Identity and Social Character in the Information Society.

1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09610179
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 社会学(含社会福祉関係)
• Research Institution: KOBE UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: MIKAMI Takeshi Kobe University Faculty of Cross-cultural Studies Professor, 国際文化学部, 教授 (80157453)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1998
• Keywords: information society / social character / identity / self / postmodern / other-directed type / narcissism / real self

Research Abstract

In our current postmodern information society, modern images of man and society that have ever existed lose their significance. However this poit has not yet examined sufficiently in sociological field.
Therefore this report tyries to recognize the prominent characteristics of both information-consumer society and human beings who are living in the fluid society, admitting the vagueness of self-consciousness and situation-oriented behavior of a man of today.
I started this study by examine the transformation of social character and peronal identy after World War II, on reference to the works of D.Riesman, E.H.Erikson and E.Goffman. On this examination, it is cleared that the concept of ego-identy is gradually loses its adequency in the information society, and that possibilities of fluid identy and self-consciousness in a postmodern information society should be formed in the age of reconstruction.