Social Organization
[My comments are in brackets and
italics.]
From Emile Durkheim,
The Division of Labor in Society, (Translated by George Simpson). by
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Durkheim/DIVLABOR.HTML
The Division of Labor
1.
[We] shall recognize only two kinds of positive solidarity which are
distinguishable by the following qualities:
2. The first binds the individual
directly to society without any intermediary. In the second, he depends upon
society, because he depends upon the parts of which it is composed.
3. Society is not seen in the same
aspect in the two cases. In the first, what we call society is a more
or less organized totality of beliefs and sentiments common to all the members
of the group: this is the collective type. [Culture] On the other
hand, the society in which we are solidary in
the second instance is a system of different, special functions which definite
relations unite. [Social organization/division of labor.]
These two societies really make up only one. They are two aspects of
one and the same reality, but none the less they must be distinguished.
4. From
this second difference there arises another which helps us to characterize and
name the two kinds of solidarity.
The first can be strong only if the ideas and tendencies common to all
the members of the society are greater in number and intensity than those which
pertain personally to each member. It is as much stronger as the excess is
more considerable. But what makes our personality is how much of our own
individual qualities we have, what distinguishes us from others. This solidarity
can grow only in inverse ratio to personality. There are in each of us, as we have said, two consciences: one which is
common to our group in its entirety, which, consequently, is not ourself, but society living and acting within us; the
other, on the contrary, represents that in us which is personal and distinct,
that which makes us an individual.
5.
Solidarity which comes from
likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops
our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it. But, at that moment, our individuality is
nil. It can be born only if the community takes smaller toll of us. There
are, here, two contrary forces, one centripetal, the other centrifugal, which
cannot flourish at the same time. We cannot, at one and the same time, develop
ourselves in two opposite senses. If we have a lively desire to think and act
for ourselves, we cannot be strongly inclined to think and act as others do. If
our ideal is to present a singular and personal appearance, we do not want to
resemble everybody else. Moreover, at the moment when this solidarity exercises
its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for
we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.
6.
The social molecules which can be coherent in this way can act together
only in the measure that they have no actions of their own, as the molecules of
inorganic bodies. That is why we propose
to call this type of solidarity mechanical. The term does not signify that
it is produced by mechanical and artificial means. We call it that only by analogy to the cohesion which unites the
elements of an inanimate body, as opposed to that which makes a unity out
of the elements of a living body. What justifies this term is that the link
which thus unites the individual to society is wholly analogous to that which
attaches a thing to a person. The individual conscience, considered in this
light, is a simple dependent upon the collective type and follows all of its
movements, as the possessed object follows those of its owner. In societies
where this type of solidarity is highly developed, the individual does not
appear, as we shall see later. Individuality is something which the society
possesses. Thus, in these social types, personal rights are not yet
distinguished from real rights.
It
is quite otherwise with the solidarity which the division of labor produces.
Whereas the previous type implies that
individuals resemble each other, this type presumes their difference. The
first is possible only in so far as the individual personality is absorbed into
the collective personality; the second is possible only if each one has a
sphere of action which is peculiar to him; that is, a personality. It is necessary, then, that the
collective conscience leave open a part of the
individual conscience in order that special functions may be established there,
functions which it cannot regulate. The more this region is extended, the
stronger is the cohesion which results from this solidarity. In effect, on the
one hand, each one depends as much more strictly on society as labor is more
divided; and, on the other, the activity of each is as much more personal as it
is more specialized. Doubtless, as circumscribed as it is, it is never
completely original. Even in the exercise of our occupation, we conform to
usages, to practices which are common to our whole professional brotherhood.
But, even in this instance, the yoke that we submit to is much less heavy than
when society completely controls us, and it leaves much more place open for the
free play of our initiative. Here, then,
the individuality of all grows at the same time as that of its parts. Society
becomes more capable of collective movement, at the same time that each of its
elements has more freedom of movement. This solidarity resembles that
which we observe among the higher animals. Each organ, in effect, has its
special physiognomy, its autonomy. And, moreover, the unity of the organism is
as great as the individuation of the parts is more marked. Because of this analogy, we propose to call the solidarity which is due
to the division of labor, organic.
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, part III, chap. 6, pp. 650-78.
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/BUREAU.HTML
VIII. Bureaucracy
I: Characteristics of Bureaucracy
MODERN officialdom functions in the
following specific manner:
I. There is the principle of fixed and
official jurisdictional areas, which are generally ordered by rules, that is,
by laws or administrative regulations.
1. The regular activities required
for the purposes of the bureaucratically governed structure are distributed in
a fixed way as official duties.
2. The authority to give the
commands required for the discharge of these duties is distributed in a stable
way and is strictly delimited by rules concerning the coercive means, physical,
sacerdotal, or otherwise, which may be placed at the disposal of officials.
