Individuality and community: The limits of social constructivism.
Ethos December 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1111/etho.12364 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Community Experience Selfhood Subjectivity |
| Key points | Argues that many discussions of socially constituted selfhood are too crude and inadvertently advocate a radical social constructivism that fails to capture first-person experience and communal heterogeneity. |
Abstract
Is selfhood socially constituted and distributed? Although the view has recently been defended by some cognitive scientists, it has long been popular within anthropology and cultural psychology. Whereas older texts by Marcel Mauss, Clifford Geertz, Hazel Rose Markus, and Shinobu Kitayama often contrast a Western conception of a discrete, bounded, and individual self with a non-Western sociocentric conception, it has more recently become common to argue that subjectivity is a fluid intersectional construction fundamentally relational and conditioned by discursive power structures. I assess the plausibility of these claims and argue that many of these discussions of self and subjectivity remain too crude. By failing to distinguish different dimension of selfhood, many authors unwittingly advocate a form of radical social constructivism that is not only incapable of doing justice to first-person experience but which also fails to capture the heterogeneity of real communal life.
Comparable studies
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| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
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| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 6
- The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Oxford University Press eBooks September 13, 2018
- Subjectivity and cultural critique Anthropological Theory February 25, 2005
- The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness Oxford University Press eBooks July 9, 2020
- The Phenomenological Mind December 22, 2007
- Subjectivity and Selfhood December 9, 2005
and 1 more in the library