| Part of a series on |
| Sociology |
|---|
 |
The sociology of human consciousness or the sociology of consciousness [1] [2] uses the theories and methodology of sociology to explore and examine consciousness.
| Part of a series on |
| Sociology |
|---|
| |
The sociology of human consciousness or the sociology of consciousness [1] [2] uses the theories and methodology of sociology to explore and examine consciousness.
The foundations of this work may be traced to philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, whose work provided major insights into the formation of mind, concepts of self and other, and the internalization of society in individual social beings, viewing these as emerging out of human interaction and communication. [3] Recent work [4] brings such a sociological and social psychological perspective to bear on several key aspects of consciousness, and in doing so inverts explanation: starting from collective phenomena, one ends up analyzing individual consciousness.
In making this inversion, they do not totally reject reductionist approaches—nor deny their value in identifying the "hardware" through which collective and social psychological processes operate. However, they would reject the idea that a complete explanation can be formulated on the basis of either purely sociological mechanisms or underlying physical, chemical, neurological, hormonal, or psychological factors and processes. For a critique of reductionism from the perspective of modern physics and biology see Morowitz (1981).
The biological and bio-physical bases of human life are recognized. However, these approaches cannot be relied on entirely. In part, the level of analysis is misdirected when it comes to some classes of consciousness phenomena; most of the natural science approaches focus on the wrong levels and the wrong factors with which to explain some of the most mysterious and paradoxical features of human consciousness.
The sociological approach [5] emphasizes the importance of language, collective representations, self-conceptions, and self-reflectivity. This theoretical approach argues that the shape and feel of human consciousness is heavily social, and this is no less true of our experiences of "collective consciousness" than it is of our experiences of individual consciousness.
The theory suggests that the problem of consciousness can be approached fruitfully by beginning with the human group and collective phenomena: community, language, language-based communication, institutional, and cultural arrangements. [6] A collective is a group or population of individuals that possesses or develops through communication collective representations or models of "we" as opposed to "them": a group, community, organization, or nation is contrasted to "other"; its values and goals, its structure and modes of operating, its relation to its environment and other agents, its potentialities and weaknesses, strategies and developments, and so on.
A collective has the capacity in its collective representations and communications about what characterizes it, or what (and how) this self perceives, judges, or does, or what it can (and cannot) do, or should do (or should not do). It monitors its activities, its achievements and failures, and also to a greater or lesser extent, analyzes and discusses itself as a defined and developing collective agent.
This is what is meant by self-reflectivity. Such reflectivity is encoded in language and developed in conversations about collective selves (as we discuss below, there are also conversations about the selves of individuals, defining, justifying, and stigmatizing them).
Human consciousness in at least one major sense is a type of reflective activity. It entails the capacity to observe, monitor, judge, and decide about the collective self. This is a basis for maintaining a particular collective as it is understood or represented; it is a basis for re-orienting and re-organizing the collective self in response to performance failings or profound crisis (economic, political, cultural).
Collective reflectivity emerges then as a function of a group or organization producing and making use of collective representations of the self in its discussions, critical reflections, planning, and actions.
Individual consciousness is the normal outcome of processes of collective naming, classifying, monitoring, judging, and reflecting on the individual members of the group or organization. And an individual in a collective context learns to participate in discussions and discourses about "themself", that is, group reflections on themself, their appearance, their orientations and attitudes, their strategies and conduct. Thus, an individual learns (in line with George Herbert Mead's earlier formulations) a naming and classification of themself (self-description and identity) and a characterization of their judgments, actions, and predispositions.
In acquiring a language and conceptual framework for this mode of activity along with experience and skills in reflective discussion they develop a capability of inner reflection and inner dialog about themself. These are characteristic features of a particular type of individual "consciousness". This conception points up the socially constructed character of key properties of the human mind, realized through processes of social interaction and social construction. In sum, individual self-representation, self-reference, self-reflectivity, and experiences of consciousness, derive from the collective experience. [7]
Self-reflectivity as a type of consciousness often facilitates critical examination and re-construction of selves, collective as well as individual. This plays an essential role in human communities (as well as individual beings) in the face of systematic or highly risky performance failures or new types of problems. Through self-reflection, agents may manage in the course of directed problem-solving to develop more effective institutional arrangements, for instance, large-scale means of social coordination such as administration, democratic association, or markets.
