Chapter III / Identity Theory
The Trouble with Identity Theory
“The concept of identity has become ubiquitous within the social and behavioral sciences in recent years, cutting across disciplines from psychoanalysis and psychology to political science and sociology. Each of these disciplines, however, has one or more conceptualizations of ‘identity’ that make a common discourse difficult.” (Burke 2003:1)
“There has been a veritable discursive explosion in recent years around the concept of ‘identity’, at the same moment as it has been subjected to a searching critique. How is this paradoxical development to be explained? And where does it leave us with respect to the concept? The deconstruction has been conducted within a variety of disciplinary areas, all of them, in one way or another critical of the notion of an integral, originary and unified identity. … What, then is the need for a further debate about ‘identity’? Who needs it? (Hall and Du Gay 1996:1)
As a first year masters student, I naïvely choose identity as the theoretical subject of my thesis research. I had a simplistic understanding of identity, which was more aligned with a Merriam-Webster dictionary than with any theory in anthropology. That understanding was shattered by the bulk of anthropological debate and critique on the subject. The more I read about identity the less I felt I knew about the concept. I abandoned the effort concept and settled on agency theory instead and was content with my choice until I began my field work. I was looking for women asserting their wills to accomplish goals of resistance against the power of American media and racism. This was what I found; however, it was far more complex and nuanced then I had expected, yet it was indeed present in their actions and lives. That agency, however, was inseparable from identity. Each agentive action was involved in the creation, maintenance, or destruction of an identity meaning or category. Who am I? Who are you? What does it mean to be who I am? How do our identities relate? While at first terrified of the idea, I became immensely interested in the process of identity. The context of the field gave context to the theories and critiques I had previously read and understanding quickly followed. However, this did not solve the problem of processing the “discursive explosion” or the impossibility of finding a “common discourse”.
The literature on identity ranges from extensive theoretical arguments to ethnographies that use identity as if it were an accepted and stable concept with little to no explanation of its usage. As noted by Burke (2003), the concept of identity transcends the social sciences and the humanities with roots in disperse theoretical histories. The trouble with identity is further exacerbated by the larger shifts and critiques in the social sciences which have obliterated much of the original ideas surrounding the concept, particularly the concept of culture.
The following is an overview of some of the more prominent theories of identity. This is not a comprehensive overview of all identity theory. The theories summarized in this chapter are those that have molded and influenced the perspective I have used to interpret my fieldwork, which is outlined in chapter six.
Culture, Personality and Psychology
In the 1920s, thirties and forties, American anthropology developed a substantial amount of work on individual identity and its relationship to wider culture. While today many of the perspectives that came out of this period have been retired in light of post-modern critique and accusations of superficial ethnographic evidence, the formerly controversial notion that personal and emotional identity is connected with greater culture still permeates contemporary theories. Out of Franz Boas’ cultural relativism and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, the school of culture and personality and the study of psychological anthropology were developed. In an effort to detach culture from race, theorists such as Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir and Margaret Mead proposed that culture was instead the accumulation of personalities writ large, configurational theory. Mead, in a 1954 introduction to Benedict’s Patterns of Culture, stated that Benedict contributed to the knowledge of anthropology with, “her view of human cultures as ‘personality writ large,’ her view that it was possible to see each culture, no matter how small and primitive or how large and complex, as having selected from the great arc of human potentialities certain characteristics and then having elaborated them with greater strength and intensity than any single individual could ever do in one life time.” (Mead 1959:vii-viii) Mead, in her own work, furthered the culture and personality perspective with her work on national characters and the socialization of children. Mead argued that, “nations developed ‘personality types’ – national ethoses, associated with particular attitudes, values and styles of behavior.” (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001:63)
Another tangent of the early developments of psychological anthropology grew out of the joint work of Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton (see Kardiner and Linton 1939; Kardiner, et al. 1945; Linton 1945). Kardiner and Linton’s goal was to broaden the horizons of culture to encompass anthropology, sociology and psychology (Linton 1945:xiii). Together they developed personality structure theory, which argued that each culture has its own basic personality, or super-ego, which was created out of the culture’s environments and institutions (Kardiner and Linton 1939:126-134). The individual identities of individuals were then characterizations of the basic personality structure (Kardiner and Linton 1939:126-134). Cora Du Bois, in her book The People of Alor (1944), advanced the concept by changing the basic personality structure to a modal personality structure, “the most representative personality in a given culture.” (Langness 1974:223)
While these perspectives were critiqued by British anthropologists at the time and by new paradigms in later anthropology, the connection between culture and the individual has been largely maintained, albeit in new forms and interpretations. Thus, a basic understanding of these roots is beneficial to any researcher of identity. I take from these early works on identity theory the strong connection between culture and identity. The concept of culture, today, means something quite different than it did in the 1920s, thirties and forties. However, I found that the connection to something or some things that are larger than one’s self was a common theme in the talk of my informants. Culture, in these instances, was not a bounded entity that defined its contents. Rather, culture was the bricolage of discourses, institutions and relationships that created structure and rule to a fleeting feeling of self and self-meaning. None of my observations were of identities that existed outside of “culture”. Further, the concept of identity presented by psychological anthropology and the culture and personality school was the theory most closely aligned with what my informants assumed identity to be. As one woman explained, “My identity comes from what I make of what is out there.” She flung her arms wide, indicating the area outside her body then pointed to her heart and said, “And then I put it in here as my own.” This understanding of identity as being a product of culture was also present in many of the discourses that these women faced. Popular media and individual encounters badgered these women with the idea that they, as individuals, were nothing more than a product of their “culture”. While, these examples are simplistic and hardly represent the breadth of the theorization in early psychological anthropology, I found that these theories were useful to “think with” while listening to the Muslima’s explanations of their identity origins and construction.
