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“In post-traditional contexts, we have no choice but to choose how to be and how to act (Giddens 1996: 28).”
Compare and assess how two of the following: a) emotions and their social regulation/performance; b) therapy culture; c) contemporary tribalism; d) individualization; e) globalization; f) communication; promote or impede the development of post-traditional identities. Is it correct to claim that contemporary identities are predominantly post-traditional?
Few would disagree with the idea that the experience of emotions is tightly interwoven with an individual’s sense of self. Indeed, the Australian sociologist Jack Barbalet has suggested that one can define emotions as the experiences of intense forms of involvement. Emotions exhibit a sense of the investment of the self in something or, especially, some other person. Emotions often manifest themselves in 11
bodily and physical forms, such as crying in relation to grief or smiling when happy. At the same time, emotions seem to be a type of experience that can be shared, even dependent on an individual’s relationships to others. Nonetheless, emotions are sometimes viewed with a certain amount of scepticism, seen as reflecting a lapse in rationality and the loss of self-control. A scientific culture may find emotions hard to verify, famous dramas play out the conflict between emotions and moral norms, and individuals can find that they are indifferent to things, situations and relationships that previously affected them deeply. The social experience of emotions has been a topic of considerable interest to sociologists for a long-time, though it was often discussed under other categories. More recently, the sociology of emotions has been consolidated as a distinctive field of research, generating innovative accounts of diverse realms of experience and the dynamics of social interaction. Do emotions tell us as much about society as they do about the self?
Course Pack Reading
Clarke, S. 2003 “Psychoanalytic Sociology and the Interpretation of Emotion”, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33: 2: 145-163
Barbalet, J. 2005 “Weeping and Transformations of Self”, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35: 2: 125-141
Week 11 The Reconstruction of Personality
For Giddens, the self has become experimental. The period of late-modernity requires the continuous reconstruction of identity. In this way, the principles of psychotherapy obtain a general importance and the experience of contingency compels agency. To the extent that these changes in the formation of identity are connected to dialogue and reflection, a process of democratizing society may be incipient in them. Yet, it is also possible, as Foucault suggested, that such a concern with personality extends surveillance to the soul. Rose develops this governmentality line of analysis and its questioning of liberal ideas of freedom. These alternative and, at the same time, interconnected perspectives occupy a pivotal position today in the sociological debates concerning the self, subjectivity and identity.
Course Pack Reading
Giddens, A. 1991 “The Contours of High Modernity” in Giddens, A. Modernity and Self-Identity Cambridge, Polity
Rose, N. 1989 “Obliged to be Free” in Rose, N. Governing the Soul London, Routledge
Week 12 Tribal Identity / Total Individuality
Do the recent discussion of the contemporary world do anything more than reiterate the early debates about the relationship of the individual and the collective? The analysis of the present seems to turn up basic alternatives, yet a closer inspection suggests a more complex interpenetration. Do we search for community? Look for ways to transcend our own self? Do we seek to find and express the specificity of our own individual identity through group membership? Is preserving individual freedom our highest value today?
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