La Carlota City College

Business and Management Department

GE 1: Understanding the Self Engr. Khrisna Mae C. Gelogo, ECE, LPT

Chapter 1: Defining the Self: Personal and Developmental Perspectives on Self and Identity
Lesson 2: The Self, Society, and Culture
INTRODUCTION
Across time and history, the self has been debated, discussed and fruitfully conceptualized by
different thinkers in philosophy. With the advent of social sciences, it became possible for new ways and
paradigms to re-examine the true nature of self. Tired of the ideas of ancient philosophers regarding the
body and the mind, thinkers settled on the idea that whatever relationship these two have is less important
than the fact that there is a self.

WHAT IS THE SELF?

In contemporary literature and even in common sense, “self” is defined by the following
characteristics: separate, self-contained, independent, consistent, unitary, and private.
• Separate: This means that the self is distinct from other selves. It is always unique and has its own
identity. One cannot be another person. Even twins have their own self-identity.
• Self-contained and Independent: Self, in itself can exist. Its distinctness allows it to be self-
contained with its own thoughts, independence, characteristics and volition. It does not require any
other self for it to exist.
• Consistent: The self has a personality that is enduring and therefore can be expected to persist for
quite some time. Consistency means that a particular self’s traits, characteristics, tendencies, and
potentials are more or less the same and allows it to be studied, described and measured.
• Unitary: The self is the center of all experiences and thoughts that run through a certain person. It
is like the chief command post in an individual where all processes, emotions and thoughts
converge.
• Private: The whole process of sorting out information, feelings and emotions, and thought
processes within the self is never accessible to anyone but the self. It suggests that self is isolated
from the external world, living within its own, however we see the clash between the self and the
external reality - that one can see that the self is always at the mercy of the external circumstances
that bump and collide with it.

Social Constructivists Perspective of the Self

• Social constructivists argue that the self should not be seen as a static entity but rather as something
that is in unceasing flux, in constant struggle with external reality, and allowing external influences
to take part in its shaping.
• The self is always in participation with social life and its identity subjected to influences here and
there. Having these perspectives should draw one into concluding that the self is truly multifaceted.
• The point is on understanding the vibrant relationship between the self and the external reality. This
points out the merged view of “the person” and their “social context” where the boundaries of one
cannot easily be separated from the boundaries of the other.
• The self is capable of morphing (or adapting) and fitting itself into any circumstance it finds itself
in.

THE SELF AND CULTURE

• According to a French anthropologist Marcel Mauss every self has two faces: personne and moi.
• Moi: it refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body and his basic identity; his biological
givenness. Moi is a person’s basic identity.

1|P age Module 1_Lesson 2

 La Carlota City College
Business and Management Department
GE 1: Understanding the Self Engr. Khrisna Mae C. Gelogo, ECE, LPT

• Personne: it is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who he is. It has much to
do what it means to live in a particular institution, particular family, particular religion, a particular
nationality, and how to behave given the expectations and influences from others. One may
personne from time to time.
• Sample shifts in personne:
- adjusting cultures in other countries
- man courting a woman (tone and mood)
- when in church
- the use of language
- other adjustments in cultural ways

THE SELF AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL WORLD

How do children growing up become social beings?
How do twins grow from the same mother turn out so differently when given up for adoption?

• More than his givenness (personality, tendencies, propensities, among others) one is believed to be
in active participation of shaping the self.
• Recent studies indicate that men and women in their growth and development engage actively in
shaping of the self.
• The unending terrain of the metamorphosis of the self is mediated by language.
• “Language as both publicly shared and privately utilized symbol system is the site where the
individual and the social make and remake each other.”

