often vanish before the work of ‘em-rebeddment’ is complete. There are rather ‘musical chairs’ of various size and style as well as of changing numbers and positions, which prompt men and women to be constantly on the move and promise no ‘fulfilment’, no rest and no satisfaction of ‘arriving’, of researching the final destination, where one can disarm, relax and stop worrying.” (Bauman, 2000, p. 33-34)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Social identity crisis in the process of Individualization • Social identity crisis can therefore be conceived as a discontinuity between the stages of dis-embedment and re-embedment in the individualization process • Fragmentation of institutional-beds and the flexiblization of modern identity: Under the network logic and the global-information paradigm • National-local identity replaced by global-mobile identity • Affect-familial identity replaced by flexible-familial identity • Permanent vocationalism and unionism replaced by flexible, self-programmed workers
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Social identity crisis in the process of Individualization • The permeation of pure relation growth: • By pure relationship, according to Giddens, it is social relationship build “purely” on the relationships itself. It differs from traditional relationships which are based on institutional bondages, such as parent-child relationships, or based on institutional restraints, such as marriage and business contracts. Instead, pure relationship “is not anchored in external conditions of social or economic life - it is …free-floating. ….The pure relationship is sought only for what the relationship can bring to the partners involved. …(It) is reflexively organized, in open fashion, and on a continuous basis” (Giddens, 1991, p. 89-91)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • The permeation of pure relation growth: • Pure relationships are by definition “double edged”. • They provide reflexive or even emancipatory chances for reconstituting traditional social relationship. They offer opportunity for the development of trust based on voluntary commitments and an intensified intimacy.” (p. 186) • Yet pure relationship …create enormous burdens for the integrity of the self. In so far as a relationship lacks external referents, it is morally mobilized only thorough ‘authenticity. …Shorn of external moral criteria, the pure relationship is vulnerable as a source of security at fateful moments and at other major life transitions.” (p. 186-7)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • The permeation of pure relation growth: • As a result, the story of the self can no longer be told in a continuous and coherent manner. In other words, the self-identity experiences sense of discontinuity and fragementation, i.e. ontological insecurity and extistential anxiety in Giddens’ terms.
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Zygmunt Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • The pilgrim as modern self: Pilgrimage of entrepreneurs, tenured workers, citizens, civil soldiers, husband and wife, etc. • Life strategy of postmodern self: • Strollers: It signifies the life strategy and state of mind of strolling in shopping malls, “finding oneself among strangers and being a stranger to them, taking in those strangers as ‘surfaces’. ….Strolling means rehearsing human reality as a series of episodes, that is as events without past and without consequences. It also means rehearsing meeting as mis-meeting, as encounters without impacts. …The stroller had all the pleasures of modern life without torments attached.” (Bauman, 1996, p. 26-27)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Zygmunt Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • Life strategy of postmodern self: • Vagabond: It represents the life strategy and attitude of wondering aimlessly and without destination. It also signifies life strategy of unwilling to settle down, to be the native and rooted in the soil. It post the stance of strangers and “being out of place” to every place and everyone. • Tourist: It represents another life strategy of movers, who “move on purpose”. The purposes that tourists have in mind are fun, joy, excitement and most of all careless. “One may say that what tourist buys, what he pays for, what he demands to be delivered … is precisely the right not to be bothered, freedom from any but aesthetic spacing.” (Bauman, 1996, p. 31)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Zygmunt Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • Life strategy of postmodern self: • Player: “The player’s world is the world of risks, of intuition, of precaution-taking. Time in the world-as-play divides into a succession of games.” (p. 31) In other words, player’s world is made up of fragments and episodes of calculated risk. Yet more importantly, player must “make sure that no game leaves lasting consequences, the player must remember (and so must his/her partners and adversaruies), that ‘this is but a game’. …The game allows no room for pity, compassion, commiseration or cooperation.” (p.32)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Zygmunt Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • The rise of networked individualism and cyber-balkanization “Networked individualism is a social pattern, not a collection of isolated individuals. Rather, individuals build their networks, on-line and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects.” (Castells, 2001, p. 131)
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation • Zygmunt Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • The rise of networked individualism and cyber-balkanization “Networked individualism is a social pattern, not a collection of isolated individuals. Rather, individuals build their networks, on-line and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects.” (Castells, 2001, p. 131)
