Gubrium and Holstein Going Concerns

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DlSTlNGU SHED LECTURE

The Self in a World of Going Concerns

Jaber F. GubriumUniversity of Fiorida

James A . HolsteinMarquette University

While commentators on the postmodern scene have dismissed or trivial-ized the personal self it nonetheless remains a central experiential con-struct articu lating a sense of moral agency for everyday life. This articleexamines self-construction in the context of a world of proliferating goingconcerns -social institutions- that increasingly shape the discursive con-tours of subjectivity. Both the negative and the positive sides of this devel-opment are examined the analytic implications of which can move us instrikingly different directions. We conclude by offering suggestions for tyingthe study of the contemporary self to the variety of discursive environmentsand practices that set the conditions of possibility for wh o and what w e are

or could be.

Times are tou gh fo r the perso nal self. This stalwart social form was conceptualizedas being a t the heartof social action. Bu t now theself is increasingly beleaguered byclaims th at pos tmo dern life dece nters an d trivializes its presence in experience. In thisview, who we really a re is constantly in ques tion. W hat we can o r should be sw ings inendless response to the d em andsof the m oment. Postmodern life provides o ne iden-tity option afte r ano the r, implicating a dizzying array of possibilities for t he self.

Perha ps this situatio n is th e inevitable result of a fast-paced world. With daily living

swirling about at unpreceden ted sp eed, som e say that the postmodernself is simul-taneously everywhere and nowhere. It is fleeting and evanescent, a m ere shadowofwhat the self on ce might hav e been. If it was comm only viewed a s the central pres-ence in experience, som e ob serversof the postmodern scene nowtell us that the

Direct all correspon dence to Jaber Gub rium University of Florida Department of Sociology 321 9Turlington Hall, Cainesvil le FL 3261 1-7330; e-mail: [email protected] .edu.

Symbolic Interactio n Volu m e 23 Nu m ber 2 p ages 95-115 ISSN 0195-6086.000 by the Society for the Study of Symb olic Interaction. All r ights reserved.

Send requests for permiss ion to r epr in t to: Rights and Permissions Univ ersity of Californ ia Press

Journals Division 2000 Center St. Ste. 303 Berkeley C 4704-1223.


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self is arbitrarily u p for grab s Sica 1993:17). It is an an yth ing goes entityFeath erston e 1992:266),if no t an insidious con game Berm an 1992). In Jean Bau-

drillards 1983,1988) electronically m ediated hyperreality, th e self com es tous ina shifting mklangeof images. It is insubstantial, perennially o n display, an d com mo di-fied mu ltiple times f or m ass consum ption, dislodged into a far-flung phantasmagoriaof postoriginary presence. The media flaunt the sights and soundsof myriad innerspaces, making the intimate public, exposing all that might otherwise be private. InJean-Franq ois Lyotards 1984) descriptionof the postmo dern conditionof knowl-edge, he bluntly tellsus that our self does not amou nt to much anym ore p.15)Per hap s most disturbing, even symbolic interactionist bellwethers an d fellow travel-er s express strong self dou bts see Den zin 1991; Ger gen 1991; Go ttschalk 1993).

Oddly eno ugh, at the same t ime that such comm entators portray th e self as hav-

ing com e un done, actors in the worldof everyday life seem to be unflinchingly com-mitted to the belief that a singular, authenticself resides within. This self occupiesan inn er sanctum, insulated from th e mor al ravagesof todays w orld. Social life maysha pe who we are, bestow glowing o r blemished identities; it may confuse o ur pub-lic personas beyond recognition, but we still believe that a true self lies some-where inside, in some deeply privileged space. As besiegedor hidden as th e selfmight be, in th e worldof everyday life it remains resolutely available as a beacon toguide us. It is tak en for granted that inour most private recesses we d o not need todivide ourselves between countless identities but ratherfeel it is still possible to getin touch, and be a t one, withour true selves.

Cu ltur e plays a stro ng hand in this belief. We place gr eat stock in th e W estern no-tion of an inn er beacon, in a self that stan ds fundamentally apa rt from the socialworld. We har bo r this in ner self as a key ingredient in ou r everyday lives. Althoug hit may be socially influenced, the self ultimately exists separately from-outsideof-our social transactions. It is imm ersed in social affairs, t obe sure, but its auto n-om ou s agency is also a leading th em e of thos e affairs. O u r cultural sensibilities ar-ticulate selves virtually ow ned by individuals, ind epe nd ent an d distinct from t heso-cial marketplaces in which people acquire their identities. Thispersonal selfrepeatedly surfaces in familiar p hrases such as t he individual versus society, thecore, true self, and w hoI really a m as opposed to who I appe ar to be.

W hat a re we to make, then, of th e cacophony of charges that the basic contoursof this subjectivity have vanished into thin air? H as th e person al self really beenlost in the swirling exp erienc es of pos tmo dern ity? H as the self be en ba ttere d be-yond recognition or into trivialized submission? Does it indeed not amount tomuch anymore?

