MCL 6224

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MCL 6224 Issues in the Development of Liberal
Studies Lecture 2 Development of the
Curriculum Content of Liberal Studies in HKSAR
Wing-kwong Tsang Ho Tim Bldg. Rm 416 Ext.
6922 wktsang_at_cuhk.edu.hk WWW.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/wkts
ang
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Recapitulation Liberal Studies as endeavors to
liberate the human mind

• Platos conception Liberal education as "an
  endeavor that liberates the mind from chains of
  its showy cave of ignorance." (Kimball, 1986,
  p.14)
• Liberating efforts of the humanists of the
  Renaissance and the scientists of the Scientific
  Revolution To reinstate the value and dignity of
  human existence and the capacity of inquiring
  mind of human beings.
• Kants concept of Enlightenment Liberal
  education as man's release from his
  self-incurred tutelage. Its outcome is that men
  have the courage to use their reason and use it
  publicly.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• By using human reason collectively and publicly,
  modern men attempt to release themselves from
  containments and tutelages imposed upon their
  existences from the environments. These attempts
  have invoked what is now known as the project of
  modernity

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• Project of modernity According to Habermas
  conception, the project of modernity is the
  collective efforts of modern men to use their
  reason to inquire into
• The natural environment These human efforts have
  constituted the scientific-inquiry discourse and
  the cognitive-instrumental rationality in modern
  society. They have also formed the discourse of
  knowledge and truth of modern society.
• The social environment These human efforts have
  constituted the theories moral and jurisprudence
  and the moral-practical rationality in modern
  society. They have also formed the discourse of
  justice and moral-rightness of modern society.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• Project of modernity According to Habermas
  conception, the project of modernity is the
  collective efforts of modern men to use their
  reason to inquire into
• The understanding, expression and actualization
  of human self These human efforts have
  constituted production and criticism of art forms
  and the aesthetic-expressive rationality. They
  have formed the discourse of authenticity and
  beauty of modern society.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• The reflectivity of late modernity and the
  challenge from post-modernism
• Beck, Giddens and Lash have coined the concept
  reflexive modernization to depict the
  self-destructive effects of modern-industrial
  society in the last quarter of the twentieth
  century.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• The reflectivity of late modernity and the
  challenge from post-modernism
• Beck writes that reflexive modernization
  means the possibility of a creative
  (self-)destruction for an entire epoch that of
  industrial society. Reflexive modernizationis
  supposed to mean that a change of industrial
  society which occurs surreptitiously and
  unplanned in the wake of normal, autonomized
  modernization and with an unchanged, intact
  political and economic order. The new society is
  not always born in pain. Not just growing
  poverty, but growing wealth as well, and the loss
  of an Eastern rival, produce an axial change in
  the types of problems, the scope of relevance and
  the quality of the political. Not only indicators
  of collapse, but also strong economic growth,
  rapid technification and high employment security
  can unleash the strom that will sail or float
  industrial society into a new epoch. (Beck,
  1994, 2-3)

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• The reflectivity of late modernity and the
  challenge from post-modernism
• By post-modernism, it refers to a theoretical
  stance, which casts fundamental doubts of the
  project of modernity. As Jean-Fransois Lyotard
  writes in his book entitled The Postmodern
  Condition A Report on Knowledge, I define
  postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.
  This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of
  progress of the sciences but that progress in
  turn presupposes it. (1984/1979 xxiii-xxiv)

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• Issues on scientific-instrumentalism versus
  environmentalism One of the fundamental issues
  concerning liberal education in the 21st century
  is the contradictory discourses between
  scientific-instrumentalism and environmentalism.
  The form may be characterized as conviction about
  the omniscience and omnipotence of the
  scientific-technological mechanism that modern
  men have built since the Scientific Movement and
  the Enlightenment. The latter indicates the
  concerns about the fragility of the ecological
  system of the earth and the belief in the
  priority of the ecological ethics and ecocentrism
  over the anthropocentricism.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• Issues on informational-global paradigm versus
  indigenous-local paradigm Another fundamental
  issue relating to liberal education in the 21st
  century is the contradictory discourses between
  the informational-global and indigenous-local
  paradigms. The former refers to the institutional
  principles and imperatives emphasizing global
  comparison and competition invoked by the
  compression of time and space that have been
  caused by the informational-technological
  development in the past three decade. The latter
  indicate the institutional principles and
  imperatives prioritizing local communal concerns
  and indigenous and personal connections of social
  organizations.

