Identity, difference and exclusion

Question 1

Anthony Gormley

Answer 1

‘Filed for the British Isles’ consists of thousands of unglazed, fired, mall clay figures, packed closely together, staring mutely at the viewer filling every inch of space. As you look closer you start to see an undulating landscape, varying by height and colour and you begin to pick out individual differences. This challenges us to think about our personal and collective identity: who we are and hoe we differ from those around us.

Question 2

Frank Mort (1989)

Answer 2

“We are not in any simple sense ‘black’ or ‘gay’ or ‘upwardly mobile’. Rather we carry a bewildering range of different, and at times conflicting, identities around with us in our heads at the same time. There is a continual smudging of personas and lifestyles, depending where we are and the spaces we are moving between.”

Question 3

Ulrich Beck (1992, 1994)

Answer 3

in late modernity, the hold of these traditional bases of identity has weakened through a process of ‘reflexive modernisation’ (Beck, 1992b; Beck et al, 1994). Beck argues that post-industrial society is characterised by the decreasing constraints of social structures associated with class, gender, family and work, and that a process of increasing individualising is taking place.

Question 4

Essentialism

Answer 4

Common identity charcteristics

Question 5

Relationalism

Answer 5

Our identities are constructed in relation to perceived similarities and differences.

Question 6

Giddens (91)

Answer 6

account of ‘reflexive modernization’ describes identity as a reflexive project, shaped by the institutions of later modernity and sustained through narratives of the self that are continually monitored and constantly revised.

Question 7

Pain et al (2000)

Answer 7

study on the way discourses of old age intersect class, bodily ability and gender in framing of older people’s leisure spaces - Pain and her co-authors explore the ways some older people frame their leisure activities in ways that maintain positive images of themselves through contrast with other groups of older adults.

Question 8

Philo (exclusion)

Answer 8

exclusion refers to: ‘A situation in which certain members of society are, or become, separated from much that comprises the normal “round” of living, and working within that society’.

Question 9

Eisenstadt and Witcher (1998)

Answer 9

social exclusion refers to ‘the outcome of processes and/or factors which bar access to participation in civil society’, including access to ‘legal justice, the labour market and political processes’

Question 10

Ruth Levitas (1998)

Answer 10

A redistributive discourse - people to be excluded as a result of the limited material resources available to them.
A social integrationist discourse stresses the rights and responsibilities of excluded groups. it holds the best way to reintegrate the excluded into mainstream society is by encouraging people into paid work.
A moral underclass discourse sees social exclusion as the result of individual failings and moral degeneracy of the excluded themselves.