Sociology 338:

Culture and the Self:
Meaning, Identity and Experience in the Modern World

Fall 2004 M 7-9:52 p.m.
Professor Alexander Tristan Riley
Office: Coleman Hall 213 Phone: 577-1118
Office hours: WF 4-5    e-mail: atriley@bucknell.edu

 

 

Self (Self) (?), a.[AS. self, seolf, sylf; akin to OS. self, OFries. self, D. zelf, G. selb, selber, selbst, Dan. selv. Sw. sjelf, Icel. sja¯lfr, Goth. silba. Cf. Selavage.]  The total, essential, or particular being of a person.  The individual as the object of his own reflective consciousness; the man viewed by his own cognition as the subject of all his mental phenomena, the agent in his own activities, the subject of his own feelings, and the possessor of capacities and character; a person as a distinct individual; a being regarded as having personality.

 

What do you know about your self? What is a self and what does it mean to have or be one? What is identity and what are the factors which contribute to the identities of selves in the modern world? How and why do we construct meaningful identities and frameworks of experience from the chaos of everyday modern life? How do gender and sexuality affect selves?  What is unique about the Western self?  The capitalist self?  The American self?  How does technology change our ways of constructing selves?  How has the experience of the self changed with the rise of  'postmodernity'?  What methods do we have for exploring and reporting on/writing about the self?

 

This course is an exploration of these and related questions. We will look at the cultural spheres and processes in the contemporary Western world within which selves and identities emerge and produce frameworks of meaning and self-consciousness in an effort to understand how sociological and historical perspective can contribute to the eternal philosophical quest for self-understanding. Our goal is that by the end of the course you will know a fair amount about the social and historical origins of the modern notion(s) of the self and be able to use that information critically in reflecting upon your own self-identity.

 

Requirements:
Attendance is essential in this course, as we meet so infrequently and as we will spend significant time discussing themes in the readings, many of which are difficult enough to provide significant barriers to understanding for one person working alone. Additionally, we will see in whole or part a number of videos, some of which are not in the library collection and which I therefore cannot make available for you to see if you miss the class session during which they are viewed.  The class is obviously quite small enough that I will certainly recognize it if you frequently miss class without valid excuse. You get one free absence during the term, which requires no excuse; beyond that, unexcused absences count against your final grade.  I am much more willing to entertain your reasons for having to miss class if you tell me in advance, as opposed to after the fact.

 

Much of the reading material in this course is weighty and requires real attention; you may in fact have to read certain pieces more than once in order to get a comfortable grasp of them. You may also do well to start reading some texts well in advance of the time we will talk about them, as for scheduling reasons we will now and again have to essentially talk about an entire book in one class session, which means you will likely need to start reading it more than a week before that date if you hope to finish in time for the discussion.  This is especially true of Bell, Wacquant, Turkle, and Leiris.  I will try in some situations to spread the discussion of certain readings out a bit by posting questions on the reading to Blackboard for your response.

 

Grades will be based on three papers (which I will assign one week in advance of the due date) based on questions drawn from the reading and class discussions (each is worth 25% of your course grade) and a class presentation, which includes a collective writing assignment that will be turned in to me (the final 25%).  Class participation is not explicitly figured into the accounting of the final grade, but it is expected that everyone will participate regularly, as this is a seminar.  It will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to get an exceptional grade in the class, whatever the quality of your written work, if you do not participate in discussions on a regular basis.  If you object on religious or philosophical or any other grounds to the practice of talking in front of the rest of the class, then you may assure me of your mastery of this dialogic part of the class requirements by talking to me during office hours or by posting comments to questions I will ask on Blackboard throughout the term.  In each class meeting, I assume, correctly or incorrectly,  that each of you has done the reading and, if necessary,  I will call on people, so please do be prepared when you come to class. 

 

Books (available in University Bookstore):

Henrick Ruitenbeek, The Individual and the Crowd:  A Study of Identity in America (IC)

Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self (CS)

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen:  Identity in the Age of the Internet (LS)

Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (MEL)

Loïc Wacquant, Body and Soul:  Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (BS)

Michel Leiris, Manhood (MH)

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (SS)

Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (CCC)

Additional readings are available on ERES, as noted in the calendar below.

Organization of Course Themes and Readings:
 

 

Monday, August 30:  The Core Questions:  What is the Self?  What is Culture?  What is Identity?  What is Meaning?

We will endeavor here to lay down some basic frameworks and definitions for the course.  We will see a video that raises essential questions about self and identity.

• Reading: CS, introduction; IC, introduction

• Video:  Bus 174

 

Monday, September 6:  The Self in History and Cross-Culturally:  What is unique about the Western Self?

We examine some historical treatments of the origins of the Western notion of the self.  Its roots in fundamentally Christian frameworks.  The self in the Enlightenment and the utilitarian self.  Comparison to non-Western ideas of self.

• Reading:  SS, chapters 13-14 ("'God Loveth Adverbs'" and "Rationalized Christianity"), 16-20 ("The Providential Order," "The Culture of Modernity," "Fractured Horizons," "Radical Enlightenment," and "Nature as Source"); IC, chapter 2 ("Identity in History"); Louis Dumont, "A modified view of our origins: the Christian beginnings of modern individualism" (ERES)

• Recommended reading:  Francis Hsu, "The Self in Cross-Cultural Perspective" (ER); Agehananda Bharati, "The Self in Hindu Thought and Action" (ERES)

 

Monday, September 13:  The Self in History 2:  The Emergence of the Self in Modernity

We study the rise of the 'expressivist' self in modernity.  Self as artist.  Consequences for community and the social world.

