Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

I’m trying hard to understand the “agency” vs “structure” division of opinion. It’s not easy because those opinions usually privilege one view over the other. And the consequences can seep. For example, I’m (half)reading an American textbook on Social Psychology because I was interested to see how it treated Social Identity Theory (only 2 sides of a 672 page book). A summary definition of SIT is given:

“a theory suggesting that individuals seek to enhance their own self esteem by identifying with specific social groups”.

Self esteem in this definition is neither just an emergent property nor a but a caused and (presumably) desirous end-state. We treat other end-state values, such as “happiness”, the same way in our culture. Why do we so often try to explain people’s behaviour in terms of their “seeking” something? The individual acts with a will, whether by own volition or forced to do so by circumstance, in their environment, and their actions are

Something about this view, which is dominant in our discourse of learning, doesn’t feel quite right for me. If only I knew why, then I’d probably not need to do a PhD!

Today I need to write about an important adult memory. Actually I’ve just returned from the potential creation of one this evening. I was treated to a drink and a meal with my brother at his club in London. His club! In London! Complete with wood-panelling, leather armchairs and lavish carpeting. It was a grown-up experience, which I of course enjoyed with a child-like mirth and idle dreams of enjoying membership there myself after my second novel is published.

However, the memory from adult life that I wanted to mention apropos the question of “who am I?” in terms of the PhD  happened to me in the summer of 2004 when I packed my two kids into the car and drove from Budapest to France for a holiday. We had done that trip several times before, to see and stay with my mother, who lives in a beautiful part of central France, but this time was different because my relationship with my wife had broken down and we were setting off on separate lives.  I planned, organised and led the trip. I decided the details and set the boundaries and I made the choices that had previously either been jointly reached or, more honestly, had been my wife’s. The kids were aged then 14 and 12, and I had also planned for us to spend a few days in Paris, with a whole day at Disney, so they were content with the idea, and I’m glad to say they remained mostly content with the relaxed agenda of the trip and the soporific quality of the summer air at my mother’s place. The day in Paris turned out to be about as perfect a day as possible, mid-June, got there early and stayed until the end of the parade, with the girls fully tired by the close.  All that driving (18 hours non-stop in both directions) was a challenge, but it was mine to own.

The trip re-awoke in me the intense pleasure of making sole decisions. The PhD may contain elements of dialogue and of supervision, as well as of mass communication to whatever community one wishes to belong to, but it’s also a hard lonely slog, so any evidence that one can muster that points to one’s ability to hack it has to be helpful.

********************************

Reflection:

When you wish to know what a smile is, how you go about finding that out will surely determine what you find. A smile is physical, so is the measure of it the muscle movements, nerve impulses, synaptic firings in the brain, releases of enzymes and so on? It’s also an emotional experience, so is it a psychological construct, its purpose and characteristics to be understood by observation and experiment? On the other hand, a smile clearly serves a social function (perhaps a iniversal one) so should it be understood in its social context?