Defining Identity

The concept of identity has been used by sociologists in a number of different contexts and an exploration of what is meant by the term is helpful in attempting to study professional housing „identity‟. Identity can be defined as a sense of who we are as individuals – a sense of self, of personhood, of what kind of person one is.

Identities always involve both sameness and difference. Thus, if you are Irish you are similar to other Irish and different from non-Irish (Cheng, 2004). There is a tendency to see identities as being fixed but some argue that identities are fluid and changeable and that new identities can be acquired (Goffman, 1959). It is also the way that we project ourselves to others – the way that we want others to see us. This allows for the possibility of identity to become a feature of the imagination. Individuals imagine themselves as belonging to some wider entity, such as a local community. In doing so, they implicitly mark closure from other groups (Jenkins, 2006). In Ireland for example, public debate often trades on this sense of identity, in commentaries on the Irish national character.

Mead (1938) discusses the acquisition of identity and the perceived agreement that primary identities are acquired in childhood – gender or ethnicity – which are

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relatively durable. Yet even these can be changed, as some transsexuals will attest but is not always the case as is demonstrated in the durable gender identity amongst the transsexual population. In later life, there may be important moments of transition in identity, as in the process of moving from childhood to adulthood. There are numerous, less profound transitions, such as changing occupations or even moving house. All these involve alterations in the individual‟s sense of what kind of person she or he is. They also involve a process of negotiation between the self and external agencies. Someone who is a Catholic, for instance, has that identity confirmed in a constant negotiation between his or her sense of being a Catholic and others‟

definition of what that means. Similarly, at different ages or points of your life, your identity may reflect your view on life at that age. So children see the world through particular lenses and have an identity as a child because of this. Here the early work on studies of identity development using a chronological approach (Erickson 1959, 1968) traces how identity is age appropriate.

Mead (1962) identified the general mechanism for the development of self is reflexivity, or the ability to put ourselves unconsciously into others‟ places and to act as they act. As a result, people are able to examine themselves as others would examine them.

It is by means of reflexiveness – the turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself – that the whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means, which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other toward himself, that the individual is able consciously to adjust himself to that process, and to modify the resultant process in any given social act in terms of his adjustment to it.

(Mead, 1962: 134)

The work of Goffman (1961) focuses attention on how identities are managed. In his view, individuals present an image of themselves to others, who are free to accept or reject that image. Goffman describes in detail the mechanisms of this impression management and draws extensively on dramatic metaphors. Although standing broadly in the symbolic interactionist tradition and concentrating his attention on face-to-face phenomena, Goffman`s interests lay mostly in displaying how the most minute and apparently insignificant activities are socially structured and surrounded by ritual. Social constructionists argue that identity is forged through social

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interaction with others. Jenkins (1996) terms this „the internal-external dialectic of identification‟. We constantly judge who we are by how we act towards others and their reaction to us.

Individual identity – embroiled in selfhood – is not meaningful in isolation from the social world of other people. Individuals are unique and variable. But selfhood is thoroughly socially constructed socialisation, and in the ongoing processes of social interaction within which individuals define and redefine themselves and others throughout their lives….An understanding emerges of the „self‟ as an ongoing and, in practice simultaneous synthesis of (internal) self-definition and the (external) definition of oneself offered by others.

(Jenkins, 1996: 20)

Snow and Anderson (1995:240) make a useful distinction between social identities, defined as those we attribute or impute to others, situating them as social objects, and personal identity attributed to the self by the actor her/himself. Hence identity can also be about differentiating ourselves from others by forging a sense of our own individuality. However, it is also about sharing distinctive features with others – a sense of belonging to a category defined by similarity. Taylor (1999) makes an important distinction between categorical and ontological identity. Categorical identity is concerned with the labels ascribed to us by ourselves and by society. An example would be our housing tenure, which brings with it a set of discourses that ascribe its relation to the wider society. This is evident in literature on the status of housing tenure (Saunders, 1990), where public opinion associates a higher status and belonging to a higher socio economic group if one has purchased their house as opposed to renting it from the local authority or Housing Association. This is in addition to the differentiation offered by the wider categories of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and so on. Ontological identity encapsulates how these are forged into a coherent sense of self-identity.

Kenny (2004) claims that identities in contemporary society, (with increased globalisation and international travel) are becoming fragmented, with a problem arising „from the difficulty of establishing any firm ground from which to distinguish identities that are chosen and those that are ascriptive and arbitrary‟ (2004: 36). In the past individuals would have had a number of central elements to the construction of their identity including family, locality, nation, social class, ethnicity and gender.

However, modern, or postmodern societies introduce more sources of identity which

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can cut across these, producing a more complex pattern of identity and belonging.

For example, greater geographical mobility can result in the loss of ties to locality and family. Globalization, therefore, can undermine the sense of nationhood and identities as a consequence of the multiplicity of lifestyles that it facilitates.

Another way of looking at the fragmentation of identities is to recognise identities as becoming more fluid in contemporary societies, and accepting that people can reflect on and change identities over their lifetime. This fluidity allows people to choose who they want to be in a society where traditional loyalties are breaking down. Like Mead (1962), Giddens (1991), argues that one of the key features of modernity is „the reflexive project of the self‟. Individuals reflect on their own identity and continuously rework it. He uses the idea of reflexiveness to argue that it constitutes an

„opening out‟ of social life in which individuals are more able to make their own lives by actively making choices. This is encapsulated by the concern with „lifestyle‟, or the desire to choose an individual identity which leads to self fulfilment:

In modern social life, the notion of lifestyles takes on a particular significance.

The more tradition loses its hold, and the more daily life is reconstituted in terms of the dialectical interplay of the local and the global, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options (Giddens, 1991: 5)

The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1977) took the idea of identity further through his work on discourse or discursive formations. Discourse, for Foucault, shaped ways of talking about, representing or knowing a particular object. In his work on the growth of the modern prison he argued that penal discourses produced a distinct set of ways of talking about and knowing the criminal and the criminal mind.

These discourses furnished positions for agency and identity. Foucault rejected the view of a person having an inner and fixed 'essence' that is the person's identity. He identified the self as being defined by a continuing discourse in a shifting communication of oneself to others. He also rejected common notions of people having some form of implicit power, replacing this with the idea of power as a technique or action in which people engage. Foucault suggested that power is thus exercised but not possessed and an 'identity' is communicated to others in your interactions with them. This identity is not a fixed thing within a person and it can be seen as a shifting, temporary construction.

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Foucault (1985) explored how individuals inhabit multiple identities. On the one hand different discourses generate particular and often divergent positions for agency and identity and on the other hand a range of social practices are themselves linked to larger structures of identity. Here he described technologies of the self as ways individuals act upon themselves to produce particular modes of identity and sexuality.

These 'technologies' include methods of contemplation, disclosure and self-discipline. Foucault (1985) describes technologies of the self as the way in which individuals work their way into discourse, as evidenced by autobiographies, diaries and blogs.