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Liberation of Human Mind From What? In Search of
the Subject Matter of Liberal Studies

• Issues on individualizing identity versus
  socio-culturally embedded identity As modern men
  and women began to enlighten or even emancipate
  themselves from culturally and socially ascribed
  identities embedded in traditional societies,
  such as believers of the Church, subjects of a
  monarch king, the wife of a husband, the daughter
  of a father, etc. they have individualized
  themselves into modern identities such as
  atheistic evolutionist, citizens of a republic,
  liberated women (both wives and daughters) from
  patriarchic family system, etc. As this process
  of individualization met with the
  global-informational age of the 21st century, the
  socio-cultural bases in which personal and social
  identities were once embedded have rapidly
  evaporated into virtuality. As a result, the
  identity crisis confronting modern men and women
  of the 21st century is the experience of
  ontological insecurity and existential anxiety
  spawned from virtual identity in network society.

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Liberation of Human Mind With What? In Search of
the Subject Content of Liberal Studies

• Area of Study I Self and Personal Development
• Module 1 Personal Development and Interpersonal
  Relationship
• Area of Study II Society and Culture
• Module 2 Hong Kong Today
• Module 3 Modern China
• Module 4 Globalization
• Area of Study III Science, Technology and the
  Environment
• Module 5 Public Health
• Module 6 Energy technology and the Environment

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Areas of Study I Self-Identity
Interpersonal Relationship
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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Personal Development in Perspectives
• In philosophical perspective, personal-development
  inquiry is basically defined as intellectual
  effort in search of the essence of a person qua
  person. It basically examines the general or even
  transcendental meaning of personal existence.
• In psychological perspective, personal-development
  study is to reveal the structure of the
  personality and self and the stages of
  development of different aspects of the self,
  such as psychosexual, cognitive and moral
  development. It basically analyzes the unique
  self identity of particular human beings.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Personal Development in Perspectives A
  recapitulation
• In sociological perspective, personal development
  is view as the process of socialization, through
  which individuals will internalize the roles,
  norms and values of a particular culture and
  community in which they reside. It basically
  investigates the social identity of members of
  human communities.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The looking-glass self Charles Cooley coined
  the concept in 1902 to indicate the developmental
  process of the self as an interpersonal process.
  It is a reflexive and glass-looking process
  consisting of
• the image of out appearance to the other person
  
• the imagination of his judgment of that
  appearance and
• some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or
  mortification. (Cooley, 1902, p. 184 quoted in
  Broom, 1981, p. 98)
• Accordingly, to Cooley the self is not some
  inborn attributes but social products generated
  from interactions with other fellow humans.
  Furthermore, the self is not a passive receiver
  of others judgments on oneself. It will actively
  interpret and react to these judgments.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The looking-glass self
• Finally, Cooley specifies that the others
  or the looking glasses, from which one takes
  reference are not assigned with equal importance
  by the self. As a result, some others are
  characterized as significant others (i.e.
  parents) while others are simply referent
  others (i.e. ordinary friends)

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• Symbolic interactionists conception of the self
• Built on Charles Cooleys concept of the
  looking-glass self, George H. Mead and Herbet
  Blumer, two founding father of the symbolic
  interactionsim (a prominent theoretical
  perspective in sociology) specify that the self
  is not a static structure but a dynamic process
  through which attributes, meanings, judgments
  that others passed onto oneself will be interpret
  and reinterpret. That is they saw the self as
  process not a structure. (Blumer, 1969, p.62)
• The process of a self provides the human being
  with a mechanism of self-interaction. Such
  self-interaction takes the form of making
  indications to himself and meeting these
  indications by making further indications. The
  human being can designate things to himself his
  wants, his pains, his goals, object around him,
  the presence of others, their actions, their
  expected actions, or whatnot. (Blumer, p. 62)

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• Symbolic interactionists conception of the self
• With the mechanism of self-interaction the human
  being ceases to be a responding organism whose
  behavior is a product of what plays upon him from
  the outside, the inside, or both. Instead, he
  acts toward his world, interpreting what
  confronts him and organizing his action on the
  basis of the interpretation. (Blumer, p.63)
• The negotiated self In the perspective of
  symbolic interactionsim, individuals are
  perceived as an active agent in the construction
  of his or her own self-concept. The self that
  emerges is a negotiated self. An important goal
  in this (negotiating) process is the enhancement
  of self-esteem. (Brinkerhoff et al. 1991, p.
  144)

