Self, Identity, and Social Institutions

Transcription

1 Self, Identity, and Social Institutions

2 Other books by Neil MacKinnon: Symbolic Interactionism as Affect Control. Albany: State University of New York Press, David Heise: Causal Analysis. New York: Wiley, Understanding Events: Affect and the Construction of Social Action. New York: Cambridge University Press, Expressive Order: Confirming Sentiments in Social Actions. New York: Springer, Surveying Cultures: Discovering Shared Conceptions and Sentiments. New York: Wiley, 2010.

3 Self, Identity, and Social Institutions Neil J. MacKinnon and David R. Heise

4 SELF, IDENTITY, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Copyright Neil J. MacKinnon and David R. Heise, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data MacKinnon, Neil Joseph, 1944 Self, identity, and social institutions / Neil J. MacKinnon, David R. Heise. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Self. 2. Identity (Philosophical concept) 3. Social institutions. 4. Social psychology Philosophy. 5. Affect (Psychology) 6. Social role. I. Heise, David R. II. Title. BF697.M dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April

5 CONTENTS List of Figures Preface vii ix One Introduction 1 Two Cultural Theories of People 19 Three Identities in Standard English 49 Four Language and Social Institutions 73 Five The Cultural Self 95 Six The Self s Identities 131 Seven Theories of Identities and Selves 163 Eight Theories of Norms and Institutions 199 Nine Social Reality and Human Subjectivity 219 Notes 235 References 241 Author Index 253 Subject Index 257

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7 FIGURES 1.1 Schematic Diagram of Institutions, Roles, and Selves, Interrelated through Semiotic and Behavioral Functioning A Fragment of an Identity Taxonomy Set-Subset Representation of a Fragment of an Identity Taxonomy Ten Most Augmented Kinds of Person in English Varieties of Identities in English Schematic Diagram of Individuals within a Cultural Theory of People Summary of Self-Processes. Block Arrows can be Read as contributes to ; Line Arrows Can Be Read as Generates A Bipolar Graphic Rating Scale for Measuring the Activity Dimension of Sentiments Mean Self Ratings on Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A) by Several Types of Respondents A Model of Social Psychological Processes Explained by Affect Control Theory 201

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9 PREFACE The theory of self presented in this book proposes that the self is manifested cybernetically in the selection and enactment of identities within institutional constraints. Although there is continuity with previous work in ACT (affect control theory) (Heise 1979, 2006; MacKinnon 1994; Smith-Lovin and Heise 1988), this new theory of self is also distinct from ACT. That is, ACT is a theory about identities and identityprocesses (MacKinnon 1994), not a theory about self and self-processes. According to ACT, people confirm identities by selecting and enacting role-appropriate actions. According to the new theory of self presented in this book, people confirm their selves by selecting and enacting identities. This is the motivational principle of affect control applied to self-actualization as opposed to identity-confirmation. Although this new theory of self is articulated at a higher level of analysis and cybernetic control than ACT, it does not displace ACT. As a theory about identities and motivated action, ACT remains a systematic, integrated, and complete theory at its own level of analysis. Yet, the theory of self proposed in this book grew out of work in ACT, and was anticipated some years ago by one of the authors of this book (MacKinnon 1994, pp ), albeit at a more intuitive level than presented here and employing a different terminology: The idea that people act to confirm cognitively and affectively salient identities is consistent with the notion of the self as a unified object in an individual s phenomenal field. A person can contemplate self and its constituent identities simultaneously. At times, he or she may consider the consequences for self-esteem of claiming and validating one or another identity through identityconfirming action. More often than not, a person preconsciously and automatically invokes identities, guided by affect control

10 x Preface processes monitoring the situation with respect to potential consequences for overall self-esteem and constrained by the current definition of the situation and the overall institutional context of the social act. Looming in the background of the phenomenal field in which the rehearsal of action takes place can be found the unified self of the individual. Its cognitive meaning corresponds to a person s biographical or global self-image, its affective meaning to his or her customary level of self-esteem, and its conative meaning to self-desires and aspirations. Unless an individual valued or cathected self as an integrated object in this phenomenal field, there would be little motivation to claim or validate particular identities. (1994, p. 62) We began expanding these nascent insights in A first task was to develop better knowledge about identities because so little was known about their numbers and types, despite myriad publications on identity theory. So we conducted the census of contemporary identities that is reported in this book. Our identity census led to a realization that identities are linked in systematic ways within a culture, so much so that the body of interconnected identities can be construed as a cultural theory of people an idea that is elaborated in this book. Available knowledge about major social institutions turned out to be inadequate for our purposes, in lacking principled methods for determining what major institutions exist in a society, and what identities or roles are associated with each institution. We parlayed insights from our discussion of cultural theories of people into systematic procedures for identifying institutions and their contents, and we report results from provisional analyses in this book. Though the relation between identities and self that MacKinnon (1994) postulated implicitly was cybernetic, we made the cybernetic model explicit in this book, and linked the model to our deepened conceptions of identities and institutions. Finally, we decided that this book required reviews of existing literature on self, identities, and social institutions, both to acknowledge our intellectual debts, and to delineate where and how we have departed from past formulations. Our book has benefited from University of Guelph Professor Stanley Barrett s review of chapter one, from his discussions with MacKinnon regarding counter-enlightenment (postmodernism), and from the elucidation of contemporary anthropology in his 2002 book. We also benefited from many useful suggestions received from the participants in a seminar offered by Heise at Indiana University in the fall of 2006, which used a draft of the book manuscript as a text. The seminar

11 Preface xi participants Sibyl Bedford, Ivan Furre, Inna Kouper, Abigail Sewell, Tanja Vuckovic, and Tabi White read and critiqued an early draft of this book. Professor Herman Smith, University of Missouri St. Louis, reviewed an early version of the book and made important suggestions. Attendees of the Networks and Complex Systems Colloquium, March 27, 2006, organized by Professor Katy Börner, Indiana University, provided useful comments and criticisms in response to Heise s presentation titled Delineating Social Institutions from Semantic Networks of Role-Identities. Additional useful feedback was obtained at Heise s similar presentation in the Sociology Department Colloquium, Duke University, April 6, The ideas were presented again in Indiana University s Computational Linguistics Colloquium, February 6, 2009, a series organized by Markus Dickinson, and participants offered helpful suggestions, especially regarding future lexicographic research on institutions. We gratefully acknowledge multiple grants to Neil MacKinnon from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada that supported work in affect control theory and development of ideas presented in this book.