785 WK9 Assgn

1
Self and Social Change

The story of social change in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is a complex
and contested one. It is worth stating at the outset that attempting to separate out social changes
is an analytic process. As soon as we pull them apart they snap back into a complex inter-
related whole. ‘Social change is both a specific and a multifaceted phenomenon’ states one
commentator (Jordan, 2002: 300). It might be fruitful to consider the elements of social change
described below in a way similar to Donna Haraway (1997). Although she categorizes change
slightly differently, the main areas are described as multiple ‘horns’ of a ‘wormhole’.
Haraway’s language is characteristically vivid here; the metaphor of a wormhole is taken to
indicate how aspects of each area of social change appear and disappear in the fabric of one
another (Jordan, 2002: 292). Thus it is impossible to conceive of social change in its totality,
but inaccurate to consider it as made up of discreet and compatible units.
Take one example of a relatively mundane development in social communication, video

conferencing, which is still an emerging technology at the time of writing. We might want to
place this in a social change category of ‘communication’. However, its central function might
yet be in transforming the workplace, making travel less necessary and home-based
employment more of a possibility. So we are tempted to put it in the ‘work’ category.
However, the fact that people can communicate in the same physical ‘space’ whilst being in
different spaces and time zones may suggest a profound change in our experience of
time/space. So maybe video conferencing should go in a ‘time/space’ category? The same
applies to many examples. Thus it is worth remembering that what are discussed as separate
social changes and categories of social change relate closely to each other and co-exist in
complex ways.
Despite complexities and controversies, social transformations have repeatedly been

flagged up using the following terms and ideas to indicate (or contest) the general shift to post-
traditional society: globalization, technology, the body, reflexivity, time and space,
homogenization, transnational corporations, individualization, polarization and gender.

Globalization

There has been a ‘globalisation’ of economic, social and political relationships which have undermined the coherence,
wholeness and unity of individual societies.

(John Urry, 1989: 97)

The globe as an organizing principle entered the popular imagination in the early 1960s with

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Mcluhan’s vivid portrayal of a ‘global village’ (McLuhan, 1964). Globalization has since
become the chosen term of many social theorists to capture the multiple, dialectical dynamics
and outcomes of recent social change. At its most basic, globalization refers to ‘the multiplicity
of linkages and interconnections that transcend the nation-state (and by implication the
societies) which make up the modern world system’ (McGrew, 1992: 65). The movement of
people, finance, ideas, goods, pollution, services and so on beyond the boundaries of the
nation-state has supposedly exposed the inherent fragility of those boundaries, creating
frenetic, voluminous networks of interdependency that criss-cross the globe. Many of the
changes we are about to discuss could easily be argued to move in the explanatory orbit of
globalization. The term has been incorporated into accounts of modernism and post-
modernism, both optimistic (creative hybridity, global dialogue) and pessimistic
(Americanism, imperialism), and is commonly argued to have political, cultural, economic and
personal dimensions (Albrow, 1996; Giddens, 1999; Held, 1995; Robertson, 1992).
Why then, is this book not called ‘Self and Globalization’? Globalization may often be a

handy and illustrative heuristic for a multitude of interrelated changes. Furthermore, most, if
not all, of the accounts summarized in subsequent chapters accept globalizing tendencies as the
implicit markers of change which underpin accounts of transformations in self-identity.
However, it is one of those terms where their meaning becomes assumed through popular
assimilation, taken-for-granted to the point where it suggests and supports any number of
claims. There is a danger of becoming blinded by the apparent descriptive power of
‘globalization’ as a theory of everything. Many have argued that what we call globalization is
in fact the continuation of base structures of capitalism or the power of nation-states (Gilpin,
1987; Golding, 2000; Jamieson, 1991). It can also obscure the localized, differentiated and
divisive ways in which multiple changes combine and are experienced. Thus the term ‘social
change’ is preferred. That said it is informative to critically consider many of the following
changes in relation to a broad process of globalization.