Symbolic Interactionism
The theory of symbolic interactionism was coined by, Sociologist, Herbert Blumer in 1937 in the edited volume Man and Society. He later gathered the work of several other contemporary theorists, particularly George Herbert Mead, but also John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley and others, to fully outline the theory in 1969. Blumer (1969) argued that symbolic interactionism grew from a strand of common discourse among the aforementioned scholars and the wider discipline of Sociology (1969:1). However, he had found that there had been, “no clear formulation of the position of symbolic interactionism, and above all, a reasoned statement of the methodological position of this approach [was] lacking.” (1969:1) Thus, he specified three “simple premises.” (1969:2)
The first premises states that, “human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.” (Blumer 1969:2) These “things” include physical objects, other people, ideals, institutions, and any other “thing” that is encountered in daily life (1969:2). The second premise states that, “the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows.” (1969:2) This premise is in opposition to earlier viewpoints that argued that meaning was either an intrinsic, natural property of each object or based on the psychological organization of the observer, such as feelings, sensations, attitudes or memories (1969:4). Both of these alternative viewpoints lack the influence of social interactions, which is present in symbolic interactionism (1969:5). The third premise is that, “these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.” (1969:2) By stating that meaning is created and maintained through social interaction, Blumer separates symbolic interactionism from other sociological theories of the time (1969:5).
Another scholar, Sheldon Stryker took the basic premises of symbolic interactionism that inspired Blumer and applied them to the concept of identity. In his 1968 article, “Identity Salience and Role Performance”, Stryker outlined five axioms of using generalized symbolic interactionism. First, Stryker states:
Behavior is premised on a “named” or classified world, and “names” or class terms carry meaning consisting of shared behavioral expectations emergent from the process of social interaction. One learns, in interaction with others, both how to classify objects with which he comes into contact and how he is expected to behave towards these objects. (Stryker 1968:559)
The second axiom proposes that identity consists of roles or positions (1968:559). Role identities are the positions available for fulfillment in social structures (1968:559), such as mother or sister in kinship structure. The third axiom presented by Stryker accepts that actors within a structure recognize and name other actors and thus create behavior expectations for each role (1968:559). The fourth axiom describes the placement of self within this theory:
Actors within this social structure name themselves as well – it is to these reflexively applied positional designations that the concept of self is typically intended to refer – and in so doing they create internalized expectations with respect to their own behavior. (Stryker 1968:559)
Finally, the fifth axiom of the symbolic interactionist perspective on identity asserts that, “behavior is the product of a role-making process, initiated by expectations but developing through subtle, tentative, probing interchange among actors in given situations that continually reshapes both the form and the content of the interaction.” (1968:559) This is in contrast to the idea that role meanings, internalization, and interaction are a stable system without negotiation (1968:559). Beyond these axioms, Stryker further emphasized that earlier works using the basic premises of symbolic interactionism with identity failed as they failed to move beyond George Herbert Mead’s view of the self and “treat the self as a complex, differentiated unit rather than as an undifferentiated unity,” and they failed to accept the self as an organized structure (1968:559).
Also important in Stryker’s (1968) perspective is the notion of commitment and salience. Stryker defined salience as the probability that a particular role-identity would be invoked over others in an array of different situations (1968:560). However, he also noted that some identity invocations are purely situational, such as the role of parent being invoked when a baby cries in the middle of the night, rather than a political identity (1968:560). Yet, in some cases the salience of a particular identity may still be great enough to invoke a particular identity, even in a “baby crying in the middle of the night situation” (1968:560). Salience is increased by the level of commitment an actor has to a identity (1968:560). Commitment is determined by the cost of giving up a particular identity, where that cost is the connections both in number and intensity to other actors associated with that identity (1968:560).
