Below is my defense presentation. Enjoy!

Transcript

[click] In 2008, I worked with an Islamic center in Louisiana to investigate the ways that Muslim women were navigating the complex social landscapes of post-9/11 life. While I worked in the field and wrote my thesis, there were sixty-five million statements made about Muslim women on the internet and nearly twenty thousand scholarly statements in books and peer-reviewed journals. My small niche in this discourse is to demonstrate how a small group of Muslim women live each day without being overcome by the robust discourses defining who they are and who they are not. I have attempted to show through anthropological literature and a series of narratives and analyses, how these women interact with a social world where their identities are constantly debated and what this means for the anthropology of identity and practice.

[click] The theoretical perspective for my thesis is a practice approach to identity. I combined the practice theories of Sherry Ortner and William Sewell with a bricolage of established identity theories, including symbolic interactionism, constructionism and discursive theories, and more contemporary works such as Holland’s Agency and Identity and Ewing’s Fractured Self.

[click] Classic understandings of identity in Anthropology focused on identity as an essential meaning of a person or group. However, as anthropology has grown though feminist, post-colonialist and postmodern critiques, this static and essentialist concept no longer fits the current direction of Anthropological research or reflects contemporary ethnographic observations.

[click] Practice theory provides a framework for examining identity as a combination of knowledge and action mediated by power, culture and personal and local — projects and desires. The following is a portion of the interaction that I used in my thesis to explain my perspective.

[click] Adiba and I had just met and she asked me, “Why do you want to study Muslims?” [click] My project or goal was to gain a rapport with Adiba so that she would agree to work with me. So, I gathered resources from our context to create a representation that I thought would help me achieve that goal. [click] From the local context, I used the knowledge that most people in the community saw Michigan and its inhabitants as particularly sympathetic and knowledgeable about Islam. [click] From my self knowledge, I used the knowledge that I was from Michigan. [click] From my knowledge of Adiba, I used our similarities to find ways that we could easily relate, such as humor. [click] There were also resources available to me that I did not use as I didn’t believe that they would help me accomplish my goal, such as my childhood interest in alien involvement in the ancient Middle East as the beginning of my interest in the Middle Eastern religion. [click] From the national discourses, I used the tragedy of 9/11… [click] …in conjunction with my knowledge of Adiba being part of a community that had suffered from the backlash after 9/11 to cement my sympathetic relationship to her. [click] I said, “Well, I grew up in Michigan and I don’t know if you know but there is a rather large population of Muslims there. (LAUGH.) After 9/11 I was heartbroken to see the culture I had grown up admiring being publically denounced by such a large part of the country.” [click] I had created a representation of myself as a sympathetic insider to Adiba’s culture.

[click] However, Adiba also had a project of her own. She wanted to understand my agenda so that she could decide on how to deal with me. [click] She had knowledge of herself as one who is exceptionally familiar with the conversion process. [click] From the local discourses, she used the popular idea that anyone who was sufficiently informed about Islam would be powerless to resist conversion. [click] From her knowledge of me, she knew that I claimed to be well informed and… [click] …I did not appear to be a Muslim. [click] So she said, “But you have never converted?” [click] Her feedback on my representation was that it was dubious as it seemed to contradict her knowledge of me and the categories I was claiming. [click] During the rest of our interaction, I addressed her concerns and we both settled on representations of each other that would define most of our relationship.

[click] One problem with early identity theory is in dealing with change and multiplicity. Through practice, change is held in the creativity and ingenuity of actors and is made possible through the multiplicity of resources for creating meanings and power. The possibility of multiplicity within individuals also creates the flexibility for individuals and groups to navigate difficult and often rigid landscapes without losing one’s self.

[click] Yusraa’s narrative represented a strategy for coping with the changes in one’s environment. Yusraa created internal representations to change her self knowledge and the knowledge she held about the identities of those around her. [click] Yusraa immigrated to the United States in the 1970s after she got married. Yusraa thought of herself as a very social person. Her new life in the United States however, found her living in a one bedroom apartment with reclusive neighbors and no friends or family living in the states.  Her husband, a doctor, worked long hours and spent much of his time socializing with his male colleagues.  [click] Like many of the immigrants I worked with, Yusraa believed that Americans were isolationists and unsocial, while she viewed people from her home country as social and family oriented. For this reason, she initially resisted changing her knowledge of herself to incorporate an “American” identity.

[click] However, over time she became desperate for interaction and began calling numbers from the phonebook where the names sounded Arabic. She eventually reached a woman who would speak with her. The friendship that blossomed from this phone call helped her accept that the social part of her life could take place in contexts outside of her home, rather than the in home social context she was used to in the Middle East. [click] This small change inspired her to leave her home to seek out social engagements through hobby groups. With the success of these outings, she began to accept that being American did not mean being anti-social, allowing her to begin to accept the representation of herself as American. [click] However, her limited resources for transportation still isolated her from much of the interaction she desired. To cement her acceptance of this new type of social identity, she procured a bike as a means to freely interact with her community. She had never owned a bike prior to this and being a bicyclist held meaning for her beyond just a woman who rides a bike. It was a crucial part of her understanding of herself as an American. Without it, she was still an immigrant who lacked the resources to meet her desire to be herself. [click] Thus, when her husband represented her bicycling identity as anti-Muslim and poor womanly behavior, she fought valiantly to protect this portion of her identity and rejected his representation of her. Their inability to agree upon a representation of Yusraa in facted ended their marriage. Today, nearly thirty years later, Yusraa still rides her bike as her primary form of transportation. Her identity as a bicyclist has grown to incorporate more meanings including health and wellbeing. She has also refused to purchase a car as she feels that the isolation of the vehicle constrains her social sensibility.