Technological change

If there were no railway to overcome distances, my child would never have left his home town and I should not need the
telephone in order to hear his voice.

(Sigmund Freud, 2002 [1930]: 26)

Developments in communication technology are seen to be a key element in radical social
upheaval, and are central to most assertions of the reality of globalization. The development of
the printing press, maritime technology allowing well-tread shipping routes and the
development of the mechanical clock, are amongst the innovations often claimed to be
neglected technologies of communication and information in earlier historical periods. Much
later, from the 1850s in the West, the telegraph network expanded rapidly to cover thousands of
miles and carry millions of messages, many of them across the Atlantic between the United
States and Europe, heralding an oft-forgotten era of ‘globalization’ (Mackay, 2002; Standage,
1990; Thrift, 1990). The steam powered rail network transformed transportation and with it
our sense of distance in the same era.

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As modernity developed, particularly with the expansion of industrialization and capitalism,
techniques of production were revolutionized, bringing enormous interlocking changes to the
nature of work, communication, public administration, surveillance, domestic life and
transportation. The early- to mid-twentieth century saw rapid growth in the use of
communication and information technology alongside production techniques, ushering in an era
of mass-production and consumption. Key products have included the car and other motor
transport, the telephone, the proliferation of radio and television reception and usage
amounting to ‘mass communication’ (Thompson, 1995). More recent ‘high-tech’ developments
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, though by no means accessible to all,
include an increase in home computer ownership, internet and email, mass air travel, expanded
use of mobile phones and portable computers (Gergen, 1991), bio-technological innovation
affecting numerous aspects of life from appearance, physical and mental health and
reproduction, to advanced surveillance, security and global positioning technologies. An
effective means of producing and distributing goods, and of informing a mass audience of their
availability, desirability and necessity are all argued to be vital components leading to a
radicalization of social change currently showing no signs of flagging. There is much common
ground in acknowledging the actuality of these developments, but significant differences in
interpreting their social impact. Arguments abound, for example, about the extent to which
technological change overcomes or maintains social inequalities, and critics of technological
determinism have made a strong case for considering technology as embedded in social,
cultural and political changes rather than simply driving them (e.g. Pile, 2002). Relatedly, the
extent to which technologies are utilized as forces of subjection and/or reflexive self-
production informs arguments made in all subsequent chapters.

The body

Technological change is not just something which happens ‘out there’. Developments in
technology have been central to shifts in our understanding of what it is to be human, and
particularly corporeality, and the boundaries between body, nature and environment. Few
would disagree that changes in technology reach into and transform our understanding of the
body. In recent years, for example, body-building and fitness technologies have been
developed parallel to increases in gym membership and equipment ownership. Such socio-
technological developments have been argued to have a profound impact on embodied
experience in early twenty-first century cultures (Dutton, 1995). The social proliferation of
plastic surgery is another example of the ways in which the body has been opened up
(sometimes literally) to technological change, transforming our notion of the body, and the
boundaries between natural and artificial, human and non-human.
More generally, the body has taken a more central role in social theory after a history of

neglect stemming back to an entrenched, masculinist, mind-body dualism in which the body
tended to be viewed as the inferior, encumbering partner (Burkitt, 1991). A rejection of
dualism and more ‘embodied’ accounts of human activity have led to an interest in the ‘social
body’ (Crossley, 2001; Turner, 1984; Schilling, 1993): how the body is regulated, inscribed,

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empowered, produced by, and productive of social convention (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977; Butler,
1990; Foucault, 1979; Elias, 1978), particularly in relation to the intersections between
technology, media, gender identity and embodiment (Haraway, 1997; Henwood et al., 2001;
Kirkup et al., 2000; Zylinska, 2002). Theorizing the relationship between change and the body
is a challenging and contested field of social theory which takes us well beyond a narrow
focus on technology. Although there is not the scope in this book to encompass anything like the
range of arguments in this field, theorizations of the body will be relevant to the discussions in
the chapters that follow.

