Monastic Blessings: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Self

This paper explores the development and maintenance of the self among members of an Orthodox Christian monastery. The principal communicative resource by which members effect their unique social order, the blessing sequence, is interpreted as a spiritual technology for altering processes of reality construction, especially those associated with agency and selfhood. The deconstruction and reconstruction of the monastic self is essential to their membership in the community and a necessary preparation for the achievement of their shared objective: immediate experience of Ultimate Reality. This study demonstrates the interdependence of communicative practice and psychological experience and suggests that specific interactive routines may be identified and enacted in order to secure desirable psycho-social outcomes.     

Constructing and Deconstructing the Body Malleable through Mother–Daughter Interactions

This interpretive study explores how mothers and their adolescent daughters respond to and interact about the body malleable ideology, or cultural discourses that normalize thinness and promote the body as changeable. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 mothers and their daughters. Grounded theory analysis revealed two responses to the body malleable ideology—the acceptance or rejection of the body as a malleable object. Participants expressed ambivalence about this ideology and related cultural discourses. Further, through their interactions, mothers and daughters both constructed and deconstructed the ideology of a malleable body. Three patterns of dyadic experience were identified: Pattern A, in which both the mother and daughter accepted the body malleable ideology, Pattern B, in which both the mother and daughter rejected the body malleable ideology, and Pattern C, in which the mother rejected and the daughter accepted the body malleable ideology. In taking an in-depth look at the cases of three dyads, we explore defining characteristics of these patterns. We also present a grounded theory model developed to illustrate relationships discovered in this study.     

Transmitting Ideals: Constructing Self and Moral Discourse on Loveline

Loveline is a late‐night radio advice show currently airing on progressive rock stations in the United States. Callers present their most intimate troubles to the show's DJ–doctor advice‐giving team, revealing themselves to an audience of faceless millions. I analyze three distinct interactional phases through which Loveline callers and hosts symbolically transform troubled selves: with each problem revealed, each embarrassing joke made, each specific recommendation given, a moral discourse is constructed. Loveline incrementally builds a distinctive way of conceptualizing right and wrong, closely tied to standards of a whole, happy, healthy selfhood. And while the notions of a moral discourse and an ideal self are fundamentally modern, Loveline's distinctive combination of mass‐mediated anonymity, intimate subject matter, satiric tone, and fragmented interaction patterns conveys these modern concepts over the radio waves and into a postmodern world.     

The Biosociology of the Social Self

In sociology today, a consensus exists that the human self is exclusively socially determined. Many sociologists maintain that any considerations of the biological basis of human behavior are irrelevant. The arguments which are made today in favor of the social determination of the human personality use the theoretical insights of the Pragmatists and Symbolic Interactionists as their source of reference and proof. All of the various Pragmatic and Symbolic Interactionist theories use a number of assumptions about the biologically innate nature of human nature. To show that the theories which have presented a social deterministic view of man are themselves deeply immersed in biological assumptions demonstrates that the irrelevance of biological factors as determinants of the human self has not been convincingly proved yet. Also it suggests the possibility that theories dealing with man's social nature and those concerned with innate species-specific characteristics may not necessarily be mutually exclusive.     

Embodied Fluidity and the Commitment to Movement: Constructing the Moral Self through Arthritis Narratives

While biomedical research reifies bodily movement in the lives of people with chronic illness as “functional mobility,” our analysis of biographical osteoarthritis narratives uncovers a moral commitment to movement as both a moral imperative and a technique to preserve a self threatened by the limits arthritis places on daily life. A content analysis of twelve interviews with arthritis sufferers shows that, in addition to the practical and emotional challenges of living with arthritis, these actors face the daily challenge of displaying their understanding of embodied fluidity—the timely and fluid movement through time and space—as a virtuous practice. Our informants use the movement mandate—the commitment to move despite the pain it may cause—to produce themselves as competent social and moral actors sacrificing the demands of their bodies to meet social expectations, and they conduct this performance in front of several audiences: the self and specific and generalized others. For these informants, in both private and public realms, the experience and the management of pain and physical limitation are profoundly social and accountable matters, as they affect interactions with others, their own social identities and moral integrity, and their relations with self as they seek to balance their arthritis pain with their past, present, and future self‐concepts.     