Later symbolic interactionists added concepts to the theory, most notably new types of identities beyond the role-identities supported by Stryker (1968). The first being social identities or identities that are equated to membership to a particular group, such as racial, ethnic, or class identities (Burke 2003:2). The second identity type, personal identities, consists of personal characteristics, such as stubborn, intelligent or trustworthy (Burke 2003:2). Burke argued that these identity types (role, social and personal) could be viewed as, “isomorphic, but having different bases or sources.” (2003:2)
Burke and others continued to contribute to symbolic interactionism in the 1980s and 90s by presenting evidence that individuals resist changes to the self both in which identities they hold and the meanings associated with those identities (see Burke and Stets 1999; Stets and Burke 2000; Swann 1983). This work led to the identification of the self-verification process wherein actors test the personal meanings of their active identities against the meanings in social contexts and then work to correct discrepancies (Burke 2003:4). Discrepancies between internal meanings and social meanings often lead individuals to feel insecure and unhappy resulting in a lower self-esteem (Burke 2003:4).
On first look, I generally appreciated the theory of symbolic interactionism. The notions of socially mediated identity meanings and a socially constituted self, worked well with my observations of the Muslima and the many others who participated in identity work of Muslims. I often observed the tug and pull between individuals as they negotiated what it meant to be Muslim, female, or covered. Stryker’s notions of salience were also fitting with the young woman who was a devout Muslim woman seeking an arranged marriage at the masjid and a political activist and scholar while addressing passers-by from a Muslim student association booth in front of her college’s student union. Another woman was a group leader and Muslim at the masjid and was a group leader and health nut as a fitness instructor at a local gym. The notion of salience most definitely applied to my observations. However, symbolic interactionism has left me without strong explanations for the role of power and individual agency in salience. Also, the notion of self as rigidly structured and organized conflicted with the often contradictory and seemingly incoherent identity that was played out among the Muslima.
Constructionism: Representation, Semiotics and Discursive Theory
The Influence of Saussure
Identity theories of representation have much of their roots in the work of Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (Hall 1997:31). Saussure’s work, while transformative in its time, as a whole, has been largely abandoned by the social sciences (Hall 1997:34). Yet, the main components of his theories have been adopted by later theorists (see Barthes 1967; Foucault 1980; Hall 1997) and combined with the issues of power, globalization, anti-essentialism and other critiques, making an understanding of Saussure’s work invaluable to any student of identity.
The fundamentals of Saussure’s theory of representation lie in the concept of signs. Signs, prior to Saussure, were generally viewed as “terms” which corresponded to “things”, for example, the Latin word arbor would correspond to the tangible object, tree (Saussure 1959:65). Saussure argued that this simplistic perception, “leads one to assume that the link between a name and a thing is something quite unproblematic, which is far from being the case” (1959:66). Instead, he theorized that a sign is instead a combination of two elements, signification and signal (Saussure 1959:67). The signification portion of the sign is the “sound pattern” or the linguistic element, such as the Latin word arbor (Saussure 1959:67), which seemingly corresponds to the prior concept of sign. However, Saussure clarified his usage of sound pattern to mean, not the physical sound of the utterance, but the, “hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses” (1959:66). With this statement, he included internal thoughts to the actual verbal utterances, making the case that the, “linguistic sign is, then, a two-sided psychological entity,” (1959:66) rather than something that exists outside of the human psyche. The second half of the Saussure’s concept of the sign is the signal. Like signification, signals to do not directly correspond to the former theory. Signals do not equate to physical objects like trees. Instead, Saussure argued, that signals are the psychological conceptualizations of tangible objects (1959:66).
Saussure also stressed the importance of accepting the arbitrariness of the connection between the signification and the signal (1959:68). This arbitrary connection is the basis for two complimentary arguments in theories of representation: first, that there is no natural link between signifiers and the signified and second, the link is created socially through cultural codes that are not permanently fixed (Hall 1997:31). With this argument, Saussure opened the door for himself and other social theorists to conceptualize signs and their meanings as socially and culturally constructed and thus reflective of and influenced by social structures and culture (Hall 1997:33).
The social aspect of signs opened up their meaning to being positioned into contexts of history, institution and culture. This means that there is a, “constant sliding of meaning in all interpretation , a margin – something in excess of what we intend to say – in which other meanings overshadow the statement or the text, where other associations are awakened to life, giving what we say a different twist” (Hall 1997:33). This “sliding” requires both the speaker and the listener in equal parts for understanding, making meaning a socially mediated process (Hall 1997:33).
