Sociology and the Self: Between Freedom and Constraint

By Arnold P. Alamon*

Chapter objectives

The following outcomes are expected after reading this chapter:

1. Readers are introduced to sociological perspectives and concepts on Self and

society.
2. They are made to understand the dynamic and interrelated link between the
two.
3. The notion of social structures that impinge upon individuals is also introduced
to the readers.
4. The readers are made to contemplate on the dynamic of freedom and
constraint in their social and personal lives.

Introduction

The relationship of the Self to society has always been considered an important topic
of investigation for the discipline of Sociology. As the study of society and social
institutions, it is natural that the seeming emphasis of the discipline, at first glance, is
skewed towards understanding the power and influence of society in shaping
individuals. Critics have complained about how Sociology has found itself weighing in
on the other end of what others consider to be a spectrum of positions that pit the
individual against society and giving the latter wider power and latitude. However, it
may be more useful to consider that Sociology is merely calling attention to the
dynamic interrelationship between the two and does not necessarily privilege one
over the other.

Sociology would always insist that it is difficult to think of society without

understanding how the Self or individuals come to be; in the same way that the Self
cannot be formed without the input and imperative provided by society.

A way that Sociologists have framed this problematique is by addressing this issue in
terms of the opposing dispositions of freedom and constraint – to what degree are
individuals able to practice their freedom before being restricted by social rules and
mores? Is the Self in society actually fully free or is this freedom mitigated by powerful
historical forces that keep his or her preferences in check?

This chapter aims to introduce key sociological concepts on Self and society through
this discursive framework of freedom and constraint. It will look into first, the process
of socialization, then the concept of life-chances, and then, the modern and
postmodern depictions of the Self. Finally, the tail end of this chapter will make a case
for the continuing need for critical and socially conscious Selves who are capable of
reshaping society just as they are molded by it. Hopefully, at the end of this chapter,
readers are introduced not just to the sociological concepts themselves but also to
the promise of Sociology as an emancipatory discipline.

The Socialization of the Self: The Soup-Spilling Kid

1
Pierre Bourdieu, the preeminent French sociologist, wrote a famous quote on the
purpose of Sociology. According to him, “The function of Sociology, as of every
science, is to reveal that which is hidden” (Bourdieu 1998). The discipline, therefore,
has the penchant to de-mystify or render unfamiliar what is commonplace and often
taken for granted realities. Assumptions are questioned and widely accepted
conclusions are often challenged.

The Self as a sociological concept has also been subject to the same scrutiny by
various practitioners and pioneering theoreticians of the discipline. It is Sociology’s
assertion that the Self, the modern thinking and acting individual, cannot come to
being without the input and influence of society making a strong case for the
interrelated and inextricable links between the two.

Most famous among them is the American philosopher and influential sociologist,
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) who identified the Self as the product of the
individual’s interaction with others in society that occurs in the process of
socialization. In this learning process, an individual gets to inculcate the proper norms
and behavior associated with assumed social positions and achieves personhood. So
how does society actually engender a complete and functional Self?

Drawing from the ideas of George Herbert Mead (Mead and Morris 1934),
phenomenological sociologists Berger and Luckmann (1966: 152-153), reinterprets
Mead’s basic ideas by using as a metaphor the allegory of the soup-spilling kid to
explain the evolution of the Self from being, at first, fragmented and then later,
complete.

Let us use as an example the learning adventures of imaginary precocious little girl
by the name of Maria. This toddler is just learning the first rudimentary terms that map
out the key figures in her social world - the members of her immediate family, her
significant others. Through her first words of “mama” or “papa”, she names the people
from whose eyes she first achieves an understanding of herself as Maria, the baby.

What is interesting, at this point, is that without the tools of language learned from her
significant others, Maria would not be able to imagine herself as such. Thus, Baby
Maria gets to know that it is her- the one who must be fed, clothed, brought to the
toilet, and basically taken cared of by members of her immediate family through the
terms used to name her that she correlates with the behavior and practices of her
father, mother, and siblings towards her. This is how she discovers her role as well as
the set of expectations that she can demand and correspondingly receive from her
family members.