O ur view is that, even while som e comm entato rs have written the personal selfsepit aph , it is still th e leading ex periential p rojectof our era.2 Th ere is overwhelmingevidence. we believe, thatif these ind eed ar e trying times for t he self, it is not becauseth e personal self has disappeared from the social landscape but just the oppo site.The

personal self remainsour prim ary subjectivity-a self we live by-but it is now pro-duced in a proliferating and variegated pan oram aof sites of self-knowledge. Thes e


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tells us what th at is: I tu rned my atten tion optimistically to th e aftern oon . Perh apshere I would find m om ent s of seclusion, restoration, an d recenterinf-three reme-dial featur esof a distinctly m od ern self p.1; emphasis added ). Ger gen conveys thepersonal shapeof th e self he desires, on e that apparently has lost its distinct moor-ings to th e fast pace and diverse spacesof po stm od ern life. This self realizes its au -thenticity by escaping from t he daily rat race. Undoubtedly , social exp erie nce nour-ishes such a self, but, ironically, it is most true to itself when it is apart from thesocial swirl. In seclusion, it can tak e sto ck of, an d resto re, itself.

In G ergens view, th e self resides naturally at th e he art of personallife, not a t theconstant mercy of diverse an d com peting social influences. H e cringes fro m th e ex-ponential growth of the se influences, which are producing a profoun d change inou r ways of understand ing the self p.6 . According to Gergen, we are n o longer

coherently thinking o r deeply feeling entities bu t inco rpor ate into ourselves a mul-tiplicity of incoh erent an d unrelated languagesof th e self p.6 . H e bem oans a va-riety of negative consequences as the au thentic selfis shattered an d displaced tomyriad social locations.

For everything we know to be true about ourselves, other voices within re-spond with doubt and even derision. This fragmentation of self-conceptions cor-responds to a multiplicity of incoherent and disconnected relationships. Theserelationships pull us in myriad directions, inviting us to play such a variety ofroles that the very concept of an authentic self with knowable characteristicsrecedes f rom view.The fully saturated self becomes no self at all. (Pp. 6-7)

Th e satu rate d self has a telling experiential geography. It is batter ed an d bullied byforces external to itself. Its str eng th derives from its interiority. Familiar m etap ho rsof volume a nd , especially, depth el abo rate this imag e of the self. Co m pet ing de -mands of social life might fragm ent th e self, but it remains a substantial repo sitorywith an impressive inner capacity a nd an ability to hold ou t against intru ders andassailants. The deeply authentic self, while socially nurtured and informed, mustfend off the social influences tha t can spoil who it truly is. Paradoxically, th e veryconditions of interaction and com munication that n urtu re the self become its tor-mento rs. Still, at its greatest de pt h, th e self can be secured against th e vicissitudes ofdaily living.

The working struggle between th e inn er self and th ese exte rior forces is percep-tively depicted in Arlie Russell Hochschilds(1983) account of th e managed heart.Hochschilds book m akes extensive use of similar m etaph ors to chronicle how thepersonal self manages t o staveoff an incre asingly comm odified sociability. Focusingon the com mercializationof feeling in th e airline industry, Hochschild in trodu ces herreader to the emot ion workof flight atten dan ts. Their jo b is to ke ep customershappy. Hochschild describes how the attend ants try t o safeguard their true selves inthe face of nagging de m and s t o selflessly, cheerfully serve customers.

Hochschilds presentation is not a lame nt over the sta teof th e personal self, as

Gergens is. Rat he r, it is a storyof resistance, a tale of how we protect our trueselves from exploitation. Hochschild provides a strategy for combating the satu-


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rated and commercialized self, a way of preserving the authentic me we feel inour heart of hearts. Speaking of flight attendants, but hoping to strike a more gen-eral chord, Hochschild writes about how people might respond to a world in whichfeelings are bought and sold and emotion management is rife. In such a world, sheexplains, the true self is overrun by false selves that have been mobilized to ward offthe growing demands of daily living. As outside interests inundate the self, it re-treats inward, leaving only uncomfortable false personas directed toward others.We preserve our selves by seeking inner shelter from the social onslaught.

The false self is a necessary conspirator in this resistance. As Hochschild states,it is a disbelieved, unclaimed self, a part of me that is not really me, yet neces-sary to protect the real self 1983:194).

The false self embodiesour acceptance of early parental requ irements that weact so as to please others, at th e expenseof o u r own need s and desires. Thisso-ciocentric, other-directed self comes to live a sepa rate existence fro m the self weclaim. In t he extrem e case, the false self m ay se t itself up as the real self, whichrem ains completely hidden. M ore comm only, the false self allows the real self alife of its own, which emerges when thereis little danger of its being used byothers. (l? 194)

Clearly, false selves perform an important, self-preserving function. They can be setup in service to others, protecting the authentic, core self. They serve as buffers be-tween external demands and an internal core that may be at odds with such de-mands. According to Hochschild, false selves maintain the true self while living civ-

illy among others who make so many contrary demands on us.With the true self hidden within, how do we know it continues to exist? Emo-

tions, Hochschild explains, are the beacons of our authentic selves. Every emotionserves a signal function, she argues (p. 29), noting that it is from feelings that welearn the self-relevance of what we see, remember, or imagine (p. 196). Emotionsput us in touch with the personal me, providing us with an inner perspective forinterpreting and responding to experience. Social life becomes problematic, how-ever, in that it often demands that we harness our feelings. This emotion manage-ment, Hochschild maintains, interferes with the signal function of feelings (p. 130),diluting or confusing a persons sense of self. As emotion management is commer-cialized, we must manipulate our feelings and, in the process, our selves, for purelyinstrumental ends. Consequently, our feelings are given over more to the organiza-tion and less to the self (p. 198).The upshot is burnout and estrangement.

