Self-Access as Access to ‘Self: Cultural Variation in the Notions of Self and Personhood

Abstract

The processes through which personal identities are constructed are so hidden, out-of-consciousness, that the results, as W.S. Gilbert points out, often seem simply natural. But, of course, far from being innate, or just a matter of wondrous coincidence, individuals are socialized into categories like ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’, ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’, ‘electrician’ and ‘shopkeeper’, ‘Geordie’ and ‘Cockney’, and a myriad more. The processes of socialization — the ‘ways we bring up children’ in the widest possible sense — vary from one period, one society and one group to another, as do the social categories available (for example, ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ were available, but, say, ‘ecologist’ or ‘Member of Gay Pride’ were not to Gilbert’s boys and ‘gals’). The components and architecture of identity, and thus identity itself, are cultural variables.

I often think it’s comical

How Nature always does contrive

That every boy and every gal,

That’s born into the world alive,

Is either a little Liberal,

Or a little Conservative!

(W.S. Gilbert, Iolanthe)