3. Methodical provision is made for
the regular and continuous fulfilment of these duties
and for the execution of the corresponding rights; only persons who have the
generally regulated qualifications to serve are employed.
4. In public and lawful government
these three elements constitute 'bureaucratic authority.' In private
economic domination, they constitute bureaucratic 'management.' Bureaucracy,
thus understood, is fully developed in political and ecclesiastical communities
only in the modern state, and, in the private economy, only in the most
advanced institutions of capitalism….
II. The principles of office hierarchy and of levels of graded authority
mean a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a
supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such a system offers
the governed the possibility of appealing the decision of a lower office to its
higher authority, in a definitely regulated manner. With the full development
of the bureaucratic type, the office hierarchy is monocratically
organized. The principle of hierarchical office authority is found in all
bureaucratic structures: in state and ecclesiastical structures as well as in
large party organizations and private enterprises. It does not matter for the
character of bureaucracy whether its authority is called 'private' or 'public.'
When the principle of
jurisdictional 'competency' is fully carried through, hierarchical
subordination--at least in public office--does not mean that the 'higher'
authority is simply authorized to take over the business of the 'lower.'
Indeed, the opposite is the rule. Once
established and having fulfilled its task, an office tends to continue in
existence and be held by another incumbent.
III. The management of the modern office is based upon written documents
('the files'), which are preserved in their original or draught form. There
is, therefore, a staff of subaltern officials and scribes of all sorts. The
body of officials actively engaged in a 'public' office, along with the
respective apparatus of material implements and the files,
make up a 'bureau.' In private enterprise, 'the bureau' is often called 'the
office.'
IV. Office management, at least all specialized office management-- and
such management is distinctly modern--usually presupposes thorough and expert
training. This increasingly holds for the modern executive and employee of
private enterprises, in the same manner as it holds for the state official.
VI. The management of the office
follows general rules, which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive,
and which can be learned. Knowledge of these rules represents a special
technical learning which the officials possess. It involves jurisprudence, or
administrative or business management.
From George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and
Society.
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Mead/MINDSELF.HTML
Social Attitudes and the Physical
World
1.
The self is not so much a substance as a process in which the
conversation of gestures has been internalized within an organic form. This
process does not exist for itself, but is simply a phase of the whole social
organization of which the individual is a part. The organization of the social
act has been imported into the organism and becomes then the mind of the
individual. It still includes the attitudes of others, but now highly
organized, so that they become what we call social attitudes rather than roles
of separate individuals. This process of relating one's own
organism to the others in the interactions that are going on, in so far as it
is imported into the conduct of the individual with the conversation of the
"I" and the "me," constitutes the self. [1] The
value of this importation of the conversation of gestures into the conduct of
the individual lies in the superior co-ordination gained for society as a
whole, and in the increased efficiency of the individual as a member of the
group. It is the difference between the process which can take place in a group
of rats or ants or bees, and that which can take place in a human community.
The social process with its various implications is actually taken up into the
experience of the individual so that that which is going on takes place more
effectively, because in a certain sense it has been rehearsed in the
individual. He not only plays his part better under those conditions but he
also reacts back on the organization of which he is a part. [In
other words, we may internalize (and call “me”) our interpretation of the
responses of other persons to our actions.
A boy asks a girl for a date. She
says, “Eeeeeuuuu.
Not likely, pimple face.” He may
come to see himself as ugly and unworthy of any better treatment. Does it work the same way if we are talking
about action. For example, do poor
grades necessarily imply that a student is ESSENTIALLY a moron?]
2.
The reaction of the individual in this conversation of gestures is one
that in some degree is continually modifying the social process itself. It is
this modification of the process which is of greatest interest in the
experience of the individual. He takes
the attitude of the other toward his own stimulus, and in taking that he finds
it modified in that his response becomes a different one, and leads in turn to
further changes it.
3.
The mind is simply the interplay
of such gestures in the form of significant symbols. [We
communicate---are understood---via sending and receiving gestures whose
meaning/significance is the same for all parties. These are called significant symbols.]
4.
We must remember that the gesture is there only in its relationship to
the response, to the attitude…..What the human being has succeeded in doing
is in organizing the response to a certain symbol which is a part of the social
act, so that he takes the attitude of the other person who co-operates with
him. It is that which gives him a mind.
5.
I want to be sure that we see
that the content put into the mind is only a development and product of social
interaction. It is a development which is of enormous importance, and which
leads to complexities and complications of society which go almost beyond our
power to trace, but originally it is nothing but the taking over of the
attitude of the other. To the extent
that the animal can take the attitude of the other and utilize that attitude
for the control of his own conduct, we have what is termed mind; and that is
the only apparatus involved in the appearance of the mind.
