Social selves : theories of the social formation of personality

Social Selves offers an interdisciplinary overview of theories of the social formation of personality - from symbolic interactionism and ethogenics, to poststructuralism, developmental psychology, Marxism and figurational sociology.

Drawing on insights from sociology, psychology, linguistics and philosophy, Burkitt argues that society and the self are essentially intertwined, with every element of the self being interconnected through social identity. He explains differences between individuals and divisions between different aspects of the personality as being generated by the way social relations and interdependencies both connect and separate us from others. The book′s theme, therefore, is the dialectical relationship between social and cultural formations and the individual activity that occurs within these parameters, creating and recreating the social and personal worlds.