What Is Identity? Flashcards
What is Identity?
How you see yourself and how others see you
Personal identity
Aspects that are unique to yourself and separate you from others, your personal feelings
Social identity
Aspects we have in common with others, how you categorise yourself in relations to groups
What are the two ways of acquiring an identity?
Achieved and ascribed, e.g. family role is ascribed but work role is achieved
What contributes to someone acquiring an identity?
Agents of socialisation
What do structural theories say about acquiring an identity?
Identity is ascribed through the agents of socialisation and structures in society, we are passive individuals and cannot change our identities
What do social action theories say about acquiring an identity?
We have human agency and can chose aspects of our identity
What are the structural theories?
Feminism, functionalism, Marxism
What are the social action theories?
Post-modernism, symbolic interactionism
What is identity like in modern society?
Defined by place in social structures, gender, class, family and work
What is identity like in post modernity?
Defined by personal choice and individualism, the influence of the media
What is a contested concept?
No agreed way of defining and studying it
Identity as sameness
Based around characteristics or features shared with others
Identity as difference
Characteristics or features that make you different from others around you
What does Woodward argue about identity?
An element of choice is required to have an identity, we choose to identity with something, it is difficult unless individual exercised choice I doing so, it is about belonging to something