Flight attendants emotion work provides a case in point. Hochschild explainsthat flight attendants are not only asked to smile as they serve their customers butare actually trained to feel and project a warmth and sincerity that convinces othersthat the smile is genuine. But as emotions are managed to meet these demands, thedistinction between real and projected selves begins to blur. Hochschild questionsthis confusion.

What happens to the way a person relates to her feelingsor her face? Whenworked -up warmth becomes an instrumentof service work, what can aperson


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learn about herself from her feelings? And when a worker abandons her worksmile, what kindof tie remains between her smile and her self?(Pp. 89-90)

The answer is obvious: flight attendants become estranged from their selves, as, byimplication, do the rest of us in our own ways become estranged from o u r selves.

Still, people know that social circumstances forever influence their behavior andfeelings. We all are routinely asked t o present images and emotions that do not flowfrom what we take to be our inner, authentic selves. We convey impressions andemotions that are shaped by interpersonal relations, organizational policies, and thelike. Our emotion work, Hochschild notes, shields our true selves and deep feelingsas much as it manages social situations. It is a way of resisting social intrusions, atechnique for counteracting the impact on our true selves.

But as we shelter the true self, we also isolate it. As Hochschild observes, We

make up an idea of our real self, an inner jewel that remains our unique possessionno matter whose billboard we wear on our back or whose smile we paste on ourface. We push the real self further inside, making it more inaccessible (p. 34). Themore threatened it becomes, the further we push the true self inward. Ultimately,our defenses against the social siege can be the selfs undoing. As we hide our per-sonal self deep inside, we risk losing sight of who we are.

S OURCES O F THE SELF

These commentaries ring familiar. We routinely draw on a similar vocabulary to de-scribe experience when the pace of life increases and demands on our time over-whelm us. Such talk concedes that the complex and varied circumstances of dailyliving are at odds with personal identity and integrity. Laments over such tryingtimes cast social life as the personal selfs ordeal, if not its antagonist.

But is social life truly so much at odds with the personal self? Must social interac-tion always involve a holding action against the apparently destructive infringe-ments of the outside world? The central tenets of pragmatism would tell us that thisis shortsighted. Harkening back t o George Herber t Mead (1934) and o ther earlypragmatists, and tracing symbolic interactionist thought up to the present (seeBlumer 1969; Hewitt 1997; Schwalbe 1983; Stryker 1980), reassures us that the selfremains essentially a social structure, arising and flourishing, even coming undone,within social experience. Its sources and destiny lie in the very same social worldthat some critics view as perilously challenging it.

The Social Self

From the start , the self unfolds in and through social life, never separate from it.If a personal self exists, it is not a distinct private entity so much as it is a concoctionof traits, roles, standpoints, and behaviors that individuals articulate and present

through social interaction.The self is not so much the cloistered core of our being asan important operating principle used to morally anchor thoughts and feelings


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ment for meaning-making is tremendously variegated and multifaceted. Perhapsmost significantly, todays post m od ern scen e is widely and diversely p op ula ted bygroups and organizations that are explici t lyor incidental ly implicated inself-prod uction . This landscape ofgrowing concerns provides much mo re than immedi-ate, face-to-face contexts for designating w ho and what we are.

We borrow th e term going concerns from E verett H ugh es 1984) as a way ofcharacterizing relatively stable, routinized, ongoing patternsof action and interac-tion. It is another way of referring to social institutions but underscores their ac-tively discursive quality. For Hughes, going concerns cou ld be as m assive a ndfor-mally structu red as gove rnm ent bureaucraciesor as modest and loosely organizedas a g roup of fr iends who gather on Thursday nights to play bridge. Large orsmall, form al or informal , each represents an ongoing commitm ent to a par t icu-

lar moral order , a way of being who and what we ar e in re lat ion to th e imm ediatescheme of things. Hugh es was careful not to reify going concerns; he did n ot viewthem as static social enti ties. R ath er, he oriente d t o them as patternsof con-certed activity.For Hugh es, the re was as much going in social institutions as the rewere concerns.

From the myriad formal organizations in which we work , study, pray, curse, play,and recover, to t he countless informal associations an d networks t o which we other-wise att end , to ou r affiliations with racial, ethnic, and ge nd ere d groupings, we m ulti-ply engage in a pano plyof going concerns most of ou r lives. Th e self is a pro ductofthis engagement. Manyof these going concerns explicitly structureor reconfigurepersonal identity. All varietyof hum an service agencies, for exam ple, readily delveinto the deepest enclavesof the self to a m elio rate personal ills. Self-help org aniza-tions seem t o crop u p on every s treet corne r, an d self-help literature bark s atusfrom the book spindlesof most su permark ets and the shelvesof every bookstore.Psychobabble in th e public me dia, radio a nd television talk shows, and Intern etchat room s constantly prom ptsus to form ulate or reformulate) who and what weare. W hatever self we might have is thu s increasinglydeprivatized, constructed, andinterpreted under the auspicesof these d ecidedly public going concerns Gu briumand Holstein 1995d, forthcoming; Holstein and Gu brium 2000b).