• Reading:  SS, chapters 21 ("The Expressivist Turn"), 23-24 ("Visions of the Post-Romantic Age" and "Epiphanies of Modernism")

 

Monday, September 20:  Self and Development/Socialization:  Self and Other

We look at some foundational sociological efforts to understand the self, including those of George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, and symbolic interactionism.

• Reading: IC, chapter 1 ("The Problem of Identity"); CS, chapter 1 ("Self, Society, and Everyday Life")

• Recommended reading:  Marilyn Lester, "Self: Sociological Portraits" (ERES)

• Video:  Vagabond or The Gleaners and I

 

Monday, September 27:  Self and Development/Socialization 2:  Self, Ego, Id, Superego

We examine the efforts to define and understand the self in psychoanalysis.

• First Paper due in class today.

• Reading:  IC, chapter 4 ("Psychoanalysis and Identity"); CS, chapter 2 ("The Repression of Self")

 

Monday, October 4:  Self in Crisis: Identity and the Mass Society, and Self in Capitalist America

We discuss the problem that mass society presents to identity and the self, especially in the modern American context but also in broader philosophical terms.  Several key social elements of modern American identity (e.g., class, status) are examined.

• Reading: IC, chapters 3 ("Existence and Identity"), 5-8 ("Character and Identity," "Class and Identity," "Anomie and Identity," and "Identity in America")

• Recommended reading:  Karl Jaspers, "Limits of the Life-Order" (ERES)

 

Monday, October 11:  Self in Capitalist America 2

We examine the intriguing argument of Daniel Bell that the very processes of self unleashed by capitalist society will eventually lead to the weakening and disappearance of capitalism.

• Reading:  CCC, pp. 3-145 (Introduction, "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism," "The Disjunctions of Cultural Discourse," and "The Sensibility of the Sixties")

• Video:  Weather Underground or No Logo ("No Space:  New Branded World")

 

Monday, October 18:  The Sexual Self

We look at the ways in which the self is sexualized and gendered as cultural processes.

• Reading:  CS, chapter 4 ("Self, Sexuality, and Gender"); Shirley Tate, "Making Your Body Your Signature" (ERES)

 

Monday, November 1:  The Sexual Self 2

More treatment of sexualized selves.  Here we look at the ways in which discourses of the sexual can lead to repression and control.

• Reading:  Anthony Giddens, "Tribulations of the Self," "Everyday Experiments, Relationships, Sexuality," "Foucault on Sexuality," "Sexuality, Repression, Civilisation" (ERES)

• Video:  Creature

 

Monday, November 8:  Technologies of the Self:  The Embodied Self

The self as an embodied 'thing.'  Practices and technologies that affect and shape it.  Music is taken as an example in one of the readings.

• Second Paper due in class today.

• Reading:  CS, chapter 3 ("Technologies of the Self"); MEL, chapters 3-6 ("Music as a Technology of Self," "Music and the Body," "Music as a Device of Social Ordering," and "Music's Social Powers")

 

Monday, November 15:  Technologies of the Self 2:  The Embodied Self

We examine a recent effort to look at the various practices and technologies that go into making up the 'pugilistic self.'

• Reading:  BS, pp. 1-233 (Prologue, "The Street and the Ring," and "Fight Night at Studio 104")

 

Monday, November 22:  The Postmodern Self

We explore postmodernism as a theoretical effort to rethink the construction of the self.  How media and consumer society affect the self.  How computer technology and the Internet change the self.

• Reading:  CS, chapter 5 ("The Postmodern Self"); LS, introduction and chapters 1-4 ("Introduction:  Identity in the Age of the Internet," "A Tale of Two Aesthetics," "The Triumph of Tinkering," "Making a Pass at a Robot," and "Taking Things at Interface Value")

• Recommended reading:  Madan Sarap, "Baudrillard: Images and Identity in Consumer Society" and "Consumer Identity and Commodity Aesthetics" (ERES)

• Video:  A.I.

 

Monday, November 29:  The Postmodern Self 2

More on computer technology's effect on identity and the self.

• Reading:  LS, chapters 5-10 ("The Quality of Emergence," "Artificial Life as the New Frontier," "Aspects of the Self," "TinySex and Gender Trouble," "Virtuality and its Discontents," and "Identity Crisis")

• Recommended reading:  Zygmunt Bauman, "On the Postmodern Redeployment of Sex" (ERES)

 

Monday, December 6:  The Self and Reflexivity:  Social Auto-Analysis, or Writing the Self and Authenticity

We read a number of attempts at exploring one's own self.  How can we be sufficiently reflexive and 'culturological' in this process?

• Third Paper due in class today.

• Reading:  MH, foreword, pp. 3-146; Douglas Porpora, "I was always a religious kid" (ERES); Don Shamblin, "Reflections of a white racist" (ERES); BS, pp. 235-255 ("'Busy' Louie at the Golden Gloves")