Deconstructing Disability and Neurodiversity: Controversial Issues for Autism and Implications for Social Work

Disability is a socially constructed concept that can be viewed from either a medical or a social perspective. Autism, a developmental disability, can be viewed from the medical model of disability or through a new perspective brought forth by the autistic community and aligning with the social model termed neurodiversity. Using the medical model and a lens of neurodiversity, we can deconstruct the controversial issues surrounding autism and provide insights for social workers and other professionals working with the community of the disabled.     

The Social Marketability of Self: Toward a New Theory of Social Deviance

Abstract

Deviance theory has problems in accounting for. (a) the form deviance takes within and between social groups, and (b) why individuals continue or discontinue deviant careers and responses. This paper deals with these problems by providing a new conceptualization of social deviance. Essentially, the theory is a combination of two ideas. First, we can all be thought of as social commodities; our commodity value (marketability) is based on the qualities we possess that others desire. Second, we all desire certain identities (ideas of who we are or would like to be) validated by others through their actions. Deviance is viewed as a response to strains involving this marketability-identity nexus that is in a continuous process of change.     

社会建设和权力理论视角下的青少年问题研究

不同的理论视角,对于青少年问题的解读是不同的。社会建构论关于“社会问题是一种界定的社会过程”的观点,福柯的权力论关于“权力一自我一知识”的关系框架,为偏差青少年过程研究提供了新的理论视角。据此得出的结论是,在与社会环境的互动过程中,偏差青少年逐步发展形成的罪错行为和边缘性活动,是青少年“群体表达不满和要求尊重某些一致认定的条件的活动”。偏差青少年在其边缘化过程形成的“共认符号”和“协同行动”产生于其与社会环境互动的人生经验．构成为他们的生活日常知识,并完成了“身份形成”和“身份认同”,实现了青少年群体内的自我肯定。权力一自我一知识的互动关系不断推动着偏差青少年边缘性的社会化过程的发展。     

Comparing Conceptualizations of Social Capital

Social work is ideally suited to use social capital to understand societal ills and to conduct a more holistic exploration of power, privilege, and oppression that affects marginalized individuals and groups. To that end, we review how prominent theorists discuss social capital and offer guidance for community practitioners based on these conceptualizations. In opposition to purely micro-level theories of human behavior in the social environment that inadvertently separate micro and macro-level social work, social capital is particularly well suited to be employed at individual, family, community, and societal levels. Our position on the importance of social capital for social work practice is in congruence with social work perspective on the person-in-environment. Although we do not offer a social capital framework for community practice, we hope that our article informs community practitioners' understanding of the place and importance of social capital for communities.     

青少年自我与社会责任的发展

文章揭示了当前部分青少年自我发展与社会责任之间的冲突,并分析了当前青少年“看不到”、“看不清”、“看不懂”社会责任的主要机制:异化的“自我”教育,使“自我”剥离了社会责任;传统伦理与道德规范的“解构”,使“自我”无法确定社会责任;抽象的“社会责任”,使“小我”难以内化“大我”。最后在理性思考的基础上,指出青少年的自我与社会责任原本并非是冲突对立的,完全有可能走向融合,而且二者的和谐发展是必然而必需的。     

Mutual Values: Self Psychology, Intersubjectivity, and Social Work

This article explores a representative sample of the values which self psychology, intersubjectivity, and social work have in common. The mutual values chosen for consideration are: (1). The inherent worth of the human being (2). The uniqueness of the individual (3). Beginning where the client is; and (4). The centrality of the relationship in the clinical setting. The focus will be on the theories and methodologies which have emerged from these values in self psychology and intersubjectivity and their utility for clinical social work. The discussion of each value includes a clinical illustration from the author's practice in order to aid in the elucidation of the concepts presented.     

