The Self: Clifford Geertz, Horace Miner, And Andrei Toom

Introduction Humanity is defined by one major factor: one’s understating of the self. By understanding one’s self, one can understand society and the world that surrounds themselves. There is one thing that can often distort one’s personality, one’s identity. By identifying as one thing a person can often change how they act or do certain things. This is often found to hide one’s true motives or intention, but it can also be used to hide hidden factors that aren’t as prevalent. One’s personality and identity are very closely linked, and tend to play off one another. This fact can be show in within multiple works. To name a few authors who demonstrate this fact: Clifford Geertz, Horace Miner, and Andrei Toom. Their works seek to dive deeper

Since everyone has their own perspectives of life, and everyone perceives things differently there are many theories that attempt to explain how humans perceive life in general terms. One of these more prominent theories is Clifford Geertz’s thick description theory. This theory states that people view the world through two lenses, these lenses being one of thick description and the other of a thin description. One’s use of the thick description is to look at anything within a society and understand the deeper meaning behind it. If we look at the act of shaking hands but it is also a sign of mutual respect and trust. By viewing the world with is idea, one can see the hidden meanings that are within even the basic things we do. On the other hand, Geertz’s thin description would look at what the act was, for what it appears to be. In turn the hand shake would be described as, two people are connecting limbs and moving them up and down. Something that can be also view through this lens would be American asking how someone is doing, after saying hello. Most American don't care and reply with “good” or “alright”, but it has become something meaningless, that has lost all context within a thick description. By perceiving things like this, one can build their ideal of their identity and personality. The lenses that Geertz discussed within his theory play a large role in defining how one understands and processes

This adjustment can be used to determine what one wishes to do for a living, or what role they will play in the day to day lives of those around them. The only issue with this is that it is culturally biased, meaning that what one might be good at in one culture means that they are the opposite in another. Without the cultural understating’s of personality and identities one can have role conflict within a society. This was very prevalent within Andrei Toom’s article A Russian Teacher in America. Within his text Toom discusses how as a student he worked hard to challenge himself and work outside the confines of the class room. He had his personality of going above and beyond to achieve new things, and his identity as a student who care about learning. When he came to teach in America, he found that his personality still worked, but his identity didn’t. His students wanted to learn what was in the confines of the class, and be rewarded for working outside of it. Here Toom has ran into role conflict, where his history as a student tells him to push forward and discover new things, but his role as a teacher states to teach what is required and move on if there is