Time-space relations

Alongside the changes already outlined, it is commonly claimed that there is also a
reconfiguration of two of the most fundamental dimensions of human existence: time and space
(e.g. Castells, 1999; Giddens, 1991; Haraway, 1997; Harvey, 1989; Thompson, 1995). The
way this reconfiguration is expressed varies. Giddens argues that social relations begin to
transcend the contexts of time and space which were previously bound to locale, for example,
whilst Harvey claims that ‘we have been experiencing…an intense phase of time-space
compression’ (Harvey, 1989: 284; emphasis added). Despite their differences, both authors
see changes in the time-space relationship allowing for a ‘complex co-ordination’ of social
relations ‘across large tracts of time-space’ (Giddens, 1990: 19). Contexts for action may no
longer be defined by a sense of time and space which is inseparable from the physicalities of
that context. Physical presence, for example, becomes an unnecessary element in social
interaction:

The advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between ‘absent’ others,
locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction. In conditions of modernity place becomes
increasingly phantasmagoric: that is to say, locales are thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social influences
quite distant from them. (1990: 19)

Social interaction ordered by localized, relatively self-contained structures of time, space and
place, is now potentially disrupted. Thus time-space distanciation, to use Giddens’s term,
further breaks the hold of tradition over social relations and the formation of identity. It is the
foundation for ‘the articulation of social relations across wide spans of time-space’ (Giddens,
1991: 20). In this sense it is the essential cause and consequence of the other dynamics which
propel modern society into a post-traditional era. The reconfiguration of time and space is
central to many portrayals of social change and their impact upon subjectivity, whether
couched in the terminology of psychosocial fragmentation, post-modernism or social
regulation, and is a central tenet in the extended reflexivity thesis, discussed in chapter three.

Homogenization, difference and hybridity

The notion of globalization conveys what appear to be contradictory images of homogeneity,
difference and hybridity. Homogenization is sometimes claimed to be an outcome of the

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dissolution of tradition, developments in communication and the continuation of capitalist
relations. The ‘timeless time…and the space of flows’ (Castells, 1999: 405) opened up by
such changes encourages dialogue that results in an increased sameness:

The living conditions of various nations, classes and individuals are becoming increasingly similar. In the past, different
continents, cultures, ranks, trades and professions inhabited different worlds, but now they more and more live in one
world. People today hear similar things, see similar things, travel back and forth between similar places for the daily grind.
(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 174)

Other ‘big’ theorists, such as Bauman, also appeal to sameness as a potential form of universal
humanism with a global reach, though are cautiously optimistic at best that it will be realized:

for the first time in human history everybody’s self-interest and ethical principles of mutual respect and care point in the
same direction and demand the same strategy. From a curse, globalization may yet turn into a blessing: ‘humanity’ never
had a better chance. (Bauman, 2004: 88)

A different but similarly positive line of argument claims that out of a basic liberal uniformity,
such as the free-exchange of information allowed by the internet, new and creative forms of
difference and distinction can readily emerge (Wiley, 1999; Lupton, 2000). Building on
proliferating communication and information structures, increased contact with others leads us
to a kind of constant cultural summit, where differences are acknowledged, explored, and
melded into innovative hybrids. Despite the apparent contrast, hopes for the increased
recognition of difference rest upon similar ideals of acceptance, open communication and
flexibility to the more optimistic theories of homogeneity. Such ideas are directly challenged
by accounts of psychosocial fragmentation (chapter two) and cultural narcissism (chapter five),
which envisage the dissolution of tradition as a disintegration of self, ripe for colonization by
the forces of capital and state. Such forces, it is argued, if not involved in more explicitly
divisive practices, appropriate humanism, multiculturalism and the ‘acceptance of difference’
as individualized commodities, further reinforcing a sense of alienation. Foucaultian analyses,
discussed in chapter four, take a similarly critical approach, deconstructing what are claimed
to be the fallacies of neo-liberal individualization, which rest on the optimistic proclamations
of globalization. Such analyses are wary of arguing that a ‘true’ or core selfhood is at stake
however. The extended reflexivity thesis (chapter three), on the other hand, offers qualified
support for the psychological benefits inherent in the inter-relating processes of
homogenization, difference and hybridity.