Another essential part to Saussure’s theory of representation and language is the concept of langue and parole. Langue, Saussure argued was the overall system of structure in language, specifically grammar (Hall 1997:33). Parole is the everyday practices of speech acts in social life (Hall 1997:33). Saussure preferred to study the structural formations of language in hopes of finding broad understandings of culture (Hall 1997:34). This focus, however, is often considered his detriment by his critics as he failed to see the power in the system of language, communication and meaning that is found on the level of parole (Hall 1997:34). Later theorists, found that his emphasis on langue as a closed system was also dubious (Hall 1997:34).
Barthes and Semiotics
“In his Course in General Linguistics, first published in 1916, Saussure postulated the existence of a general science of signs, or Semiology, of which linguistics would form only one part. Semiology therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification. (Barthes 1967:9)
In 1967, Roland Barthes argued for the usefulness of semiotics and its place in 1960s social sciences in . To begin, Barthes submitted that semiotics belonged solely in linguistics rather than linguistics being only a portion of semiotics, as was argued by Saussure (1967:9-10). Barthes found that, “objects, images and patterns of behavior can signify, and do so on a large scale, but never autonomously; every semiological system has its linguistic admixture” (1967:10). Under Barthes and other semiological theorists, semiotics broadened to encompass not just traditional linguistic signs, such as words, but to encompass any object that carries meaning, such as clothes, food, or advertisements (Hall 1997:37). In these cases the objects are the signifiers and the articulated concepts are the signified (Hall 1997:37). For example, in the context of Muslim-phobic discourses, the signifier hijab would be articulated with the signified concept of oppression. Barthes created further specificity in this concept by arguing that in such cases there are two levels to the process of signification: denotation and connotation (Barthes 1967:89). Denotation being the first act of signification where the cut of the cloth and the arrangement of the cloth on a Muslim woman’s head signifies the concept hijab. The second act of signification would be the connection of hijab to oppression, called connotation. In his 1957 book Mythologies, Barthes describes another process of signification linked to myth and ideology. He makes the argument that in some cases collections of signs can be combined in structural ways to reach a wider signification that leads the reader to ideological meanings, such as the American dream, French nationalism and so on (Barthes 1972[1957]).
Through semiotics, identity is brought out in the signification of individuals and groups. Identity is thus negotiated through the linguistic process of signification, where the concepts of identity traits and categories signify individuals or groups. Including Barthes’ concept of myth, semiotics continue to reach into identity to explain the ideological meanings associated with various groups or individuals as stereotypes.
Foucault and Discursive Theory
“Neither the dialectic, as logic of contradictions, nor semiotics as the Structure of communicators can account for the intrinsic intelligibility of conflicts. ‘Dialectic’ is a way of evading the always open and hazardous reality of conflict by reducing it to a Hegelian skeleton, and ‘semiology’ is a way of avoiding its violent, bloody and lethal character by reducing it to the calm platonic form of language and dialogue.” (Foucault 1980:114-115)
Foucault’s influence on representation was transformative. As a leader in the postmodern movement, Foucault’s work was focused not on the structure of language, but on power, knowledge and contextualization and the subject (Hall 1997:42). Foucault argued that instead of studying meaning, the social sciences should be concerned with social knowledge and instead of studying language, they should examine discourse, which encompassed, language, speech, power and social practices (Hall 1997:44). Foucault argued that there is no meaning outside discourse, as all meaning is created through social practices and shared knowledge (Hall 1997:45). It is this statement that places Foucault’s discursive theories into constructivism, as meanings are socially constructed through discourses, rather than existing a priori (Hall 1997:45).
Stuart Hall (1997) outlined six elements required for a discursive method of studying a concept. First, one needs statements about the concept from the discourse. Second, one needs to understand the rules about what is appropriate to say or think in a given context, including geography, institution and history. Third, one needs individual actors who personify the concept. Fourth, one must identify the source of the discourse’s authority. Fifth, one must observe the practices within institutions for dealing with the individuals who personify the concept. Finally, an acknowledgement that over time discourses will change to reflect societal changes, thus the discursive formation at hand will be replaced. (Hall 1997:45-46)
The perspectives of constructionism and discursive theory meshed well with my observations in the field. The social mediation of identity was ever present in the talk and actions of the Muslima. Discursive theory, particularly Foucault’s contributions, brought forward the inherent power and hegemony in the system that I found lacking in symbolic interactionism. However, Foucault left little power to the individual to effect change in one’s identity and the identities of others. The agent was of lesser concern in Foucault’s writing and he passed before being given the chance to address the nature of each agent’s place in negotiating identity through discourse. Yet, these constructivist perspectives have made up the base of my understanding of identity as a socially mediated and powerful process that is continuously negotiated in social action and social knowledge.
