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Class notes LET-GESB2102-CEH (IdentityAndDiversity)
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Class notes LET-GESB2102-CEH (IdentityAndDiversity) with notes from the assigned readings
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IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY IN EUROPEAN HISTORYWhy should we study the history of hair? One possible answer is to understand the evolution in hairstyles,
examining how people in the past dressed their hair. Yet the history of hair also provides a lens to understand
the politics of identity: throughout history, hair has been entangled with people’s self-image and perception
by others. Scholars often struggle to define identity, because it tends to shift depending on historical
circumstances and category of analysis. They have sought to enlighten the working of identity by applying
concepts explaining axes of difference: characteristics by which people r distinguished into different groups
n thus different identities.
IDENTITY:
“i use the term identity in a wide-ranging and inclusive way to mean both its public manifestations – which
might be called ‘roles’ or identity categories – and the more personal, ambivalent, reflective and reflexive
sense that people have of who they are. I do this so as to avoid reducing identity to categories of gender, race,
nation, class, sexuality, etc. with which it is often associated.” - lawler
“identity works as an object (or a set of related objects) in the social world: it works to delineate both persons
and types of persons, and to differentiate between them” - lawler
why is it a topic today?
• linguistic turn
• problems with the perception of identity making itself known only whenever n identity crisis manifests
• growing scholarly interest in identity (previously there was almost none)
what is identity?
• a multiple phenomena: there is no concrete, all-encompassing definition for identity
• identity is always social, they are not a natural given thing
• different identity categories
• gender, race, class, sexuality, nation, religion etc
• central to active process of identification
• identity > category + category + category
• mutually constitutive and exclusive
• active processual engagement with the social world —> relates not only to how i view myself but also how
others view me, my reaction to that, and the categories to which I relate them —> changeable, fluid
• social self vs natural / personal self
• our personal identities can be different in different contexts
history and identity / identities in historical research:
• its a fragmented field of study
• lawler (sociologist): both personal and social dimensions
• we study historical aspects of socially produced & circulating meanings of human interactions / power
relations that involve identity
• Lawler mentions that categories don’t stack up, but are part of separate spheres. You don’t belong to one
category, but to others, and are excluded from even other categories. Identity cannot be reduced to only
those categories, because identities are multiple, they intersect, and categorization makes the identity
very abstract (too simplistic). There is no complete overlap between categories (you might be 30 years
old but have hobbies of a 80 year old). We all have multiple categories, and we don’t belong to all of
them entirely. You can identify as a female, but don’t have all characteristics that belong to a ‘female’.
Categories also exclude one another, you can’t be white and black at the same time. Also, new categories
start to form (like non-binary category nowadays)
• meanings relate to categories —> particularly traceable during periods of societal questioning of these
meanings n resulting tensions
• we become aware of the nuances n the importance of the multilayered of these meanings
• long lines
• pivotal moments
• >< complexity historic reality
• groups
• contexts
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,“identity. sociological perspectives” lawler
• popular culture: identity is explicitly invoked only when its seen as “being in trouble”; is foregrounded
through its apparent loss or instability
• identity is considered in terms of an obvious n manifest loss / insecurity, forms of identity which appear
not to be lost can be left untheorized and unexplored
• looking at responses to identity troubles can tells us a great deal about what gets to count as normal /
normative forms f identity
• bauman — argues that the fluidity and insecurity that have always existed around identity have become
more apparent; we no longer believed the hoax that identity is stable bc social changes (collapse of nation-
states; globalization etc) have made its instability obvious; theoretical concern with identity stems from a
social concern with identity
• mead: proposes a distinction between 2 dynamic aspects of the self: the “me” who moves through the
social world, existing in complex social relations, and the “I” who represents a post hoc reflection on the
actions, perceptions and understandings of the “me”; the “I” cannot be grasped since as soon as we become
aware of it, it becomes an object YET without the concept of “I” there would be no way to explain the
reflexive aspect of the self: persons would be reducible to a series of roles
• his works show how ppl both live n reflect on their experience, and how the process of reflection in turn
reworks n reinterprets experience
• not possible to provide a single, overarching definition of what it is, how its developed bc what identity
means depends on how it is thought about
• “identity” can be used to refer to a range of phenomena
• erving goffman distinguishes between 3 forms of identity:
• personal identity (the unique characteristics of the person, in themselves n in terms of their relationship
with others)
• social identity (an identity that ppl have by virtue of their membership of social categories)
• ego identity / felt identity (a subjective sense of “who we are”; how the person thinks of themselves as a
person) —> for goffman it doesnt represent a true core of an authentic identity
• distinction between identity and subjectivity: identity stands for an association with social categories \/
subjectivity refers to the more conflictual, complex n cross-category processes by which a person gets to
be produced —> should NOT be seen as a distinction between a “real” self n a “social” self
• western notions of identity hinge on a paradoxical combination of sameness and difference: we share
common identities (“women”,”white”,”black” etc) + we have our own unique forms of identity —> ppl r
understood as being simultaneously the same and different; ppl work with an awareness that ones
humanity is simultaneously shared n singular
• part of ppls shared identities involves identity “categories” based on social divisions
• identities r better seen as ongoing processes rather than as a sort of sociological filing system - no one
belongs to / identifies with only 1 identity category
• forms / categories of identities cannot exist in isolation; some forms r mutually constitutive
• to see ppl as “different” is to obscure the history n the politics of the making of both social distinctions
and social identities
GENDER & INTERSECTIONALITY
women’s history:
1950s: mccarthy; a haunt for ppl with too progressive ideas (teachers etc)
1960s: liberation movements for different ppl (?)