[click] Power in the practice of identity is the ability to create salience for a representation or an identity meaning beyond the interaction it was created for or enough salience to overcome competing representations. Hegemony in the practice of identity is then the total salience of a representation where the representation masquerades as natural.

[click] Jamilah was one of the only black women who attended the masjid. She was the only black non-convert. In my thesis, I used  a narrative from my first interview with Jamilah where she described her struggle with her racial identity in the United States. To further illustrate the hegemony of the “black” identity, I want to share a couple other examples of identity interactions that I was present for with Jamilah.

[click] During a Ramadan outreach event that was advertised in the local paper and on the internet (meaning that the event’s attendants generally did not know each other, unlike the sponsored group events), Jamilah was approached by an African American guest. The woman was wearing a large blue hat and a long dress with three-quarter sleeves, typical Sunday dress for many of the African American churches in town. Her hair was tightly pinned under her hat. Jamilah was dressed as she usually was in a simple long sleeved dress, slightly more fitted than an abaya, with a loosely pinned hijab covering most of her hair. [click] The Christian woman told Jamilah that she had been worried about dressing appropriately for the event. She then told Jamilah that Jamilah’s dress and head covering was quite respectful of the Muslim community and that had she had a scarf she would have covered her hair too. [click] Jamilah, kindly corrected her and told her that she was a Muslim and not a guest, which was why she had her hair covered. [click] The Christian woman looked scandalized and gasped and then exclaimed, “But honey you’re black!” [click] Jamilah who is often confronted with confusion about her Muslim and Black identities simply chuckled. [click] The Christian woman then asked if Jamilah practiced “Black Islam”, implying that Jamilah’s blackness should cause her to be a “special” kind of Muslim. [click] Jamilah explained that she was born in a Muslim majority country in Africa and that she did follow the Nation of Islam. Despite Jamilah’s presence in the masjid and her traditional Muslim attire and her physical position among the other Muslim women in the room, the representation of her as Black was more salient than her Muslim representation. Throughout my fieldwork, Jamilah was frequently mistaken for non-Muslim or as a member of the Nation of Islam because of the amount of melanin in her skin. She used her wardrobe and her speech to represent herself as Muslim and frequently and explicitly described herself as African and not Black. However, the hegemonic power behind racial representations negated her representations even among her friends and fellow Muslims.

[click] I came to realize over the course of my relationship with Jamilah that while she fiercely resisted representing herself as a black African American, the power of the black representation forced her to incorporate blackness into herself knowledge.

[click] While vast power and hegemony played a large role in the lives of my informants, their everyday lives were imbued more with their agency as they attempted to meet goals, complete projects and meet their desires with intentional action. [click] Akilah is a passionate convert, who faced a great deal of adversity when she chose Islam over her Southern Baptist upbringing. Like most of the convert women, Akilah felt that she was fighting two battles in managing her identity as a Muslim woman. On one front were the popular post-9/11 discourses that deemed her an ignorant and oppressed woman. On another front she faced a barrage of “cultural” practices masquerading as “true” Islam.

[click] Akilah is an exceptionally meticulous woman. When she began to consider conversion she spent months pouring over her Bible and a copy of the Quran. On my first visit to her home she showed me the forty-odd notebooks that she had filled with comparative notes.  She converted because as she said, “She compared every piece of the Bible to the Quran, most of the time things were the same and when they weren’t she agreed more with the Quran.” [click] With her meticulous nature and the competing representations of Muslim women, Akilah liked to clearly outline what Islam was and what it meant to be a Muslim. She was very decisive in her representations. In the example I used in my thesis, Akilah used this decisiveness to create a solid representation of her friend as a bride, wife and Muslim that suited her project of clarifying feminine Muslim Identity. Akilah approached much of the interactions in her life this way.

[click] In 2003, a close Muslim friend of Akilah’s had gotten cancer. When her friend began staying in the hospital she faced trouble with the general ignorance of the hospital staff. Akilah met with the director of the hospital and organized a group of women from the masjid to hold yearly seminars with the hospital staff on how to work with female Muslim patients. In 2008, I was able to accompany her to that year’s seminar.

[click] Akilah began by explaining “Who is this Muslim Woman?” with a list of three things that Muslim women are and are not. She first created a representation of what Akilah thought were the most common assumptions that the doctors, nurses and hospital staff had about Muslim women. She used her experiences (and the experiences of her peers) of being represented by this group as resources for this representation.

[click] Then she created a complimentary representation that she called the “truth”. This representation of Muslim women as conscious of their modesty, being family oriented and educated English speakers is not the entirety of what Akilah thought it meant to be a Muslim woman. The representation was being used as a tool to accomplish her goal of changing the treatment of Muslim women in the hospital. The representation of a woman fearful of her modesty wishes not being respected in the context of an American hospital with non-Muslim explained the employee’s observations of apprehension with something that would seem more rational to them than the popular notion that Muslim women fear medicine and doctors.