Fractured Self and Illusionary Wholeness
Katherine Ewing wrote The Illusion of Wholeness to, “argue that in all cultures people can be observed to project multiple, inconsistent self-representations that are context-dependent and may shift rapidly” (1990:251). The concept of inconsistency, she argued, may seem counterintuitive to representation of the self as a whole; however, Ewing observed that the inconsistency in self representation is so ubiquitous in social interactions that it goes by generally unnoticed (1990:252). Discussion of the self existed in two seemingly contradicting conversations in Anthropology and psychoanalytics (1990:254).
Psychoanalysis has produced three general conceptualizations of the self (Ewing 1990:254). The first conceptualization of self is the, “physical organism, all aspects of psychological functioning, and social attributes” (Ewing 1990:254). This perspective is the commonly held understanding of the self that is popular in lay discourse. The second conceptualization of the self is self-representation, which Ewing argues is the version of the self that is most akin to anthropological discussions of the culturally constructed self (1990:255). The third conceptualization of the self is represented by the work of Heinz Kohut (1971; 1977). Kohut argued that the self was independent, cohesive and bounded and he recognized no difference between the self as an agent and self as representation (Ewing 1990:255). Ewing asserts that Kohut’s version of the self was the most damaging as it was “most infused with culturally shaped biases about self-experience and is thus least useful for anthropologists studying the self in other cultures” (Ewing 1990:255).
Anthropological discussions on the concept of self have generally been culturally relativistic, arguing that the self entirely flexible and can vary greatly across cultures (Ewing 1990:256). This, Ewing argued, is the result of a strong negative reaction to the work of Kohut (1990:257). She also argued that the anthropological reaction to the work of Kohut was too extreme and that it generally confused self as self-representation and self as actor (1990:257). Prior to the 1990s, anthropological research into the self was also generally concerned with contrasting a “western” self with the self of another culture to underline the lack of a universal self. Ewing suggested that while these studies argued against a universal self that they generally accepted the notion of a cohesive self type that is adopted by members of a culture (1990:257). This notion of a cohesive self type for each culture “rests on a further assumption that, until very recently, has been the prevailing paradigm in cultural anthropology: that “cultures” themselves are coherent systems” (Ewing 1990:257).
Ewing’s 1990 article, The Illusion of Wholeness, was meant to be a strong break from earlier anthropological thoughts on the self. She argued that “individuals are continuously reconstituting themselves into new selves in response to internal and external stimuli” (1990:258). To create new selves, individuals pulled from socially mediated and constructed self representations (1990:258). The creation and appearance of each self is strongly dependent on its context and are often contradictory, even within the same context (Ewing 1990:259). To the observer, Ewing argued, it is impossible to identify and “overarching cohesive self”, even among individuals in western societies that believe this to be a natural state of self (1990:259).
Although Ewing found the cohesive self to be illusionary, she continued on to stress the importance of the illusion. Individuals require and organizing system of the self to signify the acting individual and create authenticity in self representation and to avoid psychosis (1990:265-266). Ewing argued that collections of personal memories organized by cultural schemas allow individuals to create self representations that feel timeless and that self history created the illusion of self as a timeless whole (1990:268). By only using one set of these personal memories at a time, individuals can overcome great disparities in self-representation, particularly in times of conflict (1990:274).
Ewing’s article transformed my perspective on self and identity. Often in anthropological literature, self and identity are used interchangeably or are used in unspecific ways that make a clear understanding of the difference difficult to discern. Ewing used the concept of self in a highly specific way that allowed me to tease apart the separate portions of the process, if not in reality, at least for heuristic purposes. The self, as described by Ewing, fits well within my perspective as the collective resource of memories that can be called upon in identity actions. By distancing the self from the essential meaning of a person and focusing more on the self as personal history and memory, Ewing and I have both been able to draw attention to the constant contradictions and slipping of identity without conceding the nature of individuals to be inherently dishonest or to be suffering from psychosis. This was particularly important during my observations of the relationship between American, Islamic and ethnic identity, where the women’s selves in the span of a few short sentences could be represented as one but not another or multiple at once. In many instances the identity of American would be represented as part of a woman’s identity and in the same sentence be representative of an other who was ignorant and racist against her Muslim heritage. For these reasons, Ewing’s “The Illusion of Self” has played an integral role in molding my perspective on identity and self.
