Abstract
This essay explores relations between moral agency on the personal level and collective self-direction on the societal level. We first discuss what may be called “the politics of identity”—the constraints and resources that individuals discover in their efforts to create a viable self. Then we suggest ways in which planned social change may be humanized—i.e., made more accessible to the control of societal members. The self-conception of persons as agents, we argue, is dialectically interdependent with a societal image of self-renewing institutions designed for and through citizens’ collaboration.
Monday Cloudy today, wind in the east, think we shall have rain.... We? Where did I get that word?... I remember now—the new creature uses it. Mark Twain
Mark Twain, (1904, p. 3)
We felt that the right to say “we” required so much more than the simple “revolution” that was to resolve everything
Richard Zorza, (1970, p. 21)
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Brown, R.H. (1980). Identity, Politics, Planning: On Some Uses of Knowledge in Coping with Social Change. In: Coelho, G.V., Ahmed, P.I. (eds) Uprooting and Development. Current Topics in Mental Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3794-2_3
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