Social Worker’s Use of Self

Although social worker’s use of self has been conceptualized in different ways throughout the literature, there appears to be a lack of research regarding how social workers describe and involve the self that they bring to their therapeutic and non-therapeutic work. Accordingly, seven social workers were interviewed about their experience of self. Participants described the self that they brought to their work as individualistic, though at the same time stressed the importance of self when interacting with others. The processes involved in the use of self were highlighted, which related also to the different ways clinicians had of being self-aware.     

The Hobbesian Microcosm: On the Dialectics of the Self in Social Theory*

If Parsons is not guilty of holding an over-socialized conception of man, Wrong's critique does apply to the work of the “reality-constructionists” and “symbolic interactionists.” In underemphasizing Mead's “biologic individual” or “I,” contemporary sociological social psychology manages to evade the Hobbesian problem and, hence, amounts to a largely disembodied dialectic. By way of contrast, the compatibility of the Meadian and Freudian perspectives is stressed and the need for further development of a psychoanalytic sociology reaffirmed.     

Gendering the Research Self: Social Practice and Corporeal Multiplicity in the Writing of Organizational Research

This article examines the problems inherent in taking a reflexively gendered position in writing research accounts. Such socially constructed accounts typically require researchers to do one of two things: to suppress the feminine and write implicitly as male, or to adopt a textual position as ‘woman’ that fails to do justice to the complex and unstable multiplicity that underpins the research self. It is argued that this shifting multiplicity is stabilized by the relationship between self and research text being corporeally grounded and gendered in practice. Three possible approaches to gender are considered: the discursive/textual approach (as developed by Foucault); the performance/social practice approach (as developed by Judith Butler) and the corporeal multiplicity approach (as developed by Elizabeth Grosz and Dorothea Olkowski). The article concludes by suggesting a tripartite approach to writing self‐multiplicity in research to extend the possibilities opened up by the social practice approach: re‐citing (redeploying discursive resources in intertextuality); re‐siting (changing the positioning of the self in power relations by reinscribing) and re‐sighting (opening up new, virtual visions of possibility).     

Social Sources of Information in the Development of Self*

Interpersonal and cultural sources of information in the development of self are compared. Specifically, this involves the comparison of the effects of the appraisals of significant others and self-perception using shared criteria. Factors that affect the importance of these two processes, such as the presence of institutionalized indicators, the visibility of the behavior for others, and normative barriers to evaluative communication, are discussed. Finally, empirical evidence is presented on the relative effects of significant others' appraisals and cultural shared indicators of academic ability and physical attractiveness on corresponding self-ratings for children in grades 4–8 and grade 12. Self-appraisals of ability are found to be more highly related to objective variables than are self appraisals of physical attractiveness, suggesting that culturally-based self-perception is more important when there are institutionalized indicators for an attribute. The relationship between others' appraisal and self-appraisals of ability are largely spurious, casting doubt on previous research that relied only on zero-order correlations. Significant others' appraisals are not important for either self-ratings of ability or physical attractiveness.     

青少年友谊质量和社会自我关系研究

友谊作为特殊的同伴关系,在青少年社会性发展及成长过程中起着不可替代的作用,对其社会自我的形成具有重要意义。梳理国内外有关青少年友谊质量和社会自我研究的成果可以发现以往的研究大多集中在对两者中其一的单独研究,抑或友谊质量、社会自我各自与其他因素之间的关系研究,较少有研究者对友谊质量与社会自我关系展开全面细致的研究。总结以往的研究存在以下问题:友谊质量的界定不够明确;友谊质量、社会自我的结构划分众说纷纭;对两者的研究缺乏一定的统合视角;多集中于两者低水平的消极影响研究,缺少对其积极影响的探索。