Quote for the Week

I’m being a bit naughty here, but I guess sometimes it can be good to pose provocative questions. So here’s this weeks quote:

“Sociology’s great intellectual contribution is to have recognised that the self is very much a social product. Although people have instincts, dreams, private thoughts, human experience is heavily influenced by our membership in important social groups such as family, church, school, neighbourhood, class, race, gender, generation, nation. The self, for every sociologist, is largely but perhaps not entirely, an outcome of social structure - our economies, political systems, cultures, media, religions, military, policing, education. To ignore all of these external influences is to be a psychologist!”

Ben Agger (2004) The Virtual Self, p44, Blackwell.

Lots to discuss here and it doesn’t need to mean that we consign psychology to the dustbin. As so many students now are studying psychology, it might be useful to highlight why there is a bit of tension between sociologists and psychologists around the vexed issue of structure and action. Maybe both subjects have their uses and their limitations?