1970s: writing women back into history / 2nd wave of feminism, particularly trough the western
world; emancipation etc; all of that had an effect on history, the type of it; women were fed up with only men
being in the centre of all historical events, so they started writing their own history (including /
acknowledging women in those processes)
—> writing women back into history; why?
• social movements of women (2nd wave feminism), civil rights movements
• developments in social history (history from below; oral history)
“herstory” - women r valid historical subjects
context:
—> social movements of women, civili rights movement
—> social history (history “from below”, oral history)
what those women writing herstory focused on:
—> foremothers, heroines: those who resisted / revolted
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, —> victims: those who were oppressed
gender = construction:
• gender is (socially and culturally) constructed, a perception of differences between sexes; social / cultural
constructions instead of biology
• gender is a signifier of relationships of power, never an empty statement
• 4 interrelated elements:
• culturally available symbols (they can be so dominant wether u want it or not u r influenced by them, its
sth ppl have seen for centuries; can be appropriated)
• normative concepts asserting the meaning of “male” / “female”
• ideas of fixity, essentialism
• specific cultural representations (important to study bc they inform us about the time they appeared)
gender history:
• late 1980s: dissatisfaction with continuous marginalized position of women’s studies
• a study of changing social / cultural meanings of “femininity”, “masculinity”, “sexual identity” imposed on
a sexed body
• new paradigm: an intervention in the theory of knowledge n meaning
• rewriting history:
• “not only a new history of women but also a new history”
• new cultural definitions of “the cultural”, “the political” or “the economical”
• more differentiated definitions of “women”, “men”, “black”, and “white”
• gender as an analytical category
• gender = relational history: looking at history through the lens of gender (n class, race) relations
• dominance of marxist analysis of women’s studies —> tried to explain everything referring to economic
differences
• influenced by poststructuralism & foucault: discursive approach
• same words have different meaning in different eras / contexts (the linguistic turn, zeitgeist)
• key: how meanings r expressed in a language / how language produces power
• IMPORTANT: meaning is not straightforward / transparent; never finally fixed ; its shifting n often
contested
• meanings r produced at several different sites n circulated through processes n practices —> the circuit
of culture
• there is a hierarchy in meanings
• joan wallach scott:
• an analytical tool to look at historical inequalities and social institutions based on gender constructions
came into being
• methodologies:
• discourse analysis: importance of language
• representation & its looping effects
women’s history =/= gender history
intersectionality —> intersectionality is the concept that all oppression is linked; the interconnected nature of
social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent
systems of discrimination or disadvantage; the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique
experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can
marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.
“Imagine a basement which contains all people who are disadvantaged on the basis of race, sex, class,
sexual preference, age and/or physical ability. These people are stacked — feet standing on shoulders —
with those on the bottom being disadvantaged by the full array of factors, up to the very top, where the heads
of those disadvantaged by a singular factor brush up against the ceiling. Their ceiling is actually the floor
above which only those who are not disadvantaged in any way reside. Those above the ceiling admit from the
basement only those who can say that "but for” the ceiling, they too would be in the upper room. A hatch is
developed through which those placed immediately below can crawl. Yet this hatch is generally available
only to those who — due to the singularity of their burden and their otherwise privileged position relative to
those below — are in the position to crawl through. Those who are multiply-burdened are generally left
below unless they can somehow pull themselves into the groups that are permitted to squeeze through the
hatch”
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