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The situated self Another group of
  interactionists has adopted a more structural
  approach (structural school) to the conception of
  the self.
• These sociologists, such as McCall and Simons
  (1978) and Stryker (1968, 1980), emphasize the
  importance of the institutional structure in
  which individuals are situated. It is suggested
  that the self emerged from this situation will be
  conditioned by social expectations or even
  obligations prescribed to the positions, in which
  the individual is assigned into.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The situated self
• The concepts of role and role-identity
• The concept of role refers to the performances
  expected of the occupant of a given position or
  social status, such as the roles of a daughter, a
  wife, a teacher or a HKSAR citizens.
• The concept of role identity signifies that a
  role occupant has internalized the role
  expectations and performances prescribed by
  external social institution to become part of her
  own self. It is exactly through this process of
  internalization of the externalities of the
  social institution that an individual self is
  amalgamated with a social role and as a result
  constituted a social identity.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The situated self
• The concept of role set and role conflict
• The concept of role set refers to the network of
  multiple roles that an individual has to engage
  with at the same time or once at a time. For
  example, a teacher may simultaneously be a
  daughter, a wife and a mother.
• The expectations and performance of these
  multiple roles are most likely to be in conflict.
  As a result, an individual may experience the
  inter-role conflict. For example, in performing
  the role of a school teachers may in conflict
  with the role of a mother and a wife.
  Furthermore, a role occupant may also experience
  intra-role conflict as there may be discrepancies
  among role expectations from different role
  partners of a role. For example, a teacher may
  face conflicting expectations from her students,
  fellow teachers and school head.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• The situated self
• Identity hierarchy Confronted with inter-role
  conflict, an individual's identities have to set
  priority with these competing role identities.
  Hence, the concept of identity hierarchy refers
  to the resolution that an individual has to sort
  out in situation of inter-role conflict.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• A synthesis The conceptions of the negotiate
  self and situated self may seems to have
  different emphasis, but they "should not be
  viewed as opposites but as complements."
  (Brinkerhoff et al. 1991, p. 146) The two
  concepts of negotiated and situated self may be
  view in reciprocal relation. On the one hand, an
  individual is viewed as active agent in defining
  and negotiating the performance specification of
  a given role. On the other, a role with its
  performance expectation may also assert
  significant effects on the development of the
  self concept and self esteem.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• Social identity and theory of categorization
• Apart from interactionalist perspective of
  analyzing how an individuals internalizes role
  expectations and performances into their selves
  and constitutes her role-based identity, Henri
  Tajfel and his followers most notably John C.
  Turner look at formation of group identity
  formation as a social process of categorization.
• This tradition of identity study begins with the
  concept of categorization. It refers to the
  cognitive process that allow human to streamline
  perception by separately grouping like and unlike
  stimuli. Tajfel demonstrated that people
  categorize social as well as nonsocial stimuli
  and that people use social categories to identify
  themselves and others. (Thoits and Virshup,
  1997 p. 114) Tajfel illustrate the concept with
  research focusing on race, ethnicity, class, and
  nationality and empirical examples of back and
  white, Jews, Pakistanis, and French- and English
  speaking Canadian.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• Social identity and theory of categorization
• Accordingly, Tajfel defines social identity as
  that part of an individuals self which derives
  from his knowledge of his members of a group (or
  groups) together with the value and emotional
  significance attached to that membership.
  (Tajfel, 1981, quoted in Thoits and Virshup,
  1997 p. 116)
• Turner also defines social identity as
  self-categories that define the individual in
  terms of his or her shared similarities with
  members of certain social categories in contrast
  to other social categories. (Turner et al, 1987,
  quoted in Thoits and Virshup, 1997 p. 117)
• For Turner, social identities are in-group versus
  out-group categorizations. It spawns out of the
  distinction between the we-group and the
  they-group.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Self-identity in sociological perspective
• Social identity and theory of categorization
• This perspective has elevated the identity study
  from the individual level of role identity to the
  collective level of identity based on ethnicity,
  nationality, social class, and other social
  groupings. As a result, identity theory can apply
  to analyze macroscopic phenomena such as racial
  prejudice and discrimination, conflict between
  ethnic and national groupings, ethnocentrism,
  etc.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Levels and approaches to identity study
• From the precedent discussions of various
  sociological perspectives in identity study, we
  may summarize distinct levels and approaches to
  identity study as follows.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Levels and approaches to identity study
• Two approaches to identity
• Essentialism Essentialism in identity studies
  refers to approaches which takes social identity,
  such as gender, ethnicity, race, nationality,
  class, as objectively exiting reality. Their
  formations are based on some essentially fixed
  traits such as biological sex, skin color, place
  of birth, formal-legal status, level of income,
  etc.
• Constructionism Constructionism in identity
  studies refers to perspective which conceives
  identity as socially constructed reality. They
  are on one hand collectively constituted in
  social processes or even political movements, and
  on the other hand individually articulated in
  deliberate articulations.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Levels and approaches to identity study
• Three levels of identity
• The self-identity level It sees identity as a
  product of socialization and glass-looking
  process, through which an individual constructs
  her self-image, self-concept and self-esteem
  passed on by others.
• The role-identity level It construes identity as
  the outcome of internalization of specific role
  expectations and performances of particular
  social positions in which an individual is
  situated.
• The social-identity level It views identity as
  the outcome of the process of in-group versus
  out-group categorization. In particular
  socio-economic and historical contexts, social
  identities are forged by various social groupings
  by means of exchanging or even violently imposing
  we- and they-group categorizations (or labeling
  and stereotyping) on each others.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Levels and approaches to identity study
• Though these two levels of identity can
  analytically be differentiated, in reality they
  are closely interconnected. Furthermore, an
  individual must find a way to integrate the two
  levels into a consistent and coherent unity.
  Different sociologists have in fact formulated
  different theories to characterize this
  integrating process of multiple identities of the
  modern man. For example, Anthony Giddens in his
  book Modernity and Self-Identity Self and
  Society in the Late Modern Age (1990) has coined
  the concept self-identity to characterized the
  relationship between self and society in the late
  modern age.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Anthony Giddens conception of self-identity in
  late modern age
• Giddens defines self as reflexively understood
  by the person in terms of her or his biography.
  (Giddens 1991, p. 53)
• Identity, according to Giddens, indicates a
  persons sense of continuity across time and
  space. (ibid)

