Joint action and personal constructs
Trevor Butt
Department of Psychology, University of Huddersfield (UK)
Abstract
Does social structure determine individual behaviour, or do individuals
possess the freedom to determine their own destinies? On the one hand,
individuals' experience is that they enjoy a degree of personal freedom
to control their individual action. On the other, there is an evident patterning
of individual behaviour by social structure. Personal construct theorists
emphasise individuals' ability to invent themselves, while those in the
social constructionist camp see the individual as an invention of society.
In this paper, I argue that the construct individual/ action versus social
structure does not do justice to our experience in the lived world. Most
of the time we feel as though our action is drawn out of us pre-reflectively.
We find ourselves acting unselfconsciously. In this sense our action can
seem to belong to the social context, and yet it is still intentional.
Drawing on the thought of both Mead and Merleau-Ponty, and using examples
from everyday life, I argue that it is in our interaction with the world
in general, and other people in particular, that our construing takes place.
It is in this meeting of horizons that the person's construing is ex-tended.
Back to Berlin Abstracts