Тopic 5. Key concepts on Individuality

In the beginning let us observe some ideas about the self-image of man which is formed in comparison with two opposite entities – God-Creator and Nature-creature. Partly a man is spiritual? Partly he is material. Formerly, man was threatened not primarily by man, but

by nature. Through science, nearly all natural phenomena have been or can be brought under man’s control. Man is threatened neither by nature nor by the God who made nature, but by his own use of nature. Man’s enemy is man, manmade structures, or the God who made man.

Again, even in coming to know nature, man (or his scientific representatives) meets himself rather than nature. Man no longer seeks nature as such, but nature as we question it for specific scientific purposes and in the specific contexts of axiomatic frameworks that we ourselves have determined.

Thus, man is inescapably confronted by man. We have reason to ask, What is this man? But what causes us to ask questions about the form in which man’s subjective image of himself appears in his consciousness? Man’s subjective image determines what he makes of himself. Animals are as nature has created them, but man must complete his character; nature has supplied only the rudiments of it. Man must form his own personality, and he does so according to his image of what he can and should be. Scheler has delineated a historical typology of Western man’s self-images, or “reality-worlds.”

Man first saw himself as homo religiosus, a view based on the Judeo-Christian legacy of supernaturalism and its ensuing feelings of awe and of inherited guilt. The next stage was homo sapiens, rational man in harmony with the divine plan. Since the Enlightenment, this image has been largely superseded by the naturalistic, pragmatic image of homo faber – man as the most highly developed animal, the maker of tools (including language), who uses a particularly high proportion of his animal energy in cerebral activities. Body and soul are regarded as a functional unity. Human being and development are explained by the primary urges of animal nature – the desire for progeny and the desire for food, possessions, and wealth. Machiavellianism, Marxism, racism, Darwinism, and Freudianism, it is claimed, are based on this interpretation of man.

These three self-images of man have in common a belief in the unity of human history and in a meaningful evolution toward higher organization. The images of homo dionysiacus and homo creator break with this tradition and herald a new orientation of anthropological thought. In the image of man as homo dionysiacus, man sees decadence as immanent in human nature and history.

Typical exponents of this view are Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and neoromantics like Ludwig Klages, Oswald Spengler, and Leo Frobenius. Man is seen as the “deserter” or the faux pas of life; as a megalomaniac species of rapacious ape; as an infantile ape with a disorganized system of inner secretions; or as essentially deficient in vital powers and dependent for survival on technical means. Man’s power of thought is an artificial surrogate for missing or weak instincts, and his “freedom to choose” is a euphemism for his lack of direction.

Human social institutions are pitiful crutches for assuring the survival of a biologically doomed race. Reason is regarded as separate from the soul, which belongs to the vital sphere of the body. Reason is the destructive, “demoniac” struggle with, and submergence of, the healthy activity of the soul. The image of man as homo creator is likewise derived from Nietzsche, and also from Feuerbach. But the Nietzschean superman has been transformed into a stricter philosophical conception by Nicolai Hartmann, Max Scheler, and the Sartrean existentialists. Scheler called this view a “postulatory atheism of high responsibility.” Man has no ontological knowledge of an ultimate being. Contrary to Kant’s postulate of the ethical need for a God, in the new view there must be no God – or the sake of human responsibility and liberty. Only in a mechanical, nonteleological world is there the possibility of a free moral being. Where there is a planning, all-powerful God, there is no freedom for man responsibly to work out his destiny. Nietzsche’s phrase “God is dead” expresses the ultimate moral responsibility of man; the predicates of God (predestination and Providence) are to be related to individual man. Man’s awareness of his own self-images illuminates the whole range of his genuine potentialities so that his choice of an authentic form of life is not restricted by narrowness of view.

Modern ideas about consciousness and self-image are closely connected with psychoanalytical theory. The unconscious was first described by Freud when constructing psychoanalytical theory, and was assumed to be the centre of disorganized energy associated with pleasureseeking or a desire for revenge. Freud suspected that many of his patients were affected by previous experiences that could not actually be remembered verbatim, but would appear within a translated context. Thus dream imagesmay acquire especial significance to the dreamer although a full understanding of meaning may be thwarted via censorship.

Freud demonstrates in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904) that the forgetting of a single word or phrase within an otherwise well-remembered context, or even a slip of the tongue, may be very meaningful when conscious memory has been repressed. The unconscious differs from the preconscious in that the latter includes memory of experiences and motives that are available to consciousness but are not immediately present. And to follow Hilgard’s differentiation between the unconscious and subconscious (two terms used synonymously by Freud), the subconscious refers to experience that is located along such an outer perimeter of consciousness and that cannot be closely attended to because it is below some ill-defined threshold. In analytical psychology, Jung postulates a collective unconscious that is the source of consistent patterns, or archetypes, that are common to everybody, and that surface in legends, dreams and literary images.