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Anthony Giddens conception of self-identity in
  late modern age
• Self-identity, therefore, can be defined as a
  sense of continuity as interpreted reflexively
  by the agent. (ibid) More specifically, a person
  with a reasonably stable sense of self-identity
  is, therefore, the one with the capacity to keep
  a particular narrative going. The individuals
  biography, if she is to maintain regular
  interaction with others in the day-to-day world,
  cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually
  integrate events which occur in the external
  world, and sort them out into ongoing story
  about the self. (Giddens, 1991, p. 54) In short,
  self-identity can be discerned as coherent and
  continuous narrative one imputed to oneself.

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Personal Development in Sociological Perspective
To Become Human

• Anthony Giddens conception of self-identity in
  late modern age
• Constituents of self-identity A stable
  self-identity, i.e. coherent and continuous self
  narrative, would compose the following attributes
• Ontological security A stable sense of
  self-identity presupposes the elements of
  ontological security - an acceptance of the
  things and of others. (ibid) The sense of
  ontological security implies that a person has to
  extend beyond self-reflexion and connects to her
  or his environments, both physical and social. In
  turn, it will generate both sense of trust and
  bondage with the physical and social
  environments.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Institutional context of interpersonal
  relationship We are now living in well developed
  societies hence most our relationships with
  other humans take place in conventionally
  established or even institutionalized social
  contexts, such as school, family, peer groups,
  market, government, etc.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Definition of situation Even in situations where
  we encounter strangers in a shopping mall, inside
  the elevators, in a bus or a carriage of the
  subway, or even in a back alley. There are
  conventional patterns of interaction to be
  observed. Hence, definition of situation is the
  initiating concept in the sociological analysis
  of interpersonal relationship. That is, once the
  situation of the human encounter has been defined
  in conventional terms, such as a lesson, a family
  gathering, a party with peers, a date, a
  international convention, or a back-ally
  encounter with stranger the relationship at
  point and its entailed interactions can then be
  sorted out in common-sense terms.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Typification, status and role
• The concept typification refers to the deliberate
  act of assigning typical way of behaving or
  acting to our counterpart in a human interaction.
  This assignment of types and categories to
  partners in a social interaction has to be
  reciprocal acts, that is, it is a two-way
  typification initiated simultaneously from both
  side of a relationship. Furthermore, there must
  be acceptable commonality between the two
  typifications, otherwise the social interaction
  will be in disarray or can never get started.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Typification, status and role
• The concept of status and role
• The concept of status refers to a socially
  defined position that a person hold. such as
  teacher, students, father, son, Chinese citizens,
  shareholder, etc.
• The concept of role refers to performance
  expected of occupant of a particular status.
• Accordingly, both status and role can be
  understood as the outcomes of typification in a
  social interaction. Once we have assigned a
  typical status and role expectation to our
  partner in a social encounter, the subsequent
  interactions can the be carried out in in
  socially well-defined manners.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Types of interpersonal relationships
• In sociology, social relationships are commonly
  differentiated into two types
• Primary relationship It refers to the
  interpersonal relationship generated in what
  Charles Cooley called groups, such as family,
  peer group, collegial group, etc. It bears
  features as follows
• It has face to face interaction.
• It involves unspecialized relationship, i.e.
  responding the whole person rather than some
  categories or stereotype.
• It is relatively permanent.
• It involves intimate and affective ties and
  invokes strong sense of belonging.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Types of interpersonal relationships
• Secondary relationship It refers to social
  relationship established in formal organization
  or what Max Weber call bureaucracy, such as
  university, corporation, governmental department,
  etc. It has attributes as follows
• It has formal interaction.
• It involve segmented and impersonal relationship.
• It is relatively transient and short-lived.
• It involve instrumental ties and invoke formal
  membership defined in terms contractual rights
  and obligations.