I know of no way in which
intelligence or mind could arise or could have arisen, other than through the
internalization by the individual of social processes of experience and
behavior, that is, through this internalization of the conversation of
significant gestures, as made possible by the individual's taking the attitudes
of other individuals toward himself and toward what is being thought about. And
if mind or thought has arisen in this way, then there neither can be nor could
have been any mind or thought without language; and the early stages of the
development of language must have been prior to the development of mind or
thought.
PERSONALIZATION AND
August, 1997
I.
INTRODUCTION
1. Place and Personhood
Social formations--from small
groups to societies--consist of individuals.
More abstractly, however, social
formations consist of places (positions, statuses or "membership
categories") that are occupied by individuals and groups. Groups include
cliques, gangs, teams, families, classrooms, schools, neighborhoods,
communities (defined by area and/or common interest), "races,"
nationalities, and language communities. Examples of social places include
"good provider," "nurturing mother," "masterful
teacher," "wise administrator," "respected elder,"
"sweet child," "gangster," "class fool,"
"homeless," "student with a learning disability,"
"mental defective," "underclass," and the places occupied
by persons and groups labeled with terms such as "scum of the earth,"
"kike," "wop," "spic," "dumb blonde,"
"slut," "white trash," "nigger," “dyke,” and
"faggot." Most persons have commonsense knowledge of position or
place. For example, one hears comments such as "You can't talk that way to
someone in my position," or one observes that some persons said to have
mental retardation look at the floor and give minimal responses when talking to
persons in the category "normal" (Yearley
& Brewer, 1989).
2. Place, Personhood, and Identity are
Achievements
Some people take for granted a
desirable social membership and personal identity. However, persons who were
never asked to a school dance, who have recently lost their jobs, who have a
history of abuse or school failure, or who have "physical anomalies,"
know that membership and identity are neither inherent characteristics (i.e.,
part of them), nor things that can be taken for granted. Instead, a desirable
membership (place) and identity are hard won and sometimes temporary
achievements. Members of large groups know this, too. For example, the civil
rights movement of the 1950's and 60's represents the efforts of African
Americans to improve their place. Similarly, members of the disability movement
want it understood that bodies have impairments, but disability is a
stigmatized social place (Oliver, 1996). Therefore, we can say that place and
identity are achievements--in fact, they are ongoing collaborative
achievements. We acquire, learn, sustain, and change places and identities
through social interaction. Note: this interaction can be at the interpersonal level (e.g., teacher and
student; passersby on the street) and at the group level (e.g., between one community and another). Interactions
that bring individuals and groups into larger social formations, and that
bestow, sustain, or up-grade valued places and identities, are part of a personalization process (Henry,1966). However, interactions that deny, degrade, or remove
a person's or a group's place are part of a depersonalization process.
3. Personalization and Depersonalization May be
"Invisible" or Public
Most place-bestowing interactions
(e.g., when parents bring a new child into the family) and most
place-sustaining interactions (e.g., treating a person who has undergone a
disfiguring operation as the same person) are mundane, and almost invisible.
For example, family members teach a young child her place, and remind
themselves how they see the child, by the way they feed and dress her; respond
to her preferences and dispreferences; and give her
opportunities to participate.
Depersonalization, too, is accomplished through mundane interactions, such as
harsh punishment; insults; humiliation; and deprivation of opportunities,
affection and protection. For instance, the diagnosis that a student has a
(learning disability, attention disorder, conduct disorder), and the prognosis
that the student is not likely to learn much from "normal" classroom
instruction, may be understood as rational outcomes of a competent assessment (Mehan, 1993). Yet, the diagnosis and prognosis may be steps
in the invisible process of assigning the student a disvalued place in the
school and in the larger society (Carrier, 1983; McDermott, 1993). However, some personalizing
(place-bestowing, -sustaining, or -improving) interactions are planned and
perhaps public. These are rites of passage. Examples include baptism,
confirmation, graduations, and birthday celebrations. Likewise, explicit and sometimes official
depersonalization occurs during "degradation ceremonies" (Garfinkel, 1956) or "rituals of adversity"
(Murphy, Scheer, Murphy, & Mack,1988).
These include competency hearings, body searches, transfers
from regular to special education classes, derogatory propaganda, mass
imprisonment, and genocide.
4. Attributes of
Each place has certain attributes
associated with it. One set of attributes is qualities that are ascribed to
occupants of a place. These qualities include humanness, membership, value, and
identity. This does not mean that occupants actually have the ascribed
qualities. The point is that members of a culture assume that anyone who
occupies a certain place either must have or eventually will reveal certain
qualities.
Regarding the quality of humanness,
occupants of a place might be seen as fully human (part of the biological
species and of the human community defined by common origins, sufferings, and
fate). Or, occupants might be seen as lesser sorts of humans (missing what are
deemed essential features, such as an understanding of the facts of human
existence). Or, finally, occupants might be seen as nonhuman.
The midwife wonder'd and the
women cried
'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!'
