Sociologist Giddens (1991) who sees religion more as the remnants of tradition, discusses the idea of choice in relation to ‘Modernity and Self-Identity’.
Obviously, no culture eliminates choice altogether in day-to-day affairs, and all traditions are effectively choices among an indefinite range of possible
behaviour patterns. (Giddens 1991, p.80)
According to Giddens (1991, p.80) although modernity allows an individual ‘a complex diversity of choices’, there is often no advice given as to which options should be taken. He looks at the idea of lifestyles not in the ‘glossy magazine’ sense but talks about the lifestyles that we all follow. Giddens (1991, p.81) believes that we are forced to follow lifestyles and that ‘we have no choice but to choose’. It is these lifestyles that we follow that ‘give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity’. Giddens (1991, p.81) explains how these lifestyles consist of a set of routines, one of which is dress, and these routines ‘are reflexively open to change’
when people are negotiating their own ‘self-identity’. For example, it is the choices that people make each day with regards to dress that make up these routines. He emphasises that these choices ‘… are decisions not only about how to act but who to be’.
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According to Giddens (1991, p.81) these lifestyle choices apply to the working environment as well as to the non-working; people often have a choice in the work that they do, although people’s ‘styles of behaviour’ are limited in the work place.
However, he goes on to comment on how not all choices are available to everyone.
Giddens (1991, p.82) continues to explain how a lifestyle is a set of habits that are chosen by an individual and that a person who is ‘committed’ to their chosen lifestyle, would make choices that are in line with it. However, ‘the selection or creation of lifestyles is influenced by group pressures and the visibility of role models, as well as by socioeconomic circumstances’.
Four influences have been noted by Giddens (1991) that have an impact on the
‘plurality of choices’ that are open to individuals in situations of ‘high modernity’.
The first influence is noted as ‘the fact of living in a post-traditional order’ and according to Giddens (1991, p.82) this means that many ‘signposts established by tradition’ have gone, leaving individuals a multitude of alternatives from which they can choose. The second influence as stated by Giddens (1991, p.83), citing Berger (1974) is the ‘pluralisation of life-worlds’, where the ‘dominance of the local community’ has now disappeared in many post-modern cultures. People no longer live in situations where those people around them are a ‘comparable type’. As these people move through different social environments, according to Giddens (1991, p.83), they may feel uncomfortable when their own lifestyle is questioned. ‘Lifestyle choices’ can become segmented and a person does certain activities at certain times during the week or at weekends. The third influence according to Giddens (1991, p.83) is the ‘… existential impact of the contextual nature of warranted beliefs under conditions of modernity’. Fourthly, according to Giddens (1991, p.85) with the
‘globalisation of media’ a variety of social environments are now visible to anyone who looks for the ‘relevant information’. The influence on ‘lifestyle choices’ is universal, despite how ‘limiting the social situations of particular individuals or groups may be’.
In relation to self-identity Giddens (1991, p.99) moves on to discuss how the body has a special part to play. The appearance of a person including: ‘modes of dress and adornment’ are ‘ordinarily used as clues to interpret actions’. According to Giddens (1991, p.99) dress is way of showing ‘individualisation’ and can be a way of showing
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your ‘gender, class position and occupational status’. Giddens (1991, p.99) also states that dress can be influenced by a number of factors including ‘group pressures’ and is not always just the thinking of the individual. Ultimately the appearance of a person
‘becomes a central element of the reflexive project of the self’.
3.7. Habitus
Mahmood (2001, p.215), a social cultural anthropologist, examines the idea of habitus meaning ‘habituated learning through practical knowledge’ and in her research with the ‘women’s mosque movement’ in Egypt she explores the idea of habitus in relation to the wearing of the hijab. Referring to Pierre Bourdieu’s 1977 definition, Mahmood explains how her work draws on the Aristotelian meaning of the term which refers to habitus as:
…a specific pedagogical process by which moral virtues are acquired through a coordination of outward behaviour (e.g. bodily acts, social demeanor [sic]) with inward dispositions (e.g. emotional states, thoughts, intentions).
(Mahmood, 2001, p.215) This definition differs from Bourdieu’s, as according to Mahmood (2001, p.215), it does not apply to all types of knowledge and it does not ‘necessarily serve as a conceptual bridge between the objective world of social structures and subjective consciousness’. Mahmood (2001, p.215) discusses the use of the term habitus which she explains was also used by ‘late medieval thinkers such as al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun’.