Transnational corporations

The corporation’s dramatic rise to dominance is one of the remarkable events of modern history.

(Joel Bakan, 2004: 5)

Homogeneity is interpreted by more pessimistic commentators as an appropriation of the
channels of information, products and ideas by powerful corporations and nations in new
forms of imperialism (e.g. Schiller, 1976). Amongst such arguments the spread of transnational
or multinational corporations (TNCs or MNCs) is commonly emphasized as a form of social

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change (e.g. Ritzer, 1993). Joel Bakan’s recent account of corporate history and power opens
with the following:

Today, corporations govern our life. They determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and
what we do. We are inescapably surrounded by their culture, iconography, and ideology. And, like the church and
monarchy in other times, they posture as infallible and omnipotent, glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate
displays. (Bakan, 2004: 5)

Bakan’s description allows us to stand back from what has undoubtedly become one of the
most pervasive institutions in a relatively short historical period. In neo-liberal defences of the
benefits of globalization, and in critical theories of globalization and anti-globalization, TNCs
are never far from the conceptual frontline. They are seen to be integral to all the social
changes discussed so far. In neo-liberal accounts, TNCs bring the liberating message of the
market to every dark alley in the global network, ushering in freedom, opportunity, enterprise
and democracy (e.g. Leadbeater, 2004). For critics, they impose the might of the wealthy,
maintain a growing global underclass of poverty and hopelessness, and wreck the environment
in an unholy pact with the modern state (e.g Klein, 2001). Either way TNCs facilitate, and are
constituted by, global flows of communication, transportation, finance and labour. Thus in the
constant localized, experiential reconfiguration of these interacting processes, the corporation
is a forceful presence in the dynamics of social change.
The role of the corporation has warranted varied attention in accounts of social change and

selfhood. For accounts of psychosocial fragmentation and cultural pathology, capitalist social
relations and their institutions are seen to be primarily responsible for the ills of the age
(Laing, 1967; Lasch, 1979; Marcuse, 1968). For accounts of extended reflexivity, capitalism
and corporatism is subsumed under more general societal definitions, such as post-traditional,
risk or network society, liquid, high or late modernity (Bauman, 2000; Beck, 1992; Castells,
1996; Giddens, 1990, 1994); some arguments have suggested that the power of contemporary
formations of capitalism to stratify human relations and life chances is underplayed as a result
(e.g. Bradley, 1996). In Foucaultian analyses and the more general turn to language/culture,
capitalism is also in danger of being marginalized according to some critics (Rojek and Turner,
2000); the final chapter of this book is largely an attempt to reconcile suitably complex
accounts of embodied, reflexive social identity formation with an appreciation of social
structure substantially marked by divisions of class and gender which define the stubbornly
capitalist organization of social existence.

Individualization

For Beck, Bauman and others, globalization develops hand-in-hand with individualization
(Beck, 2004; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Bauman, 2001) and the term has gone on to
have reasonable explanatory reach in explaining contemporary processes at work in forming
self-identity (e.g. Furlong and Cartmel, 1997). Stripped of tradition, time/space, class
categories and so on, the basic unit of social reproduction is now claimed to be the individual.
The individualized basis for life’s trajectory and all its associated opportunities and dangers
set against an abstract social system of rewards and punishments is conceived, somewhat