Gender Studies and Feminist Contributions to Identity
Feminist and gender studies have had a considerable impact on nearly all areas of the social sciences, identity studies included. The discipline has evolved from a movement of women’s rights and the search for the universal experience of womanhood to the study of the social construction of womanhood to the study of gender construction and sexuality to the post-modern critique of identity, self and other, positionality and other post-modern concerns (Lewin 2006). In the early feminist anthropology literature, talk of identity began by deconstructing the basic assumptions built on male and female identities. Nancy Chodorow (1974) began this by unhinging the link between biology and femininity and masculinity. By using psychoanalytical methods and drawing on Freud’s Oedipus complex, she argues that gender is constructed in early childhood through socialization and enculturation not inherent biological properties of men and women (Chodorow 1974). Sherry Ortner (1974) attempted with a Levi-Straussian structuralist perspective to define the dichotomy of male and female with the concepts of culture and nature. Gayle Rubin (1975) argued that, “the feminist movement must dream of even more than the elimination of the oppression of women. It must dream of the elimination of obligatory sexualities and sex roles” (1975:204). Michelle Rosaldo (1980) argued that earlier assertions of dichotomous categories of gender were problematic. She argued instead that such analyses perpetuated the models that oppressed women and that gender hierarchies and the reasons for them are as diverse as the people that live within them (Rosaldo 1980). While much of this literature was motivated by feminist activism, it also created a niche within anthropology for studying gender and sexual identity as a social construction. This view of identity as a social construction was questioned and developed within feminist anthropology by many scholars and is still a consistent matter of inquiry today. However, I would like to review four feminist scholars, Judith Butler (1999[1990]), Evelyn Blackwood (1998), Gloria Wekker (1999), and Karla Slocum (2001) , who contributed the deconstruction of identity in different and compelling ways.
Judith Butler, over the course of her career, has worked to undermine essentialist and sexist assumptions in the construction of gender and sexual identity. Her most influential work came in her 1990 book, Gender Trouble. In Gender Trouble, she argued first that the separation of sex and gender, with the former representing natural pre-discursive categories and the later representing cultural constructions, was highly problematic (1999[1990]:163-171). Instead, she argued that sexed bodies were socially constructed, just as gender and sexuality are constructed (1999[1990]:169-171). She continues on to make the case for performative gender, which entails not an essential embodiment of gender and sexuality but the illusion of a whole and stable identity created through a series of acts, gestures and performances (1999[1990]:173). By viewing gendered and sexual identities as constituted with performative acts, Butler made the case that a universal identity that persists over time and place is impossible (1999[1990]:171). A fluid and changeable system of gender and sexuality is then, “open to intervention and resignification. Even when gender seems to congeal into the most reified forms, the ‘congealing’ is itself an insistent and insidious practice, sustained and regulated by various means” (1999[1990]:43). With this theorization of identity she argued for creating gender trouble, subversive acts, to counteract the hegemonic discourses that maintain the illusion of sustained and natural gender and sexual identities (1999[1990]:185-186).
Blackwood (1998), in her study of tombois in West Sumatra, challenged the dominate western categories of lesbian sexuality and sexual gender construction by demonstrating that the cowok and cewek were not alternative genders but women that fit into traditional gender roles by behaving in male or female roles. Blackwood’s original assumptions concerning identity came from the perspective that there were cross-cultural categories from which each person could pick their identity (1998). Specifically, she stated that her original beliefs on identity construction were based on western categories of butch and femme lesbians (1998:491). However, her fieldwork led her to argue that identity is not only situated based on individual perceptions but is also situated in the global understandings of identity categories and that hegemonic structures of identity construction vary from place to place (Blackwood 1998). Specifically, Blackwood found that even though butch and femme lesbian identities were commonplace categories in American society, applying them to other groups such as the cewek and cowok of West Sumatra did not accurately represent the behaviors and representations of their lived experience (1998). The cewek and cowok categories were created in a particular historical and social moment that incorporated some transnational ideas such as butch and femme, but largely were local constructs (1998). Blackwood argued that, “Identity for tombois in West Sumatra at this point in time is a bricolage, a mix of local, national and transnational identities” (1998:511). She concluded that identity categories need to be seen as positioned within the local, national and transnational discourses to truly useful tools of analyses (1998:511-512).
Wekker (1999) found that, in her study of mati work in Suriname, sexuality and gender were generally unrelated; sexuality was seen as part of the human condition rather than as part of a gendered identity. Further, she argued that sexuality was not used as an identity characteristic, as it was accepted as a ubiquitous behavior of both genders (1999:125). She argued that western identity characteristics and the concept of identity itself are not necessarily part of the perspective of for those being studied, who may construct self in ways that are not as personal as the concept of identity. She also found that self, in the western sense of a sum of properties, did not apply to her informants, as their construction of self was quite disparate from the western perspective. She observed the self of Suriname to be constructed of three parts, mi which is a singular self similar to western thought and mi yeye, which consists of a male and female god (1999:125). Thus, with the multiplicity of self construction and with the lack of cross-cultural properties, Wekker concluded that identity was not a useful tool for comparing cross-culturally and she argued that identity should be viewed solely as an emic construction (1999:133-134).