And so I was; which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog."
(Richard, Duke of
What kind
of humanness is ascribed to individuals who are deemed stupid, foreigners,
anti-social, violent, poor, or (as in the case of Richard) deformed? [Notice
that Richard has internalized other persons' perceptions of him, and is
resolved to play his ascribed part (vicious dog) to the hilt--which he surely
does in the next play, Richard III.]
Membership is another quality
ascribed to occupants of a place. For example, occupants might be seen as valued
members in good standing, incompetent members, members whose place is tenuous,
members on the fringe of the circle of "us," or partial members.
Identity is a third quality ascribed to occupants. It consists of alleged
stable traits such as rationality or irrationality, intelligence, honesty,
strength, competence, and value.
A second attribute of any place is resources
that members believe it is appropriate to provide, permit, or deny
occupants. Resources include food, shelter, clothing, health care, educational
and occupational opportunities, advancement, justice, affection, approval,
prestige, and protection.
A third attribute of place is moral
obligationsof
persons within the same place or between different places. These include the
understood obligation vs the understood absence of
obligation to empathize with the sufferings of other individuals or groups; the
obligation vs lack of obligation to protect others;
the obligation vs lack of obligation to be sensitive
and to satisfy other persons' preferences and dispreferences;
and the obligation vs lack of obligation to control
aggressive impulses against individuals and groups.
5. Social Functions of Personalization and
Depersonalization
Personalization and
depersonalization serve several functions. One function is simply the distribution
of life, resources, suffering, and identities in a social formation (Bourdieu, 1990; Hocart, 1970; Walzer, 1983). Who will receive the better sorts of health
care and schooling? Who will be protected from dealth,
illness, injustice, and violence? Who will be exposed to violence and
environmental toxins (Wise & Lowe, 1992)? Whose claims to deserving respect
and better treatment are we obliged to listen to and validate? Examples of a
personalizing distribution include parents buying toys for their awaited baby,
life-giving medical procedures for sick infants, and practices (e.g., baptism,
admission to regular education classes) that bring newcomers into families and
communities. Examples of a depersonalizing distribution, however, include
abortion, institutionalizing children with disabilities, discrimination in
hiring and promotion, and infanticide (e.g., restricting food to newborns with
disabilities or killing newborns of the less valued sex) (Elks, 1993; Evans,
1983; Wolfensberger, 1994). By these means, the pool
of individuals and groups with claims to a place and to the resources that go
with a place is limited and controlled.
A second function of
personalization and depersonalization processes is defending members against
vulnerability by isolating or degrading individuals and groups whose
bodies, behaviors, or life circumstances provoke fears of disfigurement, pain,
illness, poverty, failure, madness, disgrace, or abandonment. In much the same
way that old, mad or sick people have been selected as scapegoats for the sins
of the community, and then killed or driven out--thereby decreasing the
vulnerability of the group to the judgment of the gods--so in modern societies
certain places ("retard," "loser," "homeless, "weird
family") are understood as occupied by people whose misfortunes symbolize
the host of bad things that can happen.
Imagine a number of men in chains...some of whom are each
day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition
in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair
await their turn. This is an image of the human condition. (Pascal, 1966, p.
165)
The ill
treatment or neglect that such persons may receive creates social distance.
This distance enables the rest of the community to feel more secure in the
knowledge that they have not been selected for destruction by fate, chance, or
their fellow humans.
A third function is filling
important but disvalued positions in communities, organizations, and groups.
Examples include the "butt of jokes," the child or family being
evaluated, the status of student in resource rooms or segregated classes, and
people who do the "dirty work" of society.
A final function of personalization
and depersonalization is sustaining the illusion of moral rectitude,
professional expertise, and therefore legitimate authority in schools and human
service agencies by transforming unsatisfactory outcomes (which could be
attributed to malevolence or incompetence) into evidence of clients' deviance (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Carrier, 1983). For example, staff at a
school that employs highly painful methods to control problem behavior may
explain worsening "aggression" of students as part of the natural
course of the students' disorders or as a result of unknown neurological
factors.
II. SIGNS
(EVIDENCE) OF
6.
How is it that some individuals and groups are allocated a valued place,
while other are allocated and sustained in a disvalued place, such as "outsider,"
"failure," "troublemaker," or "retard"? The
answer, in part, is that each individual or group displays "socially
significant symbols." These are physical, behavioral, and social
characteristics that are understood as defining (i.e., are considered signs of)
humanness, value, and personal identity (Henry, 1966). The individual or group
who is allocated the social place "outsider" or "retard,"
is not likely to have some of the significant symbols (e.g.,
"correct" skin color, "correct" language, competence as
defined by a dominant group, a high-status family, an attractive body, and nice
clothes) that are understood as indicators of common humanity, value, and
social power, and that exert a moral force on other persons, obliging them to
help the individual to have a decent life. In summary, socially significant
symbols are tools for assigning and justifying place.
