done by jem ,amisha ,ilyes,rahma

1. Social Self
The formation of self-awareness that is created
as the individual human organism reacts to the
varied reactions of others towards it

2. ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT
The “I” and ME” Concept
❖ The I and Me concept was originated by an American
sociologist and philosopher George Herbert Mead
(1934).
❖ He investigated how children use “I” and “Me” to
describe themselves.
❖ According to Mead, the self is not there from birth,
but it is developed over time from social
experiences and activities.
❖ Mead claimed that sociology was essential to
understanding how the self emerges and develops.

3. Meaning & Interpretation
01
Preparatory Stage
(age 2 or less)
Mead argues that play is
one way in which infants
and young children first
become social beings by
imitating the actions of
those around them.
02
Play Stage
(age 2 through 6)
This imitation then develops into
‘taking the role of the other’. At this
stage a child starts to establish a
sense of self. They understand
who they are as distinct individuals
– as a “me” – by seeing themselves
from the perspective of others.
03
Game Stage
(age 7+)
To learn these organized games,
children need to understand not
only the rules of the game but
also their place within it, as well
as the various roles that exist in
the game.
Mead’s theory is based on the idea of a
two-part self. The first part, the ‘I’, is the
unsocialized infant, or the human organism
with its spontaneous want and desires.
Second part, the ‘me’, occurs during social
interactions.

4. The “me” is the social self, and the “I” is a response to the “me” (Mind, Self and Society 178).
“The ‘I’ is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the ‘me’ is the organized set of
attitudes of others which one himself assumes” (Mind, Self and Society 175).
Rather than adopting a single role, they take on the role of a ‘generalized other’.
Generalized other is Mead's (1962: 154–8) term for the collection of roles and
attitudes that people use as a reference point for figuring out how to behave in
a given situation.
Significant others: specific people, such as parents,
siblings, relatives and friends, who have direct influence
on our socialization

5. Study of the individual self cannot be divorced from the study of society.
His theory was the first sociological theory of self-formation.
To fully understand ourselves, we must begin with the social process of human interaction.
We recognize ourselves as individuals but what happens to our individual selves in personal
relationships and how does breakup affect the ‘self’?
This is answered in an article (Slotter et al. 2009) that looks at its impact on people’s sense of ‘me’.
So, when we are committed in a relationship, the lines between our self-concepts become blurred, as
shown by the frequent use of pronouns like “we,” “our,” and “us.”
They find it hard to reject characteristics that were indicative of their partner and not of themselves.
When a relationship ends, individuals lose all the self-views they
once shared with their ex-partner. They end up changing
themselves completely.
They reconstruct their sense of self without their ex-partner.

6. Critical Points
Mead's thesis has been criticized for making the process
of self-formation seem comparatively straightforward.
Others argue that the process is full of conflict which can leave
lifelong scars. This is especially true during early socialization
when kids develop a sense of their gender identity.
They also argue that Mead doesn’t address the implication of
unequal parental power dynamics on children’s socialization,
which can result in selves that are torn by internal conflicts and
contradictions.

7. Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist and the founder of
psychoanalysis) argued that unconscious thoughts and feelings
play a significant role in self-formation and gender identity.
According to him, there are three levels of mind:
The conscious mind: comprises all we are aware
of at any given time, including thoughts,
memories and feelings.
The preconscious mind: includes anything that
might be brought into the conscious mind.
The unconscious mind: a reservoir of feeling,
thoughts and memories that are outside of our
conscious awareness.
3
2
1
Cherry, “The Preconscious, Conscious, and Unconscious Minds.”
The Freudian Slip
Freud believed that while the unconscious mind is largely
inaccessible, the contents can sometimes bubble up
unexpectedly, such as in dreams or slips of the tongue.

8. References
Burkitt, I. (2008) Social Selves: Theories of Self and Society
(2nd edn, London: Sage).
Mead, G. H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society, ed. C. W. Morris
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Slotter, E. B., Gardner, W. L., and Finkel, E. J. (2009) ‘Who
am I Without You? The Influence of Romantic Break-Up on
the Self Concept’, Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 36(2): 147–60.
Cherry, Kendra. “The Preconscious, Conscious, and Unconscious Minds.” Verywellmind, December
09, 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/the-conscious-and-unconscious-mind-2795946

9. Social Stigma
Physical or social characteristics that are
identified as demeaning or are socially
disapproved of, bringing criticism, social distance
or discrimination.

10. ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT
❖ Goffman theorized how stigmatizing processess work
to produce discrimination and investigate how the
stigmatized person responds.
❖ There are different types of stigma that governs the
extent to which people can manage their self-identity
and protect their sense of self.
❖ Some ideas of stigma came from the disabled people’s
movement.
❖ Paul Hunt’s Stigma: the experience of disability (1966);
rather than seeing disabled people’s problems as
arising from their physical impairments, it was the
interactions between disabled people and abled people
that led to the stigmatizing of disability.
❖ The use of this concept was successful to explore the
situation of people with HIV/AIDS and other health
conditions.

11. MEANING AND INTERPRETATION
❖ Erving Goffman’s work showed how some physical aspects of a person’s body
can present problems once these have been categorized by others as sources
of stigma.
❖ Disabled people can be stigmatized on the basis of observable physical
impairments.
❖ There are different types of stigma - physical stigma, biographical stigma,
character stigma.
❖ Goffman isn’t suggesting people to hide stigma, but he is trying to make sense
of how the process of stigmatization works and how people use strategies to
avoid being stigmatized.
❖ Physical stigma such as visible impairment, management of this identity is
much difficult.
❖ Biographical stigma such as past criminal record can be easier to hide -
discrediting stigma - one that may lead to stigmatizing when it becomes more
widely known.

12. ❖ Character stigma such as drug users may be a discredited stigma if the person
is observed with the wrong crowd.
❖ Goffman argued that stigma is a social relationship of devaluation in which one
individual is disqualified from full social acceptance by others.
❖ Stigmatization appears in medical context as people who become ill and their
identity is changed.
❖ Stigmatizing groups is one way in which society at large controls their behavior.
❖ The stigma is never removed and the person is never fully accepted into
society.
❖ Homosexuality has long been stigmatized around the world. Homophobia -
hatred of homosexuals and their lifestyles.
❖ Violence through verbal abuse in Britain, for example, the use of terms such as
‘fag’ or queer to insult a heterosexual male, and offensive terms such as ‘sissy
or ‘pansy’ to put down gay men.
❖ Since AIDS was first found among gay men, it was originally called GRID - Gay
Related Immune Deficiency.

13. CRITICAL POINTS
❖ Lack of interest in resistance to stigmatizing processes.
❖ At the individual level, people may refuse stigmatizing label,
but unlikely to be successful in isolation.
❖ Disabled people’s movements, and gay and lesbian
movements challenged stigmas by protests and direct action
campaigns.
❖ Protests and tackling discriminatory language and labelling,
generated pressure for change and new equal rights
legislation and helped shift attitudes in society.
❖ Stigmatizing processed are perhaps more open to change.

14. ❖ Those who engage in practices of self-harm are keenly aware of
the being stigmatized, so they choose the body sites easily
hidden from public view.
❖ People with eating disorders go to great lengths to hide their
behavior and manage their presentation of self and identity.
❖ Kit Yee Chan (2009) - study of sexual promiscuity labels and
AIDS in Thailand. Explored the perceptions of nurses towards
the risk of being accidentally exposed to HIV. Nurses fear of HIV
was rooted mainly in the social ostracism of being associated
with being HIV-positive patients rather than consequences of
infection.
❖ Goffman argued that sigma can accrue from almost any aspect
of people’s lives.
CONTINUING RELEVANCE

15. ❖ Caroline Howarth (2006) - race as social
stigma;
How conceptualizing ‘race’ as a social stigma
may help us to understand the process of
stigmatizing ‘race’ but also how communities
can contest and change the processes that
lead to discrimination. Howarth argues that, as
the stigma attached to ‘race’ cannot be hidden
or disguised, resistance and attempts to
overthrow the stigmatizing regime have to be
collaborative. The article describes various
examples of this in schools and church groups
which aim to provide ‘social psychological
spaces’ in which the operation of stigma can
be challenged.
CONTINUING RELEVANCE

16. References
Chan, K. Y., Rungpueng, A., and Reidpath, D. (2009) ‘AIDS and the Stigma of Sexual
Promiscuity: Thai Nurses’ Risk Perceptions of Occupational Exposure to HIV’, Culture, Health
and Sexuality, 11(4): 353–68.
Goffman, E. ([1963] 1990) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (London:
Penguin), esp. chapters 1 and 2. Green, G. (2009) The End of Stigma: Changes in the
Experience of Long-Term Illness (London: Routledge), esp. chapters 1 and 2.
Howarth, C. (2006) ‘Race as Stigma: Positioning the Stigmatized as Agents, Not Objects’,
Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16(6): 442–51.
Hunt, P. (1966) Stigma: The Experience of Disability (London: Chapman). Nettleton, S. (2013)
The Sociology of Health and Illness (3rd edn, Cambridge: Polity). 338