Identity Flashcards
Johal
Ethnicity Identity:
Brasians
British Asians resist homogenisation through forming a hybrid identity
Nayak
Ethnicity Identity:
White wannabes
White British males dress, act and speak influenced by black hip hop culture due to globalisation
Jenkins
Forming Identity:
Social identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are
Collective and individual identity
Identity formed during socialisation, people learn to distinguish social similarities/differences between themselves and others
Back
Ethnicity Identity:
Studied two council estates in London
Found white youths were also attracted to aspects of black culture
Woodward
Forming Identity:
Argues identity is down to an element of choice
Individuals choose to identify with someone/something
Identity is about ‘belonging’ to something
Bradley
Forming Identity:
Ascribed: born/socialised with
Achieved: actively choose to pursue
Age Identity:
5 generational stages of age
Middle age has a higher status than youth or old age as these people occupy the dominant roles in society
Age Identity:
People are often made redundant at 40 and may experience age barriers in finding new jobs due to limited working life and reluctance from employed to invest in training
Bhavnani and Phoenix
Forming Identity:
Identities can be seen as flexible/conflicting
No person’s identity is the same
Corner
Age Identity:
Language used by older people about their identity is negative
Reflects that used by media and popular culture
Seen as a ‘burden’ on society
Clarke
Age Identity:
Youth was based on the concept of rebellion and resistance
Mead
Age Identity:
‘Storm and stress’ associated with youth is culturally specific
Gender Identity:
Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo have little division of labour by sex
Arapesh tribe show gentleness and flexibility from both sexes
Postman
Age Identity:
Childhood only emerged when the spread of literacy enabled adults to shield children from explicit aspects of life
Reynolds
Masculine Identity:
Some subordinated men construct alternative identities
Boys who are academic find it conflicts with hegemonic masculinity
They study hard but adopt strategies to hide it
Lees
Feminine Identity:
Passive Femininity
Girls put effort into looking ‘right’ so they are seen as ‘good girls’ and not ‘slags’
Appearance defines female identity
Studied teen girls in London
Social Control:
Boys will use negative sanctions of derogatory language to control girls
Blackman
Feminine Identity:
Assertive Femininity
Researched 10 girls in 90s that he called ‘New Wave Girls’
They were academically able and popular
They challenged patriarchal control within school
Davis
Age Identity:
Most young people are hardly distinguishable from parents in terms of values, therefore
Family must influence identity
Gardner at level
Age Identity:
Parents and children spend more time together now than 25 years ago
Parents are more concerned about the risks their children are exposed to and react with increased monitoring and control
Munice
Age Identity:
Youth are overrepresented in the media as deviant and troublesome
Thornton and savage
Age Identity:
Teenagers are more frequently condemned than praised in the media
Giddens
Age Identity:
Workplace is important and beneficial as it allows people to continue growing and learning
Arber and Ginn
Age Identity:
Ageism is reinforced by practices such as redundancy, unemployment and retirement
McRobbie and Garber
Feminine Identity:
Young girls and formation of ‘bedroom subcultures’ where codes of romance, fashion, gossip, pop music are negotiated and decided upon together
Shain
Ethnicity Identity:
Groups of Asian girls develop distinct identities in a secondary school
Gang girls, rebels, survivors, faith girls
Helps them cope with school
Voas and Crockett
Age Identity:
Surveys religious beliefs which indicate young white people are increasingly likely to become non-religious
Fox
Gender Identity:
History shows men are born hunters while women are born nurturers
Social Class Identity:
- Unlikely everyone who sees themselves as middle class shares a common experience or identity
- ‘Upper middles’, ‘middle middles’ and ‘lower middles’
- There will be differences between public sector professionals and private sector
Lewantini
Gender Identity:
Biological differences become signal for differentiation in social roles
McKingsley
Age Identity:
Argues old is a new concept due to increased life expectancy
