Definitions
- Social action: an action that takes into account or is influenced by the actions of other individuals.
- Socialization: the process by which the individual learns the norms, values, and practices which are common to a particular social group.
- Nature/Nurture Debate: A debate about whether our behaviour is primarily determined by biological factors (nature) or by the influence of our social environment (nurture). Many approaches today focus on how these factors interact.
- Socialization: The process by which the individual learns the norms, values, and practices which are common to a particular social group.
- Genocide: An organised, systematic and coordinated effort to persecute and annihilate any human group or collectivity by another group with power (usually a state)
- The self: A person’s understanding and perception of their individuality.
- Social Identity: The expectations and opinions others hold towards us based on the groups we belong to or the characteristics we are ascribed. Has a complex interactive relationship with a person’s self-identity.
- Identity: The qualities and attributes that establish a person’s individuality.
- Looking-glass self: In Cooley, our understanding of how other people perceive us, or our sense of how we appear to other people.
- Generalized other: In Mead, our sense of the general expectations which other people in a community or social group hold about appropriate beliefs and behaviours.
- Significant others: In Mead, individuals who are especially important to the development of our particular sense of self.
- I and Me: A distinction introduced by Mead. The ‘me’ is made up of those aspects of the self that have been influenced by or learned through interaction with others, while the ‘I’ consists of the individual’s responses to the ‘me’, or the individual’s response to the attitudes of others.
- Symbolic interactionism: a sociological theory that focuses on the creation of meaning through interpersonal communication.
- Interactionist Theories: Theories that analyse social phenomena by examining how individuals create and make sense of their social world through communication.
- Dramaturgical: A sociological perspective, developed by Goffman, which likens social behaviour to a dramatic performance.
- Roles: commonly held expectations about how people should or will behave in certain social positions. Individuals are thought to ‘play’ roles when they conform their behaviour to these expectations.
- Impression management: In Goffman, a process by which we attempt to influence the perceptions that other people have of us, typically in order to achieve certain ends.
- Front-stage and Back-stage: A distinction introduced by Goffman to describe two different contexts of action. People engage in ‘front-stage’ behaviour when they know or anticipate that other people are watching them, while they engage in ‘back-stage’ behaviour when their actions are comparatively less visible.
- Voluntaristic theories: theories that emphasize voluntarism.
- Social control: the means by which societies enforce social norms and reduce expressions of deviance.
- Deviance: behaviour that does not conform to social norms
- Labelling theory: a theory which proposes that identity and behaviour are often influenced by how individuals are labelled, or by how certain terms are used to describe or categorize individuals.
- Outsiders: Individuals who are thought to violate the established norms of a social group.
- Self–fulfilling prophecy: The idea that a belief or expectation about a certain outcome can help to bring about that outcome.
- Social facts: In Durkheim, aspects of social structure, such as values or norms, which exercise control over individual behaviour, typically by influencing or eliciting certain actions.
- Base: In Marxism, the economic foundation of a society, including the relations and materials of production.
- Superstructure: In Marxism, the general ideals, norms, and values of a society. Marxist thought typically holds that the superstructure is largely determined by the base.
- Ideology: Beliefs, attitudes and cultural patterns justifying existing social institutions and hierarchies. Linked to power and the maintenance of inequalities.
- Values: In Parsons, ideas or judgements about the kind of society in which people want to live, or about what constitutes a good society.
- Social Order: A situation of social stability, in which the norms or structures of a society are generally supported and maintained by its members. Typically contrasted with a state of disorder or chaos.
- Co-constituted: the view that structure and agency are not separate or opposed, but can work in conjunction or reinforce one another.
- Practices: In Bourdieu, a term used to describe the performance or carrying out of an action.
- Habitus: In Bourdieu, a set of dispositions, tendencies, and preferences, through which we understand the world and participate in it.
- Embodiment: A term used to describe how social influences manifest in the bodily dispositions and behaviours of individuals.
- Power: The ability of an entity or individual to control, direct, or otherwise influence another entity or individual.
- Post-Structuralism: A school of thought, emerging in 1960s France, which developed in reaction to the Structuralist movement which preceded it.
- Sovereign power: In Foucault, a kind of power, characteristic of medieval and Feudal societies, in which a political leader attempts to maintain social control via public displays of force and authority.
- Disciplinary power: In Foucault, a kind of power, characteristic of modern societies, in which social control is maintained by means of surveillance, socialization, and the instilling of routines and disciplines on the body.
- Docile bodies: In Foucault, individuals that have internalized disciplinary power, or who have been trained to behave in ways that preserve and maintain the present social order.
- Sexuality:An individual’s sexual identity, including their sexual preferences, desires, tastes, and so on.
- Discourse: In Foucault, sets of widely accepted norms or ways of thinking about particular topics which are taken for granted in a particular time period or locale.
- Resistance: A refusal to accept or comply with the power of another.
- Queer theory: A theoretical movement, emerging primarily in the 1990s, which is focused on the social construction of gender and sexual identities.
- Heterosexual Matrix: In Butler, a rigid set of linked categorizations in society that link sex, gender, and sexuality in a way that makes normative combinations seem natural.
- Panopticon: In Foucault and others, used as a metaphor for modern types of surveillance and self-formation. It is a type of prison designed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham and his brother in the 19th Century, in which cells are built around a central but not clearly visible (for the inmates) guard tower, such that prisoners come to assume they are being watched continuously, even if they are not.
- Networked selves: A term used to describe the effects of social networking and digital technologies on one’s sense of self.
- Augmented reality: A term proposed by Jurgenson to describe the merging of material reality and digital technologies.
