Harvie Ferguson - Self-Identity and Everyday Life

Identity and selfhood are terms routinely used throughout the human sciences that seek to analyze and describe the character of everyday life and experience. Yet these terms are seldom defined or used with any precision, and scant regard is paid to the historical and cultural context in which they arose, or to which they are applied.

This innovative book provides fresh historical insights in terms of the emergence, development, and interrelationship of specific and varied notions of identity and selfhood, and outlines a new sociological framework for analysing it.

This is the first historical/sociological framework for discussion of issues which have until now, generally been treated as philosophy or psychology, and as such it is essential reading for those undergraduates and postgraduates of sociology, philosophy, history and cultural studies interested in the concepts of identity and self. It covers a broader range of material than is usual in this style of text, and includes a survey of relevant literature and precise analysis of key concepts written in a student-friendly style.

Harvie Ferguson is a sociologist with wide-ranging interests in historical, cultural, and existential aspects of the development of modern society. His recent work includes studies of warfare, the development of modern Japanese society and phenomenology. He is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

SERIES EDITOR: ANTHONY ELLIOTT, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

The New Sociology is a book series designed to introduce students to new issues and themes in social sciences today. What makes the series distinctive, as compared with other competing introductory textbooks, is a strong emphasis not just on key concepts and ideas but on how these play out in everyday life on how theories and concepts are lived at the level of selfhood can cultural identities, how they are embedded in interpersonal relationships, and how they are shaped by, and shape, broader social processes.

Titles in the series:

Forthcoming titles in the series:

First published 2009
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.

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2009 Harvie Ferguson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ferguson, Harvie.
Self-identity and everyday life/Harvie Ferguson.
p. cm.
1. Self. 2. Identity (Psychology) I. Title.
BF697.F447 2009
155.2dc22
2008046088

ISBN 0-203-00177-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-35509-5(hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-415-35508-7 (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-00177-X (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-35509-4 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-35508-7 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-00177-6 (ebk)

The New Sociology is a Series that takes its cue from massive social transformations currently sweeping the globe. Globalization, new information technologies, the techno-industrialization of warfare and terrorism, the privatization of public resources, the dominance of consumerist values: these developments involve major change to the ways people live their personal and social lives today. Moreover, such developments impact considerably on the tasks of sociology, and the social sciences more generally. Yet, for the most part, the ways in which global institutional transformations are influencing the subject-matter and focus of sociology have been discussed only in the more advanced, specialized literature of the discipline. I was prompted to develop this Series, therefore, in order to introduce students as well as general readers who are seeking to come to terms with the practical circumstances of their daily lives to the various ways in which sociology reflects the transformed conditions and axes of our globalizing world.

Perhaps the central claim of the Series is that sociology is fundamentally linked to the practical and moral concerns of everyday life. The authors in this Series examining topics all the way from the body to globalization, from self-identity to consumption seek to demonstrate the complex, contradictory ways in which sociology is a necessary and very practical aspect of our personal and public lives. From one angle, this may seem uncontroversial. After all, many classical sociological analysts as well as those associated with the classics of social theory emphasized the practical basis of human knowledge, notably mile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Georg Simmel, among many others. And yet there are major respects in which the professionalization of academic sociology during the latter period of the twentieth century led to a retreat from the everyday issues and moral basis of sociology itself. (For an excellent discussion of the changing relations between practical and professional sociologies see Charles Lemert, Sociology After the Crisis, second edition, Boulder: Paradigm, 2004). As worrying as such a retreat from the practical and moral grounds of the discipline is, one of the main consequences of recent global transformations in the field of sociology has been a renewed emphasis on the mediation of everyday events and experiences by distant social forces, the intermeshing of the local and global in the production of social practices, and on ethics and moral responsibility at both the individual and collective levels. The New Sociology Series traces out these concerns across the terrain of various themes and thematics, situating everyday social practices in the broader context of life in a globalizing world.