Anthony Elliott

Concepts of the Self


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the rise of digital technology in recent times, but also about the changing nature of the self. For the global digital revolution has impacted profoundly on modern societies, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the everyday routines through which individuals forge and sustain a sense of self. Clearly, those like Ronda living in information-rich societies have an enormous degree of choice in accessing news and entertainment through the mass media. This explosion of global communications is crucial to the transformed nature of the self in various ways. First, an individual’s use of mass media – from the digitalization of news and streaming services to social media and virtual personal assistants – is not simply about the gathering of information, however important that might be. It informs – in a deeply symbolic way – our everyday activities and connections with others. What one gleans from the morning news, for example, provides fertile subject matter for various routine interactions in which the self is implicated – from discussions with friends in cafés to dialogue with fellow workers at the office.

      Second, an individual who engages with digital media is also caught up in a complicated process of self-definition and consumer identification. Whether one chooses to read The Times, the Daily Mail or the New York Times – and indeed whether one reads the online version or requests a robo-reader to cover the headlines – says a great deal about the relation between the self and broader socioeconomic contexts. People can separate themselves from others – in actual, imagined and virtual ways – through reliance on the cultural status of media products. Consumer identification with media products often functions in a kind of make-believe way – ‘I only read the New York Times’ – but also profoundly influences the self-presentations of individuals. Indeed, for many people, this kind of brand loyalty is definitional of their ‘ideal self’ – the self that they would like to be.

      Finally, the reshaping of the self through engagement with both digital and social media moves us to reflect on contemporary debates about modernity, postmodernism and, in particular, the much contested idea of a ‘speeding-up’ of the world. Some sociologists of the media have argued that today’s quality newspapers – such as the Los Angeles Times or the Guardian – contain as much information as an individual might have encountered over the course of their entire lifetime in a premodern society. This clearly raises issues about ‘information overload’ in modern societies; but it also raises complex questions concerning the self and its navigation of the myriad narratives and kaleidoscopic perspectives available through the mass media today. How do people forge a coherent sense of self against the expansive spread of information available through the mass media? How does the society of information overload impact on processes of self-formation? These are issues that increasingly affect everyone today.

      In still another way, all social theories of the self turn on issues of control, capabilities and capacities. This is a more complex point, and the debate around it has involved some difficult terminology – but I think the essence of the issue can be easily summarized. Many sociologists talk about the self primarily in terms of the experience of agency – the degree of active involvement individuals have in shaping their personal and cultural experience. In everyday life, we routinely engage in social practices – checking email, posting status updates or taking the dog for an evening walk – in which, for the most part, we express agency in what we do. Self-management, self-shaping, self-stylization: this is just how we give structure to our identities. As directors of our own lives, we draw upon emotional frames of memory and desire, as well as wider cultural and social resources, in fashioning the self. Expressions of personal agency – whether of writing a letter or uttering the words ‘I love you’ – are not something that happens through our actions alone (however much we sometimes think this is so). For practices of the self can also be experienced as forces impinging upon us – through the design of other people, the impact of cultural conventions and social practices, or the force of social processes and political institutions. Society, then, might be said to discipline and regulate the self, so that our deepest feelings about ourselves, as well as our beliefs about