Dissertation Draft, Chapter Five

The Role of the "Active Self" in Development

     My experiences in helping to set up the community computer center in Colonia La Herencia, as described in the preceding chapter, demonstrate several very important points about the relationship of Dewey's concept of the active self to social development. First of all, quite clearly there was no shortage of latent social capital in this neighborhood. Many people were willing to step forward and help, even without being asked to do so. They were acting out of their own desire to help, as implied by Dewey's model of the active self, out of their own interests in assuming useful social roles and to help to create a useful social system, which in this case was the community computer center.

     The key point of this dissertation is that development organizations need to be attuned to this active self process and work with it, not against it. Therefore it's important to understand that the whole process of development rests upon this psychological process of the "active self". The role of development organizations, according to this theory, is not to create fixed roles for the community members to fill. Rather, as Morton Kelsey has said, the goal is "to create the conditions which will allow the individual to perform to the maximum extent of her or his capabilities within the opportunities at hand". In the last chapter of this document I go into more detail regarding the ideal function of development organizations in this process, suggesting several possible avenues or strategies for achieving this goal. However at this point I simply want to underscore the central thesis of this research which is that development programs need to understand and support this "active self" process as the origin of social development. According to this view, the role of development programs is to facilitate the "active self" process, rather than to supplant it. Development organizations need to be sensitive to the "active self" process and to design programs which can benefit from this process within the communities they serve.

     It is more about creating opportunities for individuals to follow their own vectors. For example, I could not have predicted that the youth within the community would voluntarily establish their own program of computer classes. According to Maritza no one asked them to do so. It was done on their own initiative. However the approach that was used to develop the center, following Cavallo's Emergent Design method, did create the conditions to allow this spontaneous "active self" process to unfold. Ideally, once the process starts it can develop into a chain reaction, as indeed happened with the computer classes when the one individual who began the process moved away and other volunteers stepped in to keep the classes going. So as the fieldwork in Colonia La Herencia demonstrated, this "active self" model does seem to have implications for the design of programs intended to promote the formation of social capital.

     Dewey's model of the active self at first seems a bit far-removed from currently accepted ways of thinking about social learning. However there are indications that the psychological and sociological research communities are moving closer to Dewey's views. For example in his last book "Foundations of Social Theory" sociologist James Coleman dedicates a section to the topic of "Processes of Change inside the Actor" in which he seems to agree on several important points with Dewey's model of the active self, while stopping short of presenting a complete model of individual self change. Coleman states as did Dewey that persons may make internal changes in order to alter their own utility functions. As Coleman notes:

"But might not the desired compatibility be equally well achieved by changing the internal structure? In other words, if the actor is engaged in the task of maximizing the satisfaction of his interests, the task can be accomplished in either of two ways: He may take action to restructure the outside world, by gaining control over certain events that are important to him; or he may restructure the internal self, by gaining interest in some events and losing interest in others."

     Of course, these supposed internal processes of change cannot be directly observed, but we can observe how individuals actually behave. For example we saw in the last chapter how, in the course of setting up the community computer center, individuals like Maritza redefined their roles in order to express their interests in certain ways. According to the theory of the active self, these expressions of interests or recognitions of relationships with others in the community is integral to the process of self formation. Coleman also seems to agree with Dewey that the process involves expansion of the self to recognize social relationships differently.

     Coleman recognized, as did Dewey, that this notion of the expanded self was related to the provision of social capital, or of acting for the social good without apparent compensation. As Coleman said:

" Acts of apparent altruism, acts which derive from sentimental attachments and appear to be against the actor's self interests narrowly defined, are explicable through such an addition to the theory, the use of the notion of an expanded object self."

Although Coleman does not adopt as complete a model as Dewey related to the theory of the active self as an explanation for prosocial behavior, he does confirm central tenets of Dewey's theory which seem to suggest at a minimum that Dewey's notion of the active self is consistent with more modern understandings of these social processes..

     Further research seeming to support Dewey's notion of an active self can be found in the psychological literature. For example Festinger's (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance and Flavell's (1977) concept of metacognition. Dewey described behavior, in which one is actively involved, in a metacognitive way, of creating dissonance and thus changing the self, as follows:

"In such crises of readjustment -- and the crisis may be slight as well as great -- there may be a transitional conflict of "principle" with "interest." It is the nature of a habit to involve ease in the accustomed line of activity. It is the nature of a readjusting of habit to involve an effort which is disagreeable -- something to which a man has deliberately to hold himself."

In other words the basic processes being described by Dewey's active self" theory could also be understood in light of the accepted psychological doctrines of today, e.g. as a metacognitively controlled dissonance process. This seems to imply at a minimum that Dewey's "active self" theory is not so far removed from currently accepted psychological theory as it first may appear. The apparent differences seem to relate more to terminology than to substance.