Definition of Socially
Significant Symbols
On what basis do members allocate,
deny, remove, upgrade, or degrade place--and associated humanness, membership,
identity, resources and moral obligation? The answer, in part, is that groups
develop a stock of "significant symbols" that enable members to make
sense of their world (actually, to create and to sustain a "world").
Through interaction, members of groups come to see certain events (e.g.,
gestures, postures, utterances, objects, activities, "signs" in
nature) as signifying or pointing to something else. For example, a young child
learns that a parent's upturned lips and wide-open eyes point to something
inside the parent (happiness) and predict the parent's next action (e.g.,
hugging the child). When the gesture has the same meaning or significance for
the child (receiver) as it does for the parent (sender), the gesture is called
a significant symbol (Mead, 1956). Groups develop stocks of significant symbols
that constitute much of what they communicate about and how they communicate.
Moreover, the repeated use of significant symbols (sending and receiving
mutually understood gestures) enables members to assume that they live in an intersubjective world--that they understand one another and
constitute a community--a we (Schutz, 1970).
Different stocks of significant
symbols (items with shared meaning) are relevant for different activities in
communities. For instance, farmers know the signs of wheat rust and fertile
soil. Another and a very large set of significant symbols is used in
personalizing and depersonalizing activities. This set of socially significant
symbols is understood as pointing to humanness, value, and personal identity.
Note that some socially significant symbols are stigmata--i.e., signs of nonhumanness, incompetence, low status, threats to social
order, and "spoiled" identity (Goffman,
1963a).
Four Groups of Socially Significant
Symbols
Socially significant symbols used
in personalization and depersonalization fall into four groups, as noted by
Jules Henry (1966).
Body. One group
consists of features of the body, such as stature, the complement of body
parts, the operation of parts, and the placement and proportionality of parts
(e.g., eyes that are spaced properly). Deviations from aesthetic and medical
(official) standards of the "normal" body may be seen as stigmata--in
this case "body abominations" (Goffman,
1963a) or forms of "distortedness" (Henry, 1963). When other persons
regard an individual's body or a group's body type as attractive and healthy,
they may feel an initial attachment to the individual or group--a bond of
humanness--and provide at least a minimum of sensitivity and protection (care).
However, when other persons regard an individual's body or a group's body type
as a distortion of the human form, they may feel a lack of human kinship; their
own vulnerabilities to injury, disfigurement, disgrace, and rejection may be
provoked; and (depending on other significant symbols identified below) may
actively or passively deny life or valuable place.
Competence and Comportment Depending on the culture, community, organization, or
family, aspects of behavior that point to humanness, value, and identity
include: 1) proper orientation and attention to the outer world; 2) proper
rates and intensities of activity (i.e., between hyper- and hypoactive; 3)
locomotion (e.g., upright and steady); 4) skillful turn-taking (e.g.,
initiating, reciprocating, and repairing interaction); 5) communication via
words and embodied gestures; 6) self-care (e.g., presenting an attractive
appearance and demonstrating knowledge and respect for the "shame and
disgust function" of the group by, for instance, cleaning body fluids from
the hands) (Henry, 1966); and 7) competence at routine activities (e.g.,
playing, making friends, making money, doing chores). When an individual or
group acquires and displays socially important competencies, other persons are
likely to see the individual or group as being "like us," valuable,
and hence worthy of protection, formal instruction and other opportunities to
learn and to participate.
Possessions A third group of socially significant symbols consists of
material possessions. Examples include eating utensils, clothing, toys, bed,
seat at the supper table, books, watch, television set, bike, stereo, and
computer. Of course, the set of possessions that define a member in good
standing depends on the culture, family, peer group, and on the individual's
age. When individuals or groups display socially important possessions, other
people assume that these individuals or groups have something to offer (are
valuable), know what is "in" (are geared into cultural trends), and
are cared for (have protection and social power). Therefore, individuals and
groups who display socially important possessions are likely to be accorded a
more valuable place and personhood than individuals who lack these symbols.
Life Circumstances Life circumstances
that are important signs of humanness, value, and identity in some cultures and
groups include: 1) having a family, friends, and job; 2) having children who
are "normal"; 3) being a member of certain religious, ethnic, or
racial groups; 4) being a member of a certain social class defined by income or
area of residence; 5) having places to live, play, and hang-out (i.e.,
territory); and 6) having some autonomy and independence (e.g., an effective
voice in deciding the conditions of one's life or the lives of people to whom
one feels obligated). Individuals and groups who have important life
circumstances may be perceived as more competent, as having more resources, and
as having more value. Therefore, other things being equal (body and
comportment), they may be accorded a more valuable place and personhood. As
stated, the above socially significant symbols are understood as evidence of
proper place, and are therefore used to allocate (or to deny) and to justify
attributions of humanness, value, membership, identity, resources, and moral
obligation. The next sections examine this in more detail.