Interpretive Practice

Because selves are interactionally presen ted an d constructed in th e contextofgoing concerns, they ar e not con jured u p willy-nilly ou t of thin air.As strategic as itmight be, we d o not m ake just any claim abo ut whoor what we are, cavalierly ignor-ing time a nd place. Self-construction is always accountable t o th e institutional pref-erenc es and the p ertinen t biographical particularsof ones life Gu brium andHol-stein 1995a, 1 9 9 5 ~ ). roadly speaking, the self em anates from th e interplay a m onginstitutional demands, restraints, and resources, on the one hand, and biographi-

cally inform ed, self-constituting social actions, o n t he other.Bo th experience-near and experience-far Ge ertz 1983), this interplay consti-


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tutes what we hav e called interpretive practice-the con stellationof procedures,conditions, and resou rces throu gh which reality in this case, subjectivity or the self)is apprehended, understood, organized, and represented Gu brium and Holstein1997, 2000; Holstein and Gu brium1994, 2000b). It occupies a space now repletewith going concerns, implicating both face-to-face processesof self-constructionand the institutional conditioningof self-realization.

Social process,of course, has been th e traditional bailiwickof symbolic interac-tionism. C onditions an d possibilities, however, have often been trea ted skittishly bysymbolic interactionists for fearof reifying social stru ctu re. Perha ps surprisingly,Michel Foucau lt 1977,1988) concurs that we must con ten d with both interpretiveprocess and substance-the ongo inghows and the broad whats of self-construction.In one of his later interviews, Foucau lt 19 88 :ll) argued th at he was interested in

th e way in which th e subject constitutes himself in an active fashion, by th e prac-tices of self. . [These practices] ar e patte rns th at h e finds in his culture a nd whichare p rop ose d, suggested, an d impo sed u pon him by his culture, his society and hissocial group. Such an appro ach p oints th e way toward an und erstanding of the in-stitutional influences on self-construction but without reifying them. Employing abroad view of practice, it is possible to att en d no t only to t he discursive practicesofself-construction bu t also to th e discourses-in-practice that supply th e resources an dinterpretive possibilities fo r self-designation Holstein an d Gu bri um 2000b).

These repr esent two reflexively related co mp one ntsof interpretive practice.Al-though Foucau lt worked in an empirical register tha t highlighted th e historical con-

tours of discourses-in-p ractice, in principle his position is no t antitheticalto explica-tions of self-construction at th e interactional level. Ind eed , his views on practicereson ate with even the staunchest ethnom ethodological position on the reflexivityof social action and social stru ctu re see Garfinkel 1967).

DISCURSIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Since th e mid-tw entieth century, social life has come under th e purviewof countlessgoing concerns whose discursive environments function increasingly to assemble, al-ter, and reformulate our lives and selves. By discursive environments. we meaninteractional do m ain s characterized by distinctive waysof interpret ing and rep re-sentin g e very day realities. Schools, corre ctiona l facilities, clinics, family cou rts, sup-port groups, recreational clubs, fitness centers, and self-improvement programs,am on g ot he r institutions, pro m ote particular ways of representing who an d what weare, furnishing discourses of subjectivity that are accountably put into discursivepractice a s individuals ente r into their interpretive purview.

Such going concerns pose new challenges for the concept of a personal self.They a re n ot especial ly host i le to the personal , nor d o they necessarily saturate avessel already filled to overflowing. Ra th er , todays discursive enviro nm ents for self-

construction provide complex and variegated institutional options for who wecould be. While, taken together, these e nviro nm ents might b e seen as an over-


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whelming surfeit of self-constructive challenges by some, they may also be viewedas a burgeoning supply of possibilities for who and what we might be.

Institutional Selves in Postmod ern C onte xt

Discursive environments set the conditions of possibility for subjectivity, asFoucault (1977) put it. They establish general parameters for producing recognizableand accountable constructions, ncluding even the core self. With more going concernsthan ever entering the self-construction business, we might characterize todays worldas increasingly populated by institutional selves (Gubrium and Holstein forthcoming).

In some institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals and counseling centers, selvesare officially constructed in terms of too much or too little of every conceivable

combination of thought, feeling, and action. This can range from too much restless-ness, talkativeness, and grandiosity, which are among the diagnostic criteria ofmanic episodes, to too little passion about life or not caring anymore, which aresignal features of depression. Taken together, such discursive environments com-prise a virtual troubled identity market, geared up to construct more kinds ofproblem-ridden selves than ever.

Needless to say, not all identities are medicalized, nor do they all become the tar-gets of psychotherapeutic efforts. Self-construction extends across the wide varietyof human service institutions and beyond, to the pastoral care and spiritual fellow-ships offered by churches and the behavioral rehabilitation programs imposed on

violent offenders in prison. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), for example, is decidedlynonmedical and construes uncontrollable drinking as a moral failure. Failure hereentails a refusal to recognize that ones actions are not self-governed but are lodgedin higher powers.