Young Old: 65-84
Oldest Old 85+
Victor
Age Identity:
Society sees the elderly as lonely, unable to learn, having poor health and being dependent on others
Wilson
Gender Identity:
Men need to be promiscuous in order to ‘spread the seed’
Women need to nurture children and stay faithful in order to ensure proper upbringing
Stanley and Wise
Gender Identity:
Suggested gender is socially constructed
Behaviours connected to how we are brought up
Influenced by those around us
Hey
Feminine Identity:
Peer group influences female identity
Norms of teenage female peer groups rooted in patriarchy
Mac an Ghaill
Ethnicity Identity:
Found ethnic minority youth subcultures emerge as a defence against racism in education
Hockey and James
Age Identity:
Ethnographic research to examine power differences between ages
Old age/childhood socially constructed in similar way as they are excluded from adult world and infantilised
Researched showed evidence that childhood/old age are social constructs as children have lost independence
Aries
Age Identity:
Concept of childhood invented in middle ages
Children were not seen as innocent or kept away from adult world
After 16th century modern conceptions of childhood developed
Innocence took shape with child safeguarding laws
Introduction of education kept children separate
Infant mortality rate fell
Francis
Masculine Identity:
Boys tend to be disciplined more harshly but still dominate classroom and aggressive behaviour is tolerated
Spear
Feminine Identity:
Male teachers have hostile views toward girls in their subjects and hold traditional view of the place of women in society
Sharpe
Feminine Identity:
Found females were underachieving because education was regarded by teachers as less important
Female identity was expected to revolve around love, marriage and children
Kelly
Masculine Identity:
Science is more masculine subject and packaged as so through examples used in class and textbooks
Boys able to dominate classroom during practical lessons
Williams
Gender Identity:
Men defend gender boundaries at work by various means such as the non-acceptance of women’s authority or sexual harassment
Adkins
Feminine Identity:
Sexual work has become central part of women’s jobs
Service sector are expected to engage in ‘sexual servicing’ by being attractive and having sexual banter
Gershuny
Changing Gender Identity:
Men doing a greater amount of childcare and housework
Mort
Changing Gender Identity:
‘Metrosexual man’
A man who is heterosexual but concerned with their image and invests in personal groom
E.g. David Beckham
Canaan
Masculine Identity:
Asked working class men in Wolverhampton what was the most important thing about being a man
Employed men answered fighting, drinking and sex
Unemployed men answered having a job
Faludi
Masculine Identity:
‘Spur Posse’ was a group of young men who aimed to sleep with as many girls as possible to ‘gain points’
One member was charged with rape of 12-year-old girl and said “well she had a body”
Increasing sexual violence can be seen as an issue of masculinity as it’s their one remaining source of power
Wilkinson and Sharpe
Changing Gender Identity:
Increased participation and success of women in paid work means traditional notions of female identity are being abandoned
Wilkinson
Changing Gender Identity:
Shift in values, ‘genderquake’, in women aged under 35 compared to their mothers and grandmothers
Jackson
Changing Gender Identity:
Girls take on laddish behaviour (blurs masculine and feminine)
Ladettes are girls who behave assertive and crude
Denscombe
Changing Gender Identity:
Increase in female risk taking behaviours associated with ladette behaviour
Young women want to be seen as anything but their stereotype
Butler
Changing Gender Identity:
Asian women in Coventry and Bradford keen to move beyond traditional role
Wanted to challenge cultural gender identities, go to work and establish independence from their partners
Collier
Gender Identity:
Lads magazines still objectify women in an explicitly sexual fashion
Whole media industry devoted to encouraging women to perfect their figure, make up and sexual desirability for men
Gittins
Changing Gender Identity:
Rising divorce rates show a less passive female gender role
Cohen
Age Identity:
Mods and Rockers labelled as folk devils after small disagreement on Brighton beach
Media exaggerated the reporting
Mods and Rockers then acted as their youth label and become more violent toward each other
