Download Discuss major theories regarding the nature of personal and social

Discuss major theories regarding the nature of personal
and social identity.
Richard Jenkins said that ‘Without social identity, there is in fact, no
Society’. Sociologists see identity as related to the society in which
people live. They believe that our identity is formed against a social
background, which tries to make social interaction meaningful,
understandable and organised by categorising people in order of the
group they belong to. Because we are categorised in such a way, we
become recognisable as people such as mothers, daughters, students etc.
The nature of identity is seen as a social phenomenon and a key factor of
our social lives because our identities are also based on where we work,
live and the community etc. The concept of identity relates an
understanding of what and who we are and also what we and other
people believe us to be.
In order for us to develop this sense of identity we need to have a sense
of self- awareness and this can be increased through socialisation where
we can learn the morals of social interaction on the basis of various
cultural identities.
Our identity can also be seen as a social construct because once we have
required a certain identity we acquire and display social characteristics.
When looking as to how people obtain their identities the
phenomenological perspective believes that we attach a meaning to
reality and that we make sense of our experiences and by doing so we
search for ‘the self’ and once we have found this we are able to construct
our own meaningful identity.
The structuralist perspective places great emphasis on socialisation as the
key to social identity being constructed. It’s sees socialisation as a great
influence in terms of the way people are labelled and categorised into
certain structures of cultural identities.
For symbolic interactionists, such as Cooley who developed the ‘lookingglass self theory’, he stated that once an individual had established his
own self-awareness, they would then use the behaviours of others
towards them as a ‘mirror’ in which is a reflection of the image the
individual is and this creates their identity. This theory is similar to that of
the self fulfilling prophecy idea in that if you are labelled as something you
then ‘live up’ to that label.
George Herbert Mead another interactionist, argued that the perceptions
and behaviour we produce is influenced by the social groups in which we
belong and that our identity (our self) is only meaningful to ourselves
because we interact differently in each social group we are a member of.
Therefore, what one person perceives us to be, another may not. For
example, if I am a daughter my mother will most likely see me as
innocent and precious where as if I am a teacher my pupils should
hopefully see me as a person of authority and in charge and not innocent
and precious. As a result of this our self-image only really applies to
ourselves as we have many different images that we portray in society
but it’s important to note that without the existence of social groups ‘the
self’ would not develop because we would probably only have one
identity.
Goffman again holds the symbolic Interaction view; he saw social
encounters and interactions between people in society in theatrical terms
and uses a theatrical metaphor to represent socialisation. He viewed the
‘world as a stage’ with individuals performing and acting for their
audiences in everyday life in that each of our social groups we have a ‘role’
to follow such as mother, teacher, students etc. and we try to create a
different impression for each of them. He believed that people were like
actors in that each of us has a ‘backstage’ where our performances our
firstly prepared and the front stage is what people actually see. Because
most of the time our backstage is private and we don’t want people to see
what we’re actually thinking in comparison to what we say. This is because
when we interact with people we want them to arrive at a certain
understanding of our actions and this can be done by language, gestures
and dress etc. to ensure we are able to achieve the desired understanding
so that we ourselves are not misunderstood by others and labelled
incorrectly because of it.
Marxists believe that social class is the key factor in social identity and
self-image, because class in society is seen as a social category, which
indicates our individual social position and defines our social place in
society and this then gives us our identity.
The biological perspective would disagree with the structuralists in that
our identity comes from experience, as they believe that it’s innate, in
that the characteristics that we are born with make up our identity. For
example our gender is seen as a significant source of identity due to the
social characteristics we place on children of different genders. Gender
identity circles around the view that we have things in common with
others such as, people of the same gender have the same biology and
have similar ways of perceiving and behaving within the social world. For
example, men are seen as active, strengthful and aggressive where as
women are seen as weak and feeble.
Age also plays a major part in shaping our identity. In most societies there
tends to be four age groupings: Childhood, youth, adulthood and old age.
