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The concept of Identity

What is identity?

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Identity
• How individuals or groups see and define themselves.
• How others see and define them too. (reputation).
• Jenkins (2008): “identity involves knowing who we are,
knowing who others are, them knowing who we are, us
knowing who they think we are”.
• Not the same as personality.

• Personality is about psychological

aspects of a person’s character
(whether s/he is introverted or
extroverted, tense or laid-back,
selfish or generous.
• Personality tends to be more fixed.
• Identity is more fluid and
changeable.

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Why is identity important?

• By establishing our own identities and learning about the
identities of other individuals and groups we come to know
what makes us similar to some people and different from
others.

• This helps form our social connections.

Social solidarity (a sense of belonging)

• Very important in society.
• Emile Durkheim: Solidarity is so needed, otherwise,
individuals would be prone to anomie (a state of
loss/normlessness). This explains why individuals sometimes
commit suicide.

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Lawler (2014)

• Identity rests on the idea of marking out similarities with and

differences with others.
• We share identities which make us similar to others, such as
being human, men or women, British, black or white.
• but identity also involves a personal notion of what makes
people feel unique, special and different from others: our
individual uniqueness.

Lawler (2014)
• None of us has actually the same experiences in life – even
identical twins to dot share every aspect of life, and the way
we regard our real selves is viewed through the lenses of
early socialisation which form or self-understanding of who
we are.

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Lawler (2014)
• Identity is important because we recognize who we and
other are, and were.
• How we see ourselves – will influence the friends we have,
whom we will marry or live with, and the communities or
groups to which we relate.

• If people did not have an identity, they would lack the means
of identifying with or relating to their peer group, their
neighbours, their communities.
• Identity fits individuals into the society in which they are.

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George Herbert Mead (1934)

• Symbolic Interactionism
• His most important work is Mind, Self and Society.
• explains social action in terms of the meanings that
individuals give to them.
• Studied the “self”: the self is made up of 2: I and ME

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George Herbert Mead (1934)

• - the I
• - the ME

• The Me is your definition of yourself in a specific social role.

I see myself as a good parent or a loyal friend.

• The I is your opinion of yourself as a whole. It is related to

how others see you. Built from the reactions of others to
you. The way you interpret your reactions from others. THE
SELF CONCEPT.

George Herbert Mead (1934)

• “The self is something which has a development; it is not
initially there at birth but arises in the process of social
experiences and activity”.
• Formed from social interactions: symbolically thanks to
language.

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Identity of individuals and groups

• Depends on personal choice but also the responses and attitudes of

others.
• Individuals are not free to adopt any identity they like, and factors like
social class, ethic group, and gender are likely to influence how others
see them.
• The identity that an individual wants to assert and which they may
wish others to see them having may not be the one that others
accept to recognize.

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Howard Becker
• American sociologist – focusing on deviance and labelling
• Symbolic Interactionism
• “Outsiders” (1963) – provides the foundation for labelling theory.

• Labelling theory: how the self-identity and behaviour of individuals

may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or
classify them. It is associated with the concepts of self-fulfilling
prophecy and stereotyping.

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Howard Becker
• Speaks of a master status

• Master status: The social position that is the primary identifying

characteristic of an individual.
• It is defined as "a status that has exceptional importance for social
identity, often shaping a person's entire life“.

• Some identities can take the form of a master status – a dominant

identity that overrides all other aspects of a person’s identity.

An example

• An Asian woman, a senior manager, a ballet dancer, a mother.

• She may not wish to be identified primarily as an Asian or as a woman
but as a senior manager.
• However, if others still continue to see her first and foremost as an
Asian woman based on her gender and ethnicity, then she may find it
difficult to assert her chosen identity.

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• A master status is the dominant status of an individual which

overrides all other characteristics of the person.

• An individual's master status dominates how they are perceived by

others and their behaviour towards them.

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• Individuals may have multiple identities asserting different identities

in different circumstances.

• An individual may for instance, define herself primarily as a Muslim in

her family or community, as a manager at work, as a lesbian in her
sexual life, or as a design-drug-user in her peer group.
• It is possible for individuals to assert different identities or
impressions of themselves in different social situations.

• Identities may also change over time. As people grow older they may
begin to see themselves as different from when they were younger,
and may well be viewed differently by others.

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The social causes and

construction of identity

Social construction
• A social invention (Not necessarily right and true)
• Social phenomena only exist because people have constructed them
and given these phenomena particular labels.

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Lawler (2014)

• Identity is a social and collective process. Identity is rooted in society

– socially caused and socially constructed – formed in interaction.
People reflect on and interpret what happens to them in their
everyday social lives.
• These interpretations are put together to form an overall ‘plot’ ie.
identity.

Giddens and Sutton (2013)

• Identities are a combination of individual or personal factors, and of

social influences.
• There is a distinction between primary and secondary identities.

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Giddens and Sutton (2013)

• Primary identities: formed in early life during primary socialization
through the family and the close community. It includes gender and
ethnic identities.

• Secondary identities: linked to secondary socialization. Built on

those established by primary socialization, but also involves the built
up of new identities related to what one can achieve and adopt
(school/work). These are fluid and changeable.

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Bauman (2004)

• Postmodernist

• There is a growing insecurity around identities, and formerly fixed and

stable identities arising from factors like gender, class, nationality and
ethnicity have become more fluid, unstable fragmented and
changeable.

Different types of identities

Identities can be of different types:

- Individual or personal
- Social identity
- Collective identity
- Multiple identities
- Stigmatized or ‘spoiled’ identities

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Individual or personal identity

• Woodward (2000) refers to individual identity as that related to ‘Who
am I’. This refers to how individuals define themselves.

• Id card, NI number, passport, fingerprints, DNA, signature.

• The personal histories, friends and relationships and one’s own
understanding of who they really are as individuals.

Social Identity
• Defines individuals in relation to the
social group with which they are
identified and to which they belong.

• Also refers to the social roles built from

relationships. (e.g.: man or woman,
ethnic groups (Gozitans, Scots),
national groups, religious groups
(Sikhs), lesbians or gays.

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Collective Identity
• An identity shared by a social group
• Involves elements of both personal and social identities but differs as
it involves considerable elements of choice by individuals in that they
actively choose to identify with a group or adopt the identity
associated with it.

• I am a supporter of AC Milan (Milanist)

• I am a feminist
• I am an environmentalist.

Multiple identities
• People have several identities rather than just
one.
• Individuals may assert different selves in different
circumstances.

• E.g: at home one may assert the identity of a good

son, and a good Muslim, at school a good citizen,
in their personal relation a gay, in their peer group
a Goth etc.

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Stigmatized or ‘spoiled’ identities

• Stigma: any undesirable

physical or social
characteristic that is seen as
abnormal or unusual in some
way. It can be seen as
demeaning, and stops an
individual being fully
accepted by society.

Goffman (1990)
• Stigma (1963)
• Speaks of a stigmatized identity: an identity that is in some
way undesirable or demeaning, excluding people from full
acceptance in society.

• Stigmatized identities can face serious consequences with

others treating them with contempt, poking fun at them …
discrimination.

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• Having a stigmatized identity early

always mean that any attempts made
by individuals to present an
alternative ‘normal’ impression of
themselves will fail. This alternative
‘failed’ identity is called a spoiled
identity.

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