The Ascription of Personhood: Humanness,Value, and Identity
Humanness Humanness implies membership in the human species based on
significant symbols that define a well-functioning and aesthetically acceptable
body. Therefore, when an infant is born with "deformities," other
persons may experience difficulty assigning full humanness. This may result in
depersonalizing child-caregiver interaction, assignment to the social place of
"freak," or death.
Second, humanness implies
membership in a community defined by a group's conception of the facts of
human existence. For example, a group may believe that each member
confronts the inescapability of suffering and death; is responsible for giving
life meaning; and must be independent, productive, and tough. Therefore, when
some individuals' bodies and/or behaviors are taken to signify that the
individuals are incapable of understanding the facts of life or incapable of
meeting the challenges of existence, these individuals may be ascribed less
than full humanness and treated in a commensurate fashion (e.g., life in subordinate
statuses or in some form of institution).
Third, humanness implies intersubjectivity. To ascribe intersubjectivity is to infer that many events common to a
group have the same meaning for the individual as they do for other members;
that the individual experiences a "we" feeling with other members;
and that if the individual trades standpoints with another member, the
individual will have the same experiences as the other (Schutz,
1970). Socially significant symbols that point to intersubjectivity
or to the capacity for intersubjectivity include
working sense organs (especially eyes [Fraiberg,
1974]); orientation, attention, and responsiveness to activities (e.g., showing
recognition); and interaction competence.
In summary, the ascription of intersubjectivity is based on features of the body and
comportment that are understood as indicating that an individual is geared into
the same conventional reality and can communicate with other members. The
ascription of intersubjectivity has several personalizing
effects. It increases the incentive to enter into social relations with the
individual; it almost automatically results in other persons seeing the
individual not merely as moving meat, but a self that inhabits a body (Berger
& Luckmann, 1967; Ostrow,
1990); it fosters sympathy; and it carries the moral obligation to treat an
individual with appropriate sensitivity and respect (Schopenhauer, 1958).
Value An individual's or a
group's perceived value is based on competence, contributions to social activities,
and material possessions. People who attain these are likely to considered worthy of other members' time and effort,
protection, nurturance, clothing, shelter, toys, education, and medical care (Tronto, 1993). The inferior teaching materials and the
harsh child-caregiver interaction found in some classes and families of
children with disabilities reflect (and sustain) the ascription of low value to
the children. Value is also ascribed on the basis of significant symbols that
imply social ties. For example, the visibility of family, friends, and other
advocates; membership in religious, sports, and other groups; and symbols of
socioeconomic status (e.g., possessions) suggest that an individual or group
has protection and resources for social influence (e.g., pressure,
newsworthiness) that can be drawn upon. The individual's or group's social
ties, therefore, exert a political force that obliges other persons (teachers,
police, clergy, lawyers, media) to be sensitive to the individual's or group's
welfare, and to provide special care if called on.
Identity Socially significant symbols are used to make ascriptions
about who an individual or group is. Some socially significant symbols are
understood as pointing inward to a self or a mind (Coulter, 1979; Wittgenstein,
1971). They signify the individual's or group's "aliveness" or
"with-it-ness" as an actor (Goffman,
1963b). Specifically, functioning sense organs and proper comportment
(attention, responsiveness, competence) suggest that
an individual or group is an embodiment of will (energy, drive), consciousness,
purpose, and reason. These ascriptions powerfully affect other persons'
interactions with the individual or group. To the extent, for example, that a
child's body and behavior are seen as signifying that the child is
less-than-fully-sentient and manifests little intentionality, other persons may
have difficulty imagining a self inside the child's skin that has experiences
and that wills actions (Goode, 1991). They may, therefore, feel little intersubjectivity with the child, judge efforts to reach
the child as futile, interact with the child in ways that foster conflict and
social distance, and feel little obligation to provide resources for a decent
life.
An individual's or group's
comportment is also used to ascribe durable traits. Examples of traits include:
1) actions (whiny, demanding, cooperative, competent); 2) feelings (irritable,
depressed, happy); 3) motives (to injure, to please); 4) attitudes (serious,
frivolous, careful, studious, egoistic); and 5) ways of thinking (quick,
confused, illogical, reasonable). The ascription of traits such as irritable,
demanding, self-centered, hostile, and destructive may result in an evaluation
that the individual's presence is aversive and costly. This may foster or
sustain conflictual interaction (e.g., threat and
counter-threat; mutual punishment) that engenders increasingly deviant
behavior, leading to a child's assignment to a lesser social place (e.g., the
place of a "person with an emotional disturbance") (Baden & Howe,
1992; Campbell, Pierce, March, Ewing, & Szumowski,
1994; Olson, Bates, & Bayles, 1989; Pettit &
Bates, 1989; van de Rijt-Plooij & Plooij, 1993).
