Chameleon And Identity Essay

“’Identity has been increasingly used to refer to the social and historical make-up of a person, personality as a construct. Sometimes such identities are conceived narrowly psychological, individualist terms, as the cumulative result of personal experience and family history”

Identity as the “condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the qualities, beliefs, etc., that distinguish or identify a person or thing” (Dictionary.com). This could refer to name, gender, sexual orientation, one’s profession, race, ethnicity, and the list stretches beyond. Is it birth, by choice, or by evolution of events? In Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Teach Yourself Italian”, and Zadie Smith’s “Speaking in Tongues”, each author writes about their experiences with languages and all have lived through different events which has led them to their definitions of identity. What they all have in common is that they define identity not as something defined by birth, by determined by

Stuart Hall defines identity as an ‘already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent’. We should think instead of ‘identity as a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation’ (Hall 1994 p.392). An individual’s sense of belonging to a particular group, thinking, feelings and behaviour can also be referred to as identity. One’s cultural image can construct identity; such features as hair, skin tone and height. History shapes our identity.

Our sense of who we are as individuals, the sense of self established by unique characteristics and social roles. Throughout the Humanities course studies, many works that we have read such as Theodore Ziolkowski’s The Epic of Gilgamesh, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstien, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Toni Morrison’s Beloved all demonstrate the human process and issues to finding an identity. The first type of identity is personal identity, which refers to a sense of self that a person develops over their life. The second type of identity is social identity, which refers to a person’s membership in a social group or community. The last type of identity is cultural identity, which is a shared sense of identity within a cultural group.

Communities throughout history have always sought to define who they are as a collective whole. Over the course of time, it was this that helped bind nations together through a collective sense of national identity and belonging. Although there are some set definitions that people use to define who collectively are, such as their own language and national history, this is not the only explanation of how groups of people have conceived who they are. In reality, communities have primarily conceived who they are by comparing themselves to an ‘other’ who they are not. As the historian Peter Sahlins put it, national identity over the course of time has been constructed “by the social or territorial boundaries drawn to distinguish the collective

A person’s identity may be determined by him/her family background and this is proven evident in the essay “Private and Public Language” by Rodriguez. We live in a world in which identities are determined prematurely without hesitation. This means that even without getting to know an individuals personality the first thing that is done instead is determining identities based on your physical state, family, or family background. As a culture we live in a diverse environment in which the majority of people come from a different place, and as a result many are identified differently depending on where he/she and their family are from. Today’s culture is more diverse than ever, and more and more people are migrating to different countries and settling so I feel like it

Selection for Social Signalling Drives the Evolution of Chameleon Colour Change Abstract “Rapid colour change is a remarkable natural phenomenon that has evolved in several vertebrate and invertebrate lineages. The two principal explanations for the evolution of this adaptive strategy are (1) natural selection for crypsis (camouflage) against a range of different backgrounds and (2) selection for conspicuous social signals that maximise detectability to conspecifics, yet minimise exposure to predators because they are only briefly displayed. Here we show that evolutionary shifts in capacity for colour change in southern African dwarf chameleons (Bradypodion spp.) are associated with increasingly conspicuous signals used in male contests and

In general we differentiate between two “kinds” of identity. On the one hand there is the so called social identity, which stresses self-interpretation as a member of a certain social group and on the other hand there is the personal identity, which puts it´s emphasis on individuality and distinctiveness. This distinction is widely known as “patchwork-identity”. Both identities are only a subgroup of many different subjectively interpreted identities that everyone of us has innate.

The issue of whether identity is socially constructed or an innate characteristic remains a contested one. For some, identity is a product of the society, interactions, influence, and practices while for others, it is biological or rather primordial. At the very basic, identity is an essential personal characteristics as it encompasses the membership to different groups, including religion, gender, and ethnicity, the traits people show and what others ascribe to them (Newman 126). Identity locates people in the social world and influences all their actions, thoughts, and feelings. Several renowned thinkers and philosophers offer their

The world has become modern and global. Identification of the self is a complicated, though, an important problem of every individual. Self- identity is based on inner values and reflections on culture, politics and social interactions. The main point is that people label themselves to any particular group in the society (Worchel etc., 1998). According to Ferguson: “Identity commonly refers to which it makes, or is thought to make

The development of personal identity and a sense of place are concepts that are influenced by abstract ideology such as nationalism, fictitious history, and personal meaning. Anderson talks about the nature of how nationalism shapes a person and a community in his book, Imagined Communities. According to my first blog entry, Anderson defines a nation as an “imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” He claims that its imaginary aspect is due to the fact that individuals of a nation will never meet the rest of the nation. I state how, “This limited circumstance only allows for a subjective interpretation of a community that is not based on factual knowledge.” It is intriguing how a concept that can extensively shape the individual is an abstract illusion of a community. It illustrates how although the development of an individual may be seen as a private, even insignificant affair—it is influenced by a number of variables that exist in society. One could argue that the development of the individual is more public than private, and could shape and influence the development of a society as well as vice versa.

Imagined community is referred to the idea that a nations language, race and religion have been imaged by people who perceive themselves part of a specific nation. It is the idea that we ourselves create. In the text Whose Imagined community? By Partha Chatterjee, she explains how we have shaped this idea of imagined community and how it has been influenced by nationalism. The roots of nationalism has often been associated with a country who has political power.

Identity as a crisis is seen through a broad view of world literature, through books read this term, and through specific quotes from the books. Throughout the texts we have read this term, identity

Cultural identity is a part of the psychological self-concept that expresses an individual or group’s worldview and perceived cultural affiliations. The first step in finding a societal fit is to establish a cultural identity; this can be on an individual level and group level. Who am I? And where do I belong? These questions start to form in the human mind from an early age; it drives humans to explore their worldviews and how and where they fit in the world. Rosenfeld (1971) argued it is a deep-seated primal process that has ensured our continual survival. By finding others that think and act similarly we are offered some protection (Erickson, as cited in Carducci 2015). Erickson (as cited in Carducci, 2015) and Maslow (as cited in Mcleod 2007) argued that the need to belong is a basic building block of human development. Whatever the reason, the consensus is that humans have an intrinsic need to find a like-minded cultural group to belong to; this chosen affiliation is their cultural identity. A person may identify with more than one cultural

The nation has been described by Benedict Anderson as an "imagined community" and by Paul James as an "abstract community". It is an imagined community in the sense that the material conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections. It is an abstract community in the sense that it is objectively impersonal, even if each individual in the nation experiences him or herself as subjectively part of an embodied unity with others.