PLACING SELF-EXPRESSION IN A SOCIAL CONTEXT:

PROSPECTS FOR EXPANDING LEISURE THEORY

Susan Hutchinson & Diane M. Samdahl

University of Georgia

Paper presented at the 1999 Leisure Research Symposium, Nashville.

[Susan]This paper represents some thinking that we have been doing on the concept of self-expression. We have both been drawn to a belief that leisure can be a context for self-affirmation and self-expression. However, our recent readings in feminism and post-modernism have raised concerns for us about the simplistic attention we had been giving to individuals in isolation from their social contexts. We now believe that the social world is the source of self-expression as well as a context for self-expression. We feel the study of self-expression in leisure will be limited unless it is embedded in an understanding of broader social factors. That is what we want to discuss today. 

Traditional Perspectives on Self-Expression

“With reduced role constraint, leisure offers an increased opportunity for true self-expression. 

In fact, self-expression may be the critical distinction between anomic free time and

engaging leisure experience.” (Samdahl, 1988, p. 30, 38 [paraphrased])

[Diane]When I wrote this statement over ten years ago I thought I had a strong theoretical premise for studying leisure.I was deeply entrenched in symbolic interaction, a framework that highlights the ways that meaning is negotiated in the processes of interaction. I felt comfortable that this interactive negotiation captured the significant interface between individuals and their social environment. 

Following the tenets of symbolic interaction, I saw a dichotomy between the “me” which is a socially constructed self and the “I” which is a more autonomous self. The “I” is often construed as the true self, that inner being which is truly expressive of our identity. In my early work I proposed that leisure occurred when the socially created “me” was silent, allowing opportunity for the true self to find expression. I felt so strongly about this relationship between leisure and the true self that I stated, “ The deeper value of leisure, and the rationale for its continued study, may lie in this dimension of self-expression” (Samdahl, 1988, p. 38).

I am still intrigued with the relation between leisure and self-expression but I’m no longer satisfied with the way I framed that relationship in earlier years. Implicit in my earlier work, and in the work of many others who followed a similar line of inquiry, was an assumption that the true self emerged and sprang to life when social restrictions and constraints were reduced.had never questioned the social foundations of the true self or understood that the true self was itself a social creation, and that self-expression is made meaningful only within the context of broader social meanings.

Self-Expression Made Problematic

[Susan]Like Dr. Samdahl’s original research, most leisure theory emphasizes self-expression as a self-determined, autonomous act. We will illustrate some problems with this by sharing some of the dilemmas that confronted us as we began to relate feminist and postmodernist critique back to traditional leisure theory. Once we acknowledged the importance of social meanings as the backdrop against and within which individual experience is played out, we found that we could no longer envision a true self that became expressive in the absence of social influence.

Self-expression made problematic in leisure literature. The problems with our view of self-expression first became apparent when we examined research on leisure as resistance. Resistance is a common topic in feminist literature but it has also been studied in relation to other topics such as sport, commodification of leisure, and aging. This research suggests that people are able to use their leisure to counter cultural ideologies that restrict expressions of self. The result of resistance, then, is the freedom to engage in personally meaningful and autonomous--or self-expressive—activities that would have been restricted or prohibited by those cultural ideologies.

In many ways we are attracted to the idea that people can use their leisure to resist dominant cultural ideologies. One might argue that resistance is a clear example of autonomous self-expression in leisure. However, when we reviewed the literature on resistance we found ourselves understanding that those same cultural forces that created the constraints also shaped and defined the acts of self-expression that were being labeled resistance. For example, an adolescent girl may smoke in resistance to cultural ideologies that define what it means to be a "good girl" but in doing so she often conforms to ideologies associated with being thin or being cool--ideologies promoted quite openly by the tobacco industry. In a similar fashion, when women athletes adhere to traditional ideals about sports they may be resisting ideologies associated with passive or fragile femininity, but at the same time they are reifying ideologies associated with masculinity, body shape, and competition. Thus, these acts are simultaneously resistance and conformity.

We saw similar problems in the literature on leisure and deviance. For example, gay men who dress in drag are deviant relative to cultural norms of masculinity but they rely upon those same cultural norms to provide meaning to the feminized behaviors that they enact. Though deviance appears to be an individual or autonomous act, it is not totally free from social influences. There is a dialectic between the norm and the deviation from the norm, and deviance can be understood only by examining the cultural ideologies from which it is deviating.

Self-expression made problematic by feminist literature. The problems we saw with autonomous self expression were fed by our reading of feminist theory. Rather than focusing on individualistic behavior, feminists examine the broader cultural bases that construct meanings in women’s and men’s lives. Feminist theory enabled us to see how cultural discourses and ideologies associated with gender shape both action and experience. For example, men and women often find self-expression in very different contexts. Rather than being expressions of a totally independent true self, these forms of self-expression reflect the gendered discourses within which these people have been raised.

Gender is but one of many cultural discourses that establish normative forms of self expression. Dominant ideologies about race, ethnicity, and sexuality protect the established, hegemonic systems that provide meaning in a culture. Self-expression is much more than simple affirmation of individual identity; it can also serve to reaffirm those existing power relationships. For example, finding self-expression through the roles of mother and wife (for a woman) or the role of being a good provider (for a man) reify existing relationships between men and women. Feminist theory thus helped us place self-expression in a much broader cultural understanding.