Jerks
Age Identity:
Disagrees childhood is disappearing but concerned about loss of innocence
Children still restricted (have to attend school)
Thinks adult-child relationships are changing and becoming child-centred
Sontag
Age Identity:
Double standard of ageing in TV where women are required to be youthful but men are not
Harvey and Macdonald
Gender Identity:
Women in adverts seen as mothers/wives excited about cleaning
Men seen in pub or having women wait for them
Reaffirms stereotypical gender roles
Marsh and Millard
Gender Identity:
Young children asked to look at superhero texts
Men were hegemonic masculine
Children reproduce these stereotypes
Gill and Herdieckerhoff
Feminine Identity:
Chicklit persuades young women that body is a source of identity
Financially independent but sexually assertive heroines who need to be rescued from cheating men or single parenthood
Shakespeare
Disability Identity:
Disabled people often socialised into seeing themselves as victims
People with impairment may have investment in their own incapacity because it can become the rationale for own failures
Disability Identity:
Disabled people often socialised into seeing themselves as inferior
Often isolated from one another so struggle to form strong collective identity
Bourdieu
Social Class Identity:
Class fractions are determined by various degrees of social, economic and cultural capital
Dominant ruling class have power to shape which attributes are valued and then in the position to acquire these and pass on to their children
Gives an unfair advantage. E.g. Stanley Johnson
Mackintosh and Mooney
Social Class Identity:
Key feature of upper class is invisibility
Operate ‘social closure’, meaning their education, leisure time and daily lives are separated from and partly invisible to rest of population
Argued this group is declining in numbers and power of new ‘super rich’ are based on achieved status not ascribed
Hutton
Social Class Identity:
Decline in trade union membership and manufacturing jobs results in erosion of working class identity
Skeggs
Social Class Identity:
Studied working class women who felt humiliated by ways others judged their class background
WC Women made an extra effort to show they were respectful
Zola
Disability Identity:
Sociologist disabled due to polio
The very vocabulary we use to describe disabled people is from discriminatory society
‘De-formed, dis-eased, disabled, dis-ordered’
Murugami
Disability Identity:
Argues disabled people have ability to construct a self-identity that accepts their impairment but is independent of it
Finkelstein
Disability Identity:
Society’s negative perception of disability is down to capitalism
Emphasis on work as a source of identity
Industrialisation required healthy and fit workforce to make profits for capitalist class so disabled people became economic burden
Goffman
Forming Identity:
People have ‘discredited identities’ because certain characteristics are stigmatised
Disability Identity:
Seen to be a discredited status because able-bodied people assume disabilities stop a person being self-sufficient
Believed to be reliant on the able-bodied
Agyeman
Disability Identity:
Range of disabilities portrayed is limited, mainly blindness and wheelchair bound
Barnes
Disability Identity:
Content analysis of media identified ‘the disabled person’ as pathetic, sinister and a burden
Watson
Disability Identity:
Disabled people may respond to constant assumption that they are helpless and dependent by developing low self-esteem and worth
Scott
Disability Identity:
Found blind developed a ‘blind personality’
They internalised the expert’s view that they should be experiencing psychological problems in adjusting to loss of sight
Plummer
Sexuality Identity:
Argues homosexuality is process of discussing the homosexual career
Males who accept label of homosexual seek out others and join subcultures with norms of stereotypical homosexual characteristics
Acceptance and internalisation of the identity creates homosexuality
Weeks
Sexuality Identity:
Found more attention is paid to those who are not heterosexual and is more of an issue for these people
Four years later found sexual identification is a strange thing and being homosexual doesn’t always lead to a homosexual identity
Quinn
Sexuality Identity:
Many Native American tribes celebrate same sex marriage between 2 males. However, one acts as a feminine wife by dressing in female clothing. Same in lesbian marriages.