Mead and Vygotsky

• For Mead and Vygotsky human persons develop with the use of language acquisition and
interaction with others.
• The way that we process information is normally a form of an internal dialogue in our head.
• Those who deliberate moral dilemmas undergo this internal dialogue. “Should I do this or that?”
“But what if I do this, it will be like this.” “Do I have other options?”
• In this way cognitive and emotional development of a child is always a mimicry of how things are
to be done in the social world, in the external reality where he is in.
• Both Vygotsky and Mead treat the human mind as something that is made, constituted through
language as experienced in the external world and as encountered in dialogues with others.
• A young child internalizes values, norms, practices, and social beliefs and more through exposure
to these dialogues that will eventually become part of his individual world.
• Mead: For him, a child conceptualizes his notion of “self” as the child assumes the “other” through
language and role play. It is through this that a child delineates the “I” from the rest.
• Vygotsky: He believes that a child internalizes real-life dialogues that he has had with others, with
his family, his primary caregiver, or his playmates. They apply this to their mental and practical
problems along with the social and cultural infusions brought about by the said dialogues.

THE SELF IN FAMILIES

• Apart from the anthropological and psychological basis for the relationship between the self and
the social world, the sociologists likewise struggled to understand the real connection between the
two concepts. In doing so, sociologist focus on the different institutions and powers at play in the
society. Among these, the most prominent is the family.

2|P age Module 1_Lesson 2

 La Carlota City College
Business and Management Department
GE 1: Understanding the Self Engr. Khrisna Mae C. Gelogo, ECE, LPT

• While every child is born with certain givenness, disposition coming from his parents’ genes and
general condition of life, the impact of family is still deemed as a given in understanding the self.
• The kind of family that we are born in, the resources available to us (human, spiritual, economic)
and the kind of development that we will have will certainly affect the development of the self.
• Our potential of becoming human depends largely on the family starting from birth and the
nurturing times of child.
• In trying to achieve the goal of becoming a fully realized human, a child enters a system of
relationships, most important of which is the family.
• Human beings learn the ways of living and therefore their selfhood by being in a family. It is what
a family initiates a person to become that serves as the basis for this person’s progress.
• How kids are reared is reflected in their behavior and attitude. Internalizing behavior may either be
conscious or unconscious.
• Some behaviors and attitudes may be indirectly taught through rewards and punishments.
• Others, such as sexual behavior or how to confront emotions are learned through subtle means like
the tone of the voice or intonation of the models.
• Without a family, biologically and sociologically a person may not even survive or become a
human person.
• One is who he is because of his family for the most part.

GENDER AND THE SELF

• Gender is one of the loci of the self that is subject to alteration, change and development.
• We have seen in the past years how people fought hard to express, validate and assert their gender
rights. Conservatives frown upon this and insist on the biological.
• From the point of view of the social sciences and the self, it is important to give one the leeway to
find, express and live his destiny. This forms part of selfhood that one cannot just dismiss.
• One maneuvers into the society and identifies himself as who he is by also taking note of gender
identities.
• As part of the culture, there are roles which are expected from a particular person based from his
sex or gender, however slight changes have been observed on the way due to feminism and lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism but for the most part patriarchy has remained to be
at work.
• Nancy Chodorow, feminist, argues that because mothers take the role of taking care of children,
there is a tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality as women
as care providers in the family.
• Men on the other hand are taught early on to behave like a man by holding in one’s emotion, being
tough, fatalistic, not to worry about danger and admiration for hard physical labor.
• Masculinity is learned by integrating a young boy in a society.
• The gendered self is then shaped within a particular context of time and space which is detrimental
in the goal of truly finding one’s self, self-determination, and growth of the self.
• Gender has to personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by culture and the society.

3|P age Module 1_Lesson 2

 La Carlota City College
Business and Management Department
GE 1: Understanding the Self Engr. Khrisna Mae C. Gelogo, ECE, LPT

Assessment 2: Answer the following questions, coherently but honestly. Answer in to five to seven
sentences.
1. How would you describe your “self”?
2. What are the influences of your family in your development as an individual?
3. Think of a time when you felt you were your “true self.” What made you think you were truly
who you are during this time of your life?
4. Following the questions above, can you provide a time when you felt when you were not living
your “true self”? Why did you have to live a life like that? What did you do about it?
5. What social pressures have shaped your “self”? Would you have wanted it otherwise?
6. What aspects of your “self” do you think may be changed and you would like to change?

4|P age Module 1_Lesson 2