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Saturday, August 07, 2010

Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Mapping by : Vandana Choradia


Map of Anthony Giddens’ essay- Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

  1. Rethinking nature of modernity in 21st Century in line with society
  • “Nature of modernity must go hand in hand with a reworking of basic premises of sociological analysis.

II. Modernity affecting self and social life

  • Modernity must be understood at an institutional level
  • Self and social life constantly interact

IV. Modern Social life organized by Time and Space

  • Institutional reflexivity
  • Expansion of disembedding mechanisms
  • Transform content and nature of everyday life

V. Modernity as post traditional order; principle of radical doubt

  • Insists Knowledge should have hypotheses
  • Claims that are true
  • Openness to revision

VI. Modernity as a risk culture

  • Reflexive organization of knowledge environments
  • Risk assessment- precision, quantification
  • Although, by its nature is imperfect

VII. Riskiness of certain areas in late modern world

  • High consequence risks
  • Apocalyptic- term High Modernity

VIII. Influences of media, systems on self identity and social relations

  • Systems become autonomous
  • The activities of electronic media is devoid of hyper reality in Baudrillard’s sense

IX. Reflexively organized self-identity

  • Significance of notion of lifestyle and choices- structuring identity
  • Life planning
  • Tradition losing its hold, daily life- dialectical interplay between local and global, paralleled to people negotiating lifestyle choices
  • Capitalistic production and distribution- core components of modernity’s institutions

X. What is lifestyle?

  • Emancipation, access to forms of self-actualization, decisions taken and courses of action followed under conditions of severe material constraint
  • Interconnects with life-planning
  • Misunderstandings of ‘lifestyle’- only pursuits of prosperous/ rich groups and classes

XI. Transformation of Intimacy

  • Interaction between local and global
  • Pure relationship--- trust, reflexively controlled over long term

XII. Search for intimacy

  • Integral to pure relationship
  • Mistake- view contemporary search for intimacy as a negative reaction to the impersonal social universe

XIII. Reskilling

  • Reacquisition of knowledge and skills
  • Situationally variable
  • Contrasts… it is partial, revisable in nature of expert’s knowledge
  • Validates the need for Reskilling- Distrust, scepticism, rejection and withdrawal affects the linking of individual activities and expert systems

XIV. Interaction between self- reflexivity and abstract systems affect psychic processes and bodily development.

  • Body- phenomenon of choices
  • Do not affect only individual
  • Narcissistic cultivation- control the body

XV. Sequestration of experience

  • Influenced by science, technology and expertise
  • Reframe issues of nature, scientific idea that excludes morality- through institutional account, internal referentiality
  • People have direct contact with incidents and relate them to issues of morality

XVI. Shame by institutional repression

  • Situation- Mentions Freud in reference to guilt (killing the father- Oedipus/ Electra complex)
  • Institutional repression- shame over feeling of guilt
  • Brought out through mechanisms of change

XVII. Personal Meaninglessness and existential questioning

  • Life has nothing worthwhile
  • Phenomenon- repression
  • Authenticity- casing self- actualization

XVIII. Counter reaction to Existential questions- Life Politics

  • Repression is incomplete
  • Lifestyle choices- raise moral issues
  • Emancipatory Politics

XIX. Emancipatory politics influencing existential issues

  • Modernity excludes them
  • Emergence of life-political programme


Giddens, Anthony. “Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.” Art

    in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts. Eds. Franscina, Francis and Jonathan Harris. London/New York: Phaidon, 1992. Print

Pinto, Anil. Class lecture. On Modernity and Self Identity.Christ University. Bangalore, India. 4 August 2010. Lecture.

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