Thus, an important element in how a person gains a rudimentary and yet incomplete
Self is to learn how other people regard him or her, a feat made possible only through
the process of learning how to name, or use the tool of language according to Mead
(1934) and seconded by Berger and Luckmann (1966). It is only through the
standpoint of one’s significant others, they add, that a child first achieves a sense of
rudimentary identity.

The family is the means by which such ability and skills are passed on to a young
person. It is therefore through the basic social unit of society or the family that a
young person is enabled and equipped to achieve its full potential at the onset, a

2
testament to the enabling and empowering function of society and its social
institutions to biological individuals who become persons primarily through the
process of socialization.

However, the child remains incomplete and is just a promise of what he or she can be
at this point. It would take another process beyond the formation of a fragmented
incomplete Self within the confines of one’s immediate family that would make a child
progress to become a socially sanctified adult with a complete and whole Self. To
illustrate this process, let us go back to Maria and her adventures.

One rainy afternoon, toddler Maria was left in the care of an elder sister who cooked
porridge for the family. The hot bowl of soup was served to the little girl who promptly
knocked the bowl and its contents onto the floor. The reaction of the sister who had
to wipe the scalding bits of porridge from the floor was negative to say the least.
There may even have been a cold stare or a verbal admonishment to teach the little
Maria that she does not appreciate it when soup is spilled. Bright child that she is,
Maria quickly learns a new rule - her elder sister forbids this kind of reckless and
wasteful action such as soup-spilling.

The following week, baby Maria together with some members of the family, were
eating out in a restaurant known for the hot Filipino delicacy - batchoy noodle soup.
Her sister was not present at that time because she was in school but with her were
her parents and other siblings. It was a new experience for the toddler Maria being in
a noisy environment with lots of people she did not know.

Out of her excitement, she accidentally knocks from the table the bowl of steaming
batchoy. It was a new learning experience for Maria as she observes the reactions of
her parents and siblings over the accident. She was also surprised that not only did
the other members of her family, her significant others, disapprove of her unintended
act, but the other people in the restaurant, most especially the waiter tasked to clean
the mess, including the elderly couple in the next table, sported disapproving
reactions.

Berger and Luckmann (1966: 152-153) would consider this a momentous learning
experience that is crucial in the process of little girl Maria’s evolution from holding a
fragmented incomplete Self to one that is wholly complete and socially functional. The
little girl realizes that not only is her sister disapproving of soup-spilling but that belief
is apparently also shared by other members of her immediate family, her significant
others. Beyond this, she also comes to the important conclusion that the other
customers in the restaurant including the waiters were also in disapproval of her act.

From the realization that her sister does not approve of soup-spilling, Maria has come
to the awareness that ‘one does not spill soup’ in general. Such a seemingly simple
shift in consciousness actually indicates the elevation of Maria’s identity and self-
regard to a complex level of awareness that now includes within her personal vista
not just her significant others. This time, included for her consideration is what Mead
refers to as the “generalized other”.

This generalized other is indicated by the term “one” as a non-specific but mass noun
commanding all of us to not spill soup. Who, therefore, is the voice exhorting us to

3
follow his general commandment against soup-spilling? Isn’t it no one else but the
loud booming voice of Society?

This allegory of the soup-spilling Maria is actually the sociological narrative of how
individuals achieve complete Selves according to the re-interpretation of Berger and
Luckmann (1966) of Mead’s pioneering ideas. From the limited vista of our significant
others, we begin to have an idea of who we are as we put ourselves in the shoes of
our loved ones. However, we only become completely human once we have properly
inculcated the views and expectations of society-at-large as voiced by the
generalized other in our heads. We only become wholly human if we are able to see
ourselves from the vantage point of society’s expectations.