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paradoxically, as the only basis for our shared reality. As with other aspects of social change,
the degree of optimism invested in individualization varies amongst those who utilize it. Beck,
for example, sees individualization as an important descriptive category which poses certain
problems for contemporary society and those seeking to understand it, but also numerous
opportunities, and asserts the need for empirical study, whereas Bauman is more ambivalent,
Giddens sometimes less so (e.g. Beck, 2004; Bauman, 2004; Giddens, 1992).
The individualization thesis still recognizes socially structured inequality. However, in spite

of growing inequalities between the rich and poor, class categories no longer offer a basis for
solidarity. According to this thesis class is one of a number of ‘zombie concepts’ – like family
and neighbourhood – which are way-markers of an older modernity; they should really be
dead, but continue to shuffle along the sociological landscape (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,
2002: 202–213; Beck, 2004: 11–61). The category of class helped make sense of common
experiences in the past; for the working classes a sense of shared suffering and class solidarity
facilitated a ‘defence mechanism of social inclusion’ for its members (Boyne, 2002: 121).
However, detraditionalization is seen to fragment cohesive affiliations and displace the
commonality of experiences which characterized identity. Giddens refers to this process as
‘disembedding’: ‘the “lifting out” of social relations from local contexts and their
rearticulation across indefinite tracts of time-space’ (Giddens, 1991: 18). Vitally, re-
embedding occurs on an individualized basis.
Amidst the fluidity, fragmentation and disorganization of previously binding social

structures, the personal biography becomes the blueprint for making sense of one’s life-course
rather than broader affiliations such as class, and combines forcefully with the process of
reflexivity: ‘Individualization of life situations and processes thus means that biographies
become self-reflexive; socially prescribed biography is transformed into biography that is self-
produced and continues to be produced’ (Beck, 1992: 135). The concept of individualization
is, in a sense, an attempt to move beyond the paradigm of psychosocial fragmentation, and
occupies the same analytical and political landscape as notions of extended reflexivity. As
such it is a theoretical companion of the processes discussed in chapter three and referred to in
the related critical discussion found there and in later chapters.

Polarization

A number of contemporary commentators see polarization as an outcome of a globalized
economy balanced in favour of maintaining capital-rich economies, regions and individuals.
The monopolization of capital in the hands of a few, and the deregulation of its global
movement, combines with intense global competition for investment between nations and
regions; coupled with a growing workforce, wage control, the erosion of union power and
welfarism creates a context rife for polarization (Bauman, 1998; Bradley, 1996; Bradley et al.,
2000; Golding, 2000). Polarization is not just about a simplistic distinction between upper and
working class, as Marx sometimes envisaged it, or even between upper and under class.
Recent research suggests that inequalities cross-cut one another to produce positions of
inequality. Thus Bradley claims that ‘the economic changes which spring from the global

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restructuring of the economy have effects on all four dynamics [class, gender, age, race] of
stratification. These combine to produce growing disparities between privileged and
underprivileged groups’ (Bradley, 1996: 210).
In terms of health and access to healthcare, working practices, educational opportunity and

life expectancy, many surveys and studies support the notion of an increasing polarization in
the lifestyles of populations. Research in the United Kingdom by the Smith Institute, with a
sample of 16,000, studied the relationship between social background and achievement. They
found that the ‘opportunities gap’ between those from different social backgrounds was no
different for those born in 1958 and 1970, suggesting that ‘today’s 30-year-olds are still
haunted by disadvantage and poverty at birth’ (reported in The Guardian, July 12, 2000). In
terms of ‘information structures’, home access to the internet may be a small example of
stratification. The number of UK households with internet access has doubled in the last year to
6.5 million (25%). However, of the poorest third of the population, access varies between 3%
and 6%, while for the more affluent, it reaches about 48%. There are further regional
variations. One report agreed that there was a growing internet economy, suggesting parallels
with Lash and Urry’s information and communication structures. However, ‘if you don’t have
access to the skills and the knowledge to thrive in that economy because of where you live, or
how much money you earn, you won’t be included’ (Office of National Statistics report, in The
Guardian, July 11, 2000). The economist Larry Elliot pointed out that as well as an increasing
income gap between and within rich and poor countries, there is also a growing difference in
life expectancy (The Guardian, June 29, 2000).
Accounts have detailed the lifestyles of the underpriveleged: the ‘wasted lives’ of refugees