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Types of interpersonal relationships
• Pure relationship Recently, Anthony Giddens
  coins the concept pure relationship to signify
  the kind of human relationship permeating in the
  late modern age
• By pure relationship, according to Giddens, it is
  social relationship build purely on the
  relationships itself. It differs from traditional
  relationships which are based on institutional
  bondages, such as parent-child relationships, or
  based on institutional restraints, such as
  marriage and business contracts. Instead, pure
  relationship is not anchored in external
  conditions of social or economic life - it is
  free-floating. .The pure relationship is sought
  only for what the relationship can bring to the
  partners involved. (It) is reflexively
  organized, in open fashion, and on a continuous
  basis (Giddens, 1991, p. 89-91)

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Interpersonal Relationship in Modern Society

• Types of interpersonal relationships
• Pure relationship
• Pure relationships are by definition double
  edged.
• They provide reflexive or even emancipatory
  chances for reconstituting traditional social
  relationship. They offer opportunity for the
  development of trust based on voluntary
  commitments and an intensified intimacy. (p.
  186)
• Yet pure relationship create enormous burdens
  for the integrity of the self. In so far as a
  relationship lacks external referents, it is
  morally mobilized only thorough authenticity.
  Shorn of external moral criteria, the pure
  relationship is vulnerable as a source of
  security at fateful moments and at other major
  life transitions. (p. 186-7)
• Living the context of pure relationship, the
  story of the self-identity can no longer be told
  in a continuous and coherent manner. In other
  words, the self-identity experiences sense of
  discontinuity and fragementation, i.e.
  ontological insecurity and extistential anxiety
  in Giddens terms.

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Substantive Studies of social Identity and Social
Relationship

• Within the discipline of sociology, there is a
  field of study called social institution study or
  a perspective known as institutionalism. It
  studies specific role-identities and
  relationships generated and institutionalized in
  particular social institutions. For example,
• Family membership and role-identity of husband
  and wife, father and son, brother and sister,
  etc.
• Nationality and national identity
• Political membership of the state and citizenship
  
• Professional membership and identity of
  professionalism
• Contractual relationship and identity of seller
  and buyer
• Political membership and partisanship, etc.

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Social Identity in the Process of
Individualization

• The conception of Individualization of modern
  society
• 'Individualization consists of transforming
  human identity from a given into a task and
  changing the actors with the responsibility for
  performing that task and for the consequences
  (also the side-effects) of their performance.
  .Human being are no more born into their
  identities. Needing to become what one is the
  feature of modern living - and of this living
  alone. Modernity replaces the heteronomic
  determination of social standing with compulsive
  and obligatory self-determination. (Bauman,
  2000, p. 31-2)

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Social Identity in the Process of
Individualization

• The conception of Individualization of modern
  society
• 'individualization means, first, the
  disembedding and, second, the re-embedding of
  industrial society ways of life by new ones, in
  which the individuals must produce, stage and
  cobble together their biographies themselves.
  Thus the name individualization, disembedding
  and re-embedding do not occur by chance, nor
  individually, nor voluntarily, nor through
  diverse types of historical conditions, but
  rather all at once and under the general
  conditions of the welfare in developed industrial
  labour society, as they have developed since the
  1960s in many Western industrial countries.
  (Beck, 1994, p.13)

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Social Identity in the Process of
Individualization

• The conception of Individualization of modern
  society
• Institutionalized beds - identity bases - for
  the re-embedment of modern individuals
• Beds in capital market, e.g. occupations,
  professions, social-class positions, etc.
• Beds in institution of marriage and family,
  husband, wife, father, mother, etc.
• Beds in modern political arenas, e.g. citizens,
  members of new social movements, such as
  environmentalists, feminist, anti-gloabizationists
  , etc.