Each of these g roups is able to give their members a sense of identity as
they belong to a specific grouping wit it’s own norms and values and
forms of behaviour. We also develop roles and social characteristics with
these groups and in general, we are encouraged to identify ourselves
with the different kinds of behaviour that our based on our biological
age and are then labelled accordingly such as youths and old age
pensioners.
Our nationality makes up part of identity because it means we are a
member of another group possibly with our own language, social
characteristics and set of behaviours and so we are given a national
identity such as ‘the welsh’ and again, labelled accordingly.
Research has also shown that genetics could play a part in the building of
our identity, for example in 1975, Wilson and sociobiologists argued that
human beings are a product of natural selection because are traits and
characteristics which will increase our survival chances will be passed on
to future generations. Sociobiologists see human behaviour as being
controlled by basic human drives such as the drive to survive and
reproduce and we live our lives around these drives and act accordingly,
for example when a women is looking for mate she looks for a man with
strength and intelligence etc. to increase the chance of her child surviving
because she can only reproduce so many times. Where as a man will go
about mating with as many women as possible in the hope of producing
plenty of offspring with good traits such as intelligence and strength etc.
Although, most geneticists argue that are genes only provide the blueprint
for a person’s potential, not who and what we are so if we are born with
high intelligence it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll use it. Geneticists
believe the environment has a lot to do with shaping our identity.
The Psychoanalytic perspective believes that our identities change and
develop through time. Freud came up with five psychosexual stages that
we pass through from birth to young adulthood in which, we all pass and
supposedly shape the nature of personality from it. The stages include the
oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. Freud said that when we pass through
each of these stages if we receive to much pleasure/gratification during a
stage this can cause harmful results as we will have left too much ‘psychic
energy’ behind and so there will be less available for full adult
development and so our adult personality (which helps shape our identity)
will then reflect the stage at which we have become fixated on and can
lead to an immature personality, unusual and continual patterns of
behaviour and sometimes, a psychological disorder, if this is the case each
of these will contribute to the way we are identified by society.
Freud also came up with the idea that the personality has three parts too
it: the id, the ego and the super ego, with the id being the pleasure
principle where we say all our gratification, where as the ego is the
rational part which has norm’s, values and morals which will have come
from society, it then tries to rationalise with the id to stop it receiving too
much pleasure from society because the pleasures may deviate from the
norms and values of that society where as the super ego tends to balance
out between the two with it having a little bit of pleasure and a little
rational thinking.
This then makes up different people’s personalities and contributes to the
way they behave and so can give them certain identities because of the
behaviours they display and are again, labelled accordingly.
Marxists differ to the most of the perspectives already put forward in that
they believe that social class is the key feature in social identity and selfimage. Because class in society is a social category, which indicates our
individual social position and defines our social place in society and this
then helps to shape our identity.
Earlier view held in the 17th and 18th century are similar to the Marxists
perspective in that they believed that our identity is fixed and remains the
same throughout our life and could not be affected by social situations, as
it would seem that back then that our status gave us our identity. For
example, in pre-industrial societies the number of statuses a person had
was very small compared to nowadays where we have may different
statuses within our own societies and they are open to change and we
are able to achieve more statuses throughout our lives where in the past
your status was fixed at birth and largely unchangeable.
Post modernists also agree with this that our identities are no longer
fixed and now continually changing and we are free and able to choose
our own identities and are able to pick the social groups we interact
with.
From each of the perspectives we have considered most of them are in
agreement with the belief that our identities are socially constructed and
they reject the view that it’s innate (apart from the biological), with the
structuralist perspective placing great emphasis on socialisation as the key
to creating a social identity. Most of them see socialisation as a great
influence in terms of the way people are labelled and categorised into
certain structures of cultural identities.
Each of the perspectives has it’s own view on how our identity is created
and maybe because there are so many different explanations for it, then
maybe it is created it lots of different ways from different people. Overall,
as human and social beings we need to feel we belong to various groups
and this is significant as it means we receive sense of identity from each
of these groups we are members of and also the social interaction we
receive from these groups allows us to feel a sense of belonging and so
through this we are able to identify our identities and a sense of purpose
in life.
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