and impoverished migrants (Bauman, 2004); the urban slums, ‘warehousing the twenty-first
century’s surplus humanity’ (Davis, 2004: 28), total populations of which was conservatively
estimated at 921 million in 2001, or a third of the global urban population (2004: 13); or the
formal and informal working poor, who’s working lives only serve to perpetuate their
continual state of impoverishment (Ehrenreich, 2002). Others give accounts of life at the other
end: the rich and powerful, increasingly hidden behind gated communities and moving through
secure, defended spaces (Blakely and Snyder, 1997; Caldeira, 1996), to the point where ‘some
odd optical property of our highly polarized society makes the poor almost invisible to their
economic superiors’ (Ehrenreich, 2002: 216). Foucaultian analyses are particularly attuned to
how the techniques embodied in the micropractices of everyday life – such as public
surveillance, architecture, government health programmes – maintain and deepen social
divisions, discussed in chapter four. How the global spread of capital, in particular, ensures a
planetary consolidation of positions in the polarization of life-chances is remarkably absent
from many accounts of social change and the formation of selves however, an issue considered
in the final chapter.

Gender

It is commonly claimed that one of the most important transformations to have marked the last
half-century is our understanding of gender, the nature of male and female identity and

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particularly the relations between them. As a question of selfhood, the issue of gender will be
central to discussion in later chapters. As a dimension of broad social change however, it
warrants a brief summary here.
Feminist theory has been central to critical social theory for over a century. It is wrong to

associate feminism’s achievements solely with our understanding of gender; it has been central
to many if not all of the debates in the last half-century, such as the nature of social power, the
usefulness of psychoanalysis as a social theory, the shift from structuralism to post-
structuralism and the definition of what can be deemed political. However, feminism has been
vital in unsettling social understandings of gender and the social structure they maintain and
rely upon. Though papering over the fissures which increasingly define the development of
feminisms, it can at least be summarized that feminism has long held ‘that the social world is
pervaded by gender, that men and women are socialized into distinct patterns of relating to
each other, and that masculine and feminine senses of self are tied to asymmetrical relations of
gender power’ (Elliott, 2001: 19). There is not the space here to offer a historical overview
but part of the feminist project has been to uncover the history of gender positions and the
shifting gendered relations of power hidden in patriarchal histories.
But gender is being discussed here under the rubric of social change. So what has changed?

That deceptively innocent question has been at least as fraught with argument, contradiction
and uncertainty as any other area of supposed social transformation in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first century. Many feminists assert the continuation of gender power either in
long-existing or novel forms: the persistence of domestic violence and relational imbalance
(Jamieson, 1998; Walby, 1990), the structuring of life chances cross-cut with other inequalities
(Bradley, 1996; Skeggs, 1997, 2003) or continuing discursive and material regulation. Here the
‘losers’ in the polarization game appear to be gendered too (Adkins, 2002).
However some strands of post-structuralist and/or post-modern feminism see gender roles

changing broadly in line with the social changes we have discussed so far. Here again a
surface consensus is discernible across a number of theoretical traditions. Amidst the erosion
of tradition, the collapse of established time-space configurations, changes in the workforce,
cultural communication, reflexivity and individualization, gender becomes a more plastic
positioning. Gender is in fact treated as a form of tradition; thus is can no longer be taken for
granted, unequivocally enacted as an accepted power play.
Such claims may be expected in the broad, optimistic theorizing of a figure such as Giddens

but they are also offered support from some of the proponents of the more fashionable, critical
edge of feminist theory. Take Butler’s post-structuralist notion of gender as a performance
(Butler, 1990), for example. Gender as something we do is also gender as something we can
undo and Butler has placed considerable emphasis upon the political value of disrupting
traditional gender identities via a transgression and blurring of their boundaries. Butler’s
arguments are most readily conceived in post-traditional setting saturated by reflexivity and
fluid communication structures (McNay, 1999), though she has since explicitly countered more
voluntarist readings of her work (Butler, 1993). Issues of gender and gender bias thus surface
in the critical account of extended reflexivity in chapter three, but are integral to the arguments
made in all subsequent chapters. The extent to which social changes have been theorized in
terms of gendered subjectivities, and the consequences when they are, is a prime concern.