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Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation

• Social identity crisis in the process of
  Individualization
• What distinguished the individualization of
  yore from the form it has taken in risk society
  . No beds are furnished for re-embedding,
  and such beds as might be postulated and pursued
  prove fragile and often vanish before the work of
  em-rebeddment is complete. There are rather
  musical chairs of various size and style as
  well as of changing numbers and positions, which
  prompt men and women to be constantly on the move
  and promise no fulfilment, no rest and no
  satisfaction of arriving, of researching the
  final destination, where one can disarm, relax
  and stop worrying. (Bauman, 2000, p. 33-34)
• Social identity crisis can therefore be conceived
  as a discontinuity between the stages of
  dis-embedment and re-embedment in the
  individualization process

49
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation

• Social identity crisis in the process of
  Individualization
• Fragmentation of institutional-beds and the
  flexiblization of modern identity
• Under the network logic and the
  global-information paradigm
• National-local identity replaced by global-mobile
  identity
• Affect-familial identity replaced by
  flexible-familial identity
• Permanent vocationalism and unionism replaced by
  flexible, self-programmed workers

50
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation

• The permeation of pure relation growth
• By pure relationship, according to Giddens, it is
  social relationship build purely on the
  relationships itself. It differs from traditional
  relationships which are based on institutional
  bondages, such as parent-child relationships, or
  based on institutional restraints, such as
  marriage and business contracts. Instead, pure
  relationship is not anchored in external
  conditions of social or economic life - it is
  free-floating. .The pure relationship is sought
  only for what the relationship can bring to the
  partners involved. (It) is reflexively
  organized, in open fashion, and on a continuous
  basis (Giddens, 1991, p. 89-91)

51
Social Identity Crisis under Pure Relation

• The permeation of pure relation growth
• Pure relationships are by definition double
  edged.
• They provide reflexive or even emancipatory
  chances for reconstituting traditional social
  relationship. They offer opportunity for the
  development of trust based on voluntary
  commitments and an intensified intimacy. (p.
  186)
• Yet pure relationship create enormous burdens
  for the integrity of the self. In so far as a
  relationship lacks external referents, it is
  morally mobilized only thorough authenticity.
  Shorn of external moral criteria, the pure
  relationship is vulnerable as a source of
  security at fateful moments and at other major
  life transitions. (p. 186-7)
• As a result, the story of the self can no longer
  be told in a continuous and coherent manner. In
  other words, the self-identity experiences sense
  of discontinuity and fragementation, i.e.
  ontological insecurity and existential anxiety in
  Giddens terms.

52
Areas of Study II Society, Culture, and
Globalization
53
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of society
• The concept of society refers to an aggregate of
  human beings living together in persistent and
  orderly manner in a definite geographical
  location for a long period of time.
• Categorizing societies The concept of society
  can be used to categorize human aggregates in a
  variety of fashions. For example, Hong Kong
  society, Chinese society, American society
  agrarian society, industrial society, knowledge
  society Christian society, Muslim society
  capitalist society, socialist society democratic
  society, authoritarian society, totalitarian
  society, patriarchic society etc.

54
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of society
• Why is society possible?
• Individuals are born into social categories in
  the first place and subsequently subscribe to
  social positions as they grow up. As a result,
  they are prescribed into pre-defined role
  expectations and assignments, i.e. they are
  situated selves.
• Through the mechanism of social control and
  integration, Individuals are obliged to enact the
  role performances expected of them.
• As a result, regular patterns of interpersonal
  relationships can be maintained in regular bases.
  Sociologists have named these regular and
  continuous interpersonal relationship social
  institutions.

