Sense Of Social Identity Research Articles

The ethics of parts and wholes

A main thesis of George Fletcher's book(1) is that utilitarians who wish to outlaw some kinds of desecration and public indecency are allowed no argument by their theory except giving offense to others, which is quickly shot down by the First Amendment in the numerous cases in which the offenders are expressing something; whereas communitarians can explore arguments that do not have this liability. I wish to examine some of the arguments underlying the second part of his thesis; in doing so I shall draw upon and expand what I said earlier in The Non-suicidal Society(2) and Loyalties.(3) There is a cluster of interrelated feelings and dispositions which, in different ways, illuminate each other as well as loyalty. They include pride, shame, self-respect, egoism, alienation, sense of community, sense of possession, and social identity. Loyalty, as well as pride and shame, is a cousin of egoism. Only if I consider my society (and I am not alienated from it) am I capable of being proud or ashamed of it or loyal or disloyal to it; for these are all ego-dependent notions. I cannot, for example, be proud or ashamed of an iceberg, or of Bancock, unless I think I own or made the iceberg, or think of Bancock as my city. The only things I can be proud or ashamed of besides myself are things that are mine, in a sense of mine that greatly antedates legal ownership. Why, we might ask, do I think of anything as mine? I suspect that the earliest form of the idea relates to basic needs more than to either exclusive proprietorship or some prehistoric analog of legal ownership: my mother, my children, my family, my clan, and my safe and familiar home turf. These earliest possessions were social and contributed to the construction of my conception of myself by means of social categories--as son, parent, family, and clan member; or did so as soon as people were sufficiently evolved to have a conception of the self. Feelings of loyalty and, later, the concept of it, arose in response to relations between myself and both what I needed and what needed and made demands on me. But loyalty is not just a variant of egoism because there is an immense difference between what benefits me and what benefits my child or my country. This is the paradox of egoism and group egoism (as well as love) that perpetually confuses people about what is selfish and what is not. One acknowledges the existence of something one loves as one loves oneself, but which is not oneself and can require the sacrifice of the self. However, possession is only part of what is necessary for pride or shame; once I have a sense of possession, objective features of things come into play. The iceberg is a potential object of pride because it is grand, but a dead cockroach on my kitchen floor or a hole in my roof is not. Like pride, loyalty depends on both sense of possession--or better, its more complex relative, sense of social identity--and the repeatable features of things. There do seem to be things we just value or disvalue, whether or not they are ours. A heap of garbage or the dead cockroach is disvalued, whether it is my garbage or anyone else's. Intelligence and compassion are admired independently of loyalty, admired even in our enemies. We point with pride to the admirable qualities of our city and are ashamed of its disgusting qualities. Great poverty, ugliness, or evil government can alienate me and eventually kill loyalty, while beauty, friendliness, justice, and unique physical features enhance my loyalty. Alienation is the contrary of loyalty; it is the blocked normal development, or the later loss, of a sense of possession and identity with my family, workplace, city, or nation. Loyalty is close to love and implies concern; alienation manifests itself as indifference or hostility. Loyalty-enhancing and -alienating qualities are not necessarily moral or even admirable. There are numerous and sometimes surprising causes of loyalty or alienation, and their ultimate explanation, I believe, has to be anthropological and evolutionary. …

Home owning in the 1990s

H rousing is widely accepted as an important ele.ment of personal consumption. Because the typical American household spends more than 25 percent of its disposable income on housing, changes in housing market conditions receive significant attention. While shelter is as essential as food and security, housing provides more than mere shelter. Consumption of housing also gives access to local public goods and amenities, as well as a sense of social identity. Homeownership is often elevated in importance to that of housing consumption itself. Indeed, a major element of the "American dream" is owning a home. For a large segment of Americans, home.ownership is a primary form of personal investment (savings). But homeownership generates utility for households beyond the potential pecuniary advantages of asset ownership. Historically, property ownership has bestowed community recognition as well as other rights and privileges, such as the right to vote or other forms of participation in the political process. Homeownership also connotes stability and remains an important symbol of status, a badge of accreditation. It is among the key indicators of credit worthiness.

Life philosophy and Life style

Two categories of values are distinguished by their psychological functions. Life philosophy values secure a person's sense of personal identity; they are held regardless of what anyone else thinks of his value choice. Life style values secure a person's sense of social identity; they are held precisely because of what others think of his value choice. People sometimes run together their legitimate need for securing each of these value domains. The result of this can be an eruption of either a social or personal identity crisis. People have paid especially too little attention to the idea of social identity crisis.

Idols and Idolatry in Highland Guatemala

The highland Maya of pre-contact times possessed a polytheistic religion involving the worship of many dieties with differing characteristics. These gods were often represented in the form of idols. Despite Spanish attempts to eradicate this religion, idolatry symbolic of the earlier belief system survived well into the 19th century and even later. The town council and the cofradia provided the contexts within which aboriginal beliefs and practices persisted in modified forms. Unlike technologies and subsistence systems, belief systems because they involve emotions, explain the universe, and provide a sense of social identity often remain sufficiently flexible to accommodate to external pressures and to survive despite these.

THE RISE OF PROFESSIONALISM

Professional work conditions (and not only the general ideology) foster individualism. The professional's sense of power and authority flows not only from his actual command over special knowledge but also from his control over interpersonal situations. The first established professions—medicine, law, the ministry, and architecture—were typically concerned with the problems of individuals. Only indirectly did they define society as their client. Today, individualized service becomes an ideological remedy for the ills of a social situation, a screen for the social problems caused by the bureaucratic systems through which services are delivered—most notably in the medical and teaching professions. The ideological insistence on individual aspects, the neglect of the whole, merges with specialization to confine the professional in an ideological conception of his role: the importance of narrow responsibilities is consciously and unconsciously emphasized, exaggerating the "dignity" of the functions. The dominant ideology attributes to professionals and experts special prestige as well as "moral and intellectual superiority": sharing in this ideology, professionals can easily mystify to themselves their actual power. Moreover, they are locked into conformity with the role society offers them to play—locked in by their vocational choice, by the particular mystique of each profession, and by their whole sense of social identity. Finally, the technocratic ideology of science and objectivity excludes from the specialist's concern the social and political consequences of his acts. Nowhere is this truer than in the technical and scientific fields.