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p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.
0px 0.0px; font: 20.0px Arial; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.
0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.
0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 14.0px} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font: 12.0px ‘PingFang SC’; font-kerning: none} IntroductionThe tearing of contemporary social values is understandably tensed. What needs to be elaborated first of all is the values itself exists subjectively.
It is possible because people have different identities in the pursuit of various interests. For instance, the event of ‘bailout for Wall Street’ has caused widespread controversy. The left-wing American populism being extreme irritation in the wake of their biggest Financial crisis defeat since 1929.
It has been the irreconcilable contradiction between the ordinary public and a mighty corporation and government. It is almost certain that in the eyes of the public, the government’s actions largely betray the basic social contract. In contrast, the government bail-outs have legitimate condition, if they attend to release liquidity to the market and ensure the normal execution of the contract and efficient trading as the prerequisite. As can be seen in this case that the values of individual could base on position, personal interests and relationships with others.
In other words, the identity. It determines how people experience the social activities and response to society in a different way. In the view of primordialism that identity is inherent, people who share history and culture based on blood relationships. According to instrumentalism, it is considered identity to be a political tool which is used to implement the service to consolidate the national unity or for political gain. Both of them could be a consequence of overemphasising on nature or nurture.
Unlike the ‘determinist’, the idea of constructivism presents a useful concept that the acquisition of identity is a constructive process, it comes from people’s everyday social activities. This ongoing process leads to the constant changing in the people’s values system. The problem remains as to how to define the scope of ‘the dominating characteristics of the contemporary social environment’ and Who is more representative. The aim of this essay is to critically evaluate the influence of personal identity on individual experience and to what extent individual experience has effect by the contemporary social characteristics. The first part of this essay will discuss the difference in understanding and definition of ‘identity’ between the East and the West. The second part will examine that how the power participate in the construction process of personal identity.
The final part of the analysis will explore the relationship between personal experience and the contemporary social characteristics.The diversity of interpretation of identityThere are different descriptions of ‘Identity’ which partially came from the terminological mismatch between Chinese and English. This could be a significant departure from a holistic way of thinking and a fuzzy thought which differ from that of the partitioned analytical western thinking. On the basis of a deep-rooted understanding of consistency or identity as a single or unique individual to distinguish from others. However, it could mean ‘to make a person his/her own’, rather than someone else’s, to be unique, essential and stable characteristics when the concept of identity is applied to human beings, that is, the fundamental concepts of ‘personal identity’. Nonetheless, the western concept of culture tends to be more widely rather than a specific cultural group. On the one hand, it provides a universal perspective of culture study and a sensitivity to the dominating characteristics of the contemporary social environment. On the other hand, it has over-focused its attention on the majority ethnic groups and can be seen as the extension of the western method in culture study, whether in the study of cultural or psychoanalytic theory.
Whilst it is generally agreed that what sociologist required is a basic theory of applicability and can be more widely practical (Foucault, 1970). Consequently, it could also ignore the significant differences between subcultural groups in the western societies. One method to address this difficulty is to have a possessed of cross-cultural perspective in terms of understanding identity, for it can reveal the problems from the ‘root’. In general, there are three aspects of identity. First of all, it is the individual’s understanding and perception of the existence of the self-cognition. The second is the sense of belonging to the specific group. Finally, it is the relationship between individual and other groups, that is, to construct the cognition of self from the others. Therefore, the stability of identity could be considered as the balance between self-cognition and cognition of others.
The identity as a processIdentity could be considered as a constant process without a destination. The pinched nationalism context of identity may based on the sharing of culture and history. In the modern society, the role of cultural identity has a large proportion. According to Hall (1996) the acquisition of identity is a dynamic and interactive process which socially constructed in certain conditions. This process with exclusive, it also consumes material and ideological resources in terms of reinforcing the boundary of identity. During this process, each individual could experience their ‘life’ in different cultures, traditions, social and historical reality or in general, ‘the environment’. This could be a clue into understand the process of injecting personal experience into contemporary social features.
Furthermore, this could also be considered as a contingency process. Although the east and west society have a different cultural and historical perspective but both of them seem to focus on great events, it means the memories could be selectively constructed and in the process of population iteration, it shows the inheritance of culture and the subjectivity and fiction of history. The nature of this tendency could lurk in the possibility of the minority is subordinate to the majority.
The basis of stereotype, the product of evolution, focus and ignore. Moreover, the reason why each individual in the society is unique one because of different identities can coexist simultaneously. The development of technology has provided the safeguard for the transfer of social identity.
For example, the change of nationality, transgender and other social identities which can be transferred through technology. It significantly increases the mobility of social belonging. Likewise, the sense of belonging based on social identity is in a dynamic process of differentiation and combination. This process shows that each individual has a distinct priority in their choices of identity. There are tradeoffs between people’s different identity, depending on the specific circumstances.
In the view of Hall (1996), there is no contradiction between the acquisition of identity and the diversity of identity. Depending on the audience, the observed could be recognised as a teacher (occupation), a woman (gender) or a mother (interrelationships), it is understandable complex that the contemporary society is changing rapidly. Language as the vehicle of culture, loads with rich social information. It not only carries the function of the internal construction of identity but also creates the barrier unconsciously. This can also be seen as a privilege to groups which share common history and ancestral.
