Introduction

Abstract

Following an outline of this book, Chapter 1 addresses two issues: first, challenges to the construct of self and self-referent concepts stemming from postmodernism/poststructuralism ideas, a radical social structural approach in sociology, and an extreme hermeneutic approach to ethnography and epistemological relativism in anthropology; second, criticisms of self-esteem research based upon reviews of the research literature challenging the measurement and explanatory utility of the concept.