The Sociology of Identity

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Wayne H. Brekhus. The Sociology of Identity

Contents

Guide

Pages

The Sociology of Identity. Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility

Acknowledgments

Introduction

What Is Identity?

Cognitive Sociology Meets Symbolic Interactionism: Social Pattern Analysis of Identity Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility

Why Study Identity in Sociology?

About the Book

1 Sociological Approaches to Identity

Symbolic Interactionism

Goffman’s Dramaturgy: Identity as Strategic Performance

Bourdieu’s Habits and Dispositional Identities

Feminist Social Standpoint Theories and Intersectional Analyses

Fluid, Fragmented, Flexible, and Depthless Identities: Modernity and Postmodernity Theories

Cultural Sociology: Culture and Cognition and Symbolic Moral Boundary Theories

Varying Theoretical Traditions, Unifying Themes

Further Reading

2 Beyond the Individual: Collective Identities

Nations as Identity Communities

Ethnic and Racial Category Collective Identities

Social Movements as Collective Expressions of Group Agency and Identity

Organizational Identities

City and Neighborhood Identities

Race, Class, Age, Gender, and Sexual Identities of Collective Forms such as Neighborhoods, Professions, and Industries

Further Reading

3 Performing Authenticity: Negotiating the Symbolic Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion

Self-Authenticity versus Collective Authenticity

Doing versus Being: Identity Duration and Authenticity

Authenticating National, Ethnic, and Racial Identities

Authenticity in Organization and Place Identities

Further Reading

4 Multidimensionality, Intersectionality, and Power: Identity and Social Inequalities

Intersectionality and Multidimensionality: Challenges to Non-Inclusive Universalization

Marked and Unmarked: Accented Stigma, Hidden Privilege, and the Cognitive Politics of Social Identity

Deploying Markedness–Unmarkedness and Multidimensionality in Social Interaction

Privilege, Identity, and Exclusion: Bullying and the Interactional Reproduction of Social Inequalities

Markedness–Unmarkedness and Intersectionality in Regional Identities

Globalization, Modernity, and the Multiply Influenced and Networked Character of Contemporary Identities

Further Reading

5 Mobility and Fluidity: The Omni-Contextual Nature of Identity

Identity Mobility: Identity Currencies and Identity Contexts

Identity Commuting: Chameleons, Nocturnal Selves, and Micro-Temporal Identity Movements

Temporal and Spatial Bracketing

Identity Mobility and Place: Local Identity Cultures and How Places Make Us and How We Make Places

Identity and Time: Long-Term Identity Shifts, Migrations, and Transformations

Collective Ethnic and Racial Fluidity

Further Reading

Conclusion

Navigating Authenticities in Relation to Multidimensionality and Mobility

Multidimensionality and Fluidity Complicate Group and Place Identities

Identity and Marginality: Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility in Marginality Management

Identity and Privilege: Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility in Privilege Management

Identity Play and Provisional Identities: Connecting Mobility with Multidimensionality and Authenticity

Key Areas for Future Research in Identity Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility

Analyzing Authenticity, Multidimensionality, and Mobility in Your Own Lives

References

Index. A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

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U

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W

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Отрывок из книги

Wayne H. Brekhus

Eviatar Zerubavel’s passion for thinking about big topics in analytically creative ways continues to inspire my own thinking. I am grateful for his ongoing enthusiasm and intellectual guidance. I thank Lorenzo Sabetta for the many stimulating conversations we have had on issues related to identity and the unmarked. He came from Italy to study with me for a year, as a postdoctoral fellow, and I am indebted to him for our friendship. I also thank Jay Gubrium for our many interesting discussions about identity and for his encouragement as a colleague. I thank my wife Rachel, who has helped me think through ideas, has read through and commented on drafts and revisions, and has been a tremendous source of intellectual and moral support.

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The three major, sensitizing concepts labeled in this book “identity authenticity,” “identity multidimensionality,” and “identity mobility,” which I use to frame an understanding of the sociology of identities, are general theoretical concepts that demonstrate analytic commonalities and generic formal similarities across very different kinds of identity. These concepts are important for understanding the power dimensions of identity and the role of identity constructions in producing and reproducing inequalities, marginality, and privilege. In the course of exploring these three properties of identity, other analytic concepts will also be highlighted and discussed in connection to their broader relevance to the sociology of identity. Those analytic concepts have developed in the specific contexts of sociological ethnographies and identity literatures, but they apply across different types of identity.

Bringing together theoretical traditions to analyze the sociology of identity is an ambitious task, particularly given that the term “identity” is used in multiple ways by analysts. Rather than provide a single definition of identity, my goal is to present identity and identification in the pluralistic ways that they are employed by social actors and described by social analysts and to explain the interactional and social boundary work that identity does. This means that the text will move between relatively thin, weak forms of identification and thick, strong forms of identity, between the conscious use of categorial identities as strategic resources and the unconscious expression of them as a tacit presentation that does work (even when what it does goes largely unacknowledged), and between expressions of self-identity and group identity. The concepts of authenticity, multidimensionality, and mobility will be explored through a cognitive sociological lens, illustrating how these concepts relate to one another and to the ways in which we interactionally perform identity. Organization around these themes and around the key concepts that cut across theoretical perspectives in identity studies provides an overview designed to spark new insights and fresh ideas for exploring the stakes of identity. An emphasis on how these themes relate among themselves and to social inequalities further frames why identity is an important topic for sociological study.

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