(of a person, community, or system) not choosing to or able to communicate with others or with external systems.
‘the family is a self-enclosed unit’
‘The stop midway through splits the line, apposes the images and creates a self-enclosed unit of each one.’
‘Substituting for this lack of ambiguity, an assemblage of self-enclosed, self-pleasing, self-sycophantic and self-pitying notes to oneself fills the void.’
‘Each religious constituency has remained until recently self-enclosed, except in respect of festivals.’
‘On the positive side the site is self-enclosed and safe.’
‘These colleges and universities that were once self-enclosed enclaves are now assuming the role of community developer.’
‘When you're younger you think you're this self-enclosed short story, then you realise you're a chapter in a book and that you want to read the rest of the book.’
‘Small socialist groups formed in the principal urban centres, held indoor and street meetings, produced and sold tracts, argued among themselves, and maintained a largely self-enclosed circle of fellowship.’
‘In a self-enclosed hierarchical group (a patriarchal family, say) the members cannot choose their relationships - to whom and how they relate.’
‘The four white areas function alternatively as forms and absences of form; of the three black shapes, one is self-enclosed, one invaded by a red glob, one twinned with a white shape.’
‘An episteme of a culture is its single and self-enclosed totality that includes its language, attitudes, ideas, science: it is all the paradigms of that society.’
‘Although the mob thrives on capitalism and the free market, it is a self-enclosed society built on Machiavellian principles of solidarity and interdependence.’
‘The turn of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century also provides the setting for two more self-enclosed novels, both marked for their strong handling of fine detail.’
‘In practice this also meant that other social realms were now similarly theorised as self-enclosed entities wherein particular types of social action ensued.’
‘This very responsibility before God forbids us from living in such a way that we withdraw into ourselves, behaving in an isolated, self-enclosed manner.’
‘Also encouraging us to pause or rest in the self-enclosed contemplative ‘sphere’ are the stanza's three verbs.’
‘They're not afraid to let a scene wander off in an unexpected, seemingly random direction, to let each scene become a self-enclosed mini-story of its own.’
‘The allegory is clear, and needs no refinement - the self-enclosed society of a ship or a submarine is its own world, and can represent our own.’
‘Death and despair are the disorders that enter the human relation to creation when that relation is constricted to a self-enclosed reality.’
‘Nonetheless, the reflected face injects an extrinsic presence into an otherwise self-enclosed narrative scene.’
‘New possibilities become apparent which may break the myopia of metropolitan prejudice and self-enclosed isolation.’
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