Week 2

Question 1

George Herbert Mead - symbolic interaction; the two types of self

Answer 1

A social self and a fashioned self.

Question 2

According to Mead what is the self?

Answer 2

The self is a social product of symbolic interaction: of emergent, ongoing creation, thinking, feeling, the building of attitude structures, the taking of roles, all in a quest for coherence and orientated to the social world.

Question 3

What did Mead make a distinction between?

Answer 3

Between I and Me.
I is the unsocialised self; desires, needs and wishes.
Me is the socialised self.

Question 4

According to Mead, I is what injects …

Answer 4

Something new, creative and innovative into the process of interaction and the development of the self.

Question 5

Our sense of self, according to Mead, is always …

Answer 5

Mediated through the eyes of others - you should have to behave in a certain way in terms of what others think.

Question 6

3 strengths of symbolic interactionist concepts (Mead)

Answer 6

1. Children develop a sense of self through active, creative engagement with others.
2. Language and communication are pivotal to the fabrication of a self.
3. Self-consciousness is involved in developing a sense of others.

Question 7

Limitations of symbolic interactionist concepts (Mead) (3)

Answer 7

1. Too rationalistic, cognitive and conscious.
2. Little recognition of relation/tensions between desire, wishes, fantasies and social control and order.
3. Little recognition of power and processes of normalisation.

Question 8

Erving Goffman - ‘all the world is a stage and we are but actors upon it’: explain

Answer 8

Dramatic and theatrical metaphors: focus on the performance and presentation of a self in the public/social sphere of everyday life and relationships.

Question 9

According to Goffman, the identity, ‘the self’ is a dramatic …

Answer 9

Effect - not a cause, or a origin, but a product of interactions and relationships.

Question 10

3 key concepts of Erving Goffman

Answer 10

1. Impression management.
2. Face or facade: the face we want to present.
3. Front and back regions; front region is acting in reality, back region is acting to ourselves.

Question 11

Goffman - there is a continual need to …

Answer 11

Construct and display competence and monitor our self-identity.

Question 12

Goffman’s self stands in opposition to …

Answer 12

The idea of a ‘true self’.

Question 13

Anthony Giddens - the _____ __________ self

Answer 13

The DIY, reflexive self.

Question 14

What is the reflexive DIY self:

Answer 14

A self-defining process that depends upon the monitoring of, and reflection upon, psychological and social information about possible trajectories of life.

Question 15

According to Anthony Giddens’ reflexive self, is anything in life secure?

Answer 15

No, nothing we have is secure; our job, marriage (rising divorce rates).

Question 16

The reflective self involves changing ______

Answer 16

Our behaviour based on the changing norms.

Question 17

2 strengths of the reflexive self

Answer 17

1. The reflexive-self is not so much self-mastering, as it is implicated in the thrills and spills of social life.
2. Capability for autonomous thought and reflexivity enables the self to participate in a sort of ‘emotional regrooving’ on an ongoing basis.

Question 18

2 weaknesses of the reflexive self

Answer 18

1. Too individualistic: doesn’t account for power, lack of choice, different consequences of choices.
2. Fantasy and desire (repressed or not) do not figure highly - too rationalistic and cognitive.