[click] Akilah had seven slides with these side by side representations. Her presentation was well received by the hospital employees present and the women I spoke to who had been to the hospital unanimously agreed that they were treated better and their identities were less contested by hospital staff since Akilah had begun these training sessions.

[click] By creating two sets of representations one that fit the misconceptions of her audience and one that used the structure of the first but with “true” meanings associated with each category she made her representations easier to understand and accept as she did not completely dismiss the thoughts and observations of the staff. She merely adjusted their representation. This could be heard in the murmurings and discussion of the staff during and after the presentation, such as “Oh that explains (X behavior).” and “I never thought about that that way.”

[click] Through my thesis, I have attempted to demonstrate that identity when viewed as a practice involving power and knowledge is a useful and insightful analytical tool. This perspective has allowed me to draw out the complexities of the lived experiences of my informants. I began the project believing that I would find heroic women to whom I could offer a media for their voices. However, through my fieldwork and analysis I found that the philosophy of being an American Muslim woman is not about saying that Islam is good or bad. It is about how collectively American Muslim women represent Islam in their communities, locally, nationally and globally as well as to their selves. My informants were aware that they could not combat the representations of Muslims as others and terrorists and Muslim women as oppressed and ignorant with speech alone. They knew that they needed to gather resources to help them engage the American public with the meanings of Islam that they held in their self knowledge, in order to give power to representations of themselves as Muslim, American and good. The difficulty comes in the struggle to metaphorically speak louder than those with established narratives in public discourse. The representations of Muslims as others is supported by abundant resources both in the access to mass media and connections to popular core religious beliefs. Further, terrorists, who with bombs and guns are able to commandeer the public’s attention, give fuel to those who distort representations of Islam to help them accomplish political goals.

[click] Throughout my fieldwork, I observed women who led complex lives of thickly woven representations of themselves amid strong negative representations from national and local discourses. While I often felt overwhelmed by the stares and the questions from strangers, which were not always friendly, my informants gracefully handled each situation and in the few instances where they became angry or frustrated, they remained strong in their self knowledge. They did not waver or cower before powerful representations of themselves as oppressed, backward, ignorant or un-American. In this observation, I see hope for a future where these women and their sisters in faith are able to amass enough power to create a globally salient representation of themselves as they are.

WHO I AM / AM NOT:
IDENTITY AND PRACTICE AMONG
MUSLIM AMERICAN WOMEN IN LOUISIANA

by Angela Kristin VandenBroek

As I am winding down and coming to an end of my thesis, there will be some temporary reconstruction of this site. The most recent posts are now the chapters of my thesis.  Some of these chapters are password protected.  For those of you that should have access, you know who you are, email me if you don’t remember the password.

I hope you enjoy!

WHO I AM / AM NOT: IDENTITY AS PRACTICE
AMONG A GROUP OF MUSLIM AMERICAN
WOMEN IN LOUISIANA

by
Angela Kristin VandenBroek

Chapter I / Introduction

Chapter II / Methodology

Chapter III /Identity Theory

Chapter IV / Agency and Practice Theory

Chapter V / A Practice Theory of Identity

Chapter VI / Multiplicity in Identity Practice

Chapter VII / Power in Identity Practice

Chapter VIII / Agency and Projects in Identity Practice

Chapter IX / Conclusion: We are the Ambassadors of Our Religion.

]]> http://lostinliminality.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/coming-to-the-end/feed/ 0 Liminal http://lostinliminality.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/chapter-ii-methodology/ http://lostinliminality.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/chapter-ii-methodology/#comments Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:07:45 +0000 Angela VandenBroek http://lostinliminality.wordpress.com/?p=299 ]]> Scope and Methods of Collection

With this thesis, I do not claim to make generalized conclusions about Muslim American women, or even the more focused category of the Muslim American Women of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Instead, this project is aimed to provide a thick description of a particular practice, the practice of living the feminine American Muslim identity.  I choose this method over others, such as a large-sample survey asking for identity terms, for its ability to provide richer information on the motives and the history of the women, which I believe has led to a more thorough understanding of the behaviors I observed.  Schiff (2003:285) explained in a similar study in methodology with Israeli-Arabs, “In considering whole lives, we retain a concept of the person as the subject matter throughout our analysis in order to interpret how persons manage collective identity… The result is a complex interpretation of lives rather than the percentage of people who give themselves one-, two-, or three-word labels.” Rather than addressing questions of how all Muslim American women behave, I instead am able to analyze themes in the women’s responses and behaviors as well as the differences caused by varying life histories and other identity categories they define themselves with.  Allaine Cerwonka (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007:74), while describing her experiences doing field work in Australia commented that, “With time, I came to see that instead of being able to make such broad claims, ethnographic research done in very particular and deliberately choosen field sites does enable one to take a concept or phenomenon and understand it in deep, rich ways.”

