The Self in Social Theory: Challenges and Perspectives

The self has been conceived under various - and often inadequately elucidated - guises (individual, person, human being), providing a nodal point for the development of key dichotomies in social theory. Early social theory witnessed the rise of a stark antithesis between the modern individual as the locus and source of allegedly free agency - an assumption inherited from various philosophical currents of the West - and society as a sui generis reality with its own dynamics of development, the latter emerging from political and theoretical perspectives as divergent as Marxism and Durkheimian sociology. The individual-society divide was evident, with both ontological and epistemological repercussions, as it was coupled with the rise of dilemmas concerning the ontological status of society and the adoption of methodological individualism or methodological collectivism. Although the theoretical repercussions of this distinction were evident from the outset and generated early attempts at overcoming its confines (e.g. Simmel), it was Giddens' structuration theory that gave the problem a definite form. The problem of structure and agency posed by Giddens' structuration theory dominated theoretical debates for over two decades. This, in turn, made it imperative for diverse thinkers—such as Archer, Bourdieu, and Habermas - to elucidate the self and its relations to others and to society. In doing so, they often turned to adjacent disciplines and to philosophy in order to broaden their understanding of the singular human being, a concern that was already central (for different reasons) across various stages of Talcott Parsons's work. Concurrently, the notion of the autonomous self was challenged by various forms of constructivism and often coupled by a critique of humanism, typical examples of which are the works of Foucault and Luhmann - despite their otherwise immense differences. Pragmatism, new materialism, anti-essentialist feminist perspectives, post-structuralism, and the growing recognition of the need to overcome eurocentrism have all shaped the ways we conceive of the self, otherness, identity and difference. The notion of the self is also interwoven with conceptions of familiar space, estrangement, alienation and even with the uncanny. It positions relations as an indispensable dimension of social theorizing, as emphasized across various strands of relational sociology. Charles Taylor’s classic Sources of the Self and Paul Ricoeur’s equally important Oneself as Another both attest to the multidimensionality and importance of the notion of the self for social theory and philosophy. Despite the plurality of theoretical perspectives addressing the constitution of the self and its relations to others, social groups, and broader social and cultural settings, the self still poses a problematique that cuts across disciplines and remains indispensable to any attempt to rethink the complexity of the social world. We therefore invite theoretical contributions from all epistemological and philosophical perspectives, and from across the social sciences, that engage with the issues briefly sketched above and, more generally, with the notion of the self in relation to political, aesthetic, ethical, religious and other forms of experience and/or fields. We also welcome submissions that work on interdisciplinary approaches to the social self, by drawing on contemporary developments in the so-called brain and cognitive sciences, while linking certain tendencies in those fields with core questions in social theory. Topic editors: Angelos Mouzakitis, William Outhwaite, Leonidas Tsilipakos, Vasiliki Tsakiri, Dariusz Gafijczuk, Christoforos Bouzanis Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77291/the-self-in-social-theory-challenges-and-perspectives