Slocum’s article (2001) on black feminist identity in the Caribbean looked at identity as a problematic issue because of identity situatedness and the power constructions inherent in the identity construction of the anthropologist and the people with which the anthropologists works. Slocum presented identity as a sum of certain properties such as black, woman and American or Grenadian (2001). She demonstrated her view of identity as being constructed not of just properties but also that each property represented a membership to a particular group (2001). Slocum stated that she originally believed identity to be an internal construction, meaning that each person’s identity was what they chose it to be (2001:134). However, over the course of her fieldwork, she found flaws in this hypothesis; identity as a means for distinguishing membership to groups was far more complicated than she had originally thought. She argued that membership to certain groups could be compromised because of membership to others (2001:145). For example, her membership to the black community had to be negotiated with her membership to America; her membership to womanhood had to be negotiated with her membership to bachelorette-hood (2001:142). Thus each property of her identity did not give a straightforward membership to a particular group (2001). More importantly, however, Slocum found that identity was not an internal construction but a, “mutual construction of one another – constructions that shape the nuanced nature of the stranger-friend dynamic, and that ultimately determine under which conditions we can be close and under which we are distant” (2001:145). Slocum still retained the property based identity construction; however, she altered the constructor and the simplicity of the relationships between properties by situating them within cultural constructs and power relationships (Slocum 2001).
There are several lessons that I have taken from feminist identity theories. From Butler, I have gleaned the performative nature of identity. Often, my observations of identity among the Muslima included performances, indicated by changes in tone, posture and language. Butler also inspired many to question the assumed natural categories and properties of identity. Butler focused on sex, gender and sexuality, however, the idea is quite easily applied to other categories that are part of cultural doxa. Blackwood presented an interesting case of identity negotiation that involved discourses from the personal level to the transnational level. The Muslima negotiated their identities in their homes, in the masjid, in Baton Rouge, nationally and globally. One woman’s life forced her to confront wifehood and its associated meanings in her past with her Christian ex-husband and in her home with her current Muslim husband, and in Pakistan where she refused to be a signed witness for a marriage where she felt the marriage contract violated the bride’s identity as a wife and Muslim woman. These infinite discourses way heavily on the interpretation of each identity action to understand what context is being invoked. Blackwood’s case of the cowek and cewek were an excellent example of working with multiple influences on identity. Wekker’s article, while I generally disagree with the premise that identity as a concept is anthropologically useless, I agree that the study of identity as a system of names and symbols rather than a complex process is not useful in today’s anthropology. Slocum’s article was particularly useful to think with as it raised the issue of my identity as an ethnographer. Like Slocum, I was often identified as something quite different than I had either expected or particularly wished to be identified with. I also frequently used my identity as a tool to gain specific responses from the Muslima. Several of the women who belonged to my mother’s generation were particularly interested in discussing issues that they felt should be important to me as a young woman about to be married (I was married on June 14th, approximately half way through my fieldwork). I was often perceived as non-Muslim with little knowledge of what it meant to be a Muslim woman and thus I was often lectured on the primary features of Islam and womanhood in Islam. However, I was often able to use my identity as a Michigander to gain insider status on complaints about “Americans” and non-Muslims. Slocum’s article inspired me to place more of myself in the interactions I recorded to get a fuller picture of the identity actions taking place.
The Intersection of Identity and Agency
Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner and Carole Cain, in their 1998 book Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, described a theory for the junction of identity and agency. Holland et al. began this work by positioning their work in the discourses of anthropology, describing the work as being, “at heart an anthropological and cultural studies adaptation of sociogenic concepts of personhood developed within the American school of social psychology that claims G. H. Mead as its founder” (1998:4). Their work was significantly influenced by the work of Russian theorists, Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky, as well as the work of Pierre Bourdieu.
Holland et al. described two themes in the theories of the self and identity, culturalism and constructivism. The first, culturalism, they described as viewing the actor as one who, “seeks to conduct herself so as to do right by a preconstituted, culturally given, and moral world” (Holland, et al. 1998:13). In other words, the culturalist actor relies on culture to frame and give meaning to a given situation and the actor’s identity and then to instruct the actor’s action. The latter position, constructivism, they described as viewing the actor as one who, “responds instead to the social claims that the particular situation allows” (Holland, et al. 1998:13). In other words, the constructivist position, rooted in sociolinguistics, argues that when the actor interacts with others the meanings of the situation and the actor’s identity are created through situation-specific social positioning. Holland et al. argue that neither perspective is complete and that only by putting the two perspectives into a dialogic frame can a complete view be constructed (1998:15).