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Of course there are other changes highlighted by informed scholars, activists, journalists and
so on; and there are debates still to be had over both the extent to which they are seen to
facilitate a substantial qualitative break from the social order supposedly left behind (e.g.
Harvey, 1989; Jamieson, 1998; Golding, 2000). There is not the space here to acknowledge
arguments and approaches I am aware of but remain absent, and I can only offer apologies in
advance for what is beyond that awareness. Many changes which are bound up tightly with the
conceptualization of identity have purposefully been put off until they are explored in later
chapters, but that is not an attempt to deny that what is missing has value.

What does all this mean for the self?

The identity configuration of a complex industrial society is likely to be fragmented and confused, and analysing it an even
more speculative venture.

(Stevens, 1983: 71)

The other half of the title of this book is the ‘self’. If we were concerned with how difficult it
was to pin something like ‘social change’ down even for a moment’s observation, then the self
is up there with ‘culture’ and ‘class’ when it comes to evasive and problematic terms.
Sociological accounts of self are vast and varied. In recent years there has been a proliferation
in interest in ‘identity’, and its study has become an integral part of many undergraduate and
postgraduate sociology and psychology courses. There has also been much time spent on
attempts to differentiate between terms such as identity (and identification), self, psyche,
subject, selfhood and personhood (e.g. Jenkins, 1996). The two dominant terms are self and
identity. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology defines identity as ‘the sense of self, of
personhood, of what kind of person one is’. Fine as far as it goes, but this offers no clues to the
extent to which identity is a work of imagination, external imposition, or natural consequence
of other components ‘behind’ identity. What, most pointedly, is responsible for the genesis of a
sense of identity? It suggests another aspect of the self exists apart from one’s identity. Perhaps
that is where ‘self’ becomes salient (there is no separate entry for ‘self’ in the Penguin
dictionary). This term might be best thought of as all the components of the individual (it is
difficult not to fall back on one of the contentious terms in describing them) taken together:
one’s identity, the internal source of the sense of one’s identity and anything else purported to
be involved, such as instincts. Giddens conflates the terms into the hybrid ‘self-identity’,
whilst defining it in a sense more akin to identity: ‘the self as reflexively understood by the
individual in terms of his or her biography’ (Giddens, 1991: 244), whilst Jenkins defines ‘self’
on its own in very similar terms (Jenkins, 1996: 29–30). Jenkins prefers the term ‘selfhood’, as
he feels its usage ‘minimizes the tendency towards reification implicit in “the self” and
emphasises the processual character of selfhood’ (1996: 52).
Whilst I sympathize with Jenkins’s desire to hold on to a dynamic conceptualization of self, I

do not think it is necessary to adhere to one or another term; to do so itself runs the risk of
reification by repetition. Amidst the confusion and conceptual overlapping, and no doubt to the
chagrin of scholars of self/identity everywhere, I use the terms more or less interchangeably.
This is to avoid repetition but also because the discussion of self in this book is inseparable