There are telling lessons here on the relationship of the Self and society in relation to
the question of whether we are really free or not. From childhood to maturity, society
empowers us to become functioning and socially-acceptable individuals through the
guidance and nurturance of our families. We learn how to speak, achieve unique
identities and basically learn skills that will allow us to survive both biologically and
socially, But all these comes with a hidden but important caveat or price. We only
become bonafide members of society with socially-acceptable Selves if we already
know the rules and norms of society which goes beyond just the knowledge that one
does not spill soup.

The litany of commands actually are endless: one does not steal your classmate’s
pencil; one does not defecate or pee anywhere; one does not eat anywhere and
anytime; and so on and on. It is also a paradoxical situation here: we are given the
skills and the consciousness, the desire, to be truly free but in the same breathe also
restricted from attaining such full and unmitigated freedoms in favor societal norms
and rules.

Modernity and the Self: the Lumad Astronaut

Has the Self always been mired in this paradoxical situation of being empowered and
yet restricted? Has there always been a modern and self-aware Self across history
whose freedoms are constantly mitigated by society?

Sociology as a discipline has always insisted that the Self is a modern fiction. The
taken-for-granted autonomy and individuality we assume as givens in modern life has
not always been privileges accorded to people across history. In fact, the opposite
was true particularly during the period prior to the era of industrialized societies or
what others refer to as the feudal era or Dark Ages.

Pioneering sociologists were actually cognizant in this shift in how people live brought
about by the sea change of social transformations when societies progressed from
having land-based feudal economies to industrial production. In fact, the very
discipline was born out of this tumultuous period when the founding fathers of
Sociology grappled with understanding these changes.

Modern living and the individualistic autonomous Selves it nurtured was a living
reality for Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber and other early sociologists
and they sought to provide plausible explanations for this. What all these early
sociologists share in their analysis is the belief that transformations in the economy of

4
society have given birth to the modern individual’s autonomous and independent
practices.

Marx draws attention to the liberation of the peasant class from toiling on land to
become free agents for hire who are now dependent on the wage-labor provided by
the capitalist for survival. Unencumbered by the previous feudal relations,
individualism and its allied practices thrived under the new social order that he
labeled as capitalism. Max Weber, in turn, pursued the same sociological question
but he enriched the discourse by highlighting the emergence of a kind of protestant
ethic that promoted these new modern values.

Early sociologists have also turned to typifications of the pre-modern and modern
kinds of social arrangements to explain this phenomenon. Durkheim had his
distinction between mechanical and organic solidarities. The latter type of society that
harkens back to the feudal societies of old was characterized by sameness and
tradition. In these communities, people share a particular occupation with very little
differentiation. In a rural community, for instance, almost everyone would be a farmer.
The tendency in these societies is for people to be bounded strongly by common
beliefs and practices. One can surmise that the uniqueness and fragmented identities
that characterize modern individuals is not yet prevalent in mechanical solidarities.
Instead, people mirror each other in terms of outlook and practices because of the
strength of what Durkheim called as the collective consciousness - or “the totality of
beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society…”

In contrast, organic solidarities are the opposite. Here, societies that depict modern
social organizations are characterized by differentiation. The occupations of people
are varied and so are their beliefs and practices. The more complex division of labor
accounts for this variation in the type of people and lifestyle, and contributes to the
promotion of individualistic practices. Durkheim, however, observed that it is the
tendency of this type of solidarity to exhibit fragmentation and chaos on account of its
weaker collective consciousness.

Other sociologists would have similar typifications or ideal types that investigate the
distinctions between pre-modern and modern social arrangements. Ferdinand
Tönnies had his Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft societies referring to the intrinsic
differences between rural and urban societies. Similar to Durkheim, Tönnies also
observed that urban settings correspond to weaker ties compared to rural and more
traditional settings. The idea of modern life as impersonal and distant whereas
depicting rural living as intimate and personal was also shared by George Simmel.