Growing up in the Information Age • The Hurried Child (Elkind, 1981) and Child without Childhood (Winn, 1984) • By simplifying the access to information through TV and then PC and Internet, it opens children to experiences that were once reserved for adults, e.g. sex and violence • By blurring the boundary between adults and children and revealing the secrecy of adults in electronic media, children are less deferential to adults’ authority and they become less likely to trust or respect simply because they are adults • “Growing up too fast too soon.” (Elkind, 1981) • “Growing up too fast in the world of sex and drug.” (Winn, 1984)
Growing up in the Information Age • Disappearance of Childhood: • From literacy of printed materials to literacy of TV and then IT, the closure of adult world erodes and evaporates as the disclosure media of TV and then PC rise to dominance • These result in the exposure of the “backstage” of adulthood in front of screens of TV and then PC (Meyrowitz, 1985) and the disappearance of children (Postman, 1983) • Exposure of children to mass media (Sanders, 1995) and “unrestricted knowledge about things once kept secret from nonadults” (Steinberg and Kinchloe, 1997) have caused the death of childhood and the loss of the literal selves of children • The screenagers embrace discontinuity, turbulence and complexity. They have the natural adaptive skills that enable them to deal with the problem pf postmodernity. (Rushkoff, 1996)
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The Net Generation “have new powerful tools for inquiry, analysis, self-expression, influence, and play. They have unprecedented mobility. They are shrinking the planet in ways their parent could never imagine. Unlike television which was done to them, they are the actors in the digital world.” (Tapscott, 1998, P.3) • The psychological complex of the N-Generation • Tolerance and acceptance of diversity: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” (p. 86) • A curious generation: The interactive world of the Internet elicits intensely heightened curiosity. • Assertiveness and self-reliance: “They begin to develop self-reliance at an early age: they can find what they need quickly, easily, and honestly” (p.87) in the Internet. • A contrarian generation: “Because they have master the tools to question, challenge, and disagree, these kids are becoming a generation of critical thinkers” (p. 88) and not easily submitted to authority at face value. • A generation of high self-esteem: They acquire the capacities to act on the environment and to mastery in the computer-mediated working environment at early age. They enhance their self certainty. They also learn to establish their identity through a much enlarged social world through the Internet. • Generation of multiple self and virtual self • A generation of intelligent / multi-intelligent: “Jean Piaget… argues that intelligence develops in all children through the continually shifting balance between the assimilation of new information into existing cognitive structure and the changing accommodation of those structures themselves to incorporate the new information.” Internet and other computer-mediated environments provide ample opportunities of the kind. • A generation of stronger spatial orientation • A generation of divergent and multi-media thinking
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The Net Generation “have new powerful tools for inquiry, analysis, self-expression, influence, and play. They have unprecedented mobility. They are shrinking the planet in ways their parent could never imagine. Unlike television which was done to them, they are the actors in the digital world.” (Tapscott, 1998, P.3)
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The psychological complex of the N-Generation • Tolerance and acceptance of diversity: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” (p. 86) • A curious generation: The interactive world of the Internet elicits intensely heightened curiosity. • Assertiveness and self-reliance: “They begin to develop self-reliance at an early age: they can find what they need quickly, easily, and honestly” (p.87) in the Internet. • A contrarian generation: “Because they have master the tools to question, challenge, and disagree, these kids are becoming a generation of critical thinkers” (p. 88) and not easily submitted to authority at face value.
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The psychological complex of the N-Generation • A generation of high self-esteem: They acquire the capacities to act on the environment and to mastery in the computer-mediated working environment at early age. They enhance their self certainty. They also learn to establish their identity through a much enlarged social world through the Internet. • Generation of multiple self and virtual self • A generation of intelligent / multi-intelligent: “Jean Piaget… argues that intelligence develops in all children through the continually shifting balance between the assimilation of new information into existing cognitive structure and the changing accommodation of those structures themselves to incorporate the new information.” Internet and other computer-mediated environments provide ample opportunities of the kind.
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The psychological complex of the N-Generation • A generation of stronger spatial orientation • A generation of divergent and multi-media thinking
Growing up in the Information Age • The coming of the Net Generation (Tapscott, 1998) and the screenagers (Rushkoff, 1996) • The social complex of the N-generation: • The question of the social skills of the N-generation • The question of the attention span of the N-generation • The question of the predisposition to cruelty • A generation of vanity • The question of stressfulness of the N-generation
Lecture 6 • Understanding the Curriculum Content of Liberal Studies I: • Self and identity in post-traditional and individualized society • End