From this dialogic perspective, Holland et al. established self as developing, “through and around the cultural forms by which they are identified, and identify themselves, in the context of their affiliation or disaffiliation with those associated with those forms and practices” (1998:33). They cited the “critical disruption”, created by postmodernism, feminism and post-colonialism in anthropology, as the end of the types of questions of self that were being asked by earlier theorists, particularly the question of the universal versus culturally specific self (Holland, et al. 1998:20-28).
“In anthropology the demise of the privileged concept of bounded, discrete, coherent cultures has made room for the recognition that people are exposed to competing and differentially powerful and authoritative discourses and practices of self” (1998:29).
Instead, they argued, that new directions were emerging in ethnography that emphasized three new components of self studies (1998:28). First, practices and discourses of the self are seen as “living tools of the self – as artifacts or media that figure the self constitutively, in open-ended ways” (1998:28). Second, the self is seen as embed in social practice rather than as a constant state of being. Third, the centers of self production, “sites of self,” are accepted as plural and are often contradictory (1998:28). Because of these changes in contemporary thought, and, “if people are not seen simply as living enactments of core cultural themes, then anthropologists are free, indeed pushed, to ask a broader range of questions about experience and subjectivity and the role of cultural resources in the constitution of experience” (1998:31). In Identity and Agency (1998) they used Vygotsky’s concept of semiotic mediation devices, tools created to control one’s memory and behavior, to ask questions of individuals’ control over their identity and the agency that stems from that identity. For example, Holland et al. provide the example of hunger:
“Hunger when one feels no right to request food from one’s hosts is likely to feel different from hunger when one is a customer in an expensive restaurant and the food has been inordinately delayed.” (1998:40)
In the first situation, one’s perception of her position in relation to her host’s allows the actor to pull from the situation mediating devices, such as the meaning of the request for food, to control her response to hunger and her subsequent action. While in the second situation an individual would likely have different mediating tools, such as the meanings of customer service, to guide her action. From this, Holland et al. (1998) argue that identities are heuristically developed. Meaning that identities are created, altered and maintained as tools for social mediation.
Another important discussion in Identity and Agency (Holland, et al. 1998), is the concept of figured worlds. Figured worlds, which were drawn from the concept of activity theorized by one of Vygotsky’s student’s, Leontiev, are “socially produced, culturally structured activities” (1998:40-41). Holland et al. outline four premises for the concept of figured worlds. The first states that figured worlds are historically based, meaning that they are contextualized rather than free standing in history, including both collective history of the figured world and the individual histories of the actors who encounter them (1998:41). Second, the positions of participants in a figured world matter, in that the positions of actors dictates the relations of people within figured worlds and may also prevent some actors from ever encountering a figured world (1998:41). Third, “figured worlds are socially organized and reproduced,” (1998:41) meaning that in order for a figured world to perpetuate through history actors must continue to interact within its frames. Finally, figured worlds are characteristic of human societies, not merely “some abstract division of labor.”
Finally, Holland’s et al. concept of identity is placed with agency in the concept of self authoring. Self authoring , based on the work of Bakhtin, is the idea that individual actors must author themselves by orchestrating the many voices that come from each individual’s selves in inner speech and then using the mediating tools of current figured worlds to create an authorial stance (1998:178-180). Agency then lies in the process of authoring the self given the constraints and tools available to the individual given their positions and their participation in figured worlds.
Holland’s et al. work at first seemed to be the answer to my questions on the relationship between identity and agency. However, their work failed to place the amount of emphasis on action and agency that I had hoped for. The work more often found the intersection of agency and identity rather than demonstrating one as a form of the other. My fieldwork led me to more strongly associate identity as a form of agency rather than a free standing concept. Further, Holland et al. only marginally explored the concept of agency itself leaving one half of a single page to this endeavor. My prior research on agency led me to find agency to be a complex concept that requires far more explanation and exploration than was offered by Holland et al. With this in mind, Identity and Agency put forth useful ideas and concepts that have been beneficial in organizing and constructing my perspective. At the forefront of this is the concept of figured worlds. The concept, figured world, gave structure and organization to my understanding of context in identity interactions. Even if such structure was mainly for heuristic purposes, I found it useful for organizing the contexts of the identity acts that I observed in the field. In the next chapter I have explored the concept of agency more fully and in chapter six I have outlined my complete perspective on identity and agency.
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