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from the social, cultural, relational, discursive fabric in which it is constituted; in this sense
there are few resting places where it can become reified, whatever we call it. Differences in
terminology will be discussed only when they are perceived to be salient in specific accounts.
It is perhaps worth recalling Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) dialectic which allows an

initial positioning between constructionism and essentialism, by viewing ‘the self as a social
construction, but nevertheless a centre for a degree of agency once constructed’ (Butt, 2004:
125). Versions of this reframing of Marx’s ‘people make history but not in conditions of their
own making’ (paraphrased here) have gained momentum in recent frustrations with
constructionism (e.g. Butler, 1997; Hekman, 2000). There are problems too with this
definition, but at least it flags up my intention to hold the binaries of self/society, inner/outer, or
indeed mind/body in tension, rather than accept them in a simplistic fashion. This is nothing
new, certainly not in sociology, where the analyses of Goffman, Mead, Garfinkel, Simmell and
countless others have again and again revealed the mutual integration of self and cultural norm
or social structure.
The problem, of course, lies in the extent to which the relationship between these two

entities, which only exist in relation to each other, can be adequately conceptualized to account
for all manner of phenomenon, from the nature of self-experience to the possibility of social
transformation. It impinges on what we can say about the nature and structure of the self and its
relationship to social structures and supposed changes in both. Thus it is this problem which is
thought to be more salient than the particular terminology. It is worth stating in advance though
that I do not think it is feasible to eschew all assumptions of interiority in the name of
constructionism and/or in fear of the sin of essentialism. Winnicott delineates in the following
all that can be said for certain at this stage: ‘of every individual who has reached to the state of
being a unit with a limiting membrane and an outside and an inside, it can be said that there is
an inner reality to that individual’ (cited in Davis and Wallbridge, 1981: 33). Of course there
are points of contention even here in the assertion of an ‘inner’; nonetheless it is a guiding
assumption which will be put to the test in the chapters to come.
Questions of general definition aside, much of this book is concerned with the more specific

phenomenon of ‘self-reflexivity’. The term has been popularized by Giddens, and he perceives
there to be two levels of reflexivity. The first is a general ‘reflexive monitoring of action’
which is ‘characteristic of all human action’ (Giddens, 1990: 36). It is the ability to reflect on
what we do, and as such is the basis of self-awareness or self-consciousness. The second
form, the reflexivity of ‘modern social life’ extends the process ‘such that thought and action
are constantly refracted back upon one another’ (1990: 36). Only here is reflexivity radicalized
in its application to ‘all aspects of human life’ which ‘of course includes reflection upon the
nature of reflection itself’. Giddens’s identity is fundamentally a social one, and the
conventions and traditions in which it was once forged fall away amidst the corrosive
influence of extended self-reflexivity; no aspect of our nature can remain in the shadows. The
exact nature of the self-reflexive process, how it is integrated into a broader psychological
substrate, and the nature and dynamics of other ‘components’ of that substrate is far from
settled however. Much of the book’s discussion is concerned with the formulation of self-
reflexivity as it serves as a useful entry point into arguments over the nature of embodied
psychical dynamics and their intertwining with social structures. This in no way accedes to the

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salience self-reflexivity is granted in the overall model of self by Giddens and others, as later
critical discussion will make clear.

Self and social change

It is not difficult to imagine how some of the consequences of the changes I have outlined
above have been formulated in relation to the self. Even without the benefit of a comprehensive
psychological theory one might conclude that the self is likely to be troubled by the experience
of uncertainty and a lack of control over events suggested here. It seems reasonable to agree
with Zygmunt Bauman in asserting that the modern subject necessarily ‘swims in the sea of
uncertainty’ (Bauman, 1993: 222). We (may) have an expanding prerogative to choose but the
basis for such choice is increasingly problematic. Tradition loses its salience irretrievably and
the self is disembedded, separating the individual from the meaningful, if relatively
unquestioned, context it had in previous times been immersed in. Is the individual really
disembedded from its social and cultural moorings? Does disembedding amount to new-found
freedoms? How are these freedoms distributed socially? What are our options for re-
embedding? What form does power take in the contemporary reconfiguration of human
relations? These questions manifest at the heart of our understanding of self in relation to
social change and are explored in the following chapters. It is hopefully apparent that these are
not simply academic questions but potentially of profound personal and social relevance.

Adams, M. (2007). Self and social change. SAGE Publications, Limited.
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