The Allocation of Place: Rights,
Resources, and Opportunities to Participate
Social place is defined in part by
the material resources made available to an individual or group, and by the
rights, care, and opportunities that are accorded. Different social places
provide incumbents with greater or fewer opportunities to voice their rights,
preferences, and dispreferences, and to have their
voices validated. The cries of a child with high social place (e.g., the
"sweet child," the "challenged but one of us" child) may
provoke nurturing responses from caregivers. The cries of a child or a group with
low social place ("job-stealing foreigners") may provoke contemptuous
interpretations of the crying as "attention-getting." People who are
allocated a higher social place are also likely have
access to a greater quantity and higher quality of food, protection, clothing,
shelter, toys, medical care, and other resources. Finally, the higher the
social place, the greater and more valuable are opportunities (educational,
economic, political) accorded to the individual or group and that the
individual or group comes to regard as rightful possessions.
III.
SOCIAL INTERACTION, IDENTITY, AND PLACE
7.
Under certain conditions,
experiences of personalization and depersonalization yield identities that
match the treatment received. Sufficiently powerful and consistent
experiences of personalization may foster self (or group) satisfaction,
confidence, and attachment to the larger social formation. Sufficiently
powerful and consistent experiences of depersonalization, however, may foster
self (or group) loathing, vulnerability, and alienation from the larger social
formation. This latter was eloquently expressed by W.E.B Du
Bois.
It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the
revelation first bursts upon one... I remember well when the shadow swept over
me... (S)omething put it
into the boys' and girls' head to buy gorgeous visiting cards...and exchange.
The exchange was a merry one till one girl , a tall
newcomer, refused my card, --refused it peremptorily with a glance. Then it
dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the
others...Why did God make me a stranger and an outcast in mine own house?...It
is a peculiar sensation,...this sense of always looking at one's self though
the eyes of others, of measuring oneself by the tape of a world that looks on
in amused contempt and pity... But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not
help but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and
lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed an atmoshpere of contempt and hate. (The souls of Black
folk)
In both
personalization and depersonalization, the individual or group first interprets
the meaning of experiences. A person may interpret protection, for instance, as
meaning, "They like me, see me as valuable, as being one of them."
However, a person may interpret rejection (as in the excerpt from Du Bois) as meaning. "They see me as different, as
deficient or defective, not part of the group." Interpretation may be
followed by internalization. This means that the individual or group now uses
the interpretation to describe itself. The interpretation--"They see me as
deficient or defective, an outsider"--becomes part of the self--"I am
deficient or defective. I am an outsider." The circle is now complete. The
person or group that sees itself as a valued member is likely to act in that
fashion (e.g., to participate, and to acquire more socially significant symbols
of valuable place). This demonstrates to other persons that their perception of
the individual or group as being a valuable member was correct. When, however,
a depersonalized individual or group plays the (expected) part of outsider,
fool, adversary, enemy, or "defective," it affirms depersonalizing
perceptions that other persons had, and sustains depersonalizing treatment.
Social interaction, identity and place are now consistent.
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From W.E.B. DuBois, The
Souls of Black Folk.
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/DuBois/sbf1.htm
Chapter I Of
Our Spiritual Strivings
Between me and the other world
there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of
delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They
approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately,
and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I
fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood
boil? At these I smile, or am
interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may
require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem [
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and
Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort
of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American
world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him
see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through
the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks
on in amused contempt and pity. One ever
feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two
warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from
being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the
history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to
merge his double self into a better and truer self. [WHAT
PROCESS?] In this merging he wishes
neither of the older selves to be lost.
He would not Africanize
This, then, is the end of his
striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and
isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the
past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits
through the tale of
Away back in the days of bondage they thought
to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men
ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American
Negro for two centuries. To him, so far
as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause
of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a
promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied
Israelites. In song and exhortation
swelled one refrain--
"Shout, O children!
Shout, you're
free!
For God has bought your
liberty!"
Years have passed away since
then,--ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal
and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in
its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast.
In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:--
"Take any shape but that, and
my firm nerves
Shall never
tremble!"
The Nation has not yet found peace
from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised
land. Whatever of good may have come in
these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro
people,--a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was
unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.
A people thus handicapped ought not
to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and
thought to its own social problems. But
alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards
and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black
man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly
explain it as the natural defence of culture against
barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the
"higher" against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is
founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress,
he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance.
But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands
helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect
and mockery, the ridicule and systematic
humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical
ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the
all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from
Toussaint to the devil, --before this there rises a sickening despair that
would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom
"discouragement" is an unwritten word.