55
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• The concept of culture refers to a system of
  meanings shared by members of a specific group of
  human beings. It provides the legitimation basis
  for the way of life of that specific group over
  an enduring period of time.
• By legitimation, it refers to the motives and
  reasons for members of the group to voluntarily
  obey and spontaneously observe the prevailing way
  of life is that they genuinely believe in the
  meaningfulness and values of their conformity.

56
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• This legitimation basis can further be
  differentiated into
• Cognitive validity It refers to knowledge
  systems accumulated in a culture, which provide
  valid explanations to why we have to comply with
  the prevailing way of life. One of the most
  prominent cognitive validity in modern culture is
  the scientific knowledge.
• Normative dignity It refers to the norms and
  values accumulated in a culture, which offer
  normative justification why we have to conform to
  a particular way of life. One of the significant
  normative bases in human culture is religious
  believes.

57
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• Carriers of culture Meanings and meaningfulness
  in a culture must be expressed and consolidated
  in durable forms so they can be accumulated,
  transmitted, and defused. Therefore, empirical
  studies of culture must be initiated from
  carriers of culture.
• Language Culture as a system of shared meanings
  must find its way to circulate among its members.
  Spoken and written language is therefore vital to
  the maintenance of a culture.
• Values and beliefs As a system of meanings,
  culture will develop elaborated classifications
  or hierarchies of meanings. For example some
  meanings are valuable and desirable, while others
  are undesirable or even repugnant. Some desirable
  meanings will organize and develop into belief
  systems such as liberalism, individualism,
  Marxism or even establish as religions.

58
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• Carriers of culture
• Norms As a system of meanings, culture also
  serves as motivation and reinforcement of human
  behaviors and actions. The concept of norm refers
  to schema of actions, which are endorsed are
  deterred by a given culture. Norms can also be
  differentiated into folkways and customs, mores
  and morality, taboos, and laws.
• Symbolic objects Totems, statues, monuments,
  national flags, national days, national heroes,
  etc. are artifacts to symbolize aspects of shared
  meanings in a culture.

59
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• How can culture be maintained, transmitted and
  defused?
• The concept of socialization Socialization can
  simply be defined as the comprehensive and
  consistent induction of an individual into the
  objective world of a society or a sector of it.
• Primary socialization is the first socialization
  an individual undergoes in childhood, through
  which he becomes a member of a society.
• Secondary socialization is any subsequent process
  that inducts an already socialized individual
  into new sector. (Berger and Luckmann, 1966, p.
  150)

60
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of culture
• How can culture be maintained, transmitted and
  defused?
• Socialization is learning and teaching processes,
  through which new members of a society
  internalize, on the one hand, all the structural
  and operational components of a society, such as
  social statuses, role expectations and
  performances, social relationship and social
  order, etc. on the other hand, all the cultural
  and meaningful components of a society, such as
  language, social values and norms, history and
  heritage, etc. The outcome of the process is that
  these socialized member will take over these
  components and make them their own, and as a
  result, these components will be part of their
  common-sense knowledge or taken-for-granted
  knowledge.

61
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• A social institution can be defined as a complex
  of positions, roles, norms, and values lodged in
  particular types of social structures and
  organizing relatively stable patterns of activity
  with respect to fundamental problems in producing
  life-sustaining resources, in reproducing
  individuals, and in sustaining viable societal
  structures within a given environment. (Turner,
  1997, p.6)

62
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• An institution is a relatively enduring
  collection of rules and organized practices,
  embedded in structures of meaning and resources
  that are relatively invariant in the face of
  turnover of individuals and relatively resilient
  to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations
  of individuals and changing external
  circumstances. According, in institutions
• There are constitutive rules and practices
  prescribing appropriate behavior for specific
  actors in specific situations.
• There are structures of meaning, embedded in
  identities and belongings common purposes and
  accounts that give direction and meaning to
  behavior, and explain, justify and legitimate
  behavioral codes.
• There are structures of resources that create
  capabilities for action. (March and Olsen, 2006,
  p.3 my numbering)

63
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• Basic social institutions Throughout history,
  human societies have work out amusingly similar
  social institutions. These institutions include
  kinship and familial institution, economic
  institutions, political institutions, education
  institution, and social stratification
  institution.

64
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• The concept of economic institution
• Economic institution can be understood as the
  rules of the game in a society or, more formally,
  are the humanly devised constraints that shape
  human interaction (North, 1990, p. 3) in order
  to resolve the problem of scarcity of resources,
  or more specifically to organize the production,
  distribution and possession of economic
  resources.
• Economy or economic institution can be defined
  as those structures (of positions, norms, roles,
  networks, and organizations units) and those
  cultural symbols (norms, values, beliefs, and
  ideology) that are implicated in entrepreneurial
  activities organizing technology, physical and
  human capital, and systems of property for the
  gathering of resources and for the production and
  distribution of goods and services. (Turner,
  1997, p. 21)

65
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• The concept of economic institution
• According to Jonathan Turners conception, the
  basic elements of economic institutions are (1)
  technology, (2) physical capital, (3) human
  capital, (4) property, and (5) entrepreneurship.
• Typology of economic institution Economic
  institutions may be typified in terms of many
  different criteria and be differentiated into
  various types, such as feudalism, capitalism,
  socialism, communism industrial economy,
  knowledge economy, semiotic/consumerist economy
  market economy, planned economy etc.

66
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• Understanding the concept of political
  institution
• Political institution can be understood as the
  rules of the game in a society or, more formally,
  are the humanly devised constraints that shape
  human interaction (North, 1990, p. 3) in order
  to resolve the problem of coordination and
  control of actions and projects of members of a
  society, or more specifically to resolve problems
  of rule making, rule implementing, and settling
  rule-broking and rule-dispute.
• Polity or political institution can be defined as
  a societywide system for consolidating and
  centralizing power in order to make and implement
  binding decisions with respect to coordinating
  activities among individual and collective actors
  in a population, allocating and distributing
  resources among actors, and managing deviance by
  and conflicts among, actors. (Turner, 1997, p.
  145)

67
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• Understanding the concept of political
  institution
• Typology of political institution Political
  institutions may also be typified in terms of
  many different criteria and be differentiated
  into various types, such as democracy,
  aristocracy, autocracy liberal-democracy,
  social-democracy, peoples democratic
  dictatorship, proletarian dictatorship, monarchic
  dictatorship bureaucratic authoritarianism,
  patriarchic authoritarian, active
  non-interventionism, laissez-faire etc.

68
Concepts of Society, Culture, and Social
Institution

• Understanding the concept of social institution
• Understanding the concept of political
  institution
• Typology of political institution Political
  institutions may also be typified in terms of
  many different criteria and be differentiated
  into various types, such as democracy,
  aristocracy, autocracy liberal-democracy,
  social-democracy, peoples democratic
  dictatorship, proletarian dictatorship, monarchic
  dictatorship bureaucratic authoritarianism,
  patriarchic authoritarian, active
  non-interventionism, laissez-faire etc.

69
Understanding Globalization and its Human
Consequences
70
Debate on the origins of globalization

• A.G. Frank Grill (1993) World History
  Perspective Globalization originated 5000 year
  ago, i.e. in 3000, in Mesopotamia when supralocal
  exchange systems began to take shape.
• Braudel (1979) Wallerstein (1974) World-system
  Approach Originated from the 16th century,
  mercantile capitalism first emerged in coastal
  cities in the Mediterranean sea.
• J. W. Meyer (1979) World Polity Perspective
  Originated from the late 18th early 19th
  century and the constitution of inter-state
  competition world polity
• M. Castell (1996) M. Carnoy (2000) Global IT
  Economy Perspective Originated from 1970s as
  technological breakthrough in microelectronics,
  telecommunication, and micro-computer.

71
Meaning of globalization in the
Informational-Global paradigm

• Compression of time and space In connection to
  the penetrating, reconfiguring and converging
  capacities of IT, the globalization at the end of
  the twentieth century has outgrown its ancestors
  in bridging if not annulling the temporal and
  spatial distances between human societies and
  cultures
• Anthony Giddens (1994) in The Consequences of
  Modernity indicates that globalization is
  really about the transformation of space and
  time. I would define it as action at distance,
  and relate its growth over recent years to the
  development of means of instantaneous global
  communication and mass transportation. (1994, p.
  22)
• Zygmunt Bauman (1998) Globalization as
  annulment of temporal/spatial distances (1998,
  p.18).

72
Meaning of globalization in the
Informational-Global paradigm

• Compression of time and space
• David Harvey (1989) in The Condition of
  Postmodernity has simply defines globalization as
  time-space compression. It signifies processes
  that so revolutionize the objective qualities of
  space and time that we are force to alter how
  we represent the world to ourselves. (p. 240)

73
Meaning of globalization in the
Informational-Global paradigm

• Replacement of space of place by space of flow
  Manuel Castells (1996) in The Network Society
  defines globalization as the process of
  separating simultaneous social pr