Thus, there is an extensive and persistent discourse in Sociology that locate the
emergence of the modern Self who is independent, self-actualizing, and autonomous
in the rise of organic solidarities or Gesellschaft societies brought about by capitalism.
Does this represent the arrival of the emancipated modern individual, freed from the
feudal yoke, with limitless possibilities for self-actualization?

Sociology’s prognosis is not very optimistic. There is a view in Sociology that regard
these modern freedoms that we accord the Self as illusory and misleading. Karl Marx
(1852) famously wrote that indeed men make history but not under circumstances of
their own choosing. We do not choose what type of society we are born into, grow up
in, and where we live out the rest of our lives whether these be organic or mechanical

5
solidarities or Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft societies. The Selves that we hold
would have to contend with the traits of the societies and the social situations we are
born into.

What Marx was trying to explain is that we are born into specific social epochs whose
characteristics either enable us towards certain desired ends or severely restrict us
from going beyond established limitations. We are indeed free, but only within the
confines of predetermined borders. Sociology has a term for this overarching
sociological architecture where individuals navigate their limited freedoms. They call
this “structure” and the discipline always insisted on the structures’ interrelated
dynamic over Selves and individuals that make up society.

None is this more clearly stated in Emile Durkheim’s famous quote wherein according
to him, the aggrupation of psychologies of individuals is not equivalent to a society’s
collective consciousness or “the whole is not the sum of its parts”. He defends the
new discipline of Sociology at that time by arguing that society cannot be understood
by merely studying the psychologies of individuals that make up society since people
coming together and interacting in society give rise to a separate reality unique from
the amalgamation of individual consciousness. There is a resulting collective
effervescence or a kind of social spirit borne out of people’s interactions in society
and it often the case that for Durkheim, the social nature of life exerts considerable
influence on individuals by empowering them on the one hand, but also impinging on
their choices and limiting their potentials, on the other. Selves therefore find
themselves at the mercy of structures by virtue of the social nature of life.

Durkheim himself contemplated on this issue in his famous work on suicide (1897).
More than just being a pioneering exercise in the positivistic method where social
facts through social statistics were employed as scientific barometers of a society’s
condition, it was also a treatise on the power of structure over individuals. Death
through one’s own hand may be the most private and willful act a person can do in
the first instance. However, Durkheim then makes a case for how a society’s shifting
social solidarity accounts for the rise and fall of suicide rates. The most private act of
suicide, if Durkheim’s analysis is to be believed, is more than the willful choice of
individuals. Rather, it is an indication of a society’s health.

The strongest case for the power and influence of structure over individuals is, of
course, the existence of social inequality. Sociology has had a deep historical and
theoretical involvement in investigating the origin and persistence of poverty amid a
world of private abundance and collective production. Off the bat, the more
progressive practitioners of the discipline reject explanations that regard poverty as
the consequence of intrinsic character traits of a person or a group of people. People
are poor because they are made so by other people enabled by unjust historical
social arrangements, according to a Marxist reading of society for instance.

This is where the concept of life-chances comes in handy to elucidate, furthermore,

the relationship of the modern Self to society. Compare two young individuals: one
born into a first world setting with middle class parents, while the other, a Lumad child
from rural Mindanao whose education is periodically interrupted by evacuations due
to the militarization of their communities. Both aspire to be a NASA astronaut and
wish to be the first human being on the planet Mars. Which of the two will have

6
greater chances of achieving their dreams? Who will have more obstacles blocking
his or her way?

The case of the Lumad aspiring to be an astronaut is an example of how social

structures define our life-chances. The system is rational and orderly but skewed
against the life-chances of that Lumad child aspiring to be an astronaut to the extent
that he or she might not even imagine herself to become one actually. Her aspirations
and expectations for life would be reasonably lowered brought about by long years of
socialization that have taught her the bitter lesson that dreams should be manageable
and reasonable.

Meanwhile, those who are born into better circumstances can aspire for literally the
moon and the stars. Sometimes, there are exceptions to the rule such as Manny
Pacquiao and other rags to riches narratives. But the reason they are celebrated and
brought to everyone’s attention is precisely because the chances of these occurring is
the exception rather than the rule, a fluke in the machine-like operation of the
stratified system.

