INTRODUCTION

Morris Rosenberg provided us with a powerful model of the relationship between self and society, emphasizing the role of feelings about the self in the overall dynamic. Especially important for him were structural expectations, as they impacted variables such as self-esteem and, ultimately, individual behavior. In his early work (1965), he argued that self-concept is the intervening variable that had often been overlooked in the much researched relationship between social characteristics (social class is one he would return to over and over) and the individual's attitudes and behaviors. As he defined it later (1979), self-concept consisted of “the totality of thoughts and feelings one has about the self.” Even then, he grappled with fairly complex processes through which structural factors wound their way into these self-feelings.

For example, a perennial issue has been why certain negative social statuses, such as holding socially undesirable jobs, do not necessarily result in lower levels of measured self-esteem. Rosenberg (1965) called on the notion of “self-values” to explain such apparent inconsistencies, a concept later elaborated as “the compensation process” by Gecas and Seff (1990). In essence, it is argued (and shown) that much negative social feedback will only significantly impact factors such as self-esteem if the characteristics in question are truly important to the individual. These concepts have much in common with other symbolic interactionist notions such as the “situational context” of identities (Burke, 1988) and “salience” (Stryker & Serpe, 1982), which also point to the tendency of individuals to selectively focus on different aspects of their immediate surroundings.