But the facing of so vast a prejudice could
not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering
of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of
contempt and hate. Whisperings and
portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are
diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what
need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this
self-criticism, saying: Be content to be
servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force or
fraud,--and behold the suicide of a race!
Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good, --the more careful
adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes'
social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of
progress.
Chapter VI Of
the Training of Black Men
But when we have vaguely said that Education will set this tangle
straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training for life teaches
living; but what training for the profitable living together of black men and
white? A hundred and fifty years ago our task would have seemed easier…. [HIS
QUESITON IS, WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION?]
In rough approximation we may point
out four varying decades of work in Southern education since the Civil War.
From the close of the war until 1876, was the period of uncertain groping and
temporary relief. There were army schools, mission schools, and schools of the
Freedmen's Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system and co-operation. Then followed ten years
of constructive definite effort toward the building of complete school systems
in the South. Normal schools and colleges were founded for the freedmen,
and teachers trained there to man the public schools. There was the
inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the prejudices of the master and
the ignorance of the slave, and all seemed clear sailing out of the wreckage of
the storm. Meantime, starting in this decade yet especially developing from
1885 to 1895, began the industrial revolution of the
South. The land saw glimpses of a new destiny and the stirring of new ideals.
The educational system striving to complete itself saw new obstacles and a
field of work ever broader and deeper. The
Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically
distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools
were doing little more than common-school work, and the common schools were
training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training
these too often poorly. At the same time the white South, by reason of its
sudden conversion from the slavery ideal, by so much the more became set and
strengthened in its racial prejudice, and crystallized it into harsh law and
harsher custom; while the marvellous pushing forward
of the poor white daily threatened to take even bread and butter from the
mouths of the heavily handicapped sons of the freedmen. In the midst, then, of
the larger problem of Negro education sprang up the more practical question of
work, the inevitable economic quandary that faces a people in the transition
from slavery to freedom, and especially those who make that change amid hate
and prejudice, lawlessness and ruthless competition.
The industrial school springing to
notice in this decade, but coming to full recognition in the decade beginning
with 1895, was the proffered answer to this combined educational and economic
crisis, and an answer of singular wisdom and timeliness. From the very first in
nearly all the schools some attention had been given to training in handiwork,
but now was this training first raised to a dignity that brought it in direct
touch with the South's magnificent industrial development, and given an
emphasis which reminded black folk that before the
Especially has criticism been directed against the former educational
efforts to aid the Negro. In the four periods I have
mentioned, we find first, boundless, planless
enthusiasm and sacrifice; then the preparation of teachers for a vast
public-school system; then the launching and expansion of that school system
amid increasing difficulties; and finally the training of workmen for the new
and growing industries. This development has been sharply ridiculed as a
logical anomaly and flat reversal of nature. Soothly
we have been told that first industrial and manual training should have taught
the Negro to work, then simple schools should have taught him to read and
write, and finally, after years, high and normal schools could have completed
the system, as intelligence and wealth demanded. [IN
OTHER WORDS, COLLEGES WERE DEVELOPED BEFORE FREED BLACKS HAD GOOD GRAMMAR
SCHOOLS.]
Such higher training-schools tended
naturally to deepen broader development: at first they were common and grammar
schools, then some became high schools. And finally, by 1900, some thirty-four
had one year or more of studies of college grade. This development was reached
with different degrees of speed in different institutions:
It can thus be seen that the work of education in the South began with
higher institutions of training, which threw off as their foliage common
schools, and later industrial schools, and at the same time strove to shoot
their roots ever deeper toward college and university training. That this
was an inevitable and necessary development, sooner or later, goes without
saying; but there has been, and still is, a question in many minds if the
natural growth was not forced, and if the higher training was not either
overdone or done with cheap and unsound methods. Among white Southerners this
feeling is widespread and positive. A prominent Southern journal voiced this in
a recent editorial.
"The
experiment that has been made to give the colored students classical training
has not been satisfactory. Even
though many were able to pursue the course, most of them did so in a
parrot-like way, learning what was
taught, but not seeming to appropriate the truth and import of their instruction, and graduating without
sensible aim or valuable occupation for their future. The whole scheme has proved a waste of time, efforts,
and the money of the state."
While most fair-minded men would
recognize this as extreme and overdrawn, still without doubt many are asking, Are there a sufficient number of Negroes ready for college
training to warrant the undertaking? Are not too many students prematurely
forced into this work? Does it not have the effect of dissatisfying the young
Negro with his environment? And do these graduates succeed in real life? Such
natural questions cannot be evaded, nor on the other hand must a Nation
naturally skeptical as to Negro ability assume an unfavorable answer without
careful inquiry and patient openness to conviction. We must not forget that
most Americans answer all queries regarding the Negro a priori, and that the
least that human courtesy can do is to listen to evidence.
I sit with Shakespeare and he
winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas,
where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves
of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the
stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all
graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed
with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly