9. The Sociocultural Tradition Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University Saved on: 3/10/09 1:30 PM Printed on: 3/10/09 1:31 PM Introduction Reading 27. G. H.
Mead, “The Social Foundations and Functions of Thought and Communication” ? The principle which I have suggested as basic to human social organization is that of communication involving participation in the other. This requires the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other. This participation is made possible only through human communication ?Contrast with animal communication . . . ? Symbols => a human soci al product—that is, a product of interaction o What Mead discovers is that the self is ultimately a product of the human social use of symbols, the process of communication itself.
Mead emphasizes the process of communication as constitutive of our very sense of self. ? The first symbol important for self-formation is the self-as-object. Thinking of the self as an object is symbolic because the “object” one holds in one’s mind in order to be conscious of the self is a symbol. Objects must be symbolized in order to be identified.It’s like a nam e: you identify something by calling it by its name.
The self-as-object is a representation that one must bring before oneself in order to see the self itself. ? Distinction between the self and the body: the body does not experience itself as a whol e like the self does. o Concept of the self is inherently reflective: the self “can be both subject and object”* ? “Symbolic interactionism”: o “significant symbols” and “significant speech” ? “what is essential to a significant symbol is that the gesture which affects others should affect the individual himself in the same way.It is only when the stimulus 1 * Quote not included in the Craig Textbook excerpt. Dr.
Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University which one gives another arouses in himself the same or like response that the symbol is a significant symbol. ” o condition of symbolic interaction is the capacity to double oneself, to take an attitude that sees the self as an object of knowledge and symbolic intention Genesis of the self ? what are the conditions for the development of the self? o Note first, there is no such thing as a private language o the universal: “. . .You are saying something that calls out a specific response in anybody else provided that the symbol exists for him in his experience as it does in you.
”* o This “calling out”* of same response is part of what we mean by rationality: sameness of meaning is necessary for rationality, for rational communication. Taking the role of the other ? taking the role of the other as a condition of symbolic interaction: for example, the child playing a game of ball ? requirement of knowing the appropriate responses of others in order to play any game—this is part of the meaning of following a rule. Normative action: being guided by rules not instinct o hence Mead’s contrasts between human beings and animals o responses of others must be present in the self’s own make-up in order for any normative action to occur, and this is only possible with symbolic communication Communication and society ? social control—(again, a possibility of normative action) ? “The control of the action of the individual in a co-operative process can take place in the conduct of the individual himself if he can take the role of the other.It is this control of the response of the individual himself through taking the role of the other that leads to the value of this type of communication from the point of view of the organization of the conduct in the * Quote not included in the Craig Textbook excerpt. Dr.
Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 2 group. It carries the process of co-operative activity farther than it can be carried in the herd as such, or in the insect society” o Taking the role of the other is essential if the individual is able to exercise control over his own response o Self-criticism o “Hence social control . . is actually constitutive of and inextricably associated with .
. . individuality” The “generalized other” ? Mead is offering a description of the relationship between individual and the community or group: the entry into the experience of any member of the attitude of the community as a whole ? “The very organization of the self-conscious community is dependent upon individuals taking the attitude of the other individuals”: the “generalized other” ? Only by getting society as a whole within the experiential field of the individuals involved that society can an individual self develop fully. Only by taking the attitude of the generalized other.
. . o . .
. can one think at all: that is, take attitudes towards problems in the society; undertake organized projects or “cooperative enterprises”, for example, one identifies with a political party by taking the attitude of the political party, and one reacts and responds in terms of the organized attitudes of the party as a whole. But you can apply this to any collective set of social relations, any group o . .
. can universal discourse, a system of common or social meanings be rendered possible.Society is possible only under the conditions of “such common responses, such organized attitudes”* o can one become a self only in a community. “We cannot be ourselves unless we are also members in whom there is a community of attitudes which control the attitudes of all.
We cannot have rights unless we have common attitudes. ”* The self is an essentially relational being, and it is essentially “cognitive. ” [Cognitive: an “internalised conversation of gestures which constitutes thinking”*] * Quote not included in the Craig Textbook excerpt. Dr.Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 3 ? the generalized other is thus the way the community exercises control over the conduct of its members ? the logical universe of discourse determined by the participation and communicative interaction of individuals is the most inclusive and extensive ? Leaders: leadership is based on an ability to enter into the attitudes of the other members of the group, to mediate between different groups “by making his own experience universal, so that others can enter into this form of communication through him” ? he importance of journalism ? cooperation: universal forms expressed in universal religions a universal economic processes ? at the back of the process of discourse must lie cooperative activity: “the process of communication is, then, more universal than any particular cooperative processes.
“It is the medium through which these cooperative activities can be carried out in the self-conscious society”* Communication and democracy ? What would constitute a universal society of humankind? (processes of communication) ? the implication of democracy is that the individual can be as highly developed as lies within the possibilities of his own inheritance, and still can enter into the attitudes of the others whom he affects. ” ? “The ideal of human society is one which does bring people so closely together in their interrelationships, so fully develops the necessary system of communication, that the individuals who exercise their own peculiar functions can take the attitude of those whom they affect” ? “Human communication takes place through such significant symbols, and the problem is one of organizing a community which makes this possible.If that system of communication could be made theoretically perfect, the individual would affect himself as he affects others in every way” * Quote not included in the Craig Textbook excerpt. Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 4 Reading 28.
M. Poster, “The mode of information in postmodernity” (Almost all bullets are quotes from the text—I have omitted page refs and quotes for readability) ? My general thesis is that the mode of information enacts a radical reconfiguration of language, one which constitutes subjects outside the pattern of the rational, autonomous individual. The spatial materiality of print—the linear display of sentences, the stability of the word on the page, the orderly, systematic spacing of black letters on a white background---enable readers to distance themselves from authors. These features of print promote an ideology of the critical individual, reading and thinking in isolation, outside the network of political and religious dependencies. o print culture constitutes the individual as a subject o the role of communications in the process of constituting such subjects Electronic culture promotes the individual as an unstable identity, as a continuous process of multiple identity formation, and raises the question of a social form beyond the modem, the possibility of a postmodern society. o print: language is understood as representational, as an arbitrary system of signs.
. . the subject remains a stable point, fixed in space and time o electronic communication: language is understood as performative, rhetorical, as an active figuring and positioning of the subject. .
the subject can only be understood as partially stable, as repeatedly reconfigured at different points of time and space, as non-selfidentical and therefore as always partly Other. ? Politics: oral communication, from the point of view of print culture, binds the individual in relations of political domination. When communication is restricted to speech (and manuscript as its simple extension), individuals are easily restrained in ties of dependence. . . rint allows a dist ance to intervene between speaker and listener and this gap permits the individual to think, coolly to judge the words of the other without his or her overbearing presence ? Electronic culture permits a different interpretation of the gap.
. . Language no longer represents a reality, no longer is a neutral tool to enhance the subject's instrumental rationality: language becomes or better reconfigures reality. And by Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 5 oing so the subject is interpellated through language and cannot easily escape recognition of that interpellation. Three examples of ‘the mode of information in postmodernity’: 1.
TV ads o TV ads are nominally unidirectional communications: the sender addresses the receiver. Yet all communications, enable responses, feedbacks, replies, however delayed. o TV ads contain special powers. The 'reality' they represent can be 'hyperreal'. . .
With great flexibility the ad constructs a mini-reality in which things are set in juxtaposition s that violate the rules of the everyday. . .TV ads constitute a language system that leaves out the referent, the symbolic and the real, working instead with chains of signifiers (words) and signifieds (mental images). o The ad stimulates not an object choice, a cognitive decision, a rational evaluation, but works . .
. to produce the effects of incorporation and attachment between the viewer and the product. The viewer is the absent hero or heroine of the ad. o The population places itself in communication situations in which the TV ad is the norm of language construction, and the effects on the construction of subject positions are no doubt profound. Jean Baudrillard: The ad presupposes language not as a reference to a 'real' but as an arbitrary connection of signifiers.
It simply rearranges those signifiers, violating their 'normal' references. The aim of the ad is to associate a chain of signifiers in a narrative of a desirable lifestyle: Pepsi = youth = sexiness = popularity = fun, for example. ? a simulacrum, a copy that has no original, has no objective referent. 2.
Computerized databases o ability to constitute and multiply the identity of the individual and thereby to promote his/her control. Previously anonymous actions like paying for a dinner, borrowing a book from a library, renting a videotape from a rental store, subscribing to a Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 6 magazine, making a long distance telephone call . . . now is wrapped in a clothing of information traces which are gathered and arranged into profiles, forming more and more detailed portraits of individuals o The lines dividing individual from individual and individual from institution are consistently crossed by computer databases, canceling privacy as a model of action or even as an issue.
Databases are inherently limited and restricted structures of information; they configure reality, make composites of individual experience that could be characterized as caricatures o databases constitute additional identities for individuals, identities which-in the interactions between computers and between institutions which rely upon them, on the one hand, and individuals on the other—take the place of those individuals. ? Michel Foucault—‘Discipline and Punish’ ?What interests Foucault in the system of discipline is not only its micrological detail but also its 'positive' inscription of power: o Panopticon: Unlike the central government which uses power as a 'negative' principle of preventing or denying certain activities, the Panopticon shapes and moulds the behaviour of the criminals, producing, in a sense, a new person, the prison inmate. The key to the mechanism of discipline is the continuous, systematic , unobserved surveillance of a population. As a general feature of society, the Panopticon is an example of what Foucault calls a 'technology of power' or a 'microphysics of power'.
o Applied to databases: a ‘super-Panopticon’ because they constitute identities for each individual and they do so regardless of whether the individual is even aware of it. Individuals are 'known' to computer databases. . . Simply because this identity has no intimate connection with the internal consciousness of the individual, with his or her self-defined attributes, in no way minimizes its force or effectiveness.
Foucault focuses on the way power is both action and knowledge and the way power implicates the individual. ? The super-Panopticon is thereby more unobtrusive than its forebear, yet it is no less efficient at its task of normalization. Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 7 ? A major impact of the super-Panoptic on is that the distinction between public and private loses its force since it depended on an individual's space of invisibility, of opaqueness to the state and the corporations. 3.
Electronic writing o Electronic writing continues the tendency begun with handwriting and print: it permits the removal of the author from the text, increases the distance, both spatial and temporal , of author from the reader and augments the problem of the interpretation of texts. o Printing is often credited with shaping the autonomous rational individual, a condition of modem democracy. Electronic writing furthers all these features of handwriting and print simply because it is a far more efficient system of storage.Compared with print, digitized writing requires less time to copy and less space to store. o But electronic writing (word processing) also subverts the culture of print: the immateriality of signs on the screen compared with ink on the page, shifts the text out of a register of fixity and into one of volatility.
o Computer message services ? People seem to enjoy a communication technology in which they invent themselves in the process of exchanging signs.Some epistemological and political issues concerning the use of poststructuralist theory in the field of communication studies ? the problem of communication theory begins with a recognition of necessary selfreflexivity, of the dependence of knowledge on its context. It requires from the outset a frank acknowledgement of contingency: the 'truth' of communication theory is registered in relation to historical change and is in no sense 'absolute', offering no vantage point from which one can claim a purchase on universality ?The political implications of the resort to post-structuralism invalidates modernist political positions, those that rely upon a view of humanity as in need of emancipation from forms of external oppression. ? The question becomes one of understanding the positioning of the individual in the given language pattern and the relative change of altering that pattern, rather than one of a search for an absolute, universal beyond the given order, one thatDr.
Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 8 would somehow allow an already defined human creature to emerge as if from its tutelage, or chains. —that is, as a rational autonomous individual ? there is a secular trend emanating from electronic communication that undermines the stability of the figure of the rational autonomous individual Dr. Martin Morris, Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University 9
