Anthony Giddens: Modernity and Self-Identity

Anthony Giddens: Modernity and Self-Identity

Introduction

Modernity / changes our social life and our in-world experiences.
Self and society / mechanisms of self-idenity are shaped and shape the institutions of modernity.
Modern social life / time and space reorganisation + expansion of disembedding mechanisms.
Doubt and reflexivity / radical doubt – all knowledge open to revision. As with the self.
Uncertainty, multiple choice, trust, risk
Globalisation and media / Distant happenings with influence on local life. The significance of mediated experiences.
Reflexive self-identity / Lifestyle-choices and biographical narratives.
Transformation of intimacy / “pure relationships” – exist for the mere value of the reltionship. Trust and mutual disclosure and commitment.
Personal meaninglessness / a fundamental psychic problem. Due to lack of moral resources? A life on one’s own? Authenticity as a morally undersized process.

1. The Contours of High Modernity

The self in modernity / The reflexive struggles of life, which shape our biographical narratives.

MODERNITY: SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Dimesions /

• Industrialisation
• Capitalism

The rise of organisation / Size, bureaucratic character, concentrated reflexive monitoring.
Dynamic modern life /

1. Separation of time and space, no longer connected through the situatedness of place
2. The disembedding of social institutions. “the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts and their rearticulation across indefinite tracts of time-space” (18).
   Symbolic tokens: media of exchange
   Expert systems: modes of technical knowledge
   Depends on trust.
3. Modernity’s instrinsic reflexivity. The regularised use of knowledge about circumstances of social life as a constitutive element in its organisation and transformation.

THE LOCAL, THE GLOBAL AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE
Globalisation / inherent in the tendencies of modernity. Presence/absence; social events and relations at distance with local contextualities. The dialectic of local and global.

THE MEDIATION OF EXPERIENCE

Language / Prime mediator of experiences, a time-machine so to speak. Elevates experiences beyond immediacy.
Innis and McLuhan / the social implicatins of media, especially in relation to modernity. Modernity is inseparable from its media.
Electronic media / high modernity. But should not be understood as a phase replacing pint.
Basic feature of mediated experiences /

1. Collage effect: the juxtapostioning of stories: the newspaper page and the television programme guide.
2. The intrusion of distant events into everyday consciousness.

HIGH MODERNITY AND ITS EXISTENTIAL PARAMETERS

Characterised by a widespread scepticism about providential reason + acknowledgning the risk or science and ttechnology. The abstract systems of modernity induce acceptance of risk.
Ulrich Beck / Risk society.
Indefinite potentials for action / with attendant risks. “as if” and selecting between “possible worlds”.

WHY MODERNITY AND PERSONAL IDENTITY?

The dialectic of local and global / > Transformations in self-identity and globalisation.
The reflexive self / The self as a reflexive project.

2. The Self: Ontological Security and Existential Anxiety

ONTOLOGICAL SECURITY AND TRUST

The things we take for granted / Almost infinite range of possibilities open for the individual. Anxiety and existential issues are kept at bay – taken for granted, tacit acceptence of the world and self. The chaos that threatens the ordinariness of everyday life.
What’s creates our sense of faith and trust / Our sense of ontological security.
Basic trust: connected to the interpersonal organisation of time and space. Winnicot: the development of the infant and its reality.
Habits and routines / “in defense” of the threatening anxieties.
Creativity / the capability to act/think innovatively in relation to pre-established modes of activity, faith in the unknown future and the unpredictability of the world.

ANXIETY AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION

Wittgenstein / The universally experienced world of external reality – not directly reflected in the meaningful components of the conventions in terms of which actors organise their behaviour.
To know the meaning of words / We come to know the reality of the world and of signs as a result of the differences formed in daily practice – not only in a structuralist sense, but as differences as met with in daily experience.
Mediated experience / Important to learn about the external reality, about what is absent from individual life.
Anxiety vs. fear / Fear is a response to a specific threat, has a definite object. Anxiety however, disregards the object.

EXISTENTIAL QUESTION

Basic parameters of human life – answered by everyone who ‘goes on’ in the contexts of social activity.
Kierkegaard on axiety / Comes with human liberty, freedom derived from an ontological understanding of external reality and personal identity. Anxiety as the possibility of freedom.
1. to be / to have ontological awareness. The struggle of being against non-being.
Pre-modern context: tradition as a fundament for ontological framworks.
2. external world – human life / We live in circumstances of existential contradiction.
Heidegger: Dasein is a being who lives and dies, but also who is aware of te horizon of its own mortality.
3. the existence of other people / Thoroughly explored in early phenomenology. Husserl: interpersonal knowledge based on Cartesia rationalism. Inferences from our own feelings and experiences are the only way to be aware of other peoples’ feelings and experiences. The transcendental philosophy of the ego against the threats of solipsism.
Language / Wittgenstein: avoids the problem of transcendentalism and solipsism. Language is the means to access both self-consciousness and awareness of others. “Discovering the other” is of key importance in the initial development of self-awareness.
4. Self-identity / Presumes reflexive awareness – what the individual is conscious of, has to be routinely created and sustained in reflexive activities of the individual.
I/me/you / a linguistic differentiation. An internal relation to language, not connecting the unsocialised part of the individual (the I) to the ‘social self’.
Self-identity as the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography.
The individuals biography / keeping a particular narrative going. Integrate events of the external world in the story about the self.