Sub-Saharan African people have man-boy marriages where the young boy is treated like a female wife
McIntosh
Sexuality Identity:
In the West, homosexual males embrace feminine expectations once they accept their orientation
Can be seen in married men who identify as ‘straight’ but aren’t and don’t exhibit ‘signs of homosexuality’
Paluski and Walter’s
Social Class Identity:
Defined by what we buy and not what we do
Modern UK has choice and power like going to university
Offe
Social Class Identity:
In today’s society, fewer and fewer individuals have a unifying experience of full time work
We are all able to create our own identities regardless of the social class of our family or level of education
Marshall et al
Social Class Identity:
60% of sample thought of themselves as belonging to social class and 90% could place themselves in that class if prompted
75% agreed social mobility was difficult
Savage et al
Social Class Identity:
Few of sample thought Britain was a classless society and most were well aware of strong influence of class in society
However, most saw themselves as outside classes and just ‘ordinary’ individuals
Described a paradox in which class is an important structural force but class identities are generally weak
Rich
Sexuality Identity:
Society demands compulsory heterosexuality through the socialisation of women into subordinate heterosexual roles which ensure availability to men
Women aren’t inherently heterosexual but it is forced upon them
Lesbian identities are constructed as abnormal as they are a threat to male dominance and power over women
Modood
Ethnicity Identity:
‘Asians’ includes a range of different nationalities, religions and languages.
Second-generation ethnic minorities from both African-Caribbean and Asian backgrounds felt much more British than their parents while still seeing their ethnic origin as a key part of their identity
Ghumann
Ethnicity Identity:
Tradition, religion and family values played an important part in the upbringing of second-generation Asians (Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi) in the UK
Gilroy
Ethnicity Identity:
The shared experience of racism and powerlessness can transcend differences in background and history to create a ‘black’ identity
Spencer et al
Ethnicity Identity:
Suggests Eastern European migrants spent relatively little time socialising with British people
Dawney
Ethnicity Identity:
Found evidence of racism against European migrants in the rural community she studied
Largely came from a perceived threat and fear of numbers that didn’t necessarily have a basis in reality
Hewitt
Ethnicity Identity:
Considers a white ‘backlash’ against multiculturalism
Policies designed to achieve equality have been perceived as unfair to the white community
Cashmore and Troyna
Ethnicity Identity:
Tendency for ethnic minorities to ‘turn inwards’ to seek support from within their own
ethnic community
Response to the racism they experience
Winston James
Ethnicity Identity:
Suggests that the experience of racism unified the culture and identity of African-Caribbeans in the UK
Jacobson
Ethnicity Identity:
Many young Pakistanis are adopting a strong Islamic identity as a response to social exclusion from white British society
Brah
Ethnicity Identity:
Young British Asians are skilled cultural code-switchers
Most will find ways to successfully negotiate their own identity as a young person living in a globalised and hybrid culture like the UK
Back
Ethnicity Identity:
Found cultural hybridity in black youths as well as white youths
White youth attracted to aspects of black culture and youth from all backgrounds shared identity based on mixed ethnicity and ‘neighbourhood nationalism’
Batchelor et al
Sexuality Identity:
Heterosexuality dominant sexuality in UK media
Craig
Sexuality Identity:
Homosexual characters presented as camp, macho or deviant in the media
Watney
Sexuality Identity:
British news coverage of aids in 1980s labelled it the ‘gay plague’
Gauntlett
Sexuality Identity:
Homosexuality still underrepresented in media
Growing tolerance for it
Anderson
Nationality Identity:
Argues a ‘nation’ is an ‘imagined community’
Social construction of national identities was facilitated by developments in printing technology
This led to mass circulation of newspapers/books which created a national language
Schuden
Nationality Identity:
British people are socialised by common national culture
Common language and education
Phillips et al
Nationality Identity:
National curriculum supports ideology of nationalism
Key element in creating national identity
Kumar
Nationality Identity:
English find it difficult to say who they are
English national identity is elusive
Hall
Nationality Identity:
Countries have different reactions to globalisation
Cultural Homogenisation: countries accept a global culture and become similar
Cultural Hybridity: take some parts of global culture and develop new but still individual culture
Cultural Resistance: reject global culture and protect heritage
National identity becoming less significant
Sardar
Nationality Identity:
World is in a global identity crisis
UK is confused on whether is should become more European or American