It travel through time and history to maintain a collective identity. For example, the Anglophone world, it is the concept of identity which is emphasised by the essentialist, forcibly transformed into a cultural identity. Notwithstanding it looks fragmented today. This exclusivity is particularly evident when the power requires mastery of ideology and interferes with the seemingly natural process.
The participation of the powerThe self-identity could impact the public’s sense of the social structure and external environment, thus affect the shaping of individual and group of the political orientation, political action and transformation of political ideas. The politics of identity also has the possibility of violence and radicalisation. Like the ethnic conflicts, tribal vendettas, religious extremism and separatist activities, almost without exception, all of them are the political concepts which are mobilised based on specific identity.
Those sort of artificially reconstructed will, could be used as a tool, in order to take same action like inciting hatred. There was a typical example of how particular kinds of people are produced at particular historical periods. In the early days of New China, the material scarcity and a double blockade from diplomacy and trade could be the main theme of people’s everyday life. The struggle between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp entered the stage of the white-hot stage was the big image. It was a war about ideology. During the Marx’s Historical Materialism, there is an iterative conclusion about the form of the society. Because of the socialist revolution in China was led by the working class, and the proletariat participated, so people were divided into different classes, ‘the landlord’, ‘the rich farmers’, ‘the counter-revolutionaries’, ‘the bad-influencers’ and ‘the rightists’.
This farcical division based on their occupation, ancestry, wealth and ideology and could cause serious consequences. The fact is that the traditional sense of ‘identity’ was broken in a moment, they were categorised as ‘The Five Black Categories’ as a whole. In the view of Foucault (1993) the power to control the public grows out from themselves. It could be seen as a tool for regulation and shaping the public. The key aspect of this argument is that the act of power could be one of the most important role in the construction of a personal identity (Laclau, 1993). Therefore, the identity does not have a clear border when under certain special conditions or simply said, it has no stability. From another perspective, the identity could be defined as an objective fact which being socially constructed in the process of practice and it independent of the subject’s will. The whole generation who marked with the stigma of the times during the period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Ten-year catastrophe, it even begins to affect the naming of the child.
People who were born in that time could be named with various of words which have strong political meanings such as ‘??’ (revolution), ‘??’ (The establishment of national) or ‘??’ (Aid to North Korea). This part of history was vividly reflected into individual’s experiences and become a social common memory for all and bing inheritance by the next generation. The concept of modernity’They share in the social, they experience modernity in all its fullness of promise and terror, but they are not identical with it’.
Another limitation of this argument might be the world is multilevel in different social realities. It must be admitted that either the Marxist view of culture and history or the traditional culture study, they all approved that industrialisation, secularisation, rationalisation and political form could be the standard of modernity. The problem remains as this plausible division basically became geographical boundaries, more specifically, it provides such imagination of a modern Western civilisation and others. For instance, the development of anthropology study has a tortuous process, from curiosity to introspection, benefit from the emergence of structural functionalism and the cultural relativism becomes the mainstream view, anthropologist no longer identifies culture into superior or inferior. The questioning of the Western modernity has reflected the scope of the contemporary social environment.
According to Berman (1984) the modernity, through this ambiguous process. However, social factors could not the only element that construct identity. We shared values through our social activities, and reforming the society and environment, not merely a passive recipient.
ConclusionTo sum up, the personal experience of the social environment comes from the value judgment of various ideas, phenomena and events. Further, the identity gives individual the subjective of value system. This social construction process of identity could be a fierce competition, it always ongoing until death.
The psychoanalysis and culture theory both mention that the complexity and confusion through this competition, under the framework and influence of modernity. The personal experience could reflect the dominating characteristics contemporary social environment, especially when the power involved in the construction of social identity. However, it could affect individual experience the environment differently, in terms of the combination of identity. On the one hand, this could the root cause of social tearing. On the other hand, it could also be the basis of the diversity of social values. From one perspective, the study of cultural theory originated from the West, and it is difficult to completely abandon transcendental subjectivity. Adhering to the foundation of cultural pluralism provides an objective basis for better understanding of the different forms of society even at different times.
The social construction of identity as a process of change, it shows the instability of identity of each individual. The dichotomy fantasy of the eastern and western cultural circles, built on the basis that identity is a stable existence. However, the stability of the identity relies on relatively stable interrelationships. How can we be immune from the rampant and noisy social environment which surrounded by the fierce debate of modernity. Thus the culture itself has no distinct identity boundary (Hall, 1996). It could serve as a benchmark for measuring social environment. As a conscious individual, we should be aware of the plurality and plasticity of identity. On the one hand, the history has been suffering from the various identity based on certain superficial differences.
The extreme nationalist, racial discrimination and patriarchalism, those ideologies were criticised by structuralists a lot. These essentialist concepts still full of vitality, and they always have a negative effect on a variety of groups to experience the social environment. Identity itself can be a form of power discourse that is consistent with the contemporary social environment. As noted before, the identity has political. As noted before It is about how to organise political power and distribute political rights.