BODY AND SELF

The body / Reality is grasped hrough day-to-day praxis – the body is experienced as a practical mode of coping with external situations.
Wittgenstein, Goffman, Garfinkel / Wittgenstein raised themes on a philosophical level, Goffman and Garfinkel explored these on an empirical level. Expectations of control over bodily and facial expressions.
Foucault: body and power / the body in relation to mechanisms of power. Disciplinary power in circumstances of modernity. Giddens however, does not find Foucault’s equation of body and agency sufficient. “Bodily discipline is intrinsic to the component social agent” – transcultural, not specifically connected with modernity.
Self-identity vs. performance / Division between self-identity and the performances one put on in social contexts.
False self / when the discrepancy between performance and the individual’s biographical narrative is too radical. Die
Disembodiment / unimplicated in bodily desire - allows the individual to witness the activities of her body with natural detachment. Seems close to depersonalisation disorders by Gidden’s description. An attempt to transcend dangers and be safe.

MOTIVATION

Giddens explores the self in relation to motivation, reason, shame, guilt, pride and the ideal self. Interesting, but not really relevant for me?

3. The Trajectory of the Self

SELF-IDENTITY, HISTORY, MODERNITY

Individuality as a modern concept / with the differentiation of the division of labour – the separate individual a focus of attention (parallels discussions of the traditional self).
Giddens however, prefers to break modern individuality into finer detail, and argues that individuality has in fact been valued in all cultures. Derived from Rainwater’s portrayal of therapy.
1. The self as a reflexive project / for which the indvidual is responsible. Our reconstructive endavours.
2. The self as a trajectory of development from past to future / The self appropriates the past by sifting through it in the light of what is anticipated in the future. Creating a coherent self – connects the various phases of the lifespan. Narrating a biography.
3. Continuous and all-pervasive reflexivity / Constant self-interrogations of what is happening
4. The self-identity presumes a narrative / a narrative of the self is made explicit. Sustaining an integrated sense of self.
5. Self-actualisation implies the control of time / The primacy of personal time: zones of personal time with only remote connections with external temporal orders.
6. The reflexivity of the self extends to the body / the body is part of an action system – and not merely a passive object.
7. Self-actualisation: between opportunity and risk / Multiplicity of opportunities for self-development. Potential ways of being and acting. The risk that things can get worse than were before.
8. Authenticity / The moral thread of self-actualisation. “Being true to oneself” above all.
9. The Life course as a series of passages / But these are not institutionalised or accompanied by formalised rites.
10. Internally referential development of self

LIFESTYLES AND LIFE PLANS

Fundamentally about constructing lifestyles / beyond mere consumerism. Implies choice within a plurality of possible options. Clearly, all choices are not open to everyone.
A lifestyle involves a cluster of habits and orientations.
Plurality of choices <-- /

1. living in post-traditional order
2. the pluralisation of life-worlds
3. the existential impact of the contextual nature of warranted beliefs under conditions of modernity
4. the prevalence of mediated experiences. Meyrowitz medium-theoretical analyses.

Strategic life-planning / the substantial content of the reflexively organised trajectory of the self. Life plan calenders. Presupposes organising time: preparing for the future – interpreting the past.
Clearly lifestyle choices are not the same for everyone. But the institutional components of modernity are still a part of everyones lives.
Transformation of intimacy / The modern life conception of friends. Plurality of choice – partners are chosen from a diversity of possibilities.
The pure relationship / when ties are more or less freely chosen.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE PURE RELATIONSHIP

The ideal typical elements of pure relationships
1. Free-floating relationships / not anchored in external conditions of social or economic life. Both for marriages and for friendship relationships. They are kept alive for the sake of the social reward/emotional satisfaction they bring to life.
2. Pure / relationships are sought for what the relationship can bring to the parners.
3. Reflexive organised / in an open fashion, on a continous basis. Connects closely to the reflexive self.
4. Commitment / replaces the external anchors of relationships in pre-modern situations. A decision to be commited. Pure relationships can only exists with reciprocity.
5. Intimacy / the heart of modern forms of friendships and sexual relationships. The expectation of intimacy provides the closest links between the reflexive project of the self and the pure relationship. Requires commitment to the relationship.
6. Trust / Mutual trust. Closely related to intimacy. An individual must be trusting and trustworthy. Authenticity. Communication
7. Self-identity / negotiated through linked processes of self-exploration and the development of intimacy with the other. Help create ‘shared histories’.
Dyadic pure relationships, but people are involved in several forms of intereconnected relationships, forming milieux of intimacy.
Body / becomes socialised and drawn into the reflexive organisation of social life.

THE BODY AND SELF-ACTUALISATION

More than the physical entity / an action system, mode of praxis. Its immersion in the interactions of day-to-day life is an essential part of sustaining a coherent sense of self-identity.
Aspects / Appearance
Demeanour
Sensuality
Regimes to which bodies are subject.
Demeanour / Closely connected to Goffman’s discussion of performance. Dependent on context – maintaining appropriate behaviour.
Has to be integrated into the narrative of the person.

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