Self-expression made problematic by postmodernism. Finally, the notion of autonomous self-expression was made even more troubling when we read postmodern theory. Postmodernists describe contemporary life as a world where people play with symbols, continually constructing and reconstructing their identities in response to mass media, popular culture, and other external forces in their lives. As a result, postmodernists reject the notion of self-concept, which was based on a belief in a stable core identity, claiming that a more descriptive view of modern individuals is captured with the notion of self-image, which is outwardly focused and other-directed. Some postmodern theorists relate this loss of self to increased commodification in leisure and popular culture. A superficial interpretation of this position is to view commodification as a constraint that inhibits the expression of a more authentic self. However, the deeper critique raised by postmodern theorists is that commodification has destroyed the true self altogether. We found we could not ignore the strong argument raised by postmodern theorists that the notions of true self and authentic self-expression are no longer relevant in contemporary, commodified culture. 

 

[Diane]Our understanding of feminist and postmodern theory raised many challenging questions for us. We had begun with a belief that autonomous, self-determined leisure could be self-affirming and self-expressive, and we were reluctant to step away from that idea. However this new literature raised serious challenges to our beliefs about autonomy. Most significantly, our exposure to feminist and postmodern theory made us acknowledge that there is a social foundation for the self, even for true self or self expression. We began to see how limited we had been in viewing self-expression as autonomous rather than social in nature.

Our new understandings were in direct conflict with symbolic interaction theory, at least as we had understood and used it. Mead’s concepts of the “I” and the “me” had led us to believe that the "I" could be fairly autonomous, that it was self-determined and not reflective of social meanings which more aptly comprised the "me." In believing this, we assumed that there was something autonomous and independently meaningful within the "I" which was expressed when people were able to put down the façade of being "me." We now believe that the “I” is not devoid of social meaning. It is constructed out of and obtains value within the social contexts in which it is expressed.

We are reluctant to go to the extremes of some postmodern theorists who suggest that the self has become totally lost in contemporary society. The “I” and the “me” are a dialectic and represent different phases of personal experience. However, we now understand that both halves of that dialectic are embedded in cultural discourse. Self-expression is different for men than for women, different for Americans than for Koreans, and different for people in 1999 than for people in 1699.Social and cultural ideologies are not circumvented in self-expressive activities; they are the framework within which the self-expression is made meaningful. 

 

[Susan]In this presentation we are arguing that leisure researchers need to expand their vision to include the social contexts within which people’s selves are expressed and made meaningful. By continuing to pursue lines of inquiry that emphasize the individualistic, autonomous, self-determined nature of self-expression, leisure researchers will overlook the most significant and influential factors that shape the meanings of self-expressive activity.

We see a number of challenges that we must face if leisure research is to embrace these emerging new ideas about self, starting with a challenge to our traditional research methodologies. Survey research and other positivist strategies are based on an interest in measuring what happens within autonomous individuals. Likewise, much of the qualitative research in leisure studies draws on symbolic interaction theory which emphasizes the meaning systems of autonomous individuals. These research strategies do not allow us to expand beyond individual, subjective meanings and provide no framework for assessing the social contexts within which such meanings are constructed and expressed. If the self is to be studied in conjunction with the social and cultural discourses in which it is embedded, we need to adopt new research methodologies.

Other disciplines provide some examples for how to study individuals in relation to their broader social contexts. We see this best in feminist research but also in new research in education, social work, and many other fields. What is common in all of these studies is a reliance on truly qualitative methodologies. More than simple interviews, these researchers collect data that are rich with subjective meanings about the experiences and the social worlds of the participants.

These studies are different not only in the ways they collect data, but also in the ways that the researchers think about and analyze their data. That is, they demonstrate an interpretive lens that is quite different from that which is used in traditional analyses of quantitative data or interviews. In order to reach the understandings they seek, these researchers force themselves to examine the broader social contexts that shape the individualized experiences of their participants. The result is an examination of the intersection between agency and structure, or the relationship between lived experience and the social contexts within which those experiences are given meaning.

What this leads to, ultimately, is a challenge that extends beyond changes in leisure theory or research methodology. If we are to examine the tension between acts that are self-expressive and the cultural forces that shape and define those acts, we will have to change the very way we think about leisure and knowledge. What this will entail is a new ontological and epistemological premise for leisure research.

Ontological challenges reflect the need to change our view of truth, or our view of the understandings that we are seeking through our research endeavors. We need to focus less on hypothesis testing which serves to reaffirm our own understandings of the world and give more attention to the ways that reality is shaped and defined by the cultural and gendered meanings of individuals. For example, we need to be interested in the multiple realities that describe people's experiences--both good and bad--in leisure and recreation settings.

Epistemological challenges reflect our approaches to research. We need to forego positivist traditions that encouraged objectivity and produced data that could be easily managed, and become willing to immerse ourselves in the lives of the people we study. Until we do this we will remain blinded to significant factors that shape the meanings of self and self-expression. Without this perspective, leisure researchers are complicit in maintaining hegemonic power relationships and patterns of oppression. The challenge, and the promise for new understandings, resides in a shift in our thinking about what we consider to be knowledge, who participates in its construction, and how knowledge is constructed and represented.

We live our lives in a rich social context laden with meanings and nuances. When we ignore that social environment we impose interpretations that promote abstract theories and distort a true understanding of people’s lived experiences. To see, understand, and respect the complex ways that self-expression is entangled in webs of social meanings will require movement away from the positivist theories and methods that have shaped leisure research in the past. The challenge, and the promise for new understandings, resides in an ontological and epistemological shift that helps us position individual experiences within the rich cultural contexts that surround them.