Fri, 14 Oct 1994 06:54:14 -0700 for <socgrad@ucsd.edu>
    Fri, 14 Oct 94 9:54:13 +1100
From: "LEE MARTIN" <S-LMARTIN@bss1.umd.edu>
Organization:  University of Maryland,College Park
To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU
Date:          Fri, 14 Oct 1994 09:54:02 EDT
Subject:       "individuals"
I agree with Laura Miller.  It can be argued that the very word 
"individual" is a misnomer since, in fact, the self is essentially 
social in nature.  As Mead and symbolic interactionists who followed 
him have pointed out, not only is there no pre-social self---we are 
not born with a self---but the self is created, maintained, and 
changed in a social, interpersonal location.  There is no core self.  
Sociologists who unreflectively use the word "individual" without 
appreciating this may perpetuate the sacred cult of the individual 
(if I may bring Durkheim into this).  There are political, material, 
and self-concept ramifications of believing in a core self that 
facilitate the continuation of forms of domination, self-delusion, 
and obsfucation of the structure and effects of social stratification 
and systematic social control mechanisms that operate in our society.

Selves are social.  "Individuals" are social.  What implications for 
social change might this draw were Americans to wholeheartedly 
abandon their ideology of individualism?

Lee Martin
U. of Maryland