The subconscious represents a transitional twilight state within a psychic system, although it is unclear as to how long specific experiences and memoriesremain within such a subliminal and intermediary state of awareness. The prefix sub is misleading because it implies a lower level of awareness, which in Jung’s opinion denies the advanced understanding of some universal, archetypal, and even inherited awareness of humanity.

 

Gender is the cultural differentiation of male from female. Gender is all cultureand no nature: the only natural aspect of gender is sexual differentiation – a bio/physiological difference upon which is balanced a rickety but enormously elaborate cultural structure of differences which are used to classify and make meaningful the social relations of the human species. Whenever sexual differences are taken as meaningful, we are in the presence not of sex but of gender. The point of insisting on this distinction between sex and gender is that nothing very much can be done about human physiology in the short run, but culture can be transformed.

So arguments about what is ‘essentially’ male or female, or ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, often justify gender differences as being ‘only natural’, but this justification is ‘only ideological’. Gender is a human and a signifyingdivision; its ‘source’ in nature is neither here nor there. Gender is other: significant and generalized other.Gender is symbolic entity located outside of the self and associated with one or more other individuals. Proposed by Mead, gender is the concept of other is particularly relevant to symbolic interactionistperspectives, where the emphasis is placed on communication between the self and others (and assimilation of others within the self).

Such communication will not always take place within faceto-

face encounters. Others can be real people or fictional characters. Perhaps the starting-point for perceived others is when the child differentiates self from not-self. That vast category of not-self will then be gradually subdivided according to learneddifferences between others. Eventually the other will refer to participants engaging, or with the ability to engage in, symbolic interaction. Furthermore, some others appear to behave in consistent ways and to show specific expectations about the self’s behaviour.

Many theorists have shown particular interest in emerging relations between the self and the significant other within childhood. The rewarding and punishing actions of adult figures affect socialization, language development, and motivation. In psychoanalysis, for example, the focus is upon whether significant others frustrate or satisfy the infant. In the first instance they may be judged good or bad, but this might then set a path for subsequent assessment of other people and of the self. Indeed the significant other, through criticism of the self, provides the basis for appraisal, reflection and conscience. Increased experience of language and symbolic activity involving others leads to the realization about the significant other being representative of some larger group. It is thus argued that there may be a progression from the recognition of significant others to the constellation of generalized others.

Although the concept of other has proved invaluable when discussing socialization and the experiences of interaction, it can also be criticized on a number of counts. At the most extreme level it becomes part of a social behaviourist argument where others totally shape, control and condition the self via reward and punishment. At a more mundane level, little evidence has suggested at which point in life the significant is augmented by the generalized. The interrelationships between significant and generalized others continue throughout life, although they are rarely identified.

 

Socialization is a central concept, which in its widest application refers to all those complex and multi-faceted processes and interactions that transform the human organism into an active participating member of a society. In short the term refers to the ways in which we both become and are made social; for example, we can suggest that it describes the long and complicated process of learning to live in society. While many writers would agree on this general definition, the study of socialization is better viewed as a site for a number of problems and issues which are themselves the product of clashes between differing conceptions of the structure of societies, the nature of social and cultural relations, and the individual subject. The initial question to consider here is what individuals, or groups, are socialized into. This can be posed in a number of ways. First, what at birth do we or people enter into, into what cultures, sets of values, rules, ideologies and social conditions are we socialized, a process often referred to as cultural transmission? Second, either as a result or in reaction to this what do we become? This issue is interwoven with debates concerning the origins and development of our subjectivity, our sense of self and individual identity. These questions themselves serve to raise a further set of problems concerning the ‘how’ of socialization – how and by what agencies is such a process achieved? Is the process to be viewed as guided by an almost mechanical predefined social logic, which slots individual ‘cogs’ into the ‘great machine’ of society, or should we be more concerned to examine the negotiated development of self-consciousness and identity through ongoing interaction and the acquisition of language?

The intuitive, taken-for-granted view of socialization is that it essentially concerns children and childhood; it is a form of early ‘total training’ or ‘moulding’ that all children undergo. This view has in many ways underpinned traditional sociological and psychological approaches. It is however important to note the deterministic, machine-like, one-way process it often implies. Children, by definition immature and unregulated, posing as Campbell has noted ‘immense, incalculable threats to the social order’, are transformed into mature, competent and regulated social adults by means of a programmed system of instructions, rewards and punishments. Children are ‘empty vessels’, waiting to be filled by the social and cultural reservoirs of their society. If they are not ‘filled’ or socialized properly, so the argument goes, a defective or deviant product will result. This orthodox view of socialization has become increasingly criticized, contested and amended in recent years.