Further, my experience with Muslim American women, before, during and after my fieldwork, impressed on me that this group is exceptionally heterogeneous containing women who rarely share similar backgrounds of ethnicity, nationality, class, or culturally defined race.  Neither do they universally agree on the requirements of Islam.  As a group, little besides the belief that there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet, can be prescribed to all or the majority.  Even this most basic tenant is situated in the women’s lives in varying degrees of intensity and interpretation.  This is not to downplay the seriousness of the religion of Islam or its believers; instead I wish to demonstrate that a study claiming to represent the belief and actions of such a large and diverse group is dubious at best.

Therefore the scope of this project is to observe the behavior of identity as practice. This was accomplished with approximately sixty-four hours of extensive interviews with individual Muslim women. In addition, I spent a year, from January 2007 to December 2008, less two months to allow the community to recover from damage caused by Hurricane Gustave, observing the women at the masjid, in their homes, in their neighborhoods and at school and work.  This time of observation included special events, such as holidays and outreach activities, as well as mundane activities including eating at restaurants, grocery shopping, studying at the library, taking children to parks and so on. Finally, my field work included surveys of local media coverage and participation about and by the women I worked with and the local Muslim population.

Location and Population

Muslims are a notorious among scholars for being difficult to count in the United States.  The largest demographic survey in the United States, the federal census, is not constitutionally allowed to survey religious demography. Thus demographic statistics on Muslim American’s is left to smaller organizations which generally have much smaller samples and only cover geographic areas that are of scholarly significance. Louisiana is not one of the states in which scholars or activists have a particular interest in Muslims. Therefore, demographic information on the Muslim population is particularly sparse and lacks quality collection methods.

According to a 2008 America.gov report on Muslims in America, there are eleven mosques in the state.  However, this number is based only on the volunteered listings in the online directory of Islamic Centers organized by IslamiCity in 2008. In 2000, the Association of Religion Data Archives reported twenty-three Islamic Centers based on a survey by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). Based on my experiences in Baton Rouge and information provided by my informants there are only two masjids in Baton Rouge. The number of Islamic adherents in Louisiana is consistently cited as 13,050, as nearly all publications on Louisiana’s religious populations are based on one survey from 2000 by the ASARB. Based on the 2008 America.gov report, Louisiana ranks seventeenth in total number of mosques among other states. Based on the 2000 survey by the ASARB, Louisiana is ranked twenty-first in total Muslim adherents among other states. However, these rankings can be misleading when considering overall distribution of mosques and adherent population. Forty-nine percent of American mosques are located in the top six states in number of mosques and 32% of American mosques are located in the top two states. Similarly, 56% of American Muslims live in the top six states in Islamic adherents and 32% of American Muslims live in the top two states.

Figure 1. Graph depicting total number of mosques in the top twenty-five states in number of mosques. These twenty-five states represent 88% of the total Muslim population in the United States. Louisiana ranks seventeenth with seventeen mosques. This graph is based on data collected by the ASARD in a 2000 survey of religion in the United States (Jones, et al. 2000). Figure 2. Graph depicting total number of adherents in the top twenty-five states in Muslim population. These twenty-five states represent 95% of the total Muslim population in the United States. Louisiana ranks twenty-first with 13,050 Muslims. This graph is based on data collected by the ASARD in a 2000 survey of religion in the United States (Jones, et al. 2000).

Demographic information on the national Muslim population is more abundant than state level demographics. However, that information is still inherently flawed because of a lack of survey resources and the diversity of the Muslim population. Estimates of the national Muslim population range from two to seven million (Cincotta, et al. 2009). The wide range of estimates stems from methodological differences in each study.  Most estimates are compiled based on a combination of nationalities of immigrants, language and race statistics in other surveys and religious affiliation questions from public opinion polls (Pew Research Center 2007:11).  Methodologies that are based on generalizations of the relationships between ethnicity, language and religion struggle to compensate for the vast diversity of the Muslim population in national origin, language and race and the increasing rate of conversion among natural American citizens (Pew Research Center 2007:11).

The Pew Research Center’s 2007 report, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, argued that based on national surveys Muslim Americans are well established in the United State’s classic categories of ideal Americanhood such as education and household income. According to their report, 24% of Muslims in the United States have completed either a bachelors or a graduate degree compared to the national rate of 25% (Pew Research Center 2007). Likewise, survey responses on income mirror national rates with 41% of respondents claiming income greater than fifty-thousand dollars a year, compared to 44% of the general population. The men and women with whom I worked generally fit within the observations of the Pew Research Center’s report.  However, I observed a greater rate of individuals who had attended college than the 41% presented in the Pew Research Center’s report. This can be generally explained by the close proximity of Louisiana State University, which for many in the local Muslim population was the draw to the area, as many of them have taught or attended the university. Further, the leaders in the masjid’s community expressed a particular emphasis on the religious responsibility of Muslims to obtain educations and generally respect pursuits of knowledge.

Positioning Myself

Throughout my fieldwork, there were facets of my identity that were particularly salient for the situations I found myself in. These identities gave me access to information that I otherwise would not have. They also elicited responses from the women who spoke with me that I had not expected.  In this section, I would like to briefly talk about these characteristics and how they have molded and shifted the results I received.