There also are plenty of going concerns that feature mainly positive self-images,seeking to valorize or glamorize the self rather than to cement and reformulatetroubled identities. Formalized avocational affiliation, for example, puts people intouch with significant resources for self-construction. From international associa-tions like the Sierra Club to local senior centers, recreational organizations offer ac-tivities, training, and challenges that both explicitly and implicitly supply self-buildingopportunities. Mountain climbers, cyclists, and go-cart racers, along with martialartists, wilderness skiers, scuba divers, and myriad others, find that the social sites of

their activities provide not only recreation but also diverse ways of viewing and ar-ticulating identity. Such discursive environments may be just as consequential forself-construction as those that construct and heal the t r ~ u b l e d . ~

The ubiquity and variety of venues for self-construction suggest an importanttransformation in linkage between the personal and the social self: in a postmodernworld, the traditional relationship between the personal self and society is reversed.From a modern point of view, while the personal self is viewed as socially influ-

enced, it also is believed t o have its own private location separate from society, aspace centered in personal experience. In this context, social life is important for


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growth a nd deve lopm ent, but, in excess, it can be portra yed as besieging, saturating,and comm odifying identity. A s we h ave no ted, this view still thrives inour cultural

belief system. Fr om this perspective, the perso nal self is currently being inun datedby the heartless intrusions of p ublic life an d its engaging social institutions. Com -mentators from Gergen and Hochschild to prominent critics such as David Ries-man 1950), William H. Whyte 1956), Richard Senn ett 1974), an d ChristopherLasch 1977,1979) have painted this disturbing picture.

In a world u nde rstood inpostmodern terms, however, the relationship b etweenthe personal self an d society dramatically changes. Social construction m oves to th eforegrou nd, as the person al self is dec ent ere d from itself an d relocated into myriadgoing concerns. The personal self, however, does not vanish from the postmodernscene. It persists in the popularly held te net that an individual agentor subject exists

inside or behind th e surface ap pear ance s of o u r actions. Mo st significantly, in a post-modern context, we can see that th e senseof a personal identity is being constructedin mo re social settings than ever. A thriving land scapeof institutions serves up m yr-iad selves, providing mo re an d m ore occasions fo r constructing who and what we are.

This amo unts to a fieldof possibilities an d constraints th at ex ten ds well beyondwhat Mead, or even Go ffm an, could have imagined . A s with any social context, ineach of the se env iron m ent s we must p resent ourselves in locally familiar termsorrisk being see n as eccentric,if not ou trageous, in the immediate schemeof things. Ifwe d o no t proffer recognizable identities,our claims to selfhood might readilybetreated as nonsense.To say, fo r exam ple, Im a bloody warclub-implying thatsme--does no t usually ma ke much sense inour society. It is not a readily reco gniz-able identity. Bu t its meaning may be perfectly clear in a going concern whose vo-cabulary of identity m akes frequent reference to a bandof unruly warriors beset bydreams of bloody sacrifice. In fact,it might ev en ma ke sense inour own society ifwe found ourselves amon g mem bersof a survivalist gro up who s hare a premonitionof end uri ng a battle with a world r en t with evil cf. Mitchell 1998).Th e conditionsofpossibility for self-construction that Foucault spokeof have been extended incountless ways, across the broad horizon of contemporary lifes institutional en-counters. While som e view co ntem por ary life as satur ating the self, it also can beseen as providing coun tless op tions for what we could be, markedly expandingourpotential fo r self-expression.

New and Diverse Options

N o single discursive en viron me nt determin es who an d what we are. A n individ-ual who pr ese nts himselfor herself f or counseling a t a psychoanalytically orientedtherapy agency, fo r example, is likely to w itness the self form ulated in terms of thefamiliar Freudian idiom of psychic stru ctu res an d de pt h understanding . Troubles forthis self would be fo rmulated in the guiseof unconscious turm oil in relation to psy-

chosexual dev elopm ent, em bedd ed in the relational past. In contrast, individualsreceiving cou nseling from a solution-focused thera py agency would find th e self


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articulated in th e very co ncrete term sof the present, relating to everyday conductand routin e competence. The vestigial pastis of n o concern for th eself here, no r isdeep -seated pathology. Troubles ar e viewed as solvable everyday problemsof liv-ing, pure a nd simple see Miller1997).

In todays world, the individual has diverse options for self-construction.Tosom e degree, on e can choo se the enviro nm ent s) in which onesself will be consti-tuted. A good d eal of personal expression a nd em pow erm ent is implicated, for ex-ample, in choosing between alternative psychotherapeutic modalities. Opt for psy-choanalysis and one is apt to become a seething cauldron of unconscious conflictsroo ted in early childhood an d par ent al relationships. Select brier solution-focusedthe rap y and o ne is likely to find oneself defined as a generally c om pet ent , if con-fused or misguided, practitioner of everyday life, who merely needs to decide on

how he or she will solve su rm oun table problemsof living in th e present.Such free do m of choice is a fairly recen t d eve lop m ent . Todays rangeof discur-sive environments was unheardof a century ago; it was hardly eviden t un til the1970s. Our forebears likely constructed selves within a relatively narrow rangeofspiritu al, familial,or comm unal identities. They simply did no t enco unter th e profu-sion of going concerns and discursive offerings that engageus today. Their liveswere n ot sp rea d across the p lethora of sites and situations that now call for distinc-tive kinds of self-presentation. Self-construction was more straightforward to besure, and its possibilities were decidedly limited,if indeed self was even separatedfrom oth er social formsto desig nate subjectivity.

We even find some traditional parameters of self-construction newly reconfig-ured. For example, Hochschilds recent book,The Time Bind (1997), suggests thatthe traditional experiential relationship between work an d hom e has been reversedwith respect to where we seek our identities see Holstein and Gub rium 2000b).Most American adults, Hochschild argues, now work outside the home and, thus,engage d aily in th e institutionallife of organizations larg e an d small. This fact rep-resents a major dep artu re from work life earlier in the century. According to Hoch-schild, for some, the workplace, rather th an the home, has become a pr eferred sanc-tuary fo r th e personal self, wh ere o ne finds himselfor herself to be most cen teredand whole.