Primarily, the issue is one of determinationand social continuity. A scholar Wrong has indicated that the functionalist view has tended to overplay the conservative function of socialization. He forcefully rejects the notion of ‘society’ preserving and reproducing ‘itself’, by simply and unproblematically ‘fitting’ individuals into pre-defined social roles. Terming this an ‘oversocialized’ view, he further suggests that it cannot adequately account for social change or individual variety. Developing out of this criticism is the issue of the active participation of the individual. Symbolic interactionists, such as Mead and Schutz, have argued that the individual involved in socialization is an active participant, increasingly capable of negotiating and redefining the boundaries and rules of the learning situation. This implies a considerable move from the passive ‘absorption’ modelthat has characterized traditional views of parent – child, teacher – child relationships.

A further logical move from this model is implicit in recent work. Within the orthodox view socialization is a process that gradually stops as the subject passes from childhood through youth to adulthood. The function of education has in many ways been identified as crucial, and finishing school is equated with the end of or at least a significant break in the process.

Two questions are important here: should socialization be seen as a finite process, ending in advanced industrial societies in the late teens, or is it in fact a lifelong process, present in all interaction new and old, familiar and unfamiliar? Berger and Luckmann, for example, have distinguished between primary and secondary forms of socialization, but in their discussion they note that ‘socialization is never total, never finished’. Second, this issue in turn raises the problem of the relationship between early childhood socialization, and subsequent experience. To what extent are basic unalterable traits of behaviour and thought established in childhood?

While this has been commonly claimed, work by Goffman, for example, has demonstrated that certain processes of resocialization into occupations or institutional settings like prisons or mental asylums may drastically challenge and alter the individual’s identity and sense of self.

Finally, most contemporary approaches consider the issue of power relations, suggesting that questions of inequality and social control have very often been eclipsed within orthodox approaches by assumed consensus. In this sense not only socialization, but also the whole concept of childhood and youth has undergone critical reexamination (Aries, Murdock and McCron). More specifically, relations between socializers and socialized – parents, teachers, children, and so on – have been placed in the context of class and gender relations. This emphasis has considerably redefined the functions of socialization in terms of the social and cultural reproduction of specific sets of values, ideas and activities that uphold and maintain social class, gender and other relations, hence serving to perpetuate the inequalities and ideologies that stem from them.

Socialization therefore is a term that needs careful consideration. Its implications may be usefully thought through in the context of these debates and differences of interpretation; it poses some fundamental problems.

Value system is very important for s ocialization. Value is the judgement of perceived attributes, and of paths to goals, normally associated with an attitude. Such evaluations may include goodness, honesty, toughness and other such dimensions and will vary in intensity according to the value judgement.

A distinction should be made between moral values and other values. With moral value the individual prescribes judgement on the basis of ‘moral obligation’. The individual’s use of ‘ought’ or ‘should’ suggests such obligation, and something that is very different from other statements about values that connote only a sense of desirability; for example, ‘I like’ or ‘I want’.

The analysis of value has much relevance to the study of culture and communication. Intergroup relations may be based on the operation of differing value systems as a result of different social and cultural location. Of course the internalization of values depends essentially on communicated information, often through socialization.

 

As for roles, theyare socially defined positions and patterns of behavior which are characterized by specific sets of rules, norms and expectations which serve to orientate and regulate the interaction, conduct and practices of individuals in social situations. We often think of roles in the theatrical or dramatic sense, as referring to those parts played or performed by actors or actresses in a play or drama. In the study of social and cultural relations, roles, by extension of this theatrical idea, refer to all the different ‘parts’ that may be ‘played’ by individuals (actors and actresses) as they interact (perform) in different contexts (scenes and acts) within a particular society (the overall drama, play or theatre).

Both on and off stage, individuals occupying certain positions or roles within society are expected to ‘act’ and behave in certain predictable ways, to follow and conform to certain rules and norms that seem to exist independently of the particular individuals involved. We are socialized into these sets of expectations, often taking for granted the ways in which they define and classify the social world into seemingly endless and obvious relations between men, women, bakers, brothers, politicians, friends, and so on. The central point here is that roles always exist in relation to other roles: the occupational role of doctor, for example, implies and relates to the roles of patient, nurse and consultant, different roles which carry different expectations and degrees of power and status.

Like actors, people play many different and changing roles throughout life, and at any one point in time are involved in a multiplicity of different roles and role relations. As a student, for example, you may also be female, a friend, a union member, a cousin, sometimes a guest, a car driver, a customer, and so on. Not all of these roles can be played at the same time – significantly they may sometimes contradict, leading to ‘role conflict’ – and neither are they all equal or identical.

Anthropological studies of roles and ‘role systems’ in different

cultures, for example, have distinguished between roles that are socially ascribed to individuals at birth, or by virtue of age or kinship position, and roles that are socially achieved with access dependent upon individual performance, competition and qualification. While the term is commonly used in discussions and descriptions of social interaction and communication, its analytical value and explanatory power have been questioned. Too often it assumes a static, consensual, over-determining and over-simplified view of social relations, thereby neglecting both individuals and structures of power and inequality.