During the first half of my fieldwork, I was engaged to be married and during the second half of my fieldwork I was a newlywed. This quickly became common knowledge in the community because of the rings that I wore and because my husband frequently attended events with me. During events held at the masjid, women and men are separated and during these events my husband was warmly received among the men at the masjid. Unlike the other people in my life, my husband was a tangible aspect of my life for the community to witness. This impacted the way I was received by my informants in two ways. Firstly, most of the older women, approximately the age of my mother or older, spent a considerable amount of time giving me advice and inquiring about my wedding and my marriage. The relationships I developed with these women because of this tended to be more mentoring and motherly. Secondly, there were a handful of women who either were engaged or were seeking marriages. With these women, my relationship was more of camaraderie as we struggled with similar obstacles and were excited about similar prospects.

My geographic heritage made a considerable difference in the way I was received by the women in the community. My first introduction to the community was as a graduate student from the University of Southern Mississippi.  Most people assumed prior to meeting me that I was born in Mississippi or another southeastern state.  While under this assumption I was generally treated as someone with little to no understanding of Islam or Muslims.  This was apparent in the advice given to me and the questions asked of me in these early encounters, “Don’t shake the men’s hands,” and “Are you surprised that I am not Arab?” With some of the women, particularly the younger women, I witnessed grand displays of “Americanism” during which they represented themselves prominently as educated, independent and strong. This is not to suggest that these women were not educated, independent and strong.  However, during this period their goal, as many later told me, was to demonstrate that they were not the negative stereotype of oppressed Muslim women that was portrayed in the media and across the internet.

Early in my encounters with each woman, I told each woman that I was from Michigan. This drastically changed the way I was received by most of the women, although not by all. During my time with them, I learned that, as the home of the largest Arab population in the United States, Michigan was often seen as a bastion of tolerance and acceptance of Islam amid a sea of intolerance and ignorance. While in reality this is only marginally true and only in some areas of Michigan, it nevertheless pushed my position among the women into more of an informed sympathizer rather than an uninformed questionable individual.

Fortunately, my Michigan upbringing had exposed me to Muslim culture.  However, my mother’s guidance through my childhood and my own academic interests were the larger motivators for my sympathetic and informed nature. Nonetheless, I used my identity as a Michigander to easily soothe worries and gain rapport among the community. Doing this, opened many doors for me into conversations and experiences I many not have otherwise had.  However, this identity also had some drawbacks.  I was expected to know most etiquette rules without instruction, which made my slip ups and bumbles more socially awkward than they may have otherwise been. Luckily, my age and my still intact non-Muslim status exempted me from real responsibility for my missteps.

Lastly, my identity as an Anthropologist or more broadly as a researcher had particular benefits and drawbacks. I was not the first person to observe, interview or study people from the masjid’s community.  Ahead of me there were many reporters, social scientists, religious scholars from local synagogues and churches, school classes, and other interested parties who worked with the community. And with the current political climate and the openness of the community, I will likely not be the last researcher to have an interest in them.  The main benefit of this was that the women I spoke to were generally relaxed in my presence and were comfortable speaking in the presence of a notebook and digital recorder. They were also excellent at anticipating what events and activities I would be interesting in observing. When I arrived for these events, they were well prepared for my presence.  However, their extensive prior experience with researchers had caused most of the women to prepare, although often unconsciously, formulaic responses to questions that were delivered in even practiced voices. In some cases, it would take me many questions and redirections to receive deeper explanations and insights. Also, I frequently battled the misconception that I was writing “another” paper about Muslim women.  There was a common understanding among the women that people who were interested in studying Muslim women wanted to write about the “amazing” fact that they were not oppressed. This led to many lectures on women’s rights in Islam particularly surrounding popular controversial topics such as hijab, arranged marriage, polygamy and education.

Finally, during my work with a few of the women, my relationship with them as an Anthropologist was tainted by a prior experience with reporters and social scientists. In one case, I was never able to establish the rapport I wanted with the woman, as her prior experience had been too difficult to overcome. A reporter had interviewed her about her Muslim heritage and had printed an article with construed information. The article had painted her as an extremely oppressed individual who was a victim of both her husband and her religion, although she was in fact a well educated and happy Muslim woman. The article resulted in controversy in her community. Ultimately, she was terminated from a public service job that she had spent many years working in happily.

During my fieldwork, many other facets of my identity were influential in my position in the masjid’s community and in my relationships with the various women.  However, the above mentioned characteristics had the most profound impact on my experiences and on the data I collected.  Thus, I have documented them here in an effort to forwardly state my position in the field and in this document.

“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 14^th, 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.

For the analysis of my fieldwork, I have explored and examined identity through the lens of practice theory.  To do this, I have transformed my view of identity from the classic sense of essential meaning to a complex social practice.  This argument is a different from the arguments presented in chapter four in that I have placed a particular emphasis on the analysis of the process of identity rather than on the meanings that are created through it.  I have taken this perspective for this project for two general reasons. First, meaning is fleeting and is highly dependent on context which in many instances can change drastically from moment to moment. What, then, is to be learned from documenting and preserving these capricious meanings?

