Self, Society, and

Culture
WHAT IS THE SELF?
 Self is always unique and has its own
identity
 Self is self-contained and independent
 Self is unitary in the center of all
expiriences and thoughts that run
through a certain person
 THE SELF AND CULTURE

According to Mauss, every self has two faces:

 Moi- refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and

his basic identity; biological givenness, this person’s basic
identity.
 Personne- is composed of the social concepts of what It
means to be who he is. It means to live in a particular
institution, a particular family, a particular religion, a
particular nationality, and how to behave given the
expectation and influences from others.
THE SELF AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL WORLD

 How do children grow up and become social beings

 How can a boy turn out to be just like an ape
 How do twins coming out from the same mother turn out
to be terribly different when given up for adoption

Recent studies, however , indicate that men and women in their

growth and development engage actively in shaping of the self

‘Language as both a publicity shared and privately utilized symbol system is

the site where the individual and the social make and remake each other” –
Schwartz, White, and Lutz 1993
Mead and Vygotsky

 Human persons develop with the use of language

acquisition and interaction with others. The way
that we process information is normally a form of
an internal dialogues
 Cognitive and Emotional Development of a child is
always a mimicry of how it is done in the social
world, in the external reality where he is in
Self in Families
 The kind of family that we are born in and the resources
available to us (Human, Spiritual, Economic) will certainly
affect us and the kind of development that we will have as we
go through life
 Learning therefore is critical in our capacity to actualize our
potential of becoming humans. In trying to achieve the goal of
becoming a fully ralized human , a child enters a system of
relationships, most important of which is the family
 Without a family, biologically and sociologically, a person may
not even survive or become a person
Gender and Self

 Gender is one of those loci of self that is subject to alteration,

change, and development
 People fought hard for the right to express validate, and assert their
gender expressions
 Society forces a particular identity unto us depending on our sex
and/or gender
 The sense of self that is being taught makes sure that an individual
fits in a particular environment. This is dangerous and detrimental in
the goal of truly truly finding one’s self, self-determination, and
growth of the self.
 Gender has to personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by
culture and society
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!

PLS SUBSCRIBE TO MY CHANNEL