Social Selves
Theories of Self and Society
- Ian Burkitt - University of Bradford, UK
- Richard Jenkins, Professor of Sociology, Sheffield University
"A foundational book, beautifully framed for this new century. The old theories of self and identity must be revisited in these times of global and cultural transformation. What kinds of selves are now available to us? Which theories best help us make sense out of who we are today. Burkitt brilliantly charts a path through this complex set of issues, and we owe him a huge debt for doing so".
- Norman K. Denzin, Distinguished Research Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This new, completely revised version builds on the popular success of the first edition. It seeks to answer the basic social question of 'who am I?' by developing an understanding of self-identity as formed in social relations and social activity. Comprehensive, jargon-free and authoritative, it will be required reading on courses in self and society, identity and personality formation.
Ian Burkitt's book has been included on my PhD student reading list because it is one of the few scholarly studies about self and social indentities. Notions of identity of self and society stretch back to ancient times with Plato's republic but the emphasis on self and society came to prominence with George Herbert Mead's seminal work in the 1930s when he connected the mind, self and society as an embodied conceptualisation of social being. There are many challenges facing scholars of indentity and significantly different disciplinary approaches in doing so, with their differences in emphasis on social or psychological conceptions of identity and the construction of identities of self together with the difficulties of bridging the self with social identities constructed by the self and others. In this very accessible text Burkitt manages to achieve a synthesis of social selves by examining complex issues of self and society and their interlationship using specific themes to do so. The themes offer different perspectives on the complexities involved in constructing identity through dialogue, performance, power, gender, sexuality, social class and as a member of contemporary society. This is an inspirational text for anyone with an interest in identity. As a marketing professor identity is clearly an important construct for conceptualising markets and relation in those markets between individuals and society and Burkitt's scholarly work offers many insightful explanations of these complexities.