Second, the literature in anthropology on feminine Muslim identity has tended to focus on either documenting or deconstructing identity meanings or the consequences of those meanings.  This practice has led to several unfortunate consequences that have negatively impacted the lives of the women I have worked with as well as the level of understanding anthropologists have of the lived experiences of feminine Muslim identity. One of the core issues is the misuse of anthropological literature to essentialize the character of Muslim women for justification of political and social acts by mainstream media and governmental agencies.  However, it is also important to note the considerable drawback of this approach for the social sciences.  The immense diversity of the Muslim population makes any attempt to understand the “Muslim” identity dubious at best.  Even when drilled down to a small population, such as the group I worked with, Muslim American women over the age 18 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who all attended the same Masjid, the Muslim identity is as diverse as a random sample of the American population.  Further, the Muslima I spoke to consistently expressed distrust for social science work on Muslims, particularly Muslim women. They found that the literature they had read was overly broad, overly simplistic and was not something they could relate to, even though they were the supposed topic of the studies.  I would like to note that these women were not unfamiliar with social science literature; nearly every woman had obtained or was working to obtain a bachelors degree from a liberal arts university, some of these had obtained graduate degrees and a few of those were in social science fields.  All of the women with college degrees stated that they had taken at least one college course in either Sociology or Anthropology.

My initial draw to working with Muslim women was not far from the fears that the Baton Rouge Muslima had expressed; I had wanted to give voice to the women by allowing them to combat popular stereotypes, or identity meanings, by redefining those meanings through my thesis and any subsequent publication. However, I now believe that to analyze their contributions to this thesis by creating yet another description of Muslim women would not do justice to the complexity and sophistication of the agentive and mundane actions they took to negotiate their identities in every interaction.­

For these reasons I have chosen to explore identity from the perspective of practice and agency.  I want to look at how identity is done in practice, what the main components of the process of identity are, how this perspective on identity can be situated in contemporary debates in anthropology, particularly those concerning culture, power, historicism and subjectivity, and how this perspective can benefit anthropological knowledge on identity and the Muslima experience.

I have found that my understanding on identity as practice is prominently non-linear and is as messy and boundless as the actual expressions of it that I observed.  This chapter begins by taking this nebulous concept and presenting it in simplistic linear form.  I have found this is the optimal way to explain my observations.  However, this should in no way diminish the complexity and immeasurability of the concept itself.  In the latter portion of the chapter, I have taken the simple model and problematicized it to demonstrate these complexities, particularly those closely related to the post-modern critique.  The remaining chapters in this thesis will continue to explore these themes and draw out further facets through analysis of my field experiences.

Identity as Practice

My perspective on agency and practice is drawn heavily from the work William Sewell and Sherry Ortner that was discussed in chapter five. In general, for this project, practice should be understood as the processes and components described by Sewell (1992) and agency should be, as described by Ortner (2006), practice that involves projects and serious games or otherwise involves power negotiations. Identity thus fits in this model as a practice that when imbued with power and projects becomes agentive action.  I have found that identity fits well within Sewell’s model.  The self as self history and personal knowledge, relationships with others and elements from the context of the identity action both human and non-human make up the resources available to each actor involved in identity practice.  These resources and their uses are organized and influenced by cultural schemas. The structuration of identity then comes in the dual actions of representation and feedback, which then contributes to both the agent’s self and greater social knowledge.

A single act of identity as practice can be understood in six steps (see figure 1 for a graphical depiction). (1) The agent gathers identity resources, the characteristics, meanings and symbols of identity, that will benefit her particular project or suit the current situations. (2) The agent organizes the identity resources using the cultural schemas available to her within the context of the interaction. (3) The agent creates a representation of herself in the form of action or language. (4) The other provides feedback on the agent’s representation. (5) The agent incorporates that feedback into her self as knowledge. (6) The interaction results in added social knowledge for the discourses involved in the interaction’s context.

Figure 1. An illustrative example of a single act of the identity process. The agent collects resources from her self, the context of the interaction and her relationship with the other. She then creates a representation of herself based on her current motivations, projects and play. The other provides feedback on her representation, which she then incorporates into her self.

The following narrative demonstrates this process in the context of an interaction I had with Adiba, a young college student and Muslim activist.  This was a casual conversation, in which we were discussing my religious beliefs and my interest in Islam.  Throughout the interaction Adiba and I gathered resources, create representations and provide feedback for one another.  Adiba and I had only spoken briefly prior to this occasion.  However, I found her quite amiable and forward; my liking for her stemmed predominately from our similarities.  Adiba is only a few years younger than myself, we are both particularly outspoken and politically active and we are both particularly comfortable with talking about our personal histories and stances on various topics.  During this particular encounter, Adiba was attempting to understand my interests in Islam and why my interest had not led to conversion, something she found entirely perplexing.

Angela and Adiba’s Narrative: Who are you?

Adiba: Why do you want to study Muslims?[1]

Angela: Well, I grew up in Michigan and I don’t know if you know but there is a rather large population of Muslims there.

(We both laughed.)

An: After 9/11 I was heartbroken to see the culture I had grown up admiring being publically denounced by such a large part of the country.

Ad: But you never converted?

An: No.

Ad: But you like Islam?

An: Yes, I find the religion and the culture associated with it very intriguing.

Ad: So, you don’t believe any of it? You just appreciate it like art?

An: Yes and no. My relationship with Islam is very much one of appreciation.  However, that doesn’t mean that I believe it to be mythical or fanciful.