Marxist sociologist C. Wright Mills in his landmark work The Sociological Imagination
(1959) brought attention to the structural limits of individual life-chances. He argued
that individuals that occupy the same social position and have the same socially-
determined traits shall have the same life-chances. In fact, this is what he considered
as the first important lesson in the practice of the sociological imagination:

The first fruit of this imagination - and the first lesson of the social science that
embodies it - is the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and
gauge her own fate only by locating herself within her period , that she can know her
life chances in life only by becoming aware of all individuals in her circumstances. In
many ways it is a terrible lesson, in many ways a magnificent one.” [emphasis
mine]

Mills’ wants the common modern individual to imbibe what he calls as The
Sociological Imagination and promotes this quality of mind that looks into the
relationship of “biography, history, and of their intersections within society”. This
sociological consciousness aims to provide the common folk an understanding of the
role of social structures in their personal lives so that they will lose that feeling of
anxiety and powerlessness that characterize modern living.

One exercise that Mills thought was useful in the practice of the Sociological
Imagination was the differentiation of personal troubles from social issues. The
difference mainly revolves around scope and coverage. Troubles have to do with
problems that concern only people and circumstance within one’s immediate milieu
and whose resolution can also be found within this limited realm. Issues, on the other
hand, pertain to shared realities with a greater number of people within a larger social
and historical milieu. The solution to these types of problems require institutional
adjustments if not comprehensive social change. By arming the common folk with this
rudimentary yet empowering understanding of how structures impinge on their
individual lives, Mills and his brand of emancipatory Sociology allow these individuals
to begin to think of ways of transforming these institutional arrangements for the
good, not just of themselves but also for the many if not all.

The Self as a socially constructed and imprisoned onion

7
Modern Sociology as espoused by the likes of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, while
drawing attention to the defining power of structures over individuals, still assume that
the individual or the Self remains the basic unit of society upon whom the larger
structures of society rely on to make them functioning and real. But there is also a
subversive discourse that pursues the argument that the Self is wholly socially-
constructed and even the agency that modern Sociology accords the individual as the
case of Marx and C. Wright Mills remains, in the final analysis, a total fiction.

There are two currents within the discipline that follow the nihilist path of this
sociological discourse: one is the cynical implications of Erving Goffman’s
dramaturgical Self while the other is Michel Foucault’s postmodern discourse on
prisons as an allegory of modern life.

Drawing from his classic Sociology work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(1956), an important resource for the dramaturgical school of thought, Goffman likens
everyday social reality as the site of a performance akin to what takes place on a
theatrical stage. It is an important assertion that goes a long way in revealing the
hidden but structured architecture of everyday life. By using the theater as metaphor
for social reality, everyday life can now be dissected according to parts of a theater
where there is a setting, script, and actors.

Goffman’s singular contribution to the Sociology of everyday life through his

dramaturgical Sociology looks benign and harmless at first glance. But if one pursues
the implications of his assertion, following Shakespeare in As You Like It, that “all the
world is a stage and all the men and women merely players” what is actually revealed
is a very cynical view of modern living where people constantly act to receive social
favors in keeping with officially sanctioned “definitions of the situation” or social
scripts. Inauthenticity is a given from this point of view, even necessary. We put our
best foot forward in our dealings with people in everyday life and this constant
pretentious performance is accessible to others through our front stage even as we
hide and suppress our real selves in the back stage.

And here is where matters become problematic but interesting. Is there really a back
stage where our true authentic selves lurk, somewhere in the basement of our inner
consciousness? For Goffman apparently it may be the case that the autonomous
modern Self as an actor maybe illusory after all.

Goffman is often quoted to have said that the Self is an onion, all layers and no core
(Heede 1997 as cited in Jacobsen and Sorensen 2015: 112). It is an indictment of the
constant social pressure to perform before a social audience where we don layers of
masks one after the other. Another metaphor that he uses is to refer to the Self as a
coat hanger. It only achieves true form and function when a coat is placed on it.
Remove all the masks or the coat from the coat hanger, then it is only emptiness at
the core.