The family-friendly company called Amerco, where Hochschild conducted herstudy, is a case in point. Am erc o operates und er a Total Quality TQ) managementsystem, replacing th e traditional top-dow n, scientific framewo rk. It prov ides a dis-cursive environ me nt that ostensibly em pow ers workers t o make decisions o n theirown. AmercosTQ principles no t only offer a nu rturing atm osp here for wo rkers butalso seek to heal the troubled selves that employees often bring to,or develop, inth e workplace. In fact, th e self itself is firmly recognized as critical to com pany pol-icy an d subject to rede sign, as the following description indicates.

At A merco, employees a re invited t o feel relaxed while on th e job. Freque nt rec-

ognition events reward work but also provide the context for a kind of play.Amercos man agem ent has, in fact, put th oug ht and effort into blurring the dis-


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tinction be twe en work and play just as the distinction isso often blurred athome). . . Tlhere are even free Cokes, just as at home, stashedin refrigeratorsplaced n ear coffee machine s on every floor.

Am erco has also ma de a calculated at temp t to take on the roleof helpful rel-ative in relation to employee prob lems at work a nd a t home, implicating theso-cial selves in ques tion. Th e Ed ucation and Training Division offers employeesfree courses on company time) in De aling with Anger, H owto Give and Ac-cept Criticism, How to Cope with Difficult People, Stress Management,Taking Control of Your Work Day, and Using the Myers-Briggs PersonalityTest to Impro ve Team Effectiveness.. Am erco is also oneof about a hundredcompanies tha t enrolls its top executives in classes at the C orp ora te Learning In-stitute. O ne can, at company expense, attend a course on Self-Awarenessan d Being: Th e Imp orta nc e of Self in the Influen ce Process. Hochschild1997:205-6

Hochschild points to an unanticipated consequence of TQs cognitive and emo-tional involvem ent in workers personal lives: it turn s the workp lace in to a hom e ofsorts, a place for self-repair and recentering. This, in turn, encourages a particularkind of self-surveillance.TQ puts a premium on expressing feelings, sharing e m o-tional lab or, and co op era ting in family-like corp ora te responsibility. This also putsTQ in the business of reconstructing its participants personal selves for the gr eate rgood of the com pany and its employees.

A corp orate workplace results that com petes with t he ho me a s a sourceof iden-tity, and exten ds even to the core self. According t o H ochschild, the enticement to

put in long hou rs at w or k- ca lle d th e time bind-upsets the traditional work-family balance. A third shift em erges for wo rkers that prom pts them to distancethemselves from the time-pressured and increasingly rationalized householdso thatthey can dev ote themselves-their selves-to th e em otio nal alluresof the company.For many of Amercos employees, th e workplace is mo reof an experiential haventhan they find at home: Amerco offers emotional relief and interpersonal suste-nance away from the tumult and turmoilof the dom estic front . This arrangem entinverts the traditional cultural geographyof privacy, mak ing th e workplace m ore ofa self-sustaining refuge th an th e household.

The inversion is not necessarily bad or good. But it cogently illustrates the

changing possibilities an d options f or self-construction at the verg eof a new millen-nium. The proliferation of going concerns and their discursive environments maycomplicate or relocate self-construction, but it is also enabling in terms of theop-tions presen ted for constructing and repairing who and w hat we are, both in the im-med iate realm of daily living and throu gho ut th e life course see Holstein andGu-brium 2000a).

inequality of Opportunities

Lest we s ou nd overly sangu ine, we m ust also recognize that these institutional

optio ns are no t equally distributed across the co ntem por ary social scene.As ubiqui-tous a nd varied as self-constructing institutions have b ecom e, their discursive envi-


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108 Symbolic Interaction Volume 23, Number 2, 2000

ronments are not options for everyone. Not everyone is subjected to or has accessto the same field of possibilities. For the economically and socially privileged, thelandscape of contemporary self-building opportunities may appear to be a smorgas-bord of identities, while the less advantaged are more likely to be selectively filteredthrough the self-constructive processing of going concerns of last resort such ashomeless shelters and prisons.

Take the advantages and opportunities for sexual identity of relatively privi-leged, white, middle-class university students. Susan Chase (forthcoming) writes ofthe dilemmas of self that confront gay students who struggle with decisions aboutgoing public with what some view as tarnished identities. Her study of the relateddiscursive environments of two different college campuses reveals a dramatic con-trast in dialogue concerning sexual diversity and acceptability. One campus culti-

vates open dialogue about sexual diversity, providing a supportive community forstudents to come out and be comfortable with homosexual selves. On the othercampus, the prevailing silence on issues of sexuality, coupled with undertones of in-tolerance for sexual diversity, leads students to closet sexual nonconformity in re-sponse to an institutional preference for heterosexuality. While Chases researchteaches us that discursive environments differentially mediate sexual self-expression,it also suggests that students who can afford it can virtually shop around for schoolenvironments that accord with their sexual preferences and associated identities.

