The self as a moral concept.

Abstract

A case is made for the epistemological and ontological premises of social constructionism against arguments that it is subjectivist. From this, questions about the 'status' of the self, and its centrality (or not) to experience, emerge. Arguments for the de-centralization and centralization of the self are discussed, with particular attention to the embodied-embedded quality of the self, from which the spatiotemporal metaphors of 'positioning', 'narrative' and 'voicedness' have arisen. It is argued that communication is inherently evaluative and that the self is a 'special case' of evaluation (in terms of moral agency): the self and morality are, therefore, conceptually linked. The concept of a relational self-of-selves is one that, it is argued, emerges from dialogic processes--processes that draw upon these metaphors of embodiment and generate high orders of reflexivity. Thus, social constructionism yields a sophisticated account of self-hood, agency and responsibility.