It is because of these assertions and their implications that many contemporary

sociologists are reinterpreting Goffman beyond the dramaturgical plane and even
relating his ideas to a postmodern view of the Self. A philosopher that he is often
compared to is the French thinker Michel Foucault (Jacobsen and Sorensen 2015:
112).

8
Postmodernists such as Foucault believe that there is necessarily no essence to
human beings wherein we can attach a stable and autonomous Self. This Self
according to Lyotard, another postmodern thinker, for instance, is episodic and
relational and only created in the context of communicative exchanges which is not
very different from Goffman’s own assertions that the Self is “situationally and
interactionally defined...a social product that does not exist outside social interaction”
(Tseëlon 1992 as cited by Jacobsen and Sorensen 2015: 112).

Foucault (1995), however, had a larger theoretical agenda by looking at the

constitution of the modern Self and society through the prism of the modern penal
system particularly in his work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison System.
It is Foucault’s startling assertion that the modern prison’s function is not really for the
rehabilitation of the inmates inside. It serves more as a symbolic representation of the
power of the State and society, a physical reminder of its power to take away
freedoms when its laws are violated. What is even more bold is Foucault’s assertion
that there is no outside (1995: 301) and that society is actually one big carceral
network.

Different technologies of power operating in modern society that can also be found
inside prisons provide proof of this. The regimentation of activities and surveillance
are just two examples. Of particular importance is Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy
Bentham’s architectural design of towers at the center of prison complexes. Called
panopticon, this architectural element plays an important surveilling function. The
inmates believe that they are being watched because of the presence of the tower
and its one-way windows even if no guard is actually inside.

Foucault believes that society-at-large also employs the same surveillance tactic as
that of the Bentham’s panopticon (1995: 205). More than being an architectural
element, it is actually a “mechanism of power” according to him that is also present in
schools, hospitals, and even homes.

That feeling of always being watched or that nagging voice inside our heads that
exhort commands and edicts indicate the presence of the panopticon beyond the
prison into the most mundane and commonplace of locations in modern life, that is in
each of our minds erected there stealthily by society through the process of
socialization. Foucault, perhaps inspired by the early writings of Mead and the
phenomenological Sociology of Berger and Luckmann, seem to agree to the
proposition that the modern Self achieves completion when it has finally internalized
society’s mores and expectations. One only becomes wholly human once the
panoptic power of society has been properly imbibed and planted in your mind.

Beyond the Self: Practicing freedom amid constraint

There has been a recurring theme in this brief exposition of Sociology’s

problematization of the relationship between Self and society. On the one hand, we
become human only while in the bosom of society’s nurturing environment through
our significant others. We complete the process of achieving Selves once we are
taught the rules that govern the social order, a context that we would have to navigate
correctly throughout the rest of our lives. Thus, we are imbued with potential as well
as social skills at the start of our journey but always with the caveat that we follow
society’s established rules.

9
However, the Self that we develop grow and mature within specific socio-historical
contexts. An analysis of pre-modern societies, for instance, show that autonomous
and modern Selves were fairly a recent invention, the consequence of economic
changes and the freeing up of labor from land to be tied up to capital.

We recall Marx and his observation that the choices that we make in life as practices
of freedom, are actually contextually determined by larger historical forces that evolve
independently from human will. Men and women make history, he said, but not under
circumstances of our choosing. Whether these be mechanical or organic solidarities,
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft societies, in a first world nation or a poor rural Lumad
community, we do not choose the circumstance of our birth and the differentiated
struggles we face confronting the intrinsic power and logic of these varying social
structures. C. Wright Mills’ (1956) The Sociological Imagination actually encourages
us to have a sensitivity for the impact of these socio-historical forces in our personal
lives, an understanding of how our biographies intersect with history so that we will
not lose our bearings navigating social life.