The less advantaged are not as fortunate. Their self-identifying choices are likelyto be severely limited. For those who are disturbed, addicted, impoverished, or oth-

erwise destitute, such as individuals seeking admission to shelters or communitymental health programs, the selves they become are soon lodged in one of the fewrelationships they can afford. They are left with the option of presenting selves thatare socially tolerated in order to avail themselves of desperately needed services(see Snow and Anderson 1987; Spencer forthcoming; Weinberg forthcoming). AsMichael Schwalbe (1993:341-42) notes, materially disadvantaged persons fre-quently must submit wholesale to institutional demands on self-presentation as amatter of sheer survival.

Dire exigencies of all sorts may force individuals into constructing particularselves. Those seeking to escape their drinking habits, for instance, may turn to A Afor help. Cognizant of no plausible alternative and unaware of the demands ofAA, new members may voluntarily en ter the twelve-step program, but the pricewill be the acceptance of an alcoholic self that conforms to a distinctly pat-terned and ritualized organizational discourse (see Pollner and Stein forthcom-ing). For every work site like Amerco, there is a heartless, faceless bureaucracythat homogenizes employee selves, consigning them to Di1bert-like cubicles thatwork to ensure that each member remains anonymous and institutionally undistin-guished. For every potential client shopping the middle-class psychotherapy mar-ket, there is a coerced recipient of court-mandated behavioral therapy or prison-imposed, cognitive self change (see Fox forthcoming). This is variety, yes, but alwaysat a price


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he Self in a World of Going Concerns 109

ANA LYTIC CHALLENGESOF A PO ST M OD ER N SELF

As unequally d istributed as these optio ns are, taken togeth er they offer increasingly

complex a nd socially differentiated op po rtu nitie s to th e personal self. This situa-tion, in turn, raises its own challenges for the conceptualization and empirical ap-preciation of the self as a social form. We con clude by ad dressing som eof thesechallenges, noting prospects and implications for fu ture stud iesof self-construction.

Beyond Talk an d Interaction

O n e implication is that we can no lon ger exa m ine self-construction solely in therealm of talk and interaction. Institutional talk Dr ew and Her itage 1992; Heri-tage 1 997) must sha re th e stage with talk within institutions.To be sure, talk an d in-teraction remain th e ope ratin g vehicles throu gh which individuals construct selves.But interactional mov es-discursive p r a c t i c e s 4 0 not fully specify the concreteselves we live by. Neither are selves unf ettered perfo rm ances or situationally conve-nient pres entat ion s. Selves ar e not just locally prese nted bu t a re also ar t ifactsofdiscourses-in-practice, reflecting the moral agendas and material constraintsof thediverse going concerns and discursive environm entsof postmodern life. Self-con stru ctio n always relies o n culturally an d historically located waysof constitutingsubjectivity, n o ma tte r how artful and creative that process might be see Foucault1977; G ee rtz 1984).

If the discursive conditionsof a landscape of going concerns is to assume eq ualfooting with social interaction as a basis fo r self-construction, symb olic interaction-ist, dram aturgical, ethnom ethodolog ical, an d oth er interactionally oriented sociolo-gies need to broa den their traditional analytic horizons. This need is adumb rated inall of these approaches, but the time is now right to take t he impulse a stepor twofurth er. Go ffm an 1967,1983), for example, informedus that there is always moreat stak e for the self than o ngoing social interaction; there is an interaction order.This concept w as his wayof recognizing factors ab ove an d beyond immediate face-to-face encounters tha t condition identity(see Rawls 1987). O ur observationsof theexpanding institutional terrainof the postmodern scene suggest that we must moveabove and beyond even this,so to speak, casting ou r gaze, as Foucault m ight suggest wedo, across the interaction o rde r toward th e institutional practicesof self-construction.

If we ask Goffm an to m ake roo m o n th e conceptual stage for mo re institution-ally accountable analyses of self-construction, those following Herbert Blumers1969:2) programmatic symbolic interactionist premises might also create ana-

lytic space fo r institutional mediations.As inspirational as Blume r h as been in call-ing attention t o the interactional sources of meaning, he stopp ed shortof specifyinghow going concerns figure into the meaning-making process. It remains for us toprod Blumer s insights into h um an grou p life in directions tha t acknowledge th e

substantial interpretive sway that particular institutions have over the relation be-tween m eaning a nd social interaction.


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from all walks of life: victims of depression , par ent s of th e troub led o r gifted, alco-holics, codependents of substance abusers, cancer sufferers, survivorsof cancer,Gulf War veterans, victims of sexual assault, perpetratorsof domestic violence,AIDS victims, the friends and significant others of Alzheimers disease sufferers,and transvestites and their spouses, amon g many others. We look for ways to con-struct identity on ou r own,so much so that Rob ert Wuthnow 1994) estimates that40 perce nt of the U.S.population now participates in such discussion groups.

Ad d t o this the hum an interest programming we see on television, in the cinema,and in print, and it is clear that identity-conferring op portu nities are amply avail-able. Ord inary life has become an em poriu mof self-constructive o ptions. Images ofspecial or sullied selves come alive and ar e acted o ut before ou r very eyes on televi-sion talk shows, facilitated, if no t en co ura ged , by th e likes of O pr ah W infrey, Jenny

Jones, and Ricki Lake see Lowney an d Holstein forthcoming). We see models ofevery conceivable kindof perso na on e might become, from cover girls to superstarath letes to serial killers, cocaine addicts, and roa d ragers.

A nd , like it or not, th e sciences of the self-from psychology an d psychoanaly-sis to sociology an d anthropology-have lent thei r voices to the popular cacophony.Public discourse often com ma ndee rs the languageof the academic disciplines to d e-scribe their senses of everyday subjectivity. Roles, status, peer pressure, socializa-tion, culture and subculture, self-esteem, reinforcement, defense mechanisms, de-nial, and countless ot he r technical ter ms are now familiar t o just ab ou t everyone,regardless of education or training. The popular discourseof the self brings the

academ y an d the clinic right into the living room , if n ot fully into the bed room .Postmodernity may well be a time marked by the dedifferentiationof academic,clinical, and po pu lar discourse Lash 1 990). W hat beg an with intellectual forays byJames, Mead, and Cooley is now integral even to the self-constructive rantingsofDr. Lau ra an d Jerry Springer. Everyday parlance echoes them all. Th e challenge onthis front is surely obvious, the analytic implication being that we can no longerview thes e discursive en viron me nts in isolation. Ra ther , we need to consider themyriad ov erlapping, intersecting going concerns tha t sh ape th e self.

The Moral Climate of the Postmodern SelfLast but no t least, the se developm ents implicate a com plex moral climate, chal-

lenging us t o view th em in positive as well as negative terms. For so me, such as Ger-gen an d Hochschild especially in he Managed Hear t , th e social landscape ha s be-com e a coercive, iron cage-like env iron m ent of o ptio ns for th e self. Cast this way,institutions tyrannically impo se limited conditions of possibility for self-construction,bordering on molding, ifnot determining, the selves we become. Th e nu me rous in-stitutional demands placed on the self heighten the sense that self-construction isnow beyond personal control. This is the d ark sideof a postm oder n world as it re-

lates to w ho an d what we are, and can be.Another, more optimistic, overlay suggests that contemporary life presents us


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112 Symbolic Int eraction Volume 23, Number 2, 2000

with an ever-expanding, even emancipating, horizonof possibilities. Today, we areoffered unpreceden ted oppo rtunit ies for what couldbe done to construct selves

that comfortably accommodate the biographical particularsof our lives.A

thou-sand going concerns provide us with these opportunities; a thousand more proffernew and different chances f or fu rthe r growth, as well as a basis for challengingexisting constructions. Th is is th e positive sid eof a postm oder n world.

Going concerns play a pivotal role in how we view and express ourselves andwhat we accept within ou r deepe st reaches.To the ex tent that we inhabit a worldofmu ltiple institutional affiliations, we enco un ter diverse o ptio ns for discerning evenwhat we presume to be our core identities. We might experience this as eitherthreaten ing o r empo wering. Social lifeis fully penetrating and engrossing; it com-pletely perm eatesour lives. We cann ot escap e th e social be cause it is builtinto our

very beings. Bu t the im po rtan t lesson now is tha t th e social is also builtout o f t h eeminently variegated going concerns that supplyus with identities. FollowingGer gen, we can read this si tuat ion as an indictmen tof th e self-satu rating diversifi-cation of the postm ode rn w orld. Bu t th e possibilities fo r self-construction offeredby an unp recedented an d expanding horizonof identities can also be m orally com-pelling. O u r ability to choose between options-indeed, t o use som e options in ord erto resist others, or to construct new o n e s - c a n be as liberating as it is overwhelmingand deb ilitating.

NOTESThis article is an expanded version of th e Society for Symbolic Interactions 1999 DistinguishedLe cture titled T he Self We Live By. which was pres ente d by JaberF. Gu brium at the societys an-nual m eeting in Chicago. The article is informed by the co authors continuing research a nd w ritingon institutional practice as it relates t o self-construction.

1. O ther com mentators view this as too loosely stated and overdrawn see Best and Kellner 1991;Featherstone 1988; Poster 1988; S h a h 1993). Michael Schwalbe 1993), among others, arguesthat the contem porary condition from which th eself emerges is better characterized as latecapitalism, or perha ps modernism run amok see Agger 1990;Harvey 1989;Jameson 1984).

2. Th is is especially the case in thos e realms of edu cate d, We stern cultu re within which discourses

of self and subjectivity are prevalent. In the contem porary U nited States, this extends to allconsumers of the pop ular m edia, where self-definition in on e form or a noth er is a daily preoc-cupation.

3. Richard M itchell pers. com. 1999) brough t this toour attention. H e points out that w e a re in-creasingly encountering recreational activities that c ente r on challenges designed t o elevate an daffirm positive self-conceptions. In these going concerns, trouble d selves are left behind as par-ticipants strive to achieve physically seren e an d cognitively exa lted identities.

4. To he su re, the field of institutional self-construction opportu nities on th e co ntem porary sceneis uneven. N evertheless, that field is bro ad er th an a t any time in history. Even if possibilities a reunequally distributed, mo re options fall to even the m ost disadvantaged. An d eve n if th e insti-tutions confronting the disadva ntaged ar e often coercive with respectto self-construction andpresentation , they a re not impervious to resistance.As we have already noted, struc tural cir-

cumstances may condition, but the y cann ot fully control, the selves that w e situationally con-struct see Fox forthcoming; Hop per forthcoming; Loseke forthcoming).


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The Self in a World of Going Concerns 11 3

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