- Augmented selves: A term proposed by Jurgenson to describe self-identities which combine physical and digital aspects, or which are developed through both online and offline interaction.
- Quantified self: A term proposed by Lupton to describe self-identities which are increasingly expressed or understood through numbers and measures.
- Cyborg: In Haraway, an entity which fuses elements of animals and machines.
- Non-human agency: The idea that non-human entities have agency, or a capacity to influence events and phenomena.
- Individualization: A name given to a general social trend, evident in many contemporary societies, which affords individuals with more freedoms, options, and choices in regards to the way they live their lives.
- Mestiza consciousness: In Anzaldúa, a term describing the unique psychic experience of women with mixed ancestry, in particular Chicana women.
- Hybridity: In post-colonial studies, the creation of new transcultural forms within the zone of cultural contact produced by colonization.
- Stereotypes: A generalized belief about a group of people, indiscriminately applied to all members of that group.
Books on the General Topic
Lupton, D. 2016. The quantified self. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Tyler, I. 2020. Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality. Zed Books.
Jenkins, R 2014. Social Identity, 2nd Edition, New York: Routledge
Rainie, H & Wellman, B 2012. Networked: The new social operating system Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Elliott, A 2020. Concepts of the Self, 4th Edition, Cambridge, UK: Malden, MA: Polity.
Smart, C 2007. Personal Life: New directions in sociological thinking, Cambridge: Polity.
Ryle, R., 2012. Questioning Gender. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Korgen, K. and Atkinson, M., 2020. Race and Ethnicity. SAGE.
Contemporary Research Monographs on this Topic
Illouz, E. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kanai. A. 2019. Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value. Palgrave Macmillan.
Lupton, D., 1998. The emotional self. London: SAGE
Adams, M., 2007. Self and social change. London: SAGE
Chalari, A., 2017. The sociology of the individual. Los Angeles: Sage.
Contemporary Articles
- This is an interesting piece focused on how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals demonstrate agency in resisting norms and advocating for change. It discusses how this agency is often overlooked in media and academic accounts. Engages with social movement theory and theorists like Giddens.
- Alternative to the above focusing on a specific case study.
- Examines ideas of indigenous sovereignty using Foucault’s ideas. Engages with many of the Foucauldian concepts mentioned in the chapter.
- Explains Mead’s ideas and exemplifies them through a series of case studies. Connects Mead’s ideas to Bourdieu’s.
- Examines how mothers present their children as a form of impression management. Good example of Goffman’s ideas.
- Article touches on Goffman’s ideas and engages with many of the debates discussed in the chapter about selfhood and the internet.
- Good empirical test of labelling theory, exemplifies the theory well.
- Older article but provides a clear and easy to follow example of self-socialization via media consumption. Ties in with the discussion of individualization as well.
- Interesting study on the creativity of action. Discusses many of the scholars mentioned in the chapter, including Joas and Mead.
- Compares the work of Bourdieu and Foucault, applying their ideas to empirical studies of caste. Focuses on the idea of embodiment.
- Empirical study focusing on Australian school curricula. Exemplifies Foucault’s work, particular in regards to sexual identity.
- Provides a clear summary of the individualization thesis and discusses it in relation to empirical research on family structure in China and America. Discusses the general reception of Beck’s work and criticisms of the individualization idea as well.
- A theoretical review but would be good for students who want to go further. It discusses many of the ideas in the chapter.
Discussion Questions
- Mead argued that a person’s sense of self arises through reflection on both generalized and significant others. Can you give an example of this process from your own life?
- According to Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective, individuals play certain social roles. What kinds of roles do you play? How does your behaviour change when you are ‘back-stage’?
- In what ways is the notion of deviance socially constructed? Why might certain groups wish to label actions as deviant?
- Foucault argues that modern, disciplinary forms of power are more effective and more extensive than older, sovereign forms of power. Do you agree?
- How do you feel that your life has been affected by the process of individualization?
Chapter References
- Anzaldúa, GE (1999) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.
- Archer, M (2012) The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge University Press.
- Beck, U and Beck-Gernsheim, E (2002) Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. Sage.
- Becker, HS (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
- Bloomer, H (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. University of California Press.
- Bourdieu, P (1990) The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press.
- Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
- Castells, M (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell Publishing.
- Cooley, CH (1922) Human Nature and the Social Order, rev. edn. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
- Durkheim, E (1964) The Rules of Sociological Method. Free Press.
- Foucault, M (1995) Discipline and Punish, 2nd edn., trans. A Sheridan. Vintage Books.
- Foucault, M (1998) The History of Sexuality, 3 vols., trans. R Hurley. Penguin Books.
- Giddens, A (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Polity Press.
- Goffman, E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.
- Halberstam, J and Livingston, I (eds) (1995) Posthuman Bodies. Indiana University Press.
- Haraway, D (1985) ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, Socialist Review, no. 80, pp. 65–108.
- Joas, H (1996) The Creativity of Action. University of Chicago Press.
- Jurgenson, N (2011) ‘Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality’, The Society Pages.
- http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmentedreality/
- (accessed 5 February 2020).
- Jurgenson, N. (2012) ‘When Atoms meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented
- Revolution’ Future Internet, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 83–91.
- Latour, B (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford University Press.
- Lupton, D (2016) The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking. Polity Press.
- Marx, K (1977) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Progress Publishers.
- Mead, GH (1967) Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. University of Chicago Press.
- Merton, RK (1948) ‘The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy’, The Antioch Review, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 193–210.
- Parsons, T (1949) The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, 2nd edn. Free Press.
- Parsons, T and Bales, R (1955) Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Free Press.
- Sennett, R (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. W.W. Norton.
- Zuboff, S (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Public Affairs
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