It is obvious that Sociology as discipline has spent much of its intellectual energy from
the modern classical era up to its more contemporary postmodern iterations to
understand and study the mechanisms of constraint more than our shared
opportunities for freedom. The Self as a total social construction put forward by
Goffman and Foucault are just examples of how Sociology has taken on a very
cynical view about possible practices of freedom when society’s script according to
Goffman; and for Foucault, society’s disciplinary power; are insidious and total in their
power over Selves or individuals. Does this mean that we are not free in society and
that following Foucault, society is one big prison where there is no outside?

We go back to C. Wright Mills’ hopeful and emancipatory brand of Sociology to prove

that Sociology has been rightly insisting on the dialectical relationship between the
Self and society. His suggestion is for us to use our sociological imagination in order
to understand how social structures determine our life-chances. This, according to
him is a “terrible lesson” as well as a “magnificent one”. Only by understanding the
circumstances of our “unfreedom” that we share with others, will we be able to begin
the magnificent task of transforming society for the freedom not just of our individual
Selves but also of one and all.

References:

Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A
Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. England: Penguin Books.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. On Television. Retrieved July 25, 2018.

(https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bourdieu-television.html)

Durkheim, Emile. 1897. Suicide. New York: Free Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York:
Vintage Books.

Goffman, Erving. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinbrugh, Scotland:
University of Edinburgh Social Science Research Center

10
Jacobsen, Michael and Kristiansen, Soren. 2015. The social thought of Erving
Goffman. London: Sage Publications.

Mead, G. and Morris, C. 1934. Mind, self & society from the standpoint of a social
behaviorist. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Marx, Karl. 1852. The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Retrieved on July 26,
2018 (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm)

Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Ritzer, George. 1996. Modern Sociological Theory. 4 Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill
th

Companies.

*Bionote

Arnold P. Alamon teaches Sociology at the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute

of Technology. He also writes for SunStar Cagayan de Oro as columnist. He used to
be a Psychology major in his undergraduate years but shifted to Sociology after
taking a general education social science course where issues on Self and Society
were discussed. His life was never the same since.

Multiple choice.

1. Self and society are:

a. somewhat related but not very much.
b. independent and autonomous from each other.
c. inextricably and dynamically linked.
d. married with two kids.

2. Pertains to our immediate family members who become our first guides
and teachers in the process of socialization
a. significant members
b. personalized others
c. generalized persons
d. significant others

3. Refers to society-at-large whose vantage point is imbibed by a growing

child in order to achieve a complete socially-accepted Self
a. generalized others
b. significant members
c. personalized others
d. significant others

11
 4. Durkheim’s organic solidarity is equivalent to Tönnies’ gesellschaft
societies in the sense that these are characterized by:
a. differentiation, autonomy, and weaker social ties.
b. sameness, tradition, and overbearing social solidarities.
c. fragmented, unhinged, and wild postmodern riots.
d. rigid, dogmatic, and inflexible communities.

5. Men and women make history, according to Karl Marx, but not under:
a. the influence of alcohol.
b. the shade of a mango tree.
c. the circumstances of their own choosing.
d. the bridge.

6. As social beings, we all inhabit a predetermined sociological

architecture that impinge upon us as individuals. This is called:
a. investiture.
b. the panopticon.
c. Structure.
d. suppository.

7. “The whole is not :…..”

a. the parts of its sum.
b. the sum of its parts.
c. the it of some parts.
d. the some of parts it.

8. A quality of mind that looks into the relationship of “biography, history,

and of their intersections within society”.
a. the four-way test
b. desiderata
c. the psychological imagination
d. the sociological imagination

9. “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players”
was written by:
a. Erving Goffman
b. Michel Foucault
c. William Shakespeare
d. Lang Leave

10. According to Foucault, society is one big prision and there is no…..
a. escape.
b. future.
c. reality.
d. donut.

12
Answer Key:

1. c
2. d
3. a
4. a
5. c
6. c
7. b
8. d
9. c
10. a

13