1 Questions of Identity DD121 book 1 Chapter 1 Dr. Faisal Al-Qahtani

2 What is Identity? Identity vs. personality:  Personality personality traits or qualities individuals have:  may be shared with others with no active engagement.  Identity sharing an identity  requires some sort of choice and active engagement.  Individuals may be characterized by personality traits but they have to take up an identity.

3 What is Identity? Identity involves:  A link between the personal (agency) and the social (structure).  Some active engagement by those who take up identities: Sharing similarities and differences with others:  symbols and representation. How much control do you have in constructing your identities?  Agency factor How much control or constrains are exercised over you?  Structure factor

4 Who am I? Like Physical appearance Identities change over time. Collective identity:  identifies the person with a nation or group (e.g., European). Official construction of identity:  Passports.  Birth/death certificates.  Driving license.  Id cards.  Credit cards.  Membership cards.

5 Who are you? What can social science tell us? How are identities formed? How much control do we have in the construction of our identities? Imagining Ourselves:  Mead’s Approach: In constructing identities we imagine ourselves.  We do this by visualizing ourselves, thinking in symbols.  Some degree of agency We have to use Existing language and symbols (e.g., clothes)  Structure constraint

6 Goffman’s Approach The society in which we are born presents us with a series of roles:  patterns of behavior, routines and responses. Emphasis:  Social dimension of identity and roles.  There are links between the society and the limitations offered by the roles we play in the society. Structure constraint  People still can improvise and interpret the roles they play Agency scope

7 Freud’s Approach We have limited control over our identities. Identities are determined by the early childhood experience.  Structure constraint Individuals can understand those experiences repressed into the unconscious minds from childhood.  Agency scope

8 Linking The Personal And The Social The Identity Equation  Personal + Social  Agency scope + Structure constraint Identity  Presents a line between the personal:  how we feel about who we are. and the social:  Our society and the social, cultural and economic factors which shape experience.

9 Interpellation It is:  a process whereby individuals are being recruited or invited to adopt a particular identity: (e.g., advertisements) It may work consciously or unconsciously. It links the individual to the social.  Adopting identity by association (agency scope)  Social structures may recruit people into identities (Structure constraint)

10 Social Structures: Concepts and Explanations: The organization of society:  Class, gender, ethnicity, work and place are important in shaping our identity.  Changing social structures – e.g., changing gender roles patterns of employment, changing class and ethnic composition of the U.K, etc.  different identities are becoming available and others are disappearing.

11 Who are we? Social, economic and technological changes in the U.K. society:  Increase in the number of paid women.  Decrease in the number of people getting married.  Increase in divorce rate.  People get married at later age. New technologies  a challenge to certainties and the constraints of biology.  all these changes lead to uncertainty, diversity and insecurity in identity. Opportunities for the formation of new identities appeared. Giddens:  Identities become both more uncertain and more diverse in a rapidly changing globalized culture.

12 Why identity is an issue? Identity is in crisis.  Evidence Ethnic and national conflict across the world.

13 What do you do? Change in economic structure and in employment:  Individual need to redefine themselves.  Thus, Identities are fluid and changeable. The work we do is important in influencing our identities.

14 Where Do You Come From? Race and Place Identity is linked to place. Identity is marked by difference.  Sometimes this difference might be used as a means of asserting superiority. Racism Multi-ethnicity and cultural diversity in the contemporary UK:  Could be a source of uncertainty and diversity and constructing identities. Identity is based on being the same as some people and different from others.

15 Jackie Kay’s Poem Social constraints of identities can operate through racist practices and ideas.

16 Who Do You Want To Be? New social movements:  challenge traditional constraints.  challenge oppression and celebrate a group's positive features. Individuals and groups challenge social expectation about identity.  Through collective action and individual projects people resist dominant cultural representation of identity redefine and reconstruct identities