I'm just going to jump right into the text discussion:
"The contrast of values here, made for example between Americans and Japanese, is expressed when Americans say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but in Japan the saying is that the nail that sticks out gets pounded down." (p. 366)
I just include this because it seems a bit interesting that although the mission in Vienna was mostly comprised of Americans (U.S. citizens) I think the Japanese saying fit the organizational culture better than the American saying.
I'm next in queue!
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This next section is the main area of interest in this text, and is titled: "How Social Structure Works."
[The Norton tech services rep. just fixed my problem and I'm back with my usual late evening smoothie and meds.]
"Providing a developmental focus [as in "human development"], conformity is greater in early adolescence (at ages 13 to 14) than later on (from 18 to 20). Certain personality variables, which have to do with self-esteem, self-confidence, and intelligence, have also been found to dispose the person to remain independent from social pressure..." (p. 375, brackets mine)
Does this text infer that high self-esteem, self-confidence, and intelligence tend to make a person more independent from social pressure? I don't know how intelligent I am, but I'm not completely lacking in that department, either. And I think that when I came to Vienna I had pretty high self-esteem and self-confidence, although those eroded considerably during my time with the mission there. But that doesn't explain, really, why I might not be so affected by social pressure (i.e. from the mission to conform) while others there were, evidently more easily influenced that way. Certainly there were people there who were more intelligent than I and had at least as much self-esteem and self-confidence as I had. So while this text might be true in general, I don't think it's very helpful in explaining what was going on in the Vienna mission. I think we've looked at other possible explanations that fit better. Still, knowing what isn't so helpful might help better define the parameters of what is helpful.
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I had marked up other texts in this section, but they mostly deal with the natural course of how groups treat individuals who deviate from the group's views, and in the Vienna context I don't think it was generally a natural process, at least not in my experience. Rather, the leadership of the organization provided the cues for how certain individuals should be treated, although some long-time members were so acculturated that they might have been able to on their own also make such determinations, and this would mainly have concerned how to determine deviation and treat deviants. The end of my time with the mission was absolutely ghastly in this regard.
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This is too short of a post, so I'm going on to the next text. As I wind down here on this file I'm going to have to start putting things together for jumping into the chronology of my experiences in Vienna. Tomorrow I have a couple appointments, though, so I don't know if I'll got to that tomorrow or not.
One other aside regarding my present day life is that this past week I haven't been as tired, so I think it might be one or more of the supplements (vitamins, etc.) that I recently added to my regimen specifically for post-surgery healing. I didn't get to adding this vitamins until well over a month after the surgery so then I wanted to add them all pretty quickly to start getting the benefit of them. Usually I wait at least a week between adding/trying new supplements to see what the affect might be, but I only waited 3 or 4 days between adding each of these.
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This next text is a chapter from an edited book:
Oyserman, Daphna, & Markus, Hazel Rose. (1993). The sociocultural self. In Suls, J. (ed.). Psychological Perspectives on the Self, v. 4. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, p. 187-220.
"The self is viewed here as a multifaceted and dynamic entity - active, forceful, and capable of change - that mediates and regulates most significant intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning... Its functions are: (a) to lend meaning and organization to one's experiences - thoughts, feelings, and actions; and (b) to motivate action by providing incentives, standards, plans, strategies, and scripts for behavior." (p. 190)
The thing of interest to me here is that the self is "capable of change," and then how the other aspects relate to that ability to change. The issue is why could I not change when 60 other people (plus family members) could? Is there anything here that provides more insight into this question (or, rather, the answer to it). I'm talking about in the Vienna mission, of course.
I do think that it's possible something here might indeed be helpful. Most new comers to the mission in Vienna would probably not have a good basis from which to "lend meaning and organize one's experiences..." That is, the new person would be like a fish out of water, transferred to a new country and a ministry that they probably only had sort of an introductory knowledge of, especially the mission field itself, Eastern Europe. People like this might well be ripe for the picking, like changes just waiting to happen.
I'm not quite as certain about part (b) of that sentence, but, if I understand it right, previous "standards, plans, strategies and scripts for behavior" would also undoubtedly need revising in this new context, because the old ones might not work in the new context.
So, lacking the ability to "mediate and regulate most significant intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning", the individual would be ready and maybe even anxious to change.
My identity already functioned pretty well in the Austrian context, although it certainly might not have been completely developed when I arrived. According to this explanation, however, you'd think I would have been just as ready as the next person to change vis a vis the mission's expectation, so this paradigm doesn't explain why I couldn't change, although it does help explain, at least in part, why others might have been ready to change (in accordance with the mission's norms).
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"The sociocultural contexts people are embedded within provide them with the materials of identity construction. People then seek to create selves that are relevant and appropriate to the characteristics valued in these social contexts." (p. 192)
This makes sense, of course, at least in explaining part of a person's identity. Usually "sociocultural context" is probably relatively spontaneously developed, however, whereas in a total institution context this kind of thing would be more intentionally thrust upon an individual. But according to this text for this change to happen one has to identify with the group to a certain extent - assuming that being "embedded" with a group includes identifying with it. In the Vienna mission I was technically a part of the group, but I didn't feel completely part of it, in the sense that there were major aspects of it that I couldn't and/or didn't identify with it, and, especially in areas I consciously didn't agree with, I most definitely did not want to create my "self" to be relevant and appropriate to the characteristics valued by the organization, because I didn't share those values. So, in this sense, I think that "embedded" has to include some kind of emotional attachment to the group and identification with it. Both my attachment to the mission and my identification with it were limited.
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This is from the sub-section "Forms of Self-Knowledge."
"Neisser (1988) makes a distinction among five types of self-knowledge - ecological (i.e., self as perceived with respect to the physical environment), interpersonal (i.e., a sense of self in human interchange), extended (i.e., sense of self based on personal memories and anticipations), private (i.e., an awareness of experience not shared with others), and conceptual (i.e., one's theory of self) self." (p. 200)
I'll just go through these briefly as I think they might have applied to me in Vienna:
- ecological self: I viewed myself as a foreigner in Austria, but a member of the mission, but in the end I didn't really identify myself with either (I wasn't really an Austrian or full member of the mission)
- interpersonal self: I think I viewed myself as functional in the broader (Austrian) context, but not very functional in the mission, which was a shock for me. It was likewise easier for me to identify with the Austrian culture than with the mission culture, because, to a large extent I understood the former better than I did the latter, ironically enough (since the latter was mostly comprised of my countrymen).
- extended self: I think my personal memories probably helped me survive during my service with the mission, but my anticipations were more of a hindrance and went almost totally unfulfilled.
- private self: I think this became a kind of hell for me in Vienna as I felt I couldn't talk to anyone about my experiences and what I was thinking.
- conceptual self: by the end of my time in Vienna the mission had done a good job of tearing apart my conceptual self, but not totally, so I was eventually able to rise from the ashes of what remained of myself after they'd finished with me.
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I'm going to stop here for tonight. Before long I'll be back on track with the chronology, but all this prep work should not only help me, but also any reader who wants to go back and try to understand the significance of the various events and people I encounter when I get to Vienna. But in the meantime, I need to get some sleep.
Good night.
~ Meg