In an extract from her research with the ‘women’s mosque movement’, Mahmood (2001, p.212) cites ‘cultivating shyness’ as an example of habitus. She sets the scene by explaining how she ‘had come to know four lower-middle class working women’.
These women were in their thirties and Mahmood refers to these four women as
‘virtuosos of piety’. These women would meet at the mosque, but they would also meet to explore ‘Islamic doctrine and Quranic exegesis’. She notes that these women were not from religious families and that some of them had battles with family members when they became more ‘religiously devout’. The concept of ‘cultivating shyness’ was important to these women who explained that if you acted a certain way
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on the outside then you would learn to feel this on this inside as well. One of the women related this to the wearing of the veil:
… In the beginning when you wear it, you’re embarrassed (maksufa), and don’t want to wear it because people say that you look older and unattractive, that you won’t get married, and will never find a husband. But you must wear the veil, first because it is God’s command (hukm Allah), and then, with time, your inside learns to feel shy without the veil, and if you were to take it off your entire being feels uncomfortable (mish radi) about it.
(Mahmood, 2001, p.213) Therefore, according to the definition of habitus used by Mahmood, these women are wearing the hijab on the outside, and their emotional state and thoughts connected to the wearing of the hijab are created on the inside. Mahmood (2001, p.214) explains this as ‘an example of a mutually constitutive relationship between body learning and body sense’. Mahmood (2001, p.214) goes on to explain that once this occurs the hijab cannot just be removed as it is partly what defines the person. The hijab is not just a symbol of Islam but becomes part of the feelings of the person wearing it and is not just a ‘marker of women’s subordination or Islamic identity’. The women who spoke to Mahmood (2001) as part of her research argued that:
… those who don the veil for its symbolic significance have a deeply flawed understanding of the Islamic injunction: one veils not to express an identity but as a necessary, if insufficient, condition for attaining the goal internal to that practice – namely, the creation of a shy and modest self.
(Mahmood, 2001, p.215) In Mahmood’s (2001) view the women’s mosque movement put a great deal of effort into this practice to make sure that their outward image matched their inward feelings.
She concludes by saying:
This means that the question of reform of this tradition cannot start simply from an advocacy of women’s emancipation from male control, but
necessitates a much deeper engagement with the architecture of the self that undergirds a particular mode of living and attachment of which
shyness/veiling are a part. (Mahmood, 2001, p.217)
90 3.8. Individualization
In an interview with Beck (2009, p.202), a sociologist, Beck explains the term individualization not as individualism or individuation. Individualization to Beck (2009, p.202) ‘is a concept which describes a structural, sociological transformation of social institutions and the relationship of the individual to society’. According to Beck (2009, p.202) ‘historical phases’ of this began as early as the Middle Ages and have ‘undermined traditional securities such as religious faith, and simultaneously it has created new forms of social commitment’. Beck (2009, p.203) goes on to explain that ‘individualization liberates people from traditional roles and constraints’. ‘Social classes have been detraditionalized’ and with this has meant that individuals ‘…
become the agent of his or her own identity making …’. In particular roles of women have changed in that they are no longer housewives, and family structures now consist of a variety or relationships. However, Beck (2009, p.203) continues to explain that the freedom from traditional roles has meant that individuals are now more dependant on the ‘employment market’. These ‘individualized cultures’ believe that it is the individual who is in control of their own lives and has ‘a desire for a ‘life of one’s own’’.
In relation to individualization and women, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2009, p.55), both sociologists, write about the position that women in Germany hold and believe that ‘rapid changes have taken place in the context of women’s lives’, which gave them the chance to participate in new roles. However, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2009, p.55) explain how with this came ‘new uncertainties, conflicts and pressures’
and with this also came risks. Now women are not just thinking of themselves as part of the family, but have other aspirations outside of the family unit resulting in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2009, p.57) asking why it is that these changes have come about .
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s (2009, p.58) first analysis takes into account the education that women now receive, explaining that historically women were only given the most basic education whereas today, women are educated to the same degree as their male counterparts. These educational opportunities allow women the chance to ‘deal actively with their own situation’. These ‘educationally privileged
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women’ have a ‘new awareness’. Women now have access to courses ‘… that challenge women to stand up for themselves and actively to confront their own situation’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2009, p.58, italics in original). Another consequence of improved educational opportunities for girls according to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2009, p.59) is the fact that women today are in many cases better educated than their mothers and grandmothers. Women have left behind the
traditional roles laid out for them and no longer see ‘marriage as a goal to be achieved as quickly as possible’.