Ad: So, what is your religion? Christian?

An: No, I suppose if you were to call me anything it would be a humanist.

Ad: So, you are an atheist or agnostic then?

An: No, I believe in God.  I just don’t believe that any one religion can fully know God’s will.  So, I base my morals on logic based on the assumption that causing harm to others is bad.  I have gleaned a lot from various religions but I have never really converted to any of them.

Ad: What is stopping you from converting to Islam? I mean if you accept most of the beliefs, why not just do it?

An: I take my personal relationship with religion very seriously and I don’t feel right claiming any particular religion as my own as I don’t feel I can fully commit to embracing them.

Ad: That is the nice thing about Islam, you only have to accept that there is one God and Mohammed is his messenger. The rest is just highly suggested.  You don’t have to wear hijab.

An: (I laughed.) Actually, I don’t think I would have a problem with wearing a hijab.  However, I have found no reason to believe that God is singular.  I don’t see why God could not be multiple and singular at his whim.  Actually, I don’t find the singularity or multiplicity of God to be particularly important to my faith in what is wrong and right.

Ad: If you had to choose a religion which would it be?

An: Honestly, if I had to choose, then I suppose it would be Islam, as I disagree with it less than any other religion I have studied.

(We both laughed.)

Ad: Then it is settled, you should be a Muslim.

(We continued to laugh at the prospect of me as a Muslim.)

Ad: Not that I am trying to convert you.  That isn’t allowed in Islam, conversion comes from knowledge and choice not peer pressure.

An: Yet another thing I agree with.

(More laughing.)

Ad: You just need more knowledge.  You will be a Muslima before you leave us, I know it!

An: We will see.

(We continued to laugh for a few moments before changing the subject to scheduling a formal interview about Adiba’s life.)

Analysis of Angela and Adiba’s Narrative

I chose this example as it was predominantly, although not entirely, a one sided identity negotiation.  Most identity interactions I observed had many overlapping identity acts that identified both parties and those beyond those immediately present. Also, in this interaction, most of the identity negotiation and representation revolved around my identity.  This is particularly beneficial as I can explicitly state my intentions and projects without assumption for a clear example of the entire process.  My first identity act occurred when Adiba inquired about my purpose in studying Islam.  My response is only a partial answer to the question; I have many other facets that have caused me to be interested Islam.  However, I had a particular project in this instance to gain a rapport and trusting relationship with Adiba, as I wanted her to consent to doing a formal interview with me. My response to her question, “Why do you want to study Muslims?” did not include the parts of my self history where I was fascinated with alien conspiracy theories involving Egyptian pyramids, which led to a fascination with North African and Middle Eastern cultures. It also did not include the considerable influence of an Arab-Muslim college professor, who taught me to truly appreciate the Arabic language and his Muslim heritage. Instead, I drew resources from another portion of my self history, my experience of the sad events that occurred in my home state and nationally after September 11, 2001.  I also wanted to present myself as a compassionate and scholarly individual.  During my time at the masjid and in talking to the Muslima there, I learned that the identity characteristic, Michigander, had a particular meaning that I have not encountered in other contexts.  Michigan was seen as a bastion of Arab and Muslim culture in the United States and its non-Muslim residents were expected to be more knowledgeable and tolerant of Islam.  This was generally due to their knowledge of the large Arab and Muslim population in Michigan and that they had heard positive things about the availability of Muslim products, particularly women’s clothing, in the area. I pulled from this part of the masjid’s discourses to position myself, not as an ignorant outsider, but as a sympathetic insider using these resources.

These resources were gathered and structured with the social schemas associated with the interaction.  For example, it would have been socially unacceptable as well as detrimental to my goals, to have admitted that my eleven year old self had once identified with a rather racist and ethnocentric story of a “primitive” ancient culture that could not have created pyramids without outside help.  I also relied on schemas concerning humor.  I made the statement, “Well, I grew up in Michigan and I don’t know if you know but there is a rather large population of Muslims there,” in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner. I played upon my relationship with Adiba, me as an anthropologist studying her as my subject, and me as an ignorant outsider and her as the knowledgeable insider, to overplay my position as an anthropologist and to inform Adiba about her own culture. This further emphasized my insider status in the form of a joke. These resources and the schemas that organized them constructed a representation of myself as an informed and sympathetic insider to Adiba’s culture.

Adiba provided feedback to this representation through a steady stream of questions about the part of my representation that Adiba rejected, my non-Muslim status combined with my being sufficiently informed about the religion. In another conversation, Adiba informed me that she firmly believed that no one who had been presented with the “truth” about Islam could resist conversion.  This theme is present throughout the conversation.  By the end of the conversation, my self representation had shifted to a potential candidate for conversion.  Although, this representation was played with lightly, there were serious implications for my self history as well as the resources available to Adiba during our future encounters.  I added a new facet to my self knowledge; I could be a convert to Islam, something that was contradictory to my earlier self knowledge as a staunch non-religious person.  Although, I have not converted, the potential for conversion is now a part of my self knowledge that has an impact on my interactions with Muslims.  Adiba continued to represent me as a potential convert throughout our interactions and used it as a resource to position herself as a mentor more than an ethnographic informant.

