Talk:Self (sociology)

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This article does not currently accord with the standards laid out for an encyclopædia entry. A single block of text containing a mass of undifferentiated ideas does not help to inform a student of sociology about the concept of Self.

This page requires the following actions as a minimum: 1) copyediting to include links to other concepts. 2) separating out of ideas thematically and structured with subheadings. 3) external links added where appropriate. 4) links to related aspects of sociology and to other concept-of-self articles. 5) references and citations. 6) any other changes required to bring this article up to standard.

(aeropagitica) 19:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Article needed here
We need an article here. If this one fails to qualify can we at least keep the talk page? Mathiastck 17:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Essay moved from article
This is the essay that served as the article for most of 2006. We should as least fact check it to see if it is useable...

From a classical sociological perspective, the self is a relatively stable set of perceptions of who we are in relation to ourselves, to others, and to social systems. The self is organized around a self concept, the ideas and feelings that we have about ourselves. These ideas are derived from several sources. What Charles Horton Cooley called the looking-glass self, for example, is based on how we think other people see and evaluate us (which is not necessarily how they actually see us).

On a more structural level, the self is also based on cultural ideas about the social statuses that we occupy. In this way, for example, a woman who is a mother will draw upon cultural ideas about mothers in constructing her idea of who she is. In similar ways, she may use cultural ideas about women, about various occupations, about age, and so on to contribute to an overall sense of who she is. This component of a self-concept, which is based on the social statuses that a person occupies, is known as a social identity. An important part of the self is the ideal self, which consists of ideas about who we ought to be, rather than about who we actually are. Whether it be an "A" student, a business tycoon, a loving parent, or the perpetrator of the perfect crime, the ideal self is a standard against which we measure our self-concept - in other words, who we think we actually are.

Our self-esteem, the level of positive or negative regard we have for ourselves, depends on how well the ideal self and the self-concept agree. Also contributing to self-esteem are evaluations that are part of (a dualistic looking-glass self as self and others when we tend to think critical of ourselves if we think others are reproaching our self imageries and self constructive regards and association with the social statuses we occupy as self security within a social system. (People in prestigious occupations will tend to feel better about themselves because they draw upon the higher cultural value placed upon their positions.)

The self is socially "constructed" in the sense that it is shaped through interaction with other people and draws upon social materials in the form of cultural imagery and ideas. As with socialization in general, the individual is not a passive participant in this process and can have a powerful influence over how this process and its consequences develop. Postmodernism offers an alternative to the classical view of the self, especially through its application to feminism. From this perspective the distinction between the self and others is arbitrary and rests on the false notion that the self exists as an autonomous and separate entity. Instead, the self exists only though relationships. It is inherently relational and has meaningful definition or existence apart from those social connections.

The classical view of self is seen as a manifestation of dualistic thinking that tends to divide everything along the lines of polar opposites - mind and body, true and false, self and other - a kind of thinking that postmodernism challenges.

Postmodernism also argues against the idea that the self is a stable unit that persists through time and space. Instead, the self is seen as fragmented and split (between, for example, its conscious and unconscious aspects) and continually in the process of being constructed.

...I'm in the process of writing a new stub for the article. Please don't AfD it. --The Transhumanist 07:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)