Think through sociology

Author: (English) Ziegert Bauman
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: Thanks to this knowledge, I was able to live without worry and didn't need to look for a "proper" job everywhere. I was governed by this knowledge, but I was not aware of its existence, because when I accepted most of its basic concepts, I was in a confused pre-school stage. Therefore, when I reflect on my experiences or my own memories, I can hardly explain how I acquired that knowledge and how it permeated my personal experience and memories. Fortunately, because I forgot the reason, this knowledge was able to be established and exert such powerful control over me, and I naturally took it as a "natural" thing, rarely wanting to question it. How is everyday knowledge produced, and how is it "proposed" by the group? To find the answer to this question, I must refer to the research results of psychological experts and sociological experts. When I reviewed these results, I felt that they were often unsettling. Those things that seemed obvious and self-evident were merely collections of many beliefs, and these beliefs were supported only by the authority of the group that supported them. Perhaps no one has made greater contributions to helping us understand the internalization of group standards than the American sociologist George Herbert Mead. To describe the process of acquiring important social skills, Mead often uses some concepts he himself created, the most famous of which are the "self" and the "generalized other." These two concepts represent the duality of the self, that is, the two parts split off from the self: one is the external part (more accurately, the part that is perceived as coming from the outside, from its surrounding society, in the form of needs to be met and models to be learned), i.e., the "generalized other" in the self; the other part is the "self," the inner core of the self, through which all external social demands and expectations are examined, evaluated, inferred, and understood. In the process of forming the self, the role played by the group is completed by the "generalized other." Children realize that they are being watched, evaluated, or even punished; they are encouraged to behave in a certain way, and if their behavior violates the prescribed way, they are pushed back into the prescribed range. These experiences, as reflections of children's expectations of others of themselves, accumulate in the gradually maturing self. Obviously, they—the others—have a way of distinguishing between proper and improper behavior. They approve of proper behavior and punish wrong behavior that deviates from the rules. The memory of rewards and punishments gradually synthesizes into an unconscious understanding of rules—what others expect and what others do not expect—as the "generalized other." That is, the self's reflection of the reflection of others' self-image. In addition, the "generalized other" does not refer to just any other person. Among the people children interact with, some are chosen by the self as significant others, whose evaluations and reactions are more important than those of others, and the self's perception of these evaluations and reactions is more lasting or stronger, so the role of these evaluations and reactions is also more effective. From the above discussion, one might draw a wrong conclusion.