     Prior to completing this review of Dewey's theory of the active self, several additional issues remain to be briefly mentioned. First of all, we should mention how Dewey's model of the active self relates to conventional theories of altruism or motivation. In general, Dewey's model of the active self can also inform research on altruism, because his model recognizes the metacognitive aspect of this form of prosocial behavior often overlooked in other altruism theories. For example, social learning theories of altruism recognize that this sort of learning is possible, but unlike Dewey's model of the active self, the social learning altruism theories generally do not recognize the part the individual may play in deciding to behave prosocially. Similarly tension reduction theories of altruism recognize that internal conflicts may promote a tension-reduction, (what I have been calling dissonance reduction), effort. However these theories do not recognize as does the active self theory the metacognitive dimension of this process. At the same time, altruism theories of norms and reciprocity, while not inconsistent with Dewey's model, also do not recognize the volitional nature of deciding whether or not to conform with these norms. Thus, as this very brief survey illustrates, Dewey's model of the active self can also be seen as contributing to our understanding of altruism or motivation.

     It might be well at this point to consider some final implications of Dewey's model of the active self especially in regard to how the fieldwork at Colonia La Herencia helps to inform our understanding of the active self. One element in particular of the fieldwork data from Colonia La Herencia does not seem to be well explained by Dewey's model of the active self. This concerns the role of resources in the social system to help to activate this latent social capital. Dewey's theory correctly notes, I believe, that individuals will act for the social domain, but it ignores the important role of available resources in the social system to help to elicit this untapped social capital. We saw above in the previous chapter that it took the presence of the community center and the computer lab to evoke much of the social capital we saw contributed to the system. The relative scarcity of resources in a social domain may be one reason much social capital remains latent. Each individual wishes to contribute latent social capital through the process which Dewey described as the movement of the active self. Yet physical resources are limited in the social environment, creating a limiting factor on the active self process. This problem is especially pronounced in less developed areas. For these reasons it is vitally important that development programs use the limited shared social resources well, and that they help to ensure mutual respect for the individuality and vision of each individual within the social environment.

     Finally to complete our brief survey of the active self, it should be said what has not been said about the self, which is infinitely more than what we have said. We have mentioned that the self adapts to more perfectly express who it prefers to be in light of the opportunities at hand. It must be said that though this be true, that saying this does not express the wholeness of the self, which is more than this and more than perhaps can be expressed. Every person is a world, almost. In Mexico they have a saying "Cada cabeza es un mundo.", or "Every mind is a world", and we must not imply that simply having said that the self adjusts or moves that we have said what there is to be said about the self. We have not said what there is to say about the self, as a theory, anymore than in saying that one person moves or adjusts we have said what can be said about that person - for in both cases much more remains unknown and unsaid than the little amount that we know and can say. The rest is a mystery, and what we see is like a mere sparkle upon the ocean compared to what we do not see or know, which may only remain known to the mind of God. In fact, it may be because so much is unknown that we do move, so that at least a little more can be expressed over time than what little we see in any given moment, like a cipher that unfolds through iteration or a symphony that unfolds in notes. Vygotsky, the influential Russian psychologist of learning has provided an interesting analogy to the self as a funnel through which only a little of it's contents may pass at any moment:

"The purpose of our behavior is to keep our organism in balance with its surroundings. .... In nature the realized and executed part of life is but a minute part of the entire conceivable life (just as every life born is paid for by millions of unborn ones). Similarly, in our nervous system, the realized part of life is only the smallest part of the real life contained in us. Sherrington likens our nervous system to a funnel with its narrow part turned toward action, and the wider part toward the world. The world pours into man, through the wide opening of the funnel, thousands of calls, desires, stimuli, etc. enter, but only an infinitesimal part of them is realized and flows out through the narrowing opening."

Or we may think of the self as an island whose main land mass remains ever submerged. Sometimes there is less land mass visible, our unconsciousness rises, but through this taking and ceding of land to unconsciousness we actually become more conscious because the two are actually the same, or in opposition just as the seen and submerged parts of the island are both parts of the island. And there is a systematicity to it, such that as unconsciousness rises more stress is created, as we become limited in conscious thought, which in turn brings us more in touch with things that have been in our unconscious.

     Therefore with the rising and ebbing of the tides we see a little more or a little less of it at times; but we never see most of it. James called our various selves "the nearest approach to an absolute many that can be imagined", and it may be so except that each one of those absolute many remains in a sense unimaginable and enigma. And so we can close this section on the active self saying at least with deference that we have left unsaid far more than could be said, and to make only one final epistemological point.

     It is interesting, to me, to think about the role the physical world plays in separating out those absolute many's who we are. I have said above several times that the physical world cannot accommodate the subjective visions of all of us. It is interesting to think how this fact, this limitation of the physical world allows us to be, by limiting us, who we are. It is interesting to think that without that we could not know each other. I push for my vision; you push for yours. And in doing so we find that the world cannot accommodate the visions of both of us. We crash, we collide, as James has said:

"Our different purposes also are at war with each other. Where one can't crush the other out, they compromise and the result is again different from what anyone distinctly proposed".

And it is actually by this very process of the crashing and colliding that we come to know one another and ourselves. Were the world able to accommodate all of us, we would be unknown to one another like James' absolute many. By limiting us the physical world separates us, and in separating us we become identified. Each person in her or his mind can think they are whomever they please, but in the world we become limited, and in becoming limited we become who we are as knowable to one another and to ourselves. That was the epistemological point I wanted to make. It is the physical world which separates us which brings us together.

Very preliminary draft: Please do not quote without permission.
Comments welcome at KenDaniszewski@yahoo.com
© Copyright by Kenneth Stanley Daniszewski 2004