Language-based collective representations of the past as well as of the future, enable agents to escape the present, to enter into future as well as past imagined worlds, and to reflect together on these worlds. Moreover, in relation to the past, present, and future, the agents may generate alternative representations. These alternative constructions imagined, discussed, struggled over, and tested, make for the generation of variety, a major input into evolutionary processes, as discussed elsewhere. [8]
Such variety may also lead to social conflicts, as agents disagree about representations, or oppose the implications or remedies to problems proposed by particular agents. This opens the way for political struggles about alternative conceptions and solutions (where democratic politics entails at times collective self-reflectivity par excellence).
In general, such processes enhance the collective capacity to deal with new challenges and crises. Thus, a collective has potentially a rich basis not only for talking about, discussing, agreeing (or disagreeing) about a variety of objects including the "collective self" as well as particular "individual selves"; but it also has a means to conceptualize and develop alternative types of social relationships, effective forms of leadership, coordination and control, and, in general, new normative orders and institutional arrangements.
Collectives can even develop their potentialities for collective representation and self-reflectivity, for instance through innovations in information and accounting systems and processes of social accountability. These potentialities enable systematic, directed problem-solving, and the generation of variety and complex strategies. In particular selective environments, these make for major evolutionary advantages.
The powerful tool of collective reflectivity must be seen as a double-edged sword in relation to expanding freedom of opportunity and variability, on the one hand, and, on the other, imposing particular constraints and limiting variability.
Collective representations and reflectivity and directed problem-solving based on them may prevent human groups from experiencing or discovering the un-represented and the unnamed; unrecognized or poorly defined problems cannot be dealt with (as discussed elsewhere, [9] for instance, in the case of failures of accounting systems to recognize or take into account important social and environmental conditions and developments).
Reflective and problem-solving powers may then be distorted, the generation of alternatives and varieties narrow and largely ineffective, and social innovation and transformation misdirected and possibly self-destructive. Thus, the presumed evolutionary advantages of human reflectivity must be qualified or viewed as conditional.
In sum, recent research, building on the work of George Herbert Mead, suggests that a sociological and social psychological perspective can be a point of departure with which to define and analyze certain forms of human consciousness, or more precisely, one class of consciousness phenomena, namely verbalized reflectivity: monitoring, discussing, judging and re-orienting and re-organizing self; representing and analyzing what characterizes the self, what self perceives, judges, could do, should do (or should not do).
The "hard problem" of consciousness [10] can be approached fruitfully by beginning with the human group and collective phenomena: community, language, language-based communication, institutional and cultural arrangements, collective representations, self-conceptions, and self-referentiality. Collective reflectivity emerges as a function of an organization or group producing and making use of collective representations of the self ("we", our group, community, organization, nation) in its discussions, critical reflections, and decision-making. A collective monitors and discusses its activities, achievements and failures, and reflects on itself as a defined, acting, and developing collective being. This reflectivity is encoded in language and developed in conversations about collective (as well as individual) selves.
Individual consciousness is seen as deriving from the processes of collective naming, classifying, monitoring, judging, reflecting on, and conducting discussions and discourses about, the individual themself. In acquiring a language and conceptual framework for this mode of activity—along with skills and experiences in reflective discussion—they develop a capability of inner reflection and inner discourse about self, which are characteristic features of individual consciousness. One can also distinguish multiple modes of individual awareness and consciousness, distinguishing awareness from consciousness proper, and also identifying pre- and sub-conscious levels. [11] This points up the complexity of the human mind, in part because of its elaboration through processes of social interaction and construction.
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.
The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought, the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deals with broad fundamental questions about the extent and limits of social influences on individuals' lives and the social-cultural basis of our knowledge about the world. The sociology of knowledge has a subclass and a complement. Its subclass is sociology of scientific knowledge. Its complement is the sociology of ignorance.
In philosophy, the self is the relationship of an individual's own being, knowledge and values. Self relates the experiences of one's inner and outer living in presence.
Intrapersonal communication is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I'll do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which the sender and the receiver is the same person. Some theorists use a wider definition that goes beyond message-based accounts and focuses on the role of meaning and making sense of things. Intrapersonal communication can happen alone or in social situations. It may be prompted internally or occur as a response to changes in the environment.
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago. He was one of the key figures in the development of pragmatism. He is regarded as one of the founders of symbolic interactionism, and was an important influence on what has come to be referred to as the Chicago School of Sociology.
The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity, or the subject of experience. The earliest form of the Self in modern psychology saw the emergence of two elements, I and me, with I referring to the Self as the subjective knower and me referring to the Self as a subject that is known.
Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, geography, engineering, archaeology and linguistics.
Transformative learning, as a theory, says that the process of "perspective transformation" has three dimensions: psychological, convictional, and behavioral.
Transformative learning is the expansion of consciousness through the transformation of basic worldview and specific capacities of the self; transformative learning is facilitated through consciously directed processes such as appreciatively accessing and receiving the symbolic contents of the unconscious and critically analyzing underlying premises.
Activity theory is an umbrella term for a line of eclectic social-sciences theories and research with its roots in the Soviet psychological activity theory pioneered by Sergei Rubinstein in the 1930s. It was later advocated for and popularized by Alexei Leont'ev. Some of the traces of the theory in its inception can also be found in a few works of Lev Vygotsky. These scholars sought to understand human activities as systemic and socially situated phenomena and to go beyond paradigms of reflexology and classical conditioning, psychoanalysis and behaviorism. It became one of the major psychological approaches in the former USSR, being widely used in both theoretical and applied psychology, and in education, professional training, ergonomics, social psychology and work psychology.
Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist. He was the son of Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan. He was a founding member of the American Sociological Association in 1905 and became its eighth president in 1918. He is perhaps best known for his concept of the looking-glass self, which is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. Cooley's health began to deteriorate in 1928. He was diagnosed with an unidentified form of cancer in March 1929 and died two months later.
Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. In general, it does not refer to the specifically moral conscience, but to a shared understanding of social norms.
Self-reflection is the ability to witness and evaluate our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioural processes. In psychology, other terms used for this self-observation include 'reflective awareness', and 'reflective consciousness', which originate from the work of William James.
Social alienation is a person's feeling of disconnection from a group – whether friends, family, or wider society – to which the individual has an affinity. Such alienation has been described as "a condition in social relationships reflected by (1) a low degree of integration or common values and (2) a high degree of distance or isolation (3a) between individuals, or (3b) between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment [enumeration added]". It is a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists. The concept has many discipline-specific uses and can refer both to a personal psychological state (subjectively) and to a type of social relationship (objectively).
Collective identity or group identity is a shared sense of belonging to a group. This concept appears within a few social science fields. National identity is a simple example, though myriad groups exist which share a sense of identity. Like many social concepts or phenomena, it is constructed, not empirically defined. Its discussion within these fields is often highly academic and relates to academia itself, its history beginning in the 19th century.
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is multi-directional when the causes and the effects affect the reflexive agent in a layered or complex sociological relationship. The complexity of this relationship can be furthered when epistemology includes religion.
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966), by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, proposes that social groups and individual persons who interact with each other, within a system of social classes, over time create concepts of the actions of each other, and that people become habituated to those concepts, and thus assume reciprocal social roles. When those social roles are available for other members of society to assume and portray, their reciprocal, social interactions are said to be institutionalized behaviours. In that process of the social construction of reality, the meaning of the social role is embedded to society as cultural knowledge.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to thought (thinking):
Archetypal pedagogy is a theory of education developed by Clifford Mayes that aims at enhancing psycho-spiritual growth in both the teacher and student. The idea of archetypal pedagogy stems from the Jungian tradition and is directly related to analytical psychology.
In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to have the power and resources to fulfill their potential. For instance, structure consists of those factors of influence that determine or limit agents and their decisions. The influences from structure and agency are debated—it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems.
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment is a 1990 book by Patricia Hill Collins.
| General aspects | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Perspectives | |||
| Related fields and subfields |
| ||
| Methods | |||
| Key themes | |||