Complicating Identity as Practice

In the last section, I have shown how the process of identity as a practice is done, by gathering resources, organizing those resources with schemas and one’s goals, creating a representation, receiving feedback and incorporating the knowledge gained into one’s self and the applicable social discourses. However, I also noted previously, that this was an overly simplistic view of a complex system that is rarely linear and never complete.  During my conversation with Adiba, there were other identity practices occurring besides my own representation of myself.  I was also creating representations of Adiba.  This form of identity practice, while still following similar processes is more subtle in narrative one. In the creation of my responses to Adbia’s questions, I framed my answers to reflect who I thought she was. More accurately, I created a representation of her with the identity characteristics that I found most salient in the current interactions.  Another identity process that occurred in narrative one was Adiba creating representations of herself.  In some cases these were clearly present in the dialog, such as the when she represents herself as a good Muslim who does not proselytize.  In other cases, they were more subtle as in the questions she asks about my identity.  Finally, Adiba created representations of me.  These representations, when viewed from my point of view are a form of feedback on my self representations.  However, they also go beyond feedback on my representations, they add new resources and are supported by different goals and projects that stem from Adiba as an agent, particularly the goal of educating me on my own potential for becoming Muslim.

Beyond these immediate practices of identity, larger identity representations affected the course of our interaction. Identity characteristics are powerful symbols in discourse. While on an individual and personal level the meanings of these characteristics can be quiet malleable, the meanings associated with identity characteristics in larger discourses can be far more rigid and lasting depending on the power associated with the institutions or individuals who support them. For example, when Adiba informed me that I would not need to wear hijab as a requirement of Islam, she was pulling not from my representation of myself but from representations that had been incorporated into larger discourses. These instructed her that non-Muslim American women were opposed to wearing hijab. Thus, her representation of me was a woman who denied Islam because of modesty beliefs. I negated her representation of me by citing that it was not modesty beliefs that caused me to resist conversion but more fundamental beliefs. This negation, however, only negated my position in relation to the characteristic that Adiba had associated with me.  It did not negate the characteristic itself either within our interaction or in the discourses she pulled it from. In this way, these characteristics become hegemonic.  While with each personal interaction I had with the Muslima I emphasized that I was not opposed to the hijab, I was not able to escape this characteristic. Moreover, I observed strong indications that some women never fully believed that I found neither the hijab fundamentally oppressive nor those that wear it naïve, because I was a white, non-Muslim woman.

Methods of Analysis and Questions to Ask

By viewing self and identity through the lens of practice theory, I have sidestepped some of the questions and problems that have plagued endeavors into these two problematic concepts.  Prominently, the problem of essentialism is irrelevant to this type of analysis. To take on this perspective, identities are necessarily fleeting and in constant flux. Thus, it must be understood that no characteristic or associated meaning can fully define any individual or any part of an individual.  This understanding means that ethnographic emphasis should not be on the meanings but on the processes and projects that create, maintain, alter and cast aside these meanings and characteristics.  Further, each actor intends the representations she creates of herself and of others to be an essentialism. By successfully creating a representation that seems complete and timeless, one is able to create more power and validity for the representation.  Representations that fail to essentialize seem to lose authenticity during the interaction.

As Ewing presented in The Illusion of Wholeness (1990), the self as a concept in anthropology has been overwhelmed with the debate over the universal organization of the self and the relativistic organization of the self. Viewing the self as a repository of identity knowledge shifts the relativistic self organization away from the self and into the realm of representation.  Cultural schemas as a resource for the creation of representations allows each representation to reflect the observations of relativistic selves made in other ethnographic studies (see Shweder and Bourne 1984; Spiro 1993).  In fact, I argue that these cultural schemas or self-types, when used successfully aid in creating authenticity for the representation.  Yet, the self as I have described it allows for the universal construction of self argued for by Ewing.

While these challenges are met, there are still lingering questions concerning identity and its place in anthropology.  Particularly, if describing identity characteristics and meanings are not the goal of an ethnographic project on identity, then what should be examined? Also, what can anthropology and society gain from the knowledge created by these new analytical focuses? It is my aim to preliminarily answer these questions with this thesis. Further exploration into this perspective will evolve this perspective and may answer these questions differently with new ethnographic data and new insights.  Thus, I do not claim to have created a complete refined perspective.  Yet, for this project, I have found this perspective to be beneficial for analysis and theoretical thinking.  It is my goal to create a base on which to build.

Through the remaining chapters, I have chosen to analyze not the identity characteristics and meanings I observed in my fieldwork, but the process that utilized them.  In chapter seven, identities of kinship, I look at how representation in the family and in the masjid creates bonds and roles between individuals.  Identities in Everyday Life, chapter eight, is an examination of multiplicity in meanings between discourses, places and individuals and how this multiplicity effects the interactions of individuals. Chapter nine, Citizenship and Ethnic Identities, explores conflicting representations and how power and hegemony manipulate identity interactions and the knowledge they create. Finally in chapter ten, (Anti?)-Feminist Identities, I look at identity agency where power is asserted by agents to alter identity meanings and characteristics in powerful discourses. Through these chapters, I hope to demonstrate how focusing on identity as a practice rather than as a series of meanings gives a thicker understanding of my informants and of identity as an anthropological concept.