Self and Society explores the ways in which society, culture, and history affect how we define our experiences and ourselves. This reader contains 24 essays divided into four topical sections: the social construction of reality, sociology of thought and emotions, the self in social context, and interaction and inequality.

Despite recent interest in the effects of restructuring and redesigning the work place, the link between individual identity and structural change has usually been asserted rather than demonstrated. Through an extensive review of data from field work in a multi-national corporation Catherine Casey changes this. She knows that changes currently occurring in the world of work are part of the vast social and cultural changes that are challenging the assumptions of modern industrialism. These events affect what people do everyday, and they are altering relations among ourselves and with the physical world. This valuable book is not only a critcal analysis of the transformations occurring in the world of work, but an exploration of the effects of contemporary practices of work on the self.

This 1985 book studies the relation between the individual and collective processes, which is central to the social sciences.

How does his social environment change an individual, and why do these changes occur? Can social institutions be shaped and molded profoundly enough to afford each member of a society his maximum potential for happiness, effective functioning, and complete development? In this new work a distinguished psychologist evolves a theory of personality and society designed to help guide the work of institutions responsible for individual growth and development. Drawing on his vast experience--as an educator, a prison psychologist, a practicing psychoanalyst, and as the director of major studies in child development, personality assessment, the social psychology of higher education, and alcoholism and related problems--Professor Sanford has designed a developmental model intended to guide work in institutions which mold the individual: from family through schools, colleges, child guidance clinics, and mental hospitals. With exceptional lucidity, he examines the central issues in furthering desirable change through intervention in individual and group processes. He achieves notable advances in integrating personality theory and sociological theory: he joins psychoanalytic "ego psychologists" and other personality theorists in developing a dynamic-organismic theory broader than that of classical psychoanalysis and more in keeping with contemporary social theory. The author's clear style and firm grasp of his subject add further to the significance of Self and Society. It will be a stimulating textbook in social psychology, personality, and culture, and personality, and will make indispensable reading for behavioral scientists, psychiatrists, and educators, as well as for all professionals who work to promote mental health, education and social welfare. Nevitt Sanford (1909-1995) was professor of psychology and education at Stanford University and director of the Institute for the Study of Human Problems. After leaving Stanford in 1968, he founded the Wright Institute. He has been president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and president of the Division of Personality and Social Psychology of the American Psychological Association. He has been author or coauthor of close to 200 scholarly journals as well as